Is Islamism On The Rise in the Ferghana Valley?

Reading through what Kyrgyz bloggers have to say about Islamism was interesting, as it took place in the context of allowing women to wear the hijab in their passport photographs. Many seemed to express worry that these sorts of initiatives were funded from Arab sources, and not necessarily home-grown movements. More encouragingly, many seemed resistant to the idea of reverting to life in the 18th century, going so far as to call these activists ignorant and illiterate.

I’m not sure insulting is the best way of arguing against regression, but I think Mirsulzhan at neweurasia.net has the right idea:

I would neither like to see my country under authoritarianism nor under Islamism. I strongly believe the most rational choice we can make in this aspect is Western democracy, with its liberal values. Even Islam cannot defend humankind from drugs, alcoholism and pornography. Because these facts we can meet even in Iran, Arab Emirates and etc. Why do we need to steal someone’s liberty? People without liberty can do worse things, hundred times worse things… (translated by Mirsulzhan)

That is a viewpoint I of course agree with, but I recognize many resist because they assume it is western or cultural imperialism to allow people total freedom in choosing how they want to live their lives.

This matters in the context of a supposed re-rise of the IMU in the Ferghana Valley.

The Tajik and Kyrgyz governments have claimed recently that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) has stepped up attacks in the Ferghana Valley, the most densely populated region in Central Asia, taking in parts of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Afghan security forces announced in early July that they had arrested several men with connections to the group…

Many analysts in the region say the governments use the term IMU to refer to any movement aiming to overthrow the Uzbek government. According to an August report by the International Crisis Group think tank, the IMU “is generally thought to be but a shadow of the force that launched military incursions into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 1999 and 2000.”

Even some Tajik authorities have told Crisis Group investigators that some of those arrested for attacks in the past two years have been IMU sympathizers rather than “armed combatants or terrorists” the report states.

Indeed, much of the talk nowadays about the IMU resembles talk of Akromiya in 2005—namely, it is pretty much a shallow excuse to arrest people for political, rather than security, reasons. It makes sense—though not in any real danger of falling out of power, Islam Karimov remains the most blatant autocrat in Central Asia, if only because he doesn’t do anyone the courtesy of a sham election like Kazakhstan, or the simple declaration of eternal power like Turkmenistan.

The International Crisis Group just released another survey of Uzbekistan (PDF), and it contains an interesting, relevant segment:

The government regularly cites the dangers posed by radical Islamist groups, particularly Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) to justify such policies. Despite occasional outbreaks of violence in the region in recent years, however, there is no clear evidence the IMU poses a direct threat to it. However, if the regime continues its repressive policies, support for radicalism may well grow.

Well, yes. But there is more (or rather, less) to the IMU than most people assume:

In sum, there is no clear evidence that the IMU is an imminent threat to the Karimov regime. There is clearly an interest, however, in a number of quarters – from Islamabad and Tashkent to Moscow and Washington DC – in exaggerating its threat…

For years, the Karimov regime has justified repressive policies as a necessary element of its own war on terror, an argument which has found support in the West and in Moscow. Karimov’s allies and apologists portray him as the country’s sole bulwark against extremism and his government as the only alternative to a Taliban-style extremist regime in the Ferghana Valley. Such claims seem greatly exaggerated today but if the regime continues to crush internal dissent, eviscerate civil society, silence the independent media and smother religious institutions, the danger that they could become a self-fulfilling prophecy will grow.

Imagine that—good governance, rather than brutal oppression, create successful societies. So color me skeptical of the IMU’s rise… for now, that is. Aside from the solemn promises from clearly biased actors that there is an IMU somewhere, I have yet to see any evidence of its existence outside of a little corner of western Pakistan.