Evaluating Kyrgyzstan’s Impact on the Islamic Militant Threat in Central Asia

Summer has traditionally been the season when Islamic radicals stir up trouble in Central Asia. Some experts believe the risk of radical activity may be higher this year, due to ongoing instability in Kyrgyzstan following the April ouster of former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Others, however, believe the Islamic threat is overblown.

Islamic militants first burst on the Central Asian scene in 1999, when the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), staged a series of bombings in the Uzbek capital Tashkent in February of that year, and then vexed security services with an incursion that summer into southern Kyrgyzstan. After going through a dormant phase, radicals retuned last year, when they carried out armed attacks in Uzbekistan, near the Kyrgyz border. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].

Representatives of foreign governments and organizations with an interest in maintaining a high degree of influence in Kyrgyzstan have been among the most vociferous in warning about the growing danger of radical violence. One such official is Nikolay Bordyuzha, the secretary-general of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization. “We know that not only criminal but also extremist groups and Islamic fundamentalists have stepped up their activity in Kyrgyzstan itself and are making efforts to gain certain power,” the Interfax news agency quoted Bordyuzha as saying May 12.

Some members of the regional expert community also subscribe to the theory that political uncertainty in Kyrgyzstan will benefit Islamic militants. For example, Bulat Sultanov, the head of Kazakhstan’s Institute for Strategic Studies, told the ca-news.org news service that he worried about the possibility of a radical group, such as the IMU, whipping up ethnic tension between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in southern Kyrgyzstan. [For background see EursaiaNet’s archive].

Inside Kyrgyzstan, observers view the Islamic radical issue from a very different perspective. Dinara Oshurahunova, a prominent human rights activist, is one expert who believes that Bakiyev’s departure from power actually diminishes the threat of Islamic radical-inspired instability. Bakiyev earned the enmity of many pious Muslims in the country for implementing policies that restricted freedom of worship. Bakiyev administration repression, in particular a crackdown in late 2008 on residents in Nookat who were seeking to hold a public celebration of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, proved a useful recruiting tool for militants, Oshurahunova contended.

The Nookat events “definitely created more attraction to become radical -- not only among religious people, but among simple citizens. … Certainly, the followers of radical Islam grew after that event,” Oshurahunova told EurasiaNet.org

Bakiyev’s departure from power removed a lightning rod of discontent for pious Muslims, thus reducing the radicalization tendency, she suggested. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].

Haji Habibullo Karimov, a pious philanthropist from Osh and the author of a book urging Muslims not to turn to extremism, believes other factors have helped discourage the radical threat. “There is no unity between Muslims here,” he noted.

A representative in southern Kyrgyzstan of the underground radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir appeared to confirm the view that radicals were struggling to gain traction. In an interview with EursaiaNet.org, the Hizb representative admitted that the more tolerant approach of Kyrgyzstan’s provisional government was making recruiting efforts more difficult for Hizb. “Under democracy, when there is freedom of speech, when nobody beats you, it will be difficult to deliver my thoughts to the people, to persuade them. It takes at least two years for us to recruit a person,” the representative said. “If there is democracy, it will take a longer time, maybe three years or more.”

Rights activists say that the provisional government in Bishkek is so far demonstrating commendable openness for religious expression, thereby undermining radicalism’s appeal. Tellingly, one of its first acts of provisional President Roza Otunbayeva after assuming power was to amnesty those convicted in connection with the Nookat events.

“The situation has changed drastically,” said Ulugbek Usmanov, a lawyer for the Nookat defendants. “At the moment there is no reason for radicalization.”