Posted by NEWS on 10/9/2004, 19:50:35 Terrorism, and particularly terrorism with a perceived or avowed Islamist agenda, has sparked an increasingly acrimonious debate. Broadly speaking, two positions, both of which condemn terrorism -- without exclusively defining it -- as an unacceptable form of political violence, delimit the debate: 1) that terrorism emerges from the confluence of legitimate grievances and unresponsive government, and that the best way to fight terrorism is by creating viable mechanisms for effecting political change and addressing festering concerns; 2) that terrorism represents an ideological commitment to violence so willfully and profoundly at variance with acceptable standards of civilized behavior that it must be stamped out with the harshest measures the law allows, or else it will metastasize like a cancer. The situation in Uzbekistan has remained at the margins of this debate, in large part because the country is remote and unfamiliar to an analytical community better acquainted with the agonies and ideologies of the "Muslim heartland" that spreads out to the south and west of Central Asia. Recent events in Uzbekistan, however, beginning with a series of explosions and shoot-outs in late March-early April and continuing with three suicide bombings on 30 July, have brought greater attention to Tashkent and its troubles. While few solutions, either analytical or practical, appear to be in the offing, an overview of the polemic on terror in Uzbekistan can help to clarify the issues in the Central Asian context and to move them from the periphery to the broader context of the general debate. Hizb ut-Tahrir: Defying Characterization As previous issues of "RFE/RL Central Asia Report" have documented, Uzbekistan witnessed a series of explosions and shoot-outs in late March-early April, and then three suicide bombings on 30 June. The first spate of violence claimed 47 lives by the official total -- 33 alleged terrorists, 10 policemen, and four civilian bystanders. The more recent attacks, in which suicide bombers targeted the U.S. and Israeli embassies and the Uzbek Prosecutor-General's Office, killed the three bombers and four Uzbek police and security officials. Fifteen people are now on trial for involvement in the first series of attacks. Eurasianet reported on 5 August that Uzbek authorities arrested 85 people, including 17 women, after the most recent blasts. Uzbek officials have maintained that the attackers were members of an Islamic extremist group inspired by the ideology of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), a transnational organization that advocates the reestablishment of an Islamic caliphate and the enforcement of Islamic law, albeit by nonviolent means. Uzbek Prosecutor-General Rashid Kadyrov provided the canonical statement of this thesis at a 9 August briefing reported by Fergana.ru: "The investigation can state on the basis of irrefutable evidence that behind these terrorist acts stand international radical and extremist organizations, including HT. All of the terrorists involved in the explosions that took place in the spring and on 30 June were members of this organization, which is confirmed by the case materials and the criminals' own testimony in court." For its part, HT has denied any involvement in acts of terrorism, whether in Uzbekistan or elsewhere. HT spokesman Imron Vohid repeated this denial to RFE/RL's Uzbek Service on 2 August, at the same time expressing HT's extreme distaste for the government of Uzbek President Islam Karimov and suggesting that the organization enjoys growing support within Uzbekistan. According to RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, "Vohid told an RFE/RL correspondent that [HT] had nothing to do with the attacks and that [Uzbek President] Islam Karimov's insistence on blaming HT is an attempt to discredit this respected group in the eyes of the international community." The report goes on to quote Vohid as saying, "Karimov's regime is failing. HT continues to gain recognition among the people of Uzbekistan and Central Asia. Because of this, Karimov wants to discredit our group in the eyes of the international community. But HT has never supported violence in Central Asia, and people are well aware that it is an intellectual-political organization." "These leaders are well aware that the American force now in the process of seizing a Muslim land depends on the favorable conditions they have created for it by providing bases, airspace, and waterways for warships to launch bombers and missiles. If this had not been the case, America would not have been able to achieve its goal and it would not have established its influence. "These rulers are the cause of the ailment and the source of the misfortune. Do not leave them on their thrones. "Cast off these traitorous quisling leaders, who have befriended the colonialist infidels and neglected jihad, which is the apex of Islam." With an eye to this bellicose rhetoric, the skeptics go on to argue that HT's clandestine structure smacks of an eventual plan to move on to violent methods. In an article in "Demokratizatsiya" (Vol. 10, Fall 2002), Ariel Cohen, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, sketched a worst-case scenario, noting that many Western observers (whose views we will examine in more detail below) underestimate the threat. Cohen wrote, "If constituted, a Central Asian caliphate could serve as a platform for the takeover of all Muslim areas within Russia and expansion into the Middle East. However, because HT does not openly call for armed struggle, and because the rulers of Central Asia often persecute and prosecute its supporters, it often is defended, not only by the NGO community but also by some U.S. congressional committees dealing with religion. In the longer term, radical Islam could threaten the Volga-Urals region, as the Russian-Kazakh border is not patrolled, and new generations of Tatars and Bashkirs find themselves torn between Westernization and Islamic fundamentalism." An investigative report by Russia's "Moskovskii Komsomolets" on 19 July appeared to confirm this dire prediction. The author spent six months under cover as an HT "recruit" in Moscow. She wrote, "Five students form a unit, or a halqa [Arabic for "circle," or "link"]. Each teacher has under him up to 10 carefully concealed groups of five. Members of one group do not know others and do not talk to them. The teachers themselves are subordinate to higher-ranking members. This goes all the way up to the amir [commander] of the caliphate in Jordan." The author noted that "in the Moscow Oblast alone there are 31 HT cells." More worrisome still, "HT's structure most closely parallels the army. As one might expect, the military wing is the most secret. It has its own snipers and explosives experts." She quoted her mentor, Ali, as saying at a clandestine HT gathering in Yakhroma, outside Moscow, on 18 November 2003, "We need to raise the peoples of Central Asia in an armed uprising, seize power, and proclaim the caliphate....We need to gather weapons, explosives, and wait for the signal." According to the author, HT's plans extend to Russia as well. A meeting in Jordan in September 2003 allegedly discussed "the division of Russia along the line of the Volga and the establishment of the Great Caliphate in 'originally Muslim' lands." The report seems especially ominous in light of the large number of supporters sometimes claimed for HT in Central Asia. For example, Erkin Tukumov, who heads the Department of Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Institute of Strategic Studies under the President of Kazakhstan, told "Novoe Pokolenie" in a 6 August roundtable that "[HT] is the largest organization in Central Asia, with 50,000-60,000 people. It will be a force to be reckoned with."
Analysis: Terror In Uzbekistan
By Daniel Kimmage
The aftermath of a bombing in Tashkent this spring.
Perpetual Polemic
Skeptics point to a latent contradiction between Hizb ut-Tahrir's stated aim of restoring the caliphate and implementing Islamic law, which would imply the overthrow of Central Asia's secular regimes, and its commitment to nonviolence.
Not everyone agrees with Vohid's characterization of HT as a nonviolent intellectual-political organization. Skeptics point to a latent contradiction between the group's stated aim of restoring the caliphate and implementing Islamic law, which would imply the overthrow of Central Asia's secular regimes, and its commitment to nonviolence. At times, the group's calls for change stop just short of outright incitement to rebellion. The following excerpt from a 20 March 2003 Uzbek-language HT leaflet discusses the assistance Muslim leaders, including Uzbek President Islam Karimov, rendered the U.S.-led war in Iraq:
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