EXPLOSIONS IN TASHKENT: The
Background
B.Raman
On February 16,1999, there were a series of six car bomb explosions
in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, killing, according to official
accounts, 16 persons and injuring 130 others.
The explosions took place near the headquarters of the Council of Ministers
where President Islam Karimov was to preside over a Cabinet meeting,
outside a nearby cinema hall, near the office of the Interior Ministry,
outside the Traffic Police headquarters and a building owned by the national
bank.
While no organisation claimed responsibility for the explosions, the Uzbek
authorities, including President Karimov himself, projected the explosions
as an abortive attempt by Islamic extremist elements to assassinate the
President.
However, Russian experts, including Dr.Sergei
Abashin, an expert
on Uzbekistan at the Anthropology and Ethnology Institute of the
Russian Academy of Sciences, while not ruling out the involvement of Islamic
fanatics, drew attention also to the possibility of the political opponents
of Karimov hiring local mafia groups to eliminate the President due
to personal and political grudge.
In this connection, they drew attention to the dismissal by Karimov last
autumn of Ismail Dzhurabekov from the post of First Deputy Prime
Minister. The latter is alleged to have close nexus with local mafia groups.
Uzbekistan has a total population (according to 1991 figures) of
19.8 million, of whom the Uzbeks constitute 71 per cent ( 14.1 million
), the Russians 8 per cent ( 1.7 million), the Tajiks 5 per cent (0.93
million ) and the Kazakhs 4 per cent ( 0.81 million ). The remaining belong
to other ethnic groups like the Kyrgyz, the Turkmen, etc.
There is a large Uzbek diaspora spread over Central Asia, with the Uzbeks
constituting 24 per cent of the population of Tajikistan, 13 per cent of
the population of Kyrgyzstan, 9 per cent of the population of Turkmenistan
and 2 per cent of the population of Kazakhstan. Uzbeks also constitute
the largest single ethnic group in the areas of Northern Afghanistan around
Mazar-e-Sharif.
The politics of Central Asia is, therefore, always marked by a subterranean
fear of Uzbek hegemony and irredentism. The fears of irredentism
are particularly strong in Tajikistan and arise from the fact that the
Uzbeks look upon the Tajiks as nothing but Persianised Uzbeks and that
a separate state of Tajikistan was created by the erstwhile USSR in 1929
by separating the Tajik areas from Uzbekistan, a separation to which the
Uzbeks were never reconciled. The separation, at the same time, created
feelings of dissatisfaction in Tajikistan due to the fact that Uzbekistan
retained the historic cities of Bukhara and Samarkand despite the
fact that the Tajiks constituted over 75 per cent of their population at
the time of the partition.
The regime of Karimov has been the target of the ire of the Islamic extremist
elements due to the following reasons:
The assistance allegedly given by the Karimov
Government to the Uzbeks of Afghanistan led by Rashid Dostum
to counter the Taliban of the Pashtoons.
The assistance given by it to the Government of Tajikistan
to counter the activities of the Islamic extremist elements against the
Tajik Government. The Islamic extremist elements of the Central
Asian Republics and Afghanistan have been accusing the Karimov Government
of acting as Russia’s gendarme to crush the influence of Islamic religious
elements.
While the vast majority of the Muslims of Central Asia are Sunnis, there
are ethnic differences between the Persian-origin Tajiks and the Turkic
Uzbeks. Karimov, like Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan and Saparmurad
Niazov of Turkmenistan, wielded local power in the pre-1991 USSR as the
head of the local Communist party apparatus before becoming President of
the new republic born after the collapse of the USSR.
Because of this, while allowing Islam a greater space to operate, he retains
the old communist distrust of religion and religious fanatics and keeps
a tight control over Islamic religious activities through Mukhtarjan Abdullo Al-Bukhari, the state-appointed Mufti of Uzbekistan.
To placate the religious elements, Karimov has increased the number of
mosques in the Republic from 80 in 1991 to 5,000. The number of Muslims
permitted to go on Haj every year has increased from less than a dozen
in 1991 to 4,000. At the same time, the Mufti, acting under the directives
of the Government, exercises tight control by granting permission for the
opening of new mosques and madrasas (religious schools) to only persons
of proved loyalty, keeping a tight surveillance over the activities of
the approved mosques and madrasas through the state intelligence agencies
and by ordering the closure of the mosques and madrasas and dismissing
the imams, suspected to be indulging in undesirable activities.
Amongst activities considered undesirable by the Government and its Mufti
are advising women to wear a veil, using loudspeakers for the prayers etc.
The tight control sought to be exercised by the Government through its
Mufti over religious organisations and religious practices has given rise
to increasing resentment amongst sections of the local population, particularly
amongst the Tajiks, who were initially more susceptible to extremist religious
influences than the Uzbeks due to their interactions with the anti-Government
Islamic extremist elements of Tajikistan.
Since the Tajiks of Uzbekistan are mainly concentrated in the Uzbekistan
portion of the Ferghana Valley, which traverses Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan
and Tajikistan, this area saw the beginning of Islamic extremist
activities and, from there, these have spread to other parts of the
country.
The extremist movement in the Ferghana region of Uzbekistan was started
by the Adolat Party , which has been banned. Its leader Khokim Satimov
has been in detention since 1993. Abdulvali Mirzoev, the former Imam of
the Andijan mosque in the Valley, who, like Sayid Abdullo Nuri, the leader
of the Islamic extremist opposition of Tajikistan, had his religious
training in Pakistan, has disappeared since 1995.
In August 1995, Mirzoev and his assistant Ramazanbek Matkarimov allegedly
disappeared from the Tashkent airport while waiting to board a flight.
Nothing has been heard of them since then and their mosque was closed after
their disappearance.
There were demonstrations in 1995 in Tashkent when the Mufti ordered the
closure of the Tokhtobou mosque of the city and the removal of its
Imam, Abid Khan Nazarov. He allegedly advised women to wear a veil, refused
to officiate at funeral services for Muslims who were not regularly attending
the prayers and to solemnise weddings if there was music or dancing during
the celebration. The followers of Nazarov alleged that the Mufti and the
Government authorities accused him of trying to turn Uzbekistan into a
Saudi Arabia.
Alarmed by the increasing influence of orthodox religious elements, the
Karimov Government ordered a crackdown in January,1998, during which loudspeakers
were forcibly removed from mosques and hundreds of protesters, including
about 100 veiled women, were detained.
Following
these incidents, Abdulaziz Kamilov, the Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan,
accused on February 17,1998, three Islamic organisations of Pakistan---the
Markaz Dawa Al Irshad, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (formerly known as the
Harkat-ul-Ansar) and the Tablighi Jamaat--- of training about 400
Islamic extremists of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in order to have the Governments
of these countries overthrown and set up an Islamic regime there.
He said in his statement:
An impression is gathering
in Uzbekistan that such activity on the part of certain extremist
forces, who stand outside the parameters of law prevailing in Pakistan,
are beyond the control of governmental bodies there.
According to information available from different sources, about 400 people
from Central Asia, mainly from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, are undergoing
training at the present moment in clandestine training centres on Pakistani
territory. In particular, in madrasas such as the Jume-ul-Sanifiya
(Islamabad) and Tabon (Mardan) ideological training is being imparted while
in the region of the Arbat Road (Peshawar) and the villages of Jalhoz,
Shamshatu and Okulli Hatta in Peshawar and in Karachi, there are
training centres where special training for Islamic militants is being
imparted.
In the process of training these young people, who are inexperienced in
life and who lack clear views or outlook, extremist ideas are propagated
and instilled into them along with ideas of jihad and Wahabism.
The ultimate aim of the activities in these
centres, which were carried
out, to our mind, without the knowledge of the official authorities in
Pakistan, is to train violent, fanatic followers of extremist religious
ideology which has nothing in common with the peace-loving principles of
Islam.
Groups of militants are constituted out of these people who are trained
to carry out terrorist acts and to destabilise the situation , to
fight against the constitutional system and, ultimately, to establish Islamic
states of extremist form and content on the territory of Central
Asia. The law enforcement authorities are in possession of a lot
of facts to confirm this assertion.
He also revealed that Pakistan’s Ambassador in Uzbekistan had been given
all these details and a request had been conveyed to the Government of
Pakistan to put a stop to these activities from its territory.
In their response, the Pakistani authorities denied that any such activities
were taking place from their territory.
In May, 1998, the Uzbek authorities began a series of public trials of
Wahabi extremists. In May itself, 12 extremists were sentenced to between
five and eight years of imprisonment. This was followed by the sentencing
of seven others on June 6,1998, by the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan to between
6 and 10 years of imprisonment.
While sentencing them, the Supreme Court said: “These fanatical supporters
of Wahabism tried to destabilise the situation, undermine confidence
in the judicial system and set up an Islamic State in Uzbekistan.”
In the first week of May,1998, President Boris Yeltsin of Russia and President
Karimov met in Moscow to discuss the growing Wahabi extremist threat to
the internal security and stability of the region. They announced
the formation of a “Troika Alliance” to counter this and claimed that President
Imomali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan, who did not attend the meeting, had given
his consent to the proposed alliance over telephone.
The alliance would involve exchange of intelligence and
co-ordinated operations
to detect and neutralise the activities of the extremists and their external
supporters. After the meeting, Karimov said: “ The Troika will be concerned
not only with questions of stabilising the situation and ending confrontation
in Tajikistan, but will also handle issues pertaining to the rehabilitation
of the Tajik economy and opposition to aggressive nationalism, religious
fundamentalism and extremism.”
Yeltsin said: “We feel the need to lend a strategic character to
our relations in the face of an ideological threat from the south.”
Commenting on the alliance, Oleg Panfilov, Deputy Editor of the “Tsentralnaya
Azia, a Moscow journal specialising on Central Asia, said: “Karimov
has come to Moscow to forge military and economic ties with Russia, while
keeping his distance from the Kremlin politically. The Uzbek leader seeks
Russia’s military assistance in the face of continuing fighting in
Afghanistan and lingering instability in Tajikistan which is destabilising
the situation in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley populated mostly by Tajiks.”
This was followed by a meeting of the Interior Ministers of Russia, Uzbekistan
and Kyrgyzstan at Tashkent in the first week of June,1998. After the meeting,
Sergei Stepashin, the Russian Interior Minister, said: “ For Russia, Wahabism
is no longer a theoretical problem. We must trace the flow of money and
guns to Wahabis and the establishment of their military training camps.”
He called for the setting-up of a special unit within the newly-established
CIS co-ordination bureau to fight religious extremism.
Zakir Almatov, the Uzbek Interior Minister, said that the Wahabis of Tajikistan
and Uzbekistan were linking up with the extremists of Georgia and
Chechnya and that five Wahabi extremist groups had been arrested in Uzbekistan
since the beginning of 1997. The Kyrgyz Interior Minister said that his
Government would consider joining the “Troika Alliance.”
The Russian Federal Security Service expelled on November 26,1998, six
members of the Tablighi Jamaat of Pakistan after accusing them of fomenting
tension in the Muslim-inhabited areas of Russia. A press statement by the
FSS said : “While preaching Wahabism in the Bashkortostan region in the
southern Ural mountains, the Pakistanis made anti-Russian remarks aimed
at fuelling ethnic and religious hostility and offending the dignity of
other religious groups.” The FSS also accused them of recruiting Muslims
to fight in regional conflicts.
Two significant aspects of the allegations so far made by the Uzbek authorities
need to be underlined:
* While they have named three organisations of Pakistan
as instigators of religious extremism and violence in Uzbekistan, they
have refrained from naming the Taliban of Afghanistan.
* They have tried to give the benefit of doubt to the
Government of Pakistan by saying that the Pakistani Government and its
agencies do not seem to be aware of these activities from their territory
and, even if they were aware, were unable to control them.
The roots of the
post-1988 Wahabi extremist activities, whether in the Southern Philippines,
in Myanmar, in Bangla Desh, in India, in the Xinjiang province of China,
in Central Asia, in Chechnya or elsewhere are all to be found in Pakistan,
with the Markaz Dawa Al Irshad and its militant wing the Lashkar-e-Toiba,
the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Tablighi Jamaat being responsible for
them.
It is inconceivable
that the Pakistani authorities are not aware of what is going on from their
territory. Since 1995, the Pakistani press itself has published detailed
accounts of the activities of these organisations and of the links of important
establishment personalities such as President Mohammad Rafique Tarar, Mushahid
Hussain, the Minister in charge of Press relations in Nawaz Sharif's Cabinet,
and Lt.Gen. (Retd) Javed Nasir, former Director-General of the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) and presently intelligence adviser to Sharif, with these
organisations. Last year, Mushahid Hussain had publicly visited the training
centre of the Markaz and its Lashkar at Muridke, near Lahore. Surprisingly,
Mushahid Hussain has cordial relations with the Wahabi extremist groups
in Pakistan, despite his being a Shia.
The only possible conclusion is that to avoid a threat to the internal
security and stability of Pakistan from these organisations, the Pakistani
authorities prefer to keep them preoccupied with their external adventures.
The Markaz and its militant wing, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
are members of the International Islamic Front For Jihad Against the US
and Israel formed by Osama alias Osman Bin Laden last year. Both these
organisations have close links with the Taliban.
Though the Uzbek authorities have not blamed the Taliban by name for the
activities of the Wahabi extremists in their territory, they are greatly
concerned over the future plans of the Taliban. The “Muslim”, a Pakistani
daily, reported on August 26,1998, that maps displayed by the Taliban in
areas controlled by it in Afghanistan showed Tashkent, Bukhara, Dushanbe,Isfahan
and New Delhi as future targets of the Taliban after it had consolidated
its hold in Afghanistan.
Please refer to the paper titled the “Markaz Dawa Al Irshad—The Talibanisation
of Nuclear Pakistan.” An updated version on Harkat will follow.
8-3-99
(The writer is Additional Secretary
(Retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India and presently Director,Institute For Topical Studies,
Chennai.E-mail: corde@vsnl.com )
