BANGALORE - Almost a month after a
series of bomb attacks and shootings rocked the Central
Asian republic of Uzbekistan, the question of who
masterminded the attacks is still unclear. While the
government blames international terrorists and Islamic
radicals, others are pointing to domestic opponents to
the iron rule of President Islam Karimov. Complicating
the various theories is the fact that at least two or
three of those who participated in the suicide attacks
were women from backgrounds that are quite different
from that of most Islamic militants.
A week of
blasts and shootouts in the Uzbek capital Tashkent and
the city of Bukhara left at least 47 people, including
the attackers, dead, and scores injured. The Uzbek and
US governments - they are close allies in the "war
against terrorism" - have been quick to find links with
al-Qaeda. Several Uzbek analysts argue that while the
groups behind the violence might have links with
international terror, the roots of the anger that fueled
the attacks are domestic and homegrown.
Police
officials are said to have found a woman's shoe and
pieces of blank chador cloth among the mangled remains
of bodies at the blast site in Tashkent. On March 29,
19-year-old Dilnoza Holmuradova detonated explosives
strapped to her body at Tashkent's Chorsu market. The
explosion left two policemen and Dilnoza dead. The
suicide blast was the first ever in Uzbekistan. A series
of blasts had rocked Tashkent in 1999, but they did not
involve human beings strapping themselves with
explosives and blowing themselves up.
Governments battling Islamic extremism have
often described the average Islamic radical as young,
male, unmarried, from a relatively underprivileged and
fanatically religious background and not very well
educated. They point out that those who participate in
suicide attacks do not have much of a future and
volunteer to become "martyrs" for the cause as they do
not have options anyway.
Increasingly, however,
this "loser" profile of suicide bombers does not seem to
apply to the situation on the ground. Palestinian
suicide bombers over the past three to four years have
included women, trainee lawyers, brilliant students,
recently engaged young men, men and women with families
- not losers but people with responsibilities and bright
careers and lives to look forward to.
Dilnoza
was a devout Muslim. She is said to have started
studying the religion in 2002. The religious leaders she
encountered at a meeting appear to have left a deep
impression on the teenager.
According to a
report in the Institute for War and Peace Reporting
(IWPR) website, Dilnoza was a computer programmer, and
enrolled at the Tashkent police academy in 2001. Besides
her native Uzbek and Russian, Dilnoza also spoke
English, Turkish and Arabic.
Dilnoza's 22-year
old sister, Shahnoza, is said to have gone missing the
day of the suicide attacks. Police are said to have
launched a hunt for Shahnoza. Posters describing her as
an "Islamic fanatic" warn that she could carry out a
suicide attack.
"The central police department
in Tashkent says Dilnoza and Shahnoza were active
members of a radical Islamic group and that both had
received training in some unspecified foreign country.
It is not clear what group they are believed to have
joined, or what the nature of the training was," reports
IWPR.
Another woman who is said to have blown
herself up is 26-year old Zahro Turaeva - again a woman
with "good prospects", who had graduated from the
university of technology and was employed in a
government office for architecture and construction.
She, too, came from a well-educated family. Another
woman who figures among those who participated in the
recent suicide bombings in Uzbekistan is 21-year old
Shahnoza Inoyatova.
It is hard to understand
what might have prompted Dilnoza, Zahro and Shahnoza to
blow themselves up. Uzbek government officials blame
radical Islam. But Islam forbids suicide and several
religious leaders in Uzbekistan, as in other parts of
the world, have condemned suicide attacks as unIslamic.
Some have pointed to a tradition rooted in
Zoroastrianism - a religion practiced in the region
before the advent of Islam - that dates back several
centuries as providing legitimacy to women suicide
bombers. It is said that women used self-immolation as a
weapon of last resort to protest against domestic
violence and harassment in male-dominated Uzbek society.
In Uzbekistan today, women have much to protest
about. Thousands of women have been living in a state of
prolonged uncertainty and fear. Their husbands, sons and
fathers have been rounded up, tortured and some even
killed because of the way Karimov's administration is
carrying out the "war against terrorism" in Uzbekistan.
Among those whom the government has targeted are
not only members of extremist groups such as the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), but also outfits like the
Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which though Islamist has been moderate
in its methods so far. What is more, many of those who
have been rounded up and tortured are just devout
Muslims with no links to terrorism.
According to
Human Rights groups, 6,000 to 7,000 Muslim men have been
jailed in recent years on charges that they are trying
to overthrow Karimov's secular government. Many of them
are "missing", perhaps killed during torture in custody.
Analysts are pointing out that unlike the terror
strikes in Madrid and Bali, where ordinary civilians
were targeted to create maximum casualties, chaos and
terror, the attacks in Uzbekistan were aimed at the
police - the force that has tortured and held in custody
thousands of innocent Uzbeks.
Associated Press
reports: "The prisoners' mothers, wives and sisters have
been a rare voice of protest against rights abuses in
this tightly controlled nation. They've attempted to
stage rallies and sent letters demanding the release of
the jailed men or better prison conditions. Before the
recent violence, that outspokenness usually was punished
by suspended jail sentences and women largely avoided
the long prison terms and torture their male relatives
have suffered."
Prior to the recent violence,
women, especially relatives of those in custody, were
harassed by the police. Now, the Uzbek security forces
are targeting women more directly and ruthlessly.
Since females were involved in the suicide
attacks, women, especially religious ones and those
wearing headscarves, are suspect in the eyes of the
security forces. According to Human Rights Watch,
hundreds of women have been rounded up, beaten, harassed
and intimidated, and even raped. The whereabouts of
several women is not known. Many of the women that are
being held in custody following the suicide attacks are
those whose husbands or brothers are in jail.
Media reports from Tashkent say that
increasingly women who are fed up of fighting the system
and dealing with the uncertainty of not knowing what
happened to their sons and husbands are talking of
killing themselves and "taking out a couple of
policemen" in the process. While it is not easy for an
ordinary woman to access enough explosives for a
successful operation on her own, this is a situation
that terrorist outfits would be sure to exploit.
More suicide attacks can be expected in
Uzbekistan in the coming months, and in all likelihood,
the bombers will be women. Women suicide bombers are
less likely to be detected, and therefore the chances of
a successful operation are higher when the bomber is a
woman. Besides, a woman suicide bomber - especially one
who has a future to look forward to or who can be
projected as someone who put the cause above family ties
- makes for great propaganda material for the militant
outfits and is sure to receive maximum media attention.
With Karimov's opponents likely to turn on the
heat in the coming months, Uzbekistan can expect a long,
hot summer.
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