Central Asia Sounds Alarm on Islamic Radicalism

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

KOSH-KORGON, Kyrgyzstan — The three men were locals who were said to have once crossed into nearby Afghanistan to wage war alongside the Taliban. They then returned, militant wayfarers apparently bent on inciting an Afghan-style insurgency in this tinderbox of a valley in Central Asia. By late June, they were holed up in a house here, stockpiling Kalashnikov rifles and watching pirated DVDs of martial arts movies.

Their exact plans will most likely never be known. The Kyrgyz security services tracked them down a week after their arrival and stormed the building, according to officials and village residents. All three men were killed, including one who blew himself up with a grenade after being wounded.

The security operation was one in a recent spate of firefights and attacks in Central Asia that have raised concerns that homegrown militants with experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan may be trying to move north to take on the region’s brittle governments.

Senior officials and analysts across Central Asia have said in recent weeks that there is evidence that some Central Asians who were allied with the Taliban are retreating from Afghanistan because of pressure from the NATO mission there.

“Our belief is that because of the blow they suffered in Afghanistan, they left for a calmer place in Central Asia where they could resume operations — either to regroup or to even open up a new front,” said Kadyr K. Malikov, director of the Independent Analytical Research Center for Religion, Law and Politics in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital.

The officials and analysts said one result could be a strengthening of Islamic movements in Central Asia, especially here in the Fergana Valley, which includes parts of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. All three countries are former Soviet republics with secular leaders and Muslim populations.

The valley has long been considered one of the region’s most unstable areas because of poverty, militancy and loose borders. In 2005, in the Uzbek section of the valley, soldiers killed hundreds of people massing in an antigovernment protest.

Warnings about the spread of Islamic radicalism to Central Asia are not new, and the region’s governments have long used this supposed threat to justify severe restrictions on political freedom. But if these recent signs point to a revival, it could pose difficulties for the United States and other NATO members, which have military bases throughout Central Asia that support operations in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration only recently persuaded the Kyrgyz president to allow the United States to remain at a major air base on the outskirts of Bishkek.

The fervency of some in the Fergana Valley was evident in Friday Prayer in a recent visit to a nearby mosque, whose imam was killed in 2006 by security forces after being accused of extremism. The mosque is a meeting place for followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a worldwide Islamist group that wants to establish a pan-national Muslim state, called a caliphate, albeit nonviolently.

“The people in Afghanistan who are helping the Americans have sold out their faith, sold out their consciences,” said Noomanjan Turgunov, 60, one of the worshipers.

“We support the Taliban because they are upholding and fighting for our faith — it is for Islam,” he said. “Only God knows for sure whether the Taliban will come here or not. But if you ask me, I think that they will come. Our president has sold out our faith for a little money from the Americans.”

The interview was interrupted by an undercover Kyrgyz security agent, who was apparently monitoring the mosque, in part because Hizb ut-Tahrir is outlawed in Kyrgyzstan. This month, several of its members were arrested in Osh, the largest Kyrgyz city in the Fergana Valley, and charged with promoting extremism.

Whatever the deeply held views of people here, some experts and opposition politicians in Central Asia said the danger of a renewed Islamic insurgency was being overstated. They pointed out that these countries are secular in character because of their decades in the Soviet Union.

They said that it would be all but impossible for the Taliban to gain a foothold here because they are rooted in an ethnic group, the Pashtuns, that differs from those in Central Asia. And they maintained that rampant corruption and drug trafficking (connected to Afghan opium) were far more grievous issues, saying that the authorities described bandits as terrorists in order to cover up the problem.

“In the valley, I would say that practically all the officers in the security services are involved in drug trafficking,” said Isa Omurkulov, a Kyrgyz opposition leader.

The most well-known radical group in the region is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which fought along with the Taliban in the 1990s but is believed to have been severely weakened by the NATO operation in Afghanistan.

Governments in Central Asia have linked some recent attacks to a revitalized Uzbek movement, but that is difficult to prove. Kyrgyz officials identified the leader of the group killed in Kosh-Korgon as Hasan Suleimanov, 32, who had been trained in Pakistan and was accused of having links to the Uzbek movement.

Russia also has military bases in Central Asia and is on the alert for any signs that Islamic extremism could spread into Muslim parts of Russia. In recent weeks, it reached a tentative agreement with the Kyrgyz government to establish a military base in the Fergana Valley, in part to help ensure stability here. The base would be Russia’s second major one in Kyrgyzstan.

The Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, began issuing louder alarms about radicalism just as he was seeking to rally the public around his re-election, which he won easily on July 23 in a campaign that was marred by widespread reports of electoral fraud and violence against the opposition.

Mr. Bakiyev said in an interview that he viewed requests for bases from the Americans and Russians more favorably recently because he was worried about the conflict in Afghanistan. He said the danger was not urgent but was growing.

He noted that eight extremists had been killed recently in the Kyrgyz part of the Fergana Valley, and many others were arrested.

“These are all people who received special training in Pakistan for terrorist activity,” Mr. Bakiyev said. “All their weapons and ammunition and documents demonstrate this.”

His claims could not be independently confirmed. And some people attending Friday Prayer at the mosque in the Fergana Valley expressed deep suspicions about recent security operations, suggesting that they were contrived to drum up backing for the government.

“It is all a show, and that is very clear,” said Dilshat Rumbaev, 33, a merchant. “We have no militants here, and we are not a threat.”

Fergana Valley: Stringent Border Measures Fuelling Tension in Enclaves

Alisher Khamidov: 8/13/09

A recent clash on the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border is highlighting a simmering social problem found in and around the Fergana Valley's many isolated enclaves. Public frustration is mounting over the inability of officials in the region to grapple with border-related issues, experts say. Authorities in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are investigating the causes of the late July incident, in which a group of Uzbek citizens used stones to attack a Kyrgyz border checkpoint near the Uzbek enclave of Sokh, an area entirely surrounded by the Kyrgyz province of Batken. Two Kyrgyz law enforcement officers were reportedly injured in the confrontation. According to the Kyrgyz Border Service, the attack occurred after Kyrgyz border guards detained two Sokh residents who allegedly crossed the state border illegally. "Officers of the Kyrgyz State National Security Committee and the Interior Ministry, as well as representatives of the local authorities from both sides [of the border], arrived at the scene of the incident immediately. The incident was settled through talks. The two instigators of the conflict were handed over to Uzbek law-enforcement agencies," Cholponbek Turusbekov, deputy chairman of the Kyrgyz Border Service, told the Kazakhstan Today news agency on July 22. Residents who live in and around Sokh complain regularly about restrictions on their movement, especially since the violent episodes in Khanabad and Andijan, Uzbekistan, in late May. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].The increased restraints have hampered trade, preventing many farmers in the area from bringing their produce to market. The measures have also deepened the feeling of isolation of enclave residents from their countries.

In addition to Sokh, the Fergana Valley contains seven other enclaves. The Uzbek territories of Shakhimardan, Sokh, Qalacha, and Jangail are all located within Kyrgyzstan's Batken Province. Kyrgyzstan's Barak and Tajikistan's Sarvak both lie within Uzbekistan's Fergana province. Vorukh and Western Qalacha, two Tajik districts, are also surrounded by Batken province. During the early post-Soviet period, Fergana Valley borders were largely porous and unguarded. An insurgency waged by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) during the summer of 1999 and 2000 prompted Central Asian authorities to tighten border controls, seeking to check the free movement of individuals across borders, as well as to step up the fight against drugs and arms trafficking. Such measures had negative economic and social ramifications on regional residents. Sokhibjon, a taxi driver from Uzbek city of Fergana, described the complexity of traveling between two Uzbek cities. "If you want to get to Shakhimardan from Fergana, you have to cross at least four border checkpoints and several police stations. And you are likely to be harassed by border guards and customs inspectors. Fed up with such harassment, many people avoid traveling to Shakhimardan," he said. In addition, stringent border measures have endangered the local tourism industry, the main source of income for Shakhimardan's five thousand residents, locals say. With its picturesque scenery and mountain lakes, the enclave has long been a major holiday destination in the region. Several Islamic sacred sites located on its territory also once attracted a sizable number of religious pilgrims. "We lived off profits made during the busy summer months. Every day thousands of people flocked [to Shakhimardan]. Those days are long gone. The streets are empty and there is not much trade happening. We barely can make ends meet now," a resident of Shakhimardan told EurasiaNet on condition of anonymity.

In 2007 and 2008, residents of Shakhimardan staged several small protests in front of a local government building, trying to draw attention to their social and economic problems. Their claims, however, have been left largely unanswered by local officials. Locals in Sokh complain of isolation of another type. Sokh's 35,000 residents are predominantly ethnic Tajiks. The majority of local government officials are ethnic Uzbeks. Authorities in Tashkent have long viewed the Tajik-populated enclave with suspicion. The IMU incursions reinforced these suspicions and prompted the authorities to tighten control over movement in and out of the enclave. Between 1999 and 2001, landmines planted by Uzbek authorities to prevent the infiltration of Islamic militants killed at least a dozen local residents. Though the government began to remove landmines in the early 2000s, stiff security measures continue to make travel outside the enclave difficult for residents. When it comes to agriculture, enclave residents complain about a scarcity of arable land and pastures, a fact that sometimes has lead to clashes between neighboring villagers. Kyrgyz non-governmental organizations that specialize in conflict prevention in the Fergana Valley have reported more than a dozen border clashes involving enclave residents since the early 2000s. Regional governments have sought to delimit the state borders to reduce tensions in and around enclaves. For example, the Kyrgyz-Uzbek commission on border delimitation and demarcation has completed the delimitation of approximately 993 km out of 1,375 km of their mutual border. But a lack of funding has greatly hindered border demarcation efforts. In 2008, for instance, the Kyrgyz legislature allocated less than 10 million som (roughly $230,000) for border delimitation efforts. Complex terrain and conflicting Soviet-era maps -- printed at a time when defining the borders was not a pressing issue -- present the toughest obstacle to delimitation. As a temporary solution, Uzbek and Tajik authorities have informally sought land corridors through Kyrgyzstan that would connect the enclaves to their respective territories. But Kyrgyz officials oppose such corridors, saying they would hamper the movement of Kyrgyz citizens.

Some local residents and conflict prevention experts say that national governments should avoid hasty delimitation agreements and instead should give more authority to local governments. Maksumjon Rakhmatullayev, an analyst from the Uzbek town of Fergana, believes that "Local government officials are incapable of addressing [border-related] problems because they do not have enough power. They have to consult with their capitals for every issue and problem. And it takes time for the capitals to respond."

Editor's Note: Alisher Khamidov is a researcher based in South Kyrgyzstan.