After the fall of the Soviet Union in
1991, the people of Kazakhstan, like those in the
rest of the former Soviet Republics, experienced a
revival in religious affiliation.
In some
sectors of Kazakh society, the repression of
spiritual life in the Soviet days was reversed
when Kazakhstan became independent in December of
that year. Previously non-existent elements of
Salafism crept to the surface in Kazakhstan and
are now apparent, especially in the southern and
western regions of the country located near the
Caspian Sea and the volatile North Caucasus.
Salafism is a reform movement of Islam in
which followers believe that the life of their
Prophet Mohammad and the earliest Muslim community
constitutes a universal paradigm for interpreting world
events and history.
Salafists consider the founding years of Islam to
be the prototype for their cultural and religious
validation and use examples from that era as a
template to build relationships with "infidel" or
non-Salafist Muslim communities in the
contemporary world.
"Jihadi-Salafists" see
historical evolution as the unfolding of a single
contest: the struggle of Good (true Islam) versus
Evil (false Islam and Disbelief). [1] Although
Salafist doctrine is largely rejected by the
Islamic world, Saudi Arabia stands apart as the
leading country that preaches the doctrine.
Although "Salafists", or "Wahabbis" - as
Central Asians and Russians commonly call them -
are still a small minority at less than 1% of the
population in Kazakhstan, they are having a more
significant impact on the country than this would
suggest.
Increasing numbers of Salafists
in Kazakhstan are being influenced by calls to
violence from jihadis in the North Caucasus and
from Jund al-Khilafa (JaK - Army of the
Caliphate), a terrorist group led by Kazakhs based
in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
According to its online statements, JaK is
comprised of "mujahideen from different
nationalities, but is made up 90% Kazakh nationals
who are interested in the military, faith,
intellectual, and political support for our
brothers in order for them to rise to an
acceptable level of ability to wage the fight"
against the regime of President Nursultan
Nazarbayev.
Three videos that JaK released
in 2011 attest that the group has operated in
Khost province, Afghanistan, against US forces
along with Taliban-supported foot soldiers.
While not all Salafists promote violence
and not all aspiring jihadis are Salafists, there
is a link between Salafist fundamentalist
interpretations of Islam and terrorist attacks
that have been carried out in Kazakhstan. In 2011,
three terror incidents in claimed by JaK - in
Atyrau, Taraz and Boraldai, Almaty - bore the mark
of Jihadist-Salafist influence.
Terror
let loose On November 12, 2011, in Taraz,
southeastern Kazakhstan, Maksat Kariyev went on a
noontime rampage killing five security officers,
one gun shop guard, and himself in a suicide
bombing that he detonated when a police commander
approached him.
The interrogation of six
members of the cell that prepared Kariyev for the
attack revealed that one was a "spiritual mentor"
who drew up the attack plan for Kariyev and helped
purchase and store the RPG-26 grenade launcher,
RGD-5 grenade, Makarov pistol and two sawed-off
shotguns that Kariyev used in the attack, which
lasted several hours.
Kariyev, who has a
background as former senior rifleman in the Kazakh
army, was an ideal fighter to carry out the attack
from an operational standpoint. However, from an
ideological standpoint, Kariyev was weak. He was a
drinker who suffered from fits of temper tantrums
and could not hold a job or live in a permanent
residence after leaving the army.
Kariyev
consulted with local imams prior to his attack and
asked about the consequences of him committing a
suicide attack to kill infidels. The cell’s
"spiritual leader" ultimately persuaded Kariyev
and the other cell members to conduct jihad and
kill police officers in order to establish an
Islamic caliphate. When Kariyev carried out the
attack, he drugged himself up on narcotics and
followed those orders.
JaK said in a
statement the day after the attack that:
In Taraz, you saw with your own eyes
what one soldier did to you, and God willing you
will see horrors by the hands of men who don't
fear death and give their souls easily to
support the religion of Islam and defend the
honor of the Muslims.
On October 31,
in Atyrau, a port city on the Caspian Sea in
western Kazakhstan, a terrorist blew himself up
next to an apartment building near the intended
target - the Prosecutor-General's office - and
another bomb detonated in a garbage can blocks
away. The terrorist who blew himself up did so by
mistake. A claim of credit by JaK following the
attack stated that:
We refute that the last attack was
carried out as a martyrdom-operation. It seems
that the bomb exploded accidentally, which led
to the martyrdom of its carrier. We ask Allah to
accept him among the martyrs.
The cell
responsible for the two explosions in Atyrau was
formed in 2009 by 20-year-olds who were inspired
by the ethnic Buryat Russian-born Islamic convert
Said Buryatsky, who became a jihadi leader in the
North Caucasus before Russian forces killed him in
2010.
In 2011, the Atyrau cell connected
with JaK's leadership in the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border region and received orders to carry out the
bombings.
That Atyrau was the site of the
October 31 explosions is symptomatic of the
growing extremism in the province. According the
Director of Religion Department in Atyrau, 90% of
Atyrau province's 8,000 practicing Muslims are
between the ages of 13 and 30 and 70% of those
8,000 young people are influenced by Salafism. If
those numbers are correct, then there are more
than 5,000 Salafists in Atyrau alone. In the case
of these Atyrau bombings, it required only four of
those young Salafists to carry out what could have
been a deadly attack.
In Boraldai Village
outside of Alamaty, five JaK fighters were killed
on December 3, 2011, when Kazakhstan security
forces surrounded them inside their safe house.
Kazakh authorities suspected the cell of carrying
out a drive-by shooting that killed two police
officers on November 8 and possibly another
November 11 shooting in Almaty in which two other
police officers were killed.
The cell was
reportedly planning additional terror attacks in
Almaty before its elimination.
Only the
leader of the cell, Yerik Ayazbayev, escaped from
Boraldai at the time of the shootout, but he was
killed on December 29 in Kyzylorda, southern
Kazakhstan after police investigated what appeared
to be an accidental explosion that Ayazbayev set
off in his apartment building.
Like
Kariyev's cell, the Boraldai cell also had a
"spiritual mentor", Aghzan Khasen, who died in the
shootout in Boraldai. This appears to be a
standard model of Jak cells in Kazakhstan: six or
seven fighters under the lead of a "spiritual
mentor" who is a Jihadist-Salafist.
On
December 6, three days after the Boraldai
shootout, JaK issued a statement saying that JaK
fighters were "ready to be killed in the thousands
in order to support [Islam]" and that "losing our
lives is a cheap price that we pay for this
cause". JaK asked that "God give glory" to the
fighters who were killed by "the apostate forces
of the Nazarbayev regime" at "a base where the
five lions of the al-Zahir Baybars Battalion of
Jund al Khilafa were gathered".
Members of
the Salafist community in western Kazakhstan, were
also suspected of killing policemen in the Aktobe
region on July 1, 2011, and another special unit
officer on July 2 during the raid to capture the
killers. Although no connection with JaK has been
proven, six suspects were alleged to have taken
part in the attacks, which is consistent with the
size of JaK cells.
In an effort to curb
Salafist influence in the country, Nazarbayev
introduced a bill in September, 2011, to combat
religious extremism, but one that also restrains
basic religious freedoms. The bill, which has been
approved by the lower house of parliament and the
senate, requires religious organizations to
dissolve and register again through a procedure
that is virtually guaranteed to exclude smaller
religious groups, including most Muslim groups and
also minority Christian groups.
Trying
to turn the tide The merits of clamping on
down on religion in the wake of the rising
Jihadi-Salafist undercurrent in Kazakhstan needs
to be weighed against the risks of alienating
practicing Muslims with new religion law. But
regardless, one thing is for certain. Any policy
or law that affects religion will become
propaganda for JaK and possibly a recruiting boon
for the terror group.
On October 26, 2011,
JaK released a video in which it said:
We call upon you to abolish these
laws, and we also demand that you offer an
apology to the people for that mistake. We
demand complete freedom for Muslims to carry out
their rituals of worship. In the event you
insist on your position, then we will be forced
to make a move against you. Know that the policy
that you are following is the same that was
applied in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt; however, as
you have seen, it only caused loss to those who
exercised it.
Five days after
delivering this message, the Atyrau bombers
attempted their attack. This showed that JaK could
follow up on its warnings and that its words were
not hollow. With JaK cells entrenched in
Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev will have to add JaK's
capabilities to his calculus when he considers
other measures to combat the growth of Salafism in
his country.
Jacob Zenn is a lawyer and
international security analyst based in
Washington, DC. He writes regularly on the Central
Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Horn of Africa and
Nigeria and runs an open-source research,
translation, and due diligence team through
http://zopensource.net/ and can be reached
at jaz@Zopensource.net.
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