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On guard in Central
Asia
Across Central Asia,
governments have coped with the Islamic revival by
asserting their control over the religious
establishment and banning groups that refuse to
cooperate. The governments are motivated by fears
that uncontrolled Islam could be a potent force
for political opposition. But despite these
government efforts, homegrown and foreign-inspired
militant Islamic groups have arisen to challenge
the status quo.
The most widespread is
Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), an organization that calls
for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate to
replace the region's existing governments. The
group says it advocates only peaceful change, but
the governments accuse it of promoting violent
revolution.
People in Central Asia who
sympathize with the banned HT will not give their
names when they talk to reporters. But they will
talk about their hopes for the future.
Like this woman in Tajikistan who said:
"As for as I know, Hizb ut-Tahrir would like to
convey the message of truth to the people by
peaceful, bloodless and non-violent means and with
the help of governments. The reality is this, that
the society is corrupt and only a peaceful Islamic
government can solve this problem."
The
promise to establish Islamic government in all
traditionally Muslim lands is central to the HT's
platform.
Imran Waheed, spokesman for the
HT's office in exile in London, stated the group's
goal in a recent interview: "Hizb ut-Tahrir has a
very clear objective, which is reestablishment of
the Islamic caliphate and it is working toward
that."
Last week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair
threatened to ban the HT in Britain.
The
group's supporters use the term "Islamic
caliphate" to refer to an ideal system of
government they believe existed during the early
years of Islam. At the time, both religious and
temporal authority were in the hands of the
Prophet Mohammed or his immediate successors.
HT is believed to have first taken root in
the Uzbek-controlled part of the Ferghana Valley
shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991. It soon spread to adjacent parts of the
valley within Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, making it
Central Asia's single-most-widespread Islamic
political movement. It has also spread to
Kazakhstan and parts of Russia.
Today, HT
is banned by the Uzbek, Tajik, Kyrgyz and Kazakh
governments, which claim it seeks to overthrow
them by force.
Nabi Rahimov, the deputy
prosecutor in Tajikistan's Sughd region, described
the organization's activities this way: "What are
the intentions of this criminal union? The
documents and papers that we have confiscated from
its members show that their aim is to encourage
ethnic, religious and national animosity and
regionalism. In some documents you can see that
they are working in contrary to the 307th clause
of the constitution. In other words, they are
trying to topple the constitutional government by
force and violent means."
The Uzbek
government, which continues to be HT's main target
of criticism, accuses the group of involvement in
a series of bombings and other unrest in Tashkent
and other cities in recent years that has killed
scores of people.
Tashkent also accuses HT
of links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban and to the
armed Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). HT
denies this.
Between 1999 and 2001, using
Tajikistan's remote mountainous areas as its base,
the IMU carried out kidnappings, assassinations
and a series of armed raids deep into Kyrgyzstan
and Uzbekistan. Its stated objective is to
establish an Islamic state in Uzbekistan.
The IMU later relocated its base to
Afghanistan and it is believed to have largely
been destroyed in the US-led operation to topple
Afghanistan's Taliban regime in late 2001.
Regional governments also accuse both the
HT and the IMU of getting money and inspiration
from extremist Islamist groups elsewhere in the
Muslim world.
However, HT denies it
advocates anything but peaceful change and says it
is homegrown. It accuses the region's governments,
in turn, of using charges of terrorism to suppress
all opposition movements they cannot control.
Analysts say HT has never been proven to
have links to violent acts, but they do not rule
out that the group could be willing to use
violence to achieve an Islamic revolution. But
Michael Hall, the Bishkek-based head of the
International Crisis Group's Central Asia Project,
said government action against the group is often
so harsh that it risks turning members violent if
they are not already so.
"Insulting family
members of Hizb ut-Tahrir followers is one of the
factors that could increase anger among party
members and could force them to turn to violence,"
Hall said.
Crackdowns in Uzbekistan, where
the group appears to have the most members,
include mass arrests of suspected sympathizers and
lengthy detentions while awaiting trial. According
to independent Uzbek estimates, there may be as
many as 7,000 alleged HT members in Uzbek prisons.
Human-rights groups say suspected
militants are subjected to torture during
interrogation and called on the government to
investigate complaints.
But as regional
governments try to crack down on groups like HT,
there is no sign that the movements are
disappearing. One member of HT, who introduced
himself as Abulkhair, told RFE/RL's Tajik service
that underground cells of the party were active in
different parts of that country and government
pressure was not discouraging recruitment efforts.
"They are active in Kulab, they are active
in Khatlon and Hisar also. We hope and pray to God
that their ranks will grow more. Despite
detentions, torture and oppression, God willing,
their number will increase day by day," Abulkhair
said.
Experts say that HT in Tajikistan
and Kyrgyzstan is most active among Uzbek
minorities in these countries, raising the danger
that crackdowns against them will have ethnic
overtones.
Some analysts caution that the
governments' efforts to control political Islam -
including by arresting members of Islamic
organizations that refuse to join the
state-approved religious establishment - could
eventually backfire. Regional security expert
Ahmad Rashid, the author of Jihad: The Rise of
Militant Islam in Central Asia, said lack of
political freedoms drives people to join radical
groups.
"The enormous repression of the
[Central Asian] regimes and the lack of any kind
of political expression naturally forces
politically oriented people to go underground and
to become radicalized, and then join these
Islamist groups," Rashid told RFE/RL.
Copyright (c) 2005, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington DC 20036 |
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