Central Asia Counters IS

Central Asian militants fighting with the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Syria and Iraq pose a major security concern in Central Asia, yet governments have as yet done little to address why their citizens seek to join IS, a new report by the International Crisis Group says.

The 16-page report, Syria Calling: Radicalization in Central Asia, was published on January 20, and examines the sociopolitical context of the growing radicalization across the region. 

Deirdre Tynan, the International Crisis Group's Central Asia Project Director, said that it is easier for IS to gain recruits in Central Asia than in nearby Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"Its appeal in the region is rooted in an unfulfilled desire for political and social change. Rich or poor, educated or not, young or mature, male or female -- there is no single profile of an Islamic State supporter," Tynan said.

According to the report, some 2,000-4,000 men and women from Central Asia have become radicalized and gone to fight with or support the Islamic State group.

Ethnic Uzbeks (including Uzbek citizens) are reportedly the largest group of Central Asians fighting with IS, and there may be as many as 2,500 of these, including from Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan.  The IS group has also attracted ethnic Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Turkmen, and Tajiks.

The report found that while there is no single profile for a Central Asian IS militant -- the group has attracted younger and older, richer and poorer men and women -- but one factor linking Central Asian IS supporters is "fatigue with social and political circumstances." 

IS appears to have exploited these sentiments, with the report noting that, particularly in Uzbekistan, individuals who would not have joined older jihadi groups like the Taliban or the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan have been attracted to IS, seeing it as having created a new and ordained political order. Islamic State is also seen as standing for a universal purpose, and being about "principles, not colonialism," according to one imam from southern Kyrgyzstan who is quoted in the report.

Russia and Central Asia’s Problem

Even in the fat years, when Russia’s oil-fuelled economy guaranteed her son a job, Enjegul Kadyraliyeva struggled to survive on the dollars he sent home to her in Kyrgyzstan. Now she fears she will have to feed her grandson on the loose change she earns selling dried yogurt balls and lollipops on the pitted streets of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital.

Russia’s economic crunch and a falling rouble—a consequence, exacerbated by economic mismanagement, of sharply lower global oil prices—worry millions of Central Asians who depend on relatives working in the former imperial power to send money home. According to the World Bank, remittances are equivalent to a third of GDP in Kyrgyzstan and almost half in Tajikistan. As the Russian currency sinks, the amount guest workers are able to remit, usually in dollars, falls too. Remittances to Uzbekistan fell by 9% in the third quarter of 2014 compared with a year earlier, according to central-bank statistics in Russia. One analyst believes remittances to Tajikistan are a fifth lower than a year earlier.

Regional growth has been revised downwards again and again in recent months. Central Asian currencies have also fallen. On January 1st Turkmenistan, a secretive state that is rich in gas, devalued the manat by 19%. Thanks partly to weak exchange rates, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the two poorest post-Soviet countries, face double-digit inflation. The rouble, admittedly, has fallen much further—by half in the past year. That makes Central Asian goods uncompetitive in Russia, the largest market for most of the region’s five economies. Uzbekistan’s car exports to Russia are 35% lower than a year ago. A Tajik selling imported nuts and dried fruit in Moscow says his profit margins have gone.

As for Central Asian labourers in Russia, some of their leaders expect about a quarter to return home. The prospect of hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men flooding these weak states should terrify Central Asia’s graft-prone governments, which do little to create jobs and rely on emigration to ease social pressures. In 2009, in the previous financial crisis, remittances to Kyrgyzstan fell by 28% and men returned home. That set the scene a few months later for the violent overthrow of the country’s elected president-turned-dictator, Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

Uzbekistan Prepares for Threats

Amidst many security threats especially in the Western Asia region, Uzbekistan is resolutely confronting threats to its security, and its young men, as always, are competing for vacancies in the military. Other Central Asian countries are doing the same.

Conscription or alternative military training is a fact of life in Uzbekistan, mandated for all Uzbek men aged 18 to 27. On January 13, one day before Homeland Defender's Day, President Islam Karimov signed a law regulating this year's conscription.

Young men may choose between one year of active duty and one month of training in the Mobilisation-Conscription Reserve (MPR).

But not everybody wanting to serve the year gets his wish.

"The number of applicants for [one-year] active duty is much larger than what we need," Defence Ministry spokesman Izzatilla Umarov told Central Asia Online. "You could say entering the military in Uzbekistan is more difficult than entering a prestigious university ... [Uzbek] conscripts face tough requirements and have to pass difficult IQ and physical fitness tests. Only one of every eight applicants was inducted last year."

Various benefits make joining the military attractive.

"People come to the military pursuing different goals: some dream about a military career and are drawn to the profession of defender of the motherland," Umarov said. "Others seek to become eligible for benefits. For example, anyone who has done the [one-year] active duty receives an automatic 27% increase to his university entrance exam score. The state might subsidise his tuition too."

"I served as a paratrooper in 2005-2006," Tashkent resident Stepan Litvinov said. "I took that step deliberately, because this was the profession of my dreams, and I wasn't disappointed in the least. The service was hard but part of real life. There was none of the 'hazing' that I feared could happen. On the contrary, we spent that year in an atmosphere of solid friendship."

Islam and Central Asia

During Vladimir Putin’s visit to Uzbekistan last December, Uzbek President Islam Karimov asked his Russian peer to help his country against the rising threat of militant Islam. While this article discusses why these calls for help are generally unfounded, an ironic coincidence shows that the most likely threat in the name of Islam will come in March, when Karimov is scheduled for re-election. The terms extremism, radicalism, terrorism and fundamentalism are used interchangeably by the leaders in the region to describe the threat that political Islam could pose to their well-established regimes. The ruthless violence of some groups, such as ISIS or Al-Qaeda, has been a recurring nightmare for Central Asian leaders and now it seems even more crucial, as U.S. troops leave Afghanistan. A haven for moderate Islam is under siege, according to the governments of the region.

Communication and discourse seem to be at the heart of the problem. The student of international relations would quickly tend to see the matter through a “securitization theory” lens. Without getting too academic, suffice it to say that several actors and their speech shape the way threats are constructed and become rooted in the discourse on national security. Rustam Burnashev, professor at the Kazakh-German University in Almaty, Kazakhstan, has extensively explained how Central Asian regimes “link Islamists with terrorism and violence” in order to ensure their own survival, without real or tangible concerns for the security of their citizens. After all, Central Asian governments have been quick to label any episode of violence   as Islamic, from the civil war in Tajikistan to the Andijan massacre in Uzbekistan.

On November 11, 2014, the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan (KNB) estimated that around 300 citizens were involved in ISIS. Beyond the headline, however, Chief Nurtai Abikayev provides little evidence to back his numbers. Repeatedly, local news agencies have spun the government’s discourse, emphasizing the threat. Even Russian outlets have pointed fingers to Central Asia for “bringing radical Islam to Russia.”