| |
Moscow turns up heat on
radicals
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW - After a recent crackdown on alleged
Muslim extremists, Moscow continues its verbal assault
on radical groups, including those of Central Asian
origin. Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization face a common enemy, the terrorist groups
operating in Central Asia and in the Caucasus against
Europe and the US, Konstantin Totsky, Russia's envoy to
NATO, stated last Tuesday.
This month, General
Boris Mylnikov, head of the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) Anti-Terrorist Center, stated that the
international operation in Afghanistan merely dispersed
but failed to destroy the Taliban and other Muslim
radicals. Subsequently, the threat of Muslim radicalism,
notably in the form of Hizb-ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic
Party of Liberation), has increased in Central Asia,
Mylnikov argued.
Moreover, it has been claimed
that an effort is under way to unify radical Islamic
groups in Central Asia, including those among the Hizb,
Uighur separatists, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
(IMU), and possibly Chechen separatists.
For
instance, this month the Kazakh National Security
Committee (KNB) and Russian Federal Security Service
(FSB), both successor agencies of the Soviet-era KGB,
conducted a joint search for "Chechen terrorists" in
Kazakhstan. Although some 30,000 Chechens still live in
Kazakhstan (where they were exiled in 1944 by the Soviet
dictator Joseph Stalin) and some 15,000 Chechens have
taken refuge during the most recent Chechen war, the KNB
and the FSB found no terrorists there.
Meanwhile, the KNB announced a crackdown on
Uighur separatists there. On July 11, KNB head Nartai
Dutbayev told journalists in Astana that three members
of the "Islamic Party of Eastern Turkestan" were
detained with arms and explosives. He added that the
alleged plotters "maintained ties with their accomplices
in Afghanistan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan".
Dutbayev also claimed that the IMU and the Hizb
increased their clandestine activities in Kazakhstan.
Ten members of Hizb were detained in southern
Kazakhstan, he said, adding that the Hizb posed "a real
threat to Kazakhstan's security".
Meanwhile,
Russia, with its Orthodox Christian majority and
20-million-strong Muslim minority, is extremely wary of
a perceived threat of Muslim extremism, notably with a
backdrop of endemic violence in predominantly Muslim
Chechnya.
Notably, last month law-enforcement
agencies in Moscow announced that they had detained 121
alleged Muslim militants, including 55 suspected members
of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir al-Islami radical group. The
suspects were reportedly headed by Kyrgyz citizen
Alisher Musayev and Tajik citizen Akram Jalolov. It was
reported that hand grenades, explosives and ammunition
were found on some detainees, as well as Islamic
propaganda leaflets.
There have been
contradicting Russian media reports regarding alleged
plotters in Moscow. Hizb ut-Tahrir activists were
accused of recruiting volunteers to fight against
Russian troops in Chechnya and of plotting to create an
Islamic state in Russia and even to assassinate the
presidents of Muslim Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, as well
as Orthodox Christian Ukraine. So far, there have been
no comments or confirmation from the states mentioned.
Moreover, all the detained except Musayev and Dzalolov
were eventually released.
However, Russia's
Memorial human-rights group eventually claimed that the
announcement of the Hizb bust was a sham designed to
show that Russia is fighting terrorism. The police
rounded up workers at a bakery that employs immigrants
from Central Asia, said Vitaly Ponomaryov, head of
Memorial's Central Asia program. Only two people have
been charged as a result of the raid, and the detainees'
alleged membership in any extremist organizations is far
from certain, he said.
Vladimir Chumak, lawyer
of Dzhalolov and Musayev, said both his clients deny
their guilt and any connection to Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Chumak
claimed the explosives and ammunition may have been
planted. Hizb ut-Tahrir has also said in a statement
that "bringing explosives, planting them alongside books
and leaflets of the Hizb and showing them together will
not fool anyone".
However, Hizb ut-Tahrir's
calls to seize power and supplant existing governments
with Islamist regimes for the purpose of jihad against
the West may have drawn attention of the law-enforcement
agencies in Russia and other Central Asian states.
The FSB has long accused Hizb ut-Tahrir of links
with separatist fighters, Wahhabists and alleged Arab
mercenaries combating Russian troops in the breakaway
republic of Chechnya. The FSB also argued that the group
was recently joined by members of the IMU, a radical
Central Asian-based Islamic organization. The IMU was
linked to the Taliban and was also routed during the
US-led military campaign in Afghanistan.
Last
month's arrests were the latest in a long series of
measures against radical Islamists, including
Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Russian officials have been lashing out
at this group for quite some time. Two years ago, the
Russian Foreign Ministry described Hizb-ut-Tahrir as
"the most radical clandestine extremist structure,
funded by overseas centers, which aims at Islamization
of Russia and neighboring countries". In May 2001,
General Boris Mylnikov, head of the CIS Anti-Terrorist
Center, stated that Hizb-ut-Tahrir was "an organization
of international terrorism, potentially threatening
Russia and CIS". On December 16 last year, FSM head
Nikolai Patrushev stated that Hizb-ut-Tahrir "organized
armed units and took part in these units".
In
May 2001, the FSB and Moscow police detained Uzbek
national and Hizb activist Nodir Aliyev, who was sought
by Uzbek authorities on charges of conspiracy to
overthrow the regime in his homeland. Despite protests
by human-rights activists, in just three days Aliyev was
deported to Uzbekistan.
This year, Russian
authorities moved to ban what they viewed as terrorist
organizations. On February 4, the FSB asked the
Prosecutor General's Office to put 15 organizations on
Russia's list of terrorist groups. Among the 15 were two
Chechen groups - the Supreme Military Majlis-ul Shura of
the United Mujahideen Forces of the Caucasus, headed by
Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, and the Congress of the
Peoples of Ichkeria and Dagestan, headed by Basayev and
another Chechen separatist leader, Movladi Udugov. Other
groups on the FSB's list include al-Qaeda, the Muslim
Brotherhood and Hizb-ut Tahrir al-Islami. Subsequently,
the Russian Supreme Court put Hizb ut-Tahrir and 14
other groups on a list of banned terrorist
organizations.
Not surprisingly, the Russian
government is weary of such groups as Hizb ut-Tahrir
al-Islami, one of the most secretive fundamentalist
Islamic organizations, which has been active in former
Soviet states since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Although the group has never been involved in any
violent actions, it is being repressed by many
governments, which consider its radicalism a threat.
The ultimate goal of this clandestine,
cadre-operated, radical Islamist political organization
is jihad against Kufr (non-believers), the
overthrow of existing political regimes and their
replacement with a Caliphate (Khilafah in
Arabic), a theocratic dictatorship based on the sharia
(religious Islamic law). According to Hizb's vision,
such a state would not recognize existing national,
regional, tribal, or clan differences and would include
all Muslims.
Since its inception in 1952 in
Jordanian-occupied East Jerusalem, Hizb has gained a
mass following. Furthermore, Sheikh Taqiuddin an-Nabhani
al Falastini, the founder of Hizb, who was serving at
the time on the Islamic appellate court in Jerusalem,
also drew on the organizational principles of
Marxism-Leninism, marrying Islamist ideology to Leninist
strategy and tactics.
Hizb ut-Tahrir has been
seen as a totalitarian organization, akin to a
disciplined Marxist-Leninist party, which tolerates no
internal dissent. Because its goal is global revolution,
it was compared to the Trotskyites. Moreover, Hizb
opponents argue that its strategy and tactics show that,
while the party is currently circumspect in preaching
violence, it will justify its use, as Lenin and the
Bolsheviks did in 1917. Russia's today mainly
anti-communist elite is necessarily wary of any
Bolshevik-type party, notably one utilizing radical
Muslim slogans.
Hizb expansion into Central Asia
coincided with the breakup of the Soviet Union in the
early 1990s. In the authoritarian post-Soviet states in
Central Asia, Hizb ut-Tahrir has seized a protest niche
that could be occupied by a political opposition, had it
been allowed by the authorities.
Moreover, in
Central Asia Hizb reportedly seeks to penetrate state
structures and enlist government officials and military
officers. Its platform openly states that the group has
started to seek the support of influential people. Hizb
has begun to penetrate the elites in Central Asia. Media
in the region have reported successes in penetrating the
parliament in Kyrgyzstan, the media in Kazakhstan, and
customs offices in Uzbekistan.
Hizb ut-Tahrir
now has large followings in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. It has an estimated
5,000-10,000 members, and many supporters in Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. At least 500 are
already behind bars in Uzbekistan alone. Most of its
members are believed to be ethnic Uzbeks. Moreover, Hizb
ut-Tahrir has reportedly extended its influence into
China's traditionally Muslim Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous
Region.
The use of "heavy-handed repression" by
Central Asian governments increases the risk that the
Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a non-violent radical Islamic group,
will adopt more confrontational tactics, according to a
recently published study, prepared by the Brussels-based
International Crisis Group (ICG). In its report, titled
"Radical Islam in Central Asia: Responding to
Hizb-ut-Tahrir", the ICG argues that the organization is
an "essentially peaceful group". The Hizb has
specifically rejected terrorism, believing the murder of
innocent bystanders to be a violation of Islamic law,
the report said.
However, Moscow presumably
would not subscribe to that sort of argument.
Furthermore, Russia has geopolitical motives to crack
down on groups such as Hizb, because the fight against
"terrorism and extremism" now tops the agenda of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which groups together
Russia, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan.
The group has drafted "the Shanghai
anti-terror convention". The presidents of the SCO
states gathered in the Kremlin on May 29 and decided
that the organization would have a Regional
Anti-Terrorist Force in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. The
force is to tackle jointly such threats as terrorism,
separatism and extremism. The SCO also plans to hold
joint "anti-terrorist" exercises late this year in
Kazakhstan involving the armed forces of all six member
states.
The SCO has been understood as one of
the vehicles used by Russia to sustain its clout in
strategically important Central Asia, as well as
maintain good relations with China. Hence the crackdown
on groups such as Hizb, which are seen as a threat in
other SCO states, is consistent with the goals of
Russia's domestic and foreign policies.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
