Central Asia braces for
militants' return from
Afghanistan By Jacob Zenn
On December 4, 2012, the deputy chairman
of Kazakhstan's National Security Committee,
Kabdulkarim Abdikazymov, said that Jund al-Khilafa
was a "real threat" to Kazakhstan's national
security. Similarly, on November 26, 2012, the
chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Defense
and Security of Kyrgyzstan, Tokon Mamytov, warned
that "there might be danger of an incursion from
Afghanistan into Kyrgyzstan in 2013 or 2014".
Abdikazymov and Mamytov's statements
reflect concerns in Central Asia about "foreign
fighters" currently in Afghanistan returning to
their home countries after the planned United
States and North Atlantic treaty Organization
(NATO) withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The
last time a world power withdrew from Afghanistan
- the
Soviet Union in 1988 - many
foreign fighters from Southeast Asia returned to
their home countries and used the financial and
logistical networks and skills acquired in the
war-torn country to form terrorist groups, such as
Kumpulan Mujahidin in Malaysia, Jemaah Islamiyah
in Indonesia and Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines.
The question now is whether the several
thousand Central Asians in Afghanistan present a
"real threat" to their home countries, as
Abdikazymov suggests, or whether the threat is
only perceived.
A review of three Central
Asian militant groups based in Afghanistan - Jund
al-Khilafah, which targets Kazakhstan, the
Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), which targets
Xinjiang, China, and the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan (IMU) - shows that Central Asian
fighters do not yet appear to be returning to
their homelands. But history, as well as these
groups' intent, suggests that the threat of their
eventual return to their home countries - whenever
it may be - is real.
Jund al-Khilafah is
based in the North Caucasus and the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, and it carried
out three separate attacks in Atyrau, Taraz and
Almaty in late 2011. As evidenced by slain
Tunisian-born Jund al-Khilafah amir Moez
Garsallaoui's connections to Mohammed Merah, who
killed three Jews and four French paratroopers in
southwest France in March 2012, Jund al-Khilafah
also has international operational capabilities.
There are an estimated 200 to 300
Kazakhstani militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan,
many of whom have financial relationships with
Jund al-Khilafah supporters in Kazakhstan.
This became apparent with the sentencing
of Aidos Kusanov on October 8, 2012, who
transferred 380,000 tenge (US$2,500) to Jund
al-Khilafah in Pakistan through the Aqtobe-based
militant group Ansar al-Din. Ansar al-Din has not
claimed any attacks in Kazakhstan, but has issued
numerous video statements condemning the
Kazakhstani government on jihadist websites, such
as hunafa.com and Kavkaz Center, and seeks to
"establish links of material support" to "assist
the families of the mujahideen," according to its own
propaganda.
Despite Jund al-Khilafa
and Ansar al-Din's operational links to
Kazakhstan, the flow of militants and funds still
appears to be from Kazakhstan to Afghanistan and
Pakistan or elsewhere - not the other way around.
This could soon change.
In a November 2011
Islamic Jihad Union video statement, a Kazakhstani
fighter said that after victory in Afghanistan,
their "goal" is Central Asia, while another
fighter, who claimed to be the "amir", said their
"sphere of interest" is Central Asia, in
particular Kazakhstan. Other experts in the region
argue that the IMU and other militants are already
in Kazakhstan, using the country effectively as a
"terminal" linking Europe, Central Asia and
Afghanistan, and therefore the militants do not
want to destabilize Kazakhstan, yet.
The
Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), which is led by
Uyghurs from China's Xinjiang province and is
based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region,
also has Turkish- and Russian-speaking members.
According to unsubstantiated Chinese reports, the
TIP has connections to militants from Xinjiang who
are fighting in Syria, while TIP members were
convicted in Dubai in 2010 for attempting to blow
up a statue of a Chinese dragon outside of a
popular mall in a symbolic attack.
The TIP
has about 300 - 500 fighters, but there is only
concrete evidence of one TIP fighter who has ever
trained in Afghanistan or Pakistan and returned to
Xinjiang to carry out an attack.
He was
Memtieli Tiliwaldi, the alleged leader of the July
30-31 attacks in Kashgar that killed more than 10
Han Chinese pedestrians. He was depicted in a TIP
video training in a mountainous area resembling
the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and then
was confirmed killed by Chinese security forces in
Kashgar after the attacks.
China's Vice
Minister of Public Security Meng Honwei said one
month before the attacks in Kashgar that that
there were "signs [that] the 'East Turkistan'
terrorists are flowing back" and "they are very
likely to penetrate into China from Central Asia".
Like Jund al-Khilafah and the TIP, the
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has entrenched
itself in northern Afghanistan, but it has not
carried out any major attacks in Uzbekistan or
elsewhere in Central Asia since at least 2004.
Reportedly, the IMU is connected to Jamaat
Ansarullah, which is an Islamist militant group
operating in Tajikistan; and, according to
accounts, armed groups in Afghanistan's Badakshan
Province, which borders Tajikistan's
Gorno-Badakshan Autonomous Oblast, are "becoming
stronger". However, the IMU appears to be more
effective in helping the Taliban seize control of
northern Afghanistan than attacking targets in
Central Asia, even if it does have a presence in
Kazakhstan and other neighboring countries.
The Southeast Asian militants who returned
to their home countries after the Soviet
withdrawal from Afghanistan carried out or trained
others to carry out terrorist attacks, which
killed hundreds of people, but, they proved much
less effective at generating change than the mass
social movements in the Arab World in 2011.
As long as the populations of Central
Asian countries remain vigilant to the threat
posed by these militant groups, the fighters
returning from Afghanistan will likely be able to
carry out only sporadic attacks and gain no
traction in society.
However, crises like
the ethnic riots in Urumqi in 2009, the ethnic
clashes in Osh in 2010, the deadly Zhanaozen
protests in 2011, and the instability in
Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakshan in 2012, all have the
potential to erode government legitimacy, while
increasing support for alternatives to the present
leadership.
Most alternatives come in the
form of opposition parties, but some of those who
have been aggrieved may turn toward groups like
the TIP, Jund al-Khilafah and the IMU instead.
Jacob Zenn is a lawyer and
international security analyst based in Washington
DC. He writes regularly on Central Asia, Southeast
Asia and Nigeria and runs an open-source research,
translation, and due diligence team through
http://zopensource.net/. He can be reached at
jacobzenn@gmail.com.
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