In Central Asia, the threat of ISIL appears inflated

There is a growing danger that returning ISIL fighters will stir internal disaffection against local secular governments in Central Asia but the threat is overblown, argues Stephen Blackwell

Foreign ISIL fighters, like these in Raqaa, Syria, are returning to Central Asia but the threat they pose remains greatly inflated. File / AP Photo

A report published last month by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group claimed that up to 4,000 recruits from Central Asia had joined ISIL in Syria and Iraq. Many of these new recruits are inhabitants of the Fergana Valley, an ethnically diverse region spanning Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and eastern Uzbekistan. The ICG report also claimed that the region’s enduring problems of poor governance and repression could create the conditions for a resurgence of radical groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an organisation that claimed allegiance to ISIL last October.

According to some Central Asian governments, there is a growing danger that returning ISIL fighters will stir internal disaffection against local secular governments. Such an assumption is questionable given evidence that extremist religious movements are most likely to emerge as a result of conflicts that stem from other causes. ISIL emerged from the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq and the civil war in Syria. Similarly, Libya is now seeing the emergence of radicals given the lack of a strong central government. On this evidence, unless there is a case of “state failure” in Central Asia, there is little likelihood of a radical movement emerging.

Of the Central Asian countries that emerged from the rubble of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have been most subject to instability. Tens of thousands were killed in Tajikistan in the 1990s as the result of a civil war stemming from ethnic and regional rivalries.

In Kyrgyzstan, popular protests in 2005 and 2010 led to changes of government but did little to remedy corruption. Inter-communal violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks during the latter uprising left more than 400 dead.

Last year, Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambaev’s government faced mass demonstrations in the capital Bishkek from protesters seeking reform.

With many of the hundreds of ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek citizens now fighting for ISIL having originated from the Fergana Valley, Kyrgyz and Tajik authorities are concerned that these radicals will seek to spread the ISIL message by exploiting local ethnic and social fissures when they return.

In addition, with the Nato mission in Afghanistan being scaled back, local authorities are worried that a potential security vacuum in the northern Afghan provinces of Kunduz and Faryab could permit the Taliban and its affiliates to export terror attacks and drug trafficking operations. Tajikistan shares more than 1,200km of sparsely populated border country with Afghanistan. Last year, sporadic violent incidents on Afghanistan’s northern borders led to the killing of six Turkmen soldiers.

Russia has been quick to respond to the perceived ISIL threat to Central Asia. Both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain home to Russian military bases.

Last month, further military assistance was offered to help shore up Tajikistan as an “outpost in the fight against terror” according to the Kremlin. Moscow is also looking to reassert regional influence through the Eurasian Economic Union, a customs treaty between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan that came into force on January 1 this year. Kyrgyzstan is expected to join the EEU in May.

The new union is widely perceived as part of a Kremlin plan to reassert Russia’s dominance over the post-Soviet republics. However, in its efforts to re-establish its regional dominance, Russia is facing intense competition from the US and China.

Hoping to use security assistance to maintain influence in Central Asia following Nato’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington has delivered 300 armoured vehicles to Uzbekistan and provided millions of dollars of aid to the Tajik intelligence services. The region also remains crucial to China’s ambition to create a “New Silk Road”.

Given this level of external interest, the Central Asian regimes have every interest in maximising the potential risk from radicals in order to secure assistance from powerful external benefactors.

The realities of power politics in Central Asia suggest therefore that the supposed radical threat is more theoretical than real.

A research paper titled The Myth of Post-Soviet Radicalisation in the Central Asian Republics, published by London’s Chatham House last November, warned that the region’s governments were deliberately exaggerating the ISIL threat.

Nevertheless, the reality is that extremists will grow in appeal so long as state institutions are seen as corrupt, inefficient and unresponsive. In seeking to prop up authoritarian local regimes, there is a parallel danger that great power intervention in Central Asia will deepen the level of popular disaffection and alienation.

Ultimately, only real and effective efforts by the region’s governments to conciliate their citizens will serve to head off the threat of violent extremism.

Stephen Blackwell is an inter­national politics and security ­analyst