Central Asia Should Not be Ignored

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

For the past two decades, much of the world’s attention has been focused on Afghanistan. But it would be imprudent to ignore two of the countries that border it to the north, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

These two central Asian states, along with neighbours Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan, were part of the Soviet Union until that Communist multinational empire imploded in 1991.

A number of extremist groups have tried to destabilize these states. They have proven particularly dangerous to Tajikistan, where a bloody civil war raged in the 1990s, and to Uzbekistan, where bombings and sabotage have led to severe repression by those in power.

Three organizations in particular have fomented most of the violence.

While two have been more localized in their attempts to wrest power, the third advocates an ideology that transcends statehood, and, like al-Qaeda, dreams of an Islamic caliphate encompassing the Muslim world.

In Tajikistan, a small impoverished country of some 7.3 million people, the Hizbi Nahzati Islomii Tojikiston (Islamic Renaissance Party, or IRP) was formed in 1990.

The Soviet state was near collapse and nationalist ideas had begun to permeate the politics of the republic. Taking advantage of the situation, the IRP’s stated aim was to bring Islamic values back into public life.

Soon enough the country descended into a brutal civil war: while then President Rahmon Nabiyev organized pro-government militias, the IRP turned to rebels in Afghanistan for military aid.

By 1997, when a UN-brokered peace accord was signed, as many as 100,000 people may have been killed. Many others, including IRP members, had fled into Afghanistan, where some fought alongside the Taliban militants. The party was later legalized and maintains an uneasy truce with the government.

Uzbekistan, with its 27.6 million people, is the largest of the five central Asian republics in population. It has been a centre of Muslim culture for more than a thousand years, with fabled cities such as Bokhara, Samarkand and Tashkent, renowned for their architecture, literature and scholarship.

Uzbekistan’s president, Islam Karimov, has ruled the country with an iron hand since 1990 but this did not prevent the rise of militant organizations that sought the overthrow of his regime and its replacement with an Islamic state.

The O’zbekiston Islomiy Harakati (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU) was formed in 1998. In 1999 the IMU set up several military camps in northern Afghanistan.

Central Asia’s Ferghana Valley, where the Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and Tajik borders converge, has been the main area for IMU operations, and the organization launched punitive campaigns there in 1999, 2000 and 2001.

In addition, the IMU was responsible for a series of bombings in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent in 1999 and 2004, as well as numerous kidnappings.

When the American-led alliance invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the IMU announced its loyalty to the Taliban. In turn it received support from them and from Osama bin Laden.

Though the IMU suffered heavy losses while fighting alongside the Taliban, it has successfully re-organized itself in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan in Pakistan over the following years.

However, Tahir Yuldashev, one of the movement’s leaders, was killed in a strike by an unmanned American aircraft in South Waziristan in late August.

Finally, there is the Hizb-ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HTI) or the Islamic Party of Liberation, a pan-Islamist, transnational political organization whose goal is to combine all Muslim countries in a unitary Islamic state.

It was founded in then Jordanian-ruled east Jerusalem in 1953 and has members around the world, despite being banned by many governments. Its leader since 2003 is Sheik Ata Abu al-Rishta, a Palestinian scholar and writer.

Though the organization is illegal in all five central Asian Muslim republics, HTI has large followings in the region. Most of its members there are believed to be ethnic Uzbeks and President Karimov is a regular target of derision.

In May 2005, hundreds of people were killed by police in demonstrations in the Ferghana Valley city of Andijan; the president accused the HTI of responsibility for the violence.

Central Asia should not be ignored. With the collapse of Soviet power, these countries have re-entered the international political system.

Along with Afghanistan and Pakistan, they are now part of what we might term the greater Middle East.

We’ve seen the television ads for Prince Edward Island historical sites that proclaim,“this place matters!” It certainly holds true for central Asia.