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September 4, 2006

Kyrgyzstan: Suspected Islamist Leader Killed in South

According to Reuters AlertNet, a suspected radical Muslim leader has been shot by security services in the south of Kyrgyzstan. The news is also carried by AKI Press, but requires a paid subscription to view. The man who was shot is named as Rasul Akhunov, who was killed on Saturday (Sept 2). A spokesperson for the Kyrgyz National Security Service (SNB) stated today that Akhunov is thought to belong to the Islamic Party of Turkestan or i>Islamic Movement of Turkestan (IMT).

This group is another front of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which was founded in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 1998, with the intention of forming an Islamist state in Uzbekistan. It is led by Tahir Yuldosh, who gained permission in May 1999 from Afghanistan's Taliban to establish a base in the north of that country, where he is still thought to reside. A senior figure in the group, Juma Namangani, was made a "deputy" of Osama bin Laden in 2001. He trains militants in northern Afghanistan.

The group has an estimated 700 members, and in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, they carried out a series of five car bombings in February 1999. It has also taken foreigners as hostages. It is classed as a specially designated terrorist entity by the US Treasury and State Department.

The group has been active in Kyrgyzstan, where on May 12 members of the group attacked the frontier post of Tajikistan and the customs post of Kyrgyzstan. 7 machine carbines, a machine gun, and a sniper rifle were seized in raids after the May 12 incidents. The director of the SCO Regional Anti-terrorist Structure, (RATS), Vyacheslav Kasymov, said recently that the IMT had become activated only of late, and that its members "steal cars, kill innocent owners, and factually openly move along the roads of Kyrgyzstan. In liquidating this group, the forces of both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan cooperated closely and demonstrated high professionalism."

On Wednesday August 16, a member of the IMT/IMU was arrested. A search of his house in the region around Osh recovered two F1 grenades, ten Kalashnikov assault rifle cartridges, a capsule with a detonator," as well as 28 books, four CDs and two audio cassettes with recordings touting religious extremism. Two packages presumably containing 38 grams of heroin were also confiscated.

The man who was killed by the SNB, Rasul Akhunov, had been shot during a special operation in the town of Osh, which lies near the border with Uzbekistan. The SNB said that Akhunov had taken part in the gang raids that took place in May, which saw a number of customs officials and border guards killed.

The south of Kyrgyzstan lies along a heroin-trafficking route, and Reuters states that crime-related shootings are commonplace.

According to Radio Free Europe, SNB claimed they had tracked Rasul Akhunov down to a house in the town but he refused to surrender, and opened fire. One SNB official was wounded in the operation.

We reported on August 7 that a prominent imam, Muhammadrafiq Kamalov, aka Rafiq Qori Kamoluddin of the Al-Sarahsiy Mosque in the border town of Kara-Suu, had been shot on August 6 in the town of Osh. He was in a car with two others, driving at speed through the town. When SNB members tried to stop the car, the occupants opened fire.

SNB claimed that the three men in the car, including the cleric, who was an ethnic Uzbek, were all members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Radio Free Europe also reports, quoting from Ferghana.ru, that Akhunov had been in the Daewoo car which was hit on August 6 with the three others, but had managed to escape.

A report from the Christian Science Monitor from Thursday, August 31, reported that the Kyrgyz authorities had ordered Islamist groups in the region, including the IMU and the IMT, to turn themselves in by Friday.

The group Hizb ut-Tahrir is outlawed in the country, but had been in regular attendance in Kamalov's mosque in Kara-Suu. He denied encouraging them, but said they were welcome to pray with his congregation. Hizb ut-Tahrir in the region are also believed to be becoming more militant, as we wrote on August 18.

Analysts have suggested that the Kyrgyz authorities' recent heavy-handed approach to Islamic radicalism in the region is causing more radicals to spring up. Kyrgyzstan also appears to be drawing its allegiances more towards the Russian sphere now, than to the US and the West, with which it had been allied. A Kyrgyz journalist, Yulia Savchenko, writes in Euroasianet that the favouring of Russia by Kyrgyzstan's president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, may lead to a renewal of US-Kyrgyz tension in the near future.

There is a US military base in the nation, but in mid-July, two US diplomats had been expelled from Kyrgyzstan, accused of interfering in the nation's domestic affairs, and six members of the Kyrgyz National Security Service who were in the US undergoing antiterrorism training were expelled in response. On Wednesday, 2 August, the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry announced that two employees were ordered to leave the United States. No reason was given for the move.

According to Kyrgyz officials, the group Hizb ut-Tahrir in the region has split into factions, with several members now supporting violence. As Kyrgyzstan succumbs to pressure from Uzbekistan, the CS Monitor states, the SNB and other authorities now hold the view that as well as militant Islam, political Islam poses a threat.

Hizb ut-Tahrir believes in the amalgamation of Muslim states into one Sharia-controlled superstate, a renewal of the last Caliphate, which was run by the Ottomans, but destroyed by the forces of Kemal Attaturk in March 1924.

Michael Hall of the International Crisis Group says: "These regimes don't like opposition, period. If today that comes in the form of Islamic radicals, that's sort of the threat du jour. You also have to see it from the point of view of these movements' supporters. These are people for whom Islam, even radical Islam, represents justice, fairness, and accountability on the part of their governments - and they are not seeing that right now."

Reuters states that governments in Central Asia have been said to be using the perceived Islamic threat to "clamp down on dissent and religious freedom."

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at September 4, 2006 8:40 AM

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