[A-List] Central Asia a vital, delicate U.S. ally

["Mark Jones" <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

San Francisco Chronicle
September 29, 2002
Central Asia a vital, delicate U.S. ally
Muslim factor threatens an alliance fueled by terror
Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer

Namangan, Uzbekistan -- The ghost of Juma Namangani, the leader of Central
Asia's most feared militant group, lingers everywhere in the impoverished,
dusty villages of his homeland in the Fergana Valley.

It loiters behind heavily armed police checkpoints that line the road
through
the arid foothills of the Kuramin mountain range into the valley. It haunts
Uzbek border guards nervously scrutinizing vehicles for Muslim rebels.

And it spooks authoritarian Central Asian leaders into issuing regular
warnings that Namangani, reportedly killed during the U.S. bombing in
Afghanistan, is still alive -- and that his followers are waiting for the
right moment to descend from the snow-capped peaks into the emerald orchards
cascading down the valley to engulf the volatile region where Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan converge.

The war on terrorism has created unlikely alliances between the White House
and the authoritarian leaders of these former Soviet republics. The support
the United States solicits -- and the cash it has begun dispensing -- could
backfire into a wave of anti-Americanism if Islamic insurgents win
widespread
sympathy among the overwhelmingly Muslim populations of these nations.

"We must encourage these governments to make significant improvements in
people's lives so that people can look for changes within, rather than go
outside looking for these militant groups," said a U.S. official, speaking
on
condition of anonymity in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. "That's a real concern in
the
long run -- that you need to establish democratic norms."

Experts say neglect of human rights, intolerance of dissent and widespread
corruption have driven these nations into abject poverty and have planted
the
seeds of popular dissent that could feed radical Islamic movements. The most
prominent such group is Namangani's Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU.

"There is very strong evidence coming in that suggests (the IMU) are in fact
regrouping and threatening to become a 'true' terrorist group -- smaller in
numbers, but a membership solely dedicated to extreme aims," said Tamara
Makarenko, an expert on Central Asian militant groups at the University of
Glamorgan in Wales.

"At the same time, with continued human rights abuses and repression against
even moderate Islam, facets of the IMU . . . have gained influence in many
parts of the region," she said.

IMU fighters have made repeated armed incursions into Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan
and Tajikistan over the past several years. After the Sept. 11 attacks,
President Bush listed the IMU among terrorist organizations sheltered,

armed and trained by the Taliban and linked to suspected terrorist
mastermind
Osama bin Laden. It was the only Central Asian group on Bush's list.

The southern tier of republics that became independent after the 1991
breakup
of the Soviet Union are overwhelmingly Muslim. But their secular leaders
often see even moderate Islam as a threat to their authoritarian regimes and
have devised heavy-handed ways to restrain religion.

In Uzbekistan, a state committee that controls religious practice in the
country, and the staff of the grand mufti of Tashkent -- handpicked by
President Islam Karimov -- distributes the sermons that are read every
Friday
in every mosque in the country. Of the five former Soviet republics in the
region, only Tajikistan allows a religious party to be represented in
parliament.

The U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan weakened the Taliban and al Qaeda and
temporarily crushed militant groups throughout the ex-Soviet nations in the
region. Yet to achieve genuine stability across Central Asia, analysts say,
the campaign to turn Afghanistan into a place that can no longer harbor
extremist groups is a beginning, but only a beginning.

To strengthen the region against the instability that provides a breeding
ground for Islamic extremism, analysts say, the United States must use its
increasingly close relationship with the former Soviet Central Asian
republics to push them toward free markets and democratic reforms. They warn
that continuing inaction could exacerbate instability in the region.

"The international coalition has secured Central Asian support in the war on
terrorism without demanding concessions," said Makarenko. "As a result . . .

the regional governments have, in many respects, manipulated the war on
terrorism to secure their own positions."

Just last week in Washington, Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell told
President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan that his help in the anti-terrorism
campaign does not give him a green light to undermine democracy. White House
spokesman Sean McCormack said Bush "talked about the importance of political
and economic reforms in Kyrgyzstan, including human rights."

As the United States trolled for support in Central Asia before last
October's bombing campaign began in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan's Karimov became
the first leader of a former Soviet republic to allow U.S. troops to use air
bases and other military facilities in his country. Kyrgyzstan's Akayev,
Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakstan and Imomali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan
followed suit.

Now, about 1,000 U.S. troops work out of the Khanabad air base in southern
Uzbekistan, nearly 2,000 U.S. and coalition troops operate out of Manas air
base in Kyrgyzstan, and American bombers repeatedly used Tajikistan's
airspace during their raids on Taliban positions in northern Afghanistan
last
year.

Such close cooperation finally helped place the impoverished Central Asian
countries on the map for the White House, said Fiona Hill, an expert on the
former Soviet Union at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"Certainly in Washington things have changed," she said. "People aren't
calling them 'the Stans' anymore, people are actually articulating the word
'Uzbekistan.' "

For the region, this means more money and promises of long-term cooperation.

U.S. aid budgets for Central Asia have nearly doubled since the war on
terror
began, increasing from $240 million in 2001 to $442 million this year.

But there is no sign of U.S. assistance in impoverished regions such as the
mountain-ringed Fergana Valley, where 2 million Tajiks, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks
live in poverty behind an intricate lace of state borders on a sunburned
plain about twice the size of Rhode Island.

In Namangan, Juma Namangani's hometown, life is so bad that many men spend
their last money to bribe their way onto trains and trucks that take them to
Russia, where they become laborers and send their small earnings back home.
Women and children work at cotton farms and orchards in return for 14 pounds
of pasta, 14 pounds of flour and a liter of cooking oil per month.

"Poverty is enemy No. 1," said Gafurjan Tashpulatov, an activist in
Namangan.
"Poor people become aggressive. They become restless."

Tashpulatov and other activists suggest that poverty has driven many people
here to join Hizb-ut-Tahrir, or the Party of Liberation, a secretive cross-
border organization that calls for the establishment of a Muslim state in
Asia.

Although it professes nonviolence and claims it has no links to al Qaeda,
the
party has attracted the wrath of regional leaders. Kyrgyzstan's Akayev calls
it a terrorist organization.

Central Asian leaders say Islamic militants from various groups have united
to form a pan-Central Asian militant group, the Islamic Movement of Central
Asia, with a goal to overthrow the existing governments and create an
Islamic
state.

Kalyk Imankulov, the head of the Kyrgyz National Security Service, said
earlier this month that the Islamic Movement is based in the nearly
impassable mountains of Afghanistan's eastern Badakhshan province; is headed
by Tahir Yuldashev, the interim leader of the IMU; and includes Tajiks and
Uzbeks, as well as Chechens from southern Russia and separatists from the
Xinjiang autonomous region of China.

While most experts view such announcements skeptically, many agree that the
threat of terrorism here exists.

"People here are not afraid of a couple hundred fighters somewhere in the
mountains," said a Western observer in Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent. "They
are afraid of car bombings, truck bombings going off in Tashkent, Dushanbe
and (Kyrgyzstan's capital) Bishkek."

Under the guise of fighting Islamic extremism, the government of Kyrgyzstan
stepped up persecution of opposition groups, shut down three opposition
newspapers and increased its crackdown on Hizb-ut-Tahrir. In March, Kyrgyz
police opened fire at a peaceful demonstration, killing five people.

In Uzbekistan, politically motivated arrests continue, although the number
decreased dramatically to only 180 people this year, from about 1,500 people
last year. Uzbek government agents continue to monitor mosques, and any
religious practice still can be construed as trying to overthrow the
constitutional order.

In Namangan, nearly everyone has a friend or a family member who has been
thrown into prison for years for violations that are sometimes as minuscule
as praying or growing a beard.

As disgruntlement with Central Asian hard-line governments grows among the
local population, the United States runs the risk of seeing its cooperation
with Central Asian authorities misread as support for those leaders' rampant
violations of political and human rights, analysts warn.

"Locals . . . find it hypocritical of the international coalition to be
fighting oppression on the one hand, and rewarding oppression on the other,"
Makarenko said. "If this continues, it will inevitably fuel regional
discontent."