Tag Archives: Islamic extremism

Comment: Worry over intensifying fighting in northern Afghanistan

OCT. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia and the US are right to be increasingly concerned about intensifying fighting in northern Afghanistan.

The question is what can they do about it, if anything?

This week, Russia said it was sending a batch of attack helicopters to its base in Tajikistan. Russia is clearly in a belligerent mood, as its air strikes in Syria have also shown.

For most ordinary Tajiks, as the Bulletin reports, the attack helicopters are welcome in the country, although it is not entirely clear when Russia would actually use them.

For the US, the priority is to protect its own. It has said it is going to spend $200m strengthening its embassy in Turkmenistan.

No doubt the current embassy needed an upgrade but don’t be fooled by the cleverly spun press releases.

The US is not spending $200m rebuilding its embassy to re-affirm its commitment to Turkmenistan. It is spending $200m rebuilding its embassy on the outskirts of Ashgabat because it is nervous and the strategy now is to prioritise protection over everything else. This will be an embassy with big walls and prison-style security cut off from the rest of Turkmenistan.

Both the Russian and the US moves are a response to the Taliban threat over the border and the radical Islamic threat internally.

These threats appear to be growing, although there is debate over just how strong IS recruitment really is in the region. Both Russia and the US and the rest of Central Asia will have to get used to them.

By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin

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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)

Comment: Fate of IRPT in Tajikistan

OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – So the fate of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) appears to have been sealed by the country’s highest court. It is, apparently, a terrorist organisation that helped plan a couple of attacks last month on police checkpoints which killed two dozen people.

A former deputy defence minister has been named as the mastermind of the attacks but the IRPT also played an important role, the court said.

This is the culmination of a ramping up of pressure on the IRPT this year. Its leaders have been forced out of the country, some of its top Dushanbe-based officials have been attacked in the street and various courts have banned it for, firstly not being big enough and secondly for its involvement in the September attacks.

To really prove its case, the Tajik judiciary needs to release more concrete evidence to the international community of the IRPT’s apparent involvement in the attacks. At the moment it just doesn’t stack up.

Instead, as an analyst told the Bulletin’s correspondent in Dushanbe, it feels like a blatant attack on political opponents.

This is dangerous for Tajikistan. What Tajikistan needs is a moderate opposition group that is going to challenge the authorities and President Emomali Rakhmon through the normal channels. What it’ll get instead, with the crushing of opposition groups, is a vacuum that radical Islamists can exploit.

Tajikistan stands at a cross- roads. By banning the IRPT, the authorities are disenfranchising part of its population and taking another step along the wrong path.

By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin

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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Tajikistan kills Nazarzoda men

OCT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan security forces killed two men they said were linked to former deputy minister Gen. Abdukhalim Nazarzoda. Tajik authorities have accused Nazarzoda of plotting attacks on police checkpoints that killed more than two dozen people in Dushanbe and a nearby town last month. Nazarzoda was killed during a special operation.

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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Attacker targets US embassy in Uzbekistan

SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US embassy in Tashkent said that an unidentified man threw two homemade grenades over the wall of the compound.

One of the grenades exploded but didn’t injure anybody, the embassy said in a statement. No group has claimed responsibility. The embassy closed immediately after the attack although it reopened the following day.

“At approximately 7:30 am on Monday, September 28 an unidenti- fied assailant tossed two improvised incendiary devices onto embassy grounds,” the embassy said in a state- ment.

“One of the incendiary devices exploded. Immediately following the explosion the embassy went on lock- down. No one was injured in the blast.”

The attack will be a major concern for the US. Governments in Central Asia have spoken of the increased threat from radical Islam, although some of the evidence has been dis- puted. It’s still unclear if this attack was linked to radical Islam or to something else but it would have been unsettling.

In 2004, car bombs targeted both the US and Israeli embassies. Two security guards were killed outside the Israeli embassy.

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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Extremists claim to control Tajik border

SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Islamic Jihad Union, an Al- Qaeda splinter group, said that it now controlled part of the border zone with Tajikistan and Afghanistan. This claim could not be independently verified but the media did say that the Islamic Jihad Union had reportedly released photos of armed men around the Amu Darya river on the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Tajikistan accuses IRPT of attacks

SEPT. 20 2015, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik security forces detained 13 leaders from the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) and accused them of being linked to attacks this month that killed two dozen people.

Pressure has been mounting on the IRPT, the only real opposition party in Tajikistan, over the past few months. It’s leader, Muhiddin Kabiri, has fled into exile and the ministry of justice has said that the IRPT has to disband because it lacks members.

Now, the Tajik authorities have allegedly seized documents from IRPT office in Dushanbe that proves it was involved in attacks apparently lead by a disgruntled former deputy defence minister.

The IRPT denied links to attacks on two police stations on Sept. 4.

And on the streets of Dushanbe, this is view shared by some residents.

“I don’t think that IRPT are involved. The government is apparently getting rid of former Civil War opposition members,” a Dushanbe resident called Yahyo said.

A Dushanbe analyst agreed and said that Pre.s Rakhmon had used the attacks to get rid of opponents.

“Rakhmon will further centralise the regime with these lies being his main tool,” he said, anonymously.

The authorities also said they killed Gen. Abduhalim Nazarzoda, the ex-deputy defence minister blamed for organising the attacks (Sept. 19).

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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Comment: Internal issues, not external, are trigger for violence in Tajikistan

SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In Central Eurasia and the Caspian region, IS may not be a direct threat today but it could be in the future because many of the factors that create homegrown terrorism are already present. These are mainly the presence of foreign fighters from the Middle East and the influence of recruiters, particularly spread on Internet.

But importantly, and this is often overlooked, the penetration of politicised and radical [neo-] Salafism into pluralistic local Sunni- Hanafi doctrine and practice should be taken into account.

We should analyse thoroughly the factors that brought about IS into the Middle East to draw lessons on how to prevent the outbreak of similar cases in our region. Terrorism waged for the sake of seemingly religious aims cannot develop without a particular political conjuncture, social and psychological grounding.

Many analyses of terrorism have overlooked the psychological factor — the existence of hurt psychology and phenomenon of self- estrangement — in would-be radical militants. The mental prison of takfiri ideology produced by radical neo-Salafism incorporates the foundations of the above mentioned psychological factor. This factor is often coupled with the brutalisation of human nature.

Takfirism is a brand of radical neo-Salafism whose adherents accuse all other Muslims of unbelief and apostasy. Neo-Salafism is itself politicised, centralist, fond of a uniformity set of teaching which inculcates the siege mentality.

Consequently, we should be aware of the ongoing process of the penetration of neo-Salafist teachings in post-Soviet Sunni Muslim communities. The neutralisation of neo-Salafism in Central Eurasia would have been much more productive if it had not been the influence of some foreign actors. We cannot help but suspect the financial leverage of some states where political regimes are, at least, sympathetic to neo-Salafism.

Second, we should heed the phenomenon of the existence of how traumatised psychology shaped either by post-Soviet criminal under-culture or oppressive politics of highly authoritarian regimes.

We shouldn’t also forget that IS flourishes in the Middle East where the large communities of Sunni Muslims have become subject to brutalisation by oppressive and sectarian regimes.

By Galym Zhussipbek, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Suleyman Demirel University in Almaty

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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Tajikistan hosts regional security summit

SEPT. 15 2015, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — Leaders from member states of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) travelled to the Tajik capital for their annual summit, with talk of the threat from Islamic extremism dominating the conference.

Security was tight across Dushanbe. Earlier this month twin attacks on police stations, one in Dushanbe and one in a nearby town, killed nearly two dozen people.

The day after the summit, Tajikistan’s Prosecutor-General accused the opposition Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) of coordinating the attacks (Sept. 17). The authorities have been putting the IRPT under increased pressure over the past year. Linking it to the attacks will now, almost certainly, mean it will be banned.

At the CSTO summit, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon said the number of young Tajiks lured to join IS in Iraq and Syria is increasing.

“The spectre of emergencies and security threats in the region is not diminishing, and could even grow,” he said. This rhetoric, Western analysts have said, suits the security- focused agenda of Central Asia. Many think it is overstated.

Russian president Vladimir Putin said he will help Central Asia strengthen its southern border against any Taliban incursions.

“Here in Tajikistan you are confronted with problems, with encroachments and attempts to rock the situation, and I would like to say that you can always count on our assistance and support,” media quoted Mr Putin as saying.

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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Afghanistan warns Azerbaijan on IS

AUG. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an interview with the state-run Turkish news agency Andalou, Afghan vice-president General Abdul Rashid Dostum said he believed the Islamic extremist group IS would target Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus. IS has been increasing its recruitment drive across Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)

Azerbaijani police makes IS arrests

SEPT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The security forces in Azerbaijan said they had detained five men for bring- ing arms into the country, planning various attacks and having links to the Islamic extremist group IS. Media reported that the five men had had links to IS in Syria and Iraq between 2013 and 2015.

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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)