DATE=9/6/1999
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=CENTRAL ASIAN INSURGENCY
NUMBER=5-44203
BYLINE=ED WARNER
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Perhaps as many as a thousand Islamic
militants have seized five mountain villages in
Southern Kyrgyzstan and taken several hostages,
including four Japanese geologists. In its worst
crisis since gaining independence from the Soviet
Union, Kyrgyzstan has called on neighboring countries
for help, as well as Russia. Correspondent Ed Warner
has a report on this latest Islamist uprising, which
alarms the established powers of Central Asia.
TEXT: The towering mountains and plunging valleys of
southern Kyrgyzstan are ideal terrain for invading
Islamic militants. Arriving from Tajikistan to the
south, they have seized hostages with the apparent aim
of swapping them for Islamist prisoners held in
Uzbekistan.
They have chosen Kyrgyzstan for their mission because
it is much more vulnerable than Uzbekistan, where
President Islam Karimov has cracked down hard on
dissidents of any kind. Kyrgyzstan's small armed
forces cannot repel the invaders alone. So Moscow has
been asked to help.
The Russians, who constantly warn of Islamist
ambitions in Central Asia, say they are willing to
send arms but not troops to this extreme end of what
was once their empire.
The invasion of Kyrgyzstan is the latest in a series
of attacks that have unnerved the governments of the
region. Last February, bombs killed sixteen people
and injured 120 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital.
The organizer of that plot is suspected of being the
leader of the Kyrgyztan incursion.
Russell Zanca, Professor of Anthropology at
Northeastern Illinois University, has made several
trips to central Asia to study pastoral communities.
He says President Karimov's warnings of an Islamist
threat have been dismissed as self-serving, but there
is some truth to them:
// ZANCA ACT //
Given what we have seen happening in the
Caucasus and Dagestan and a few years back the
whole disaster in Chechnya, I think we can admit
that these sorts of people do exist. They are
armed, and sometimes they are willing to take
very extreme measures. How dangerous they are,
what kind of a real threat they represent to the
states in Central Asia is another question.
// END ACT //
Professor Zanca says armed militancy should not be
confused with the intense religious faith to be found
in the Uzbek city of Namagan in the Fergana Valley.
There, in his opinion, repression has far exceeded any
possible threat:
// ZANCA ACT //
I do think that the Uzbek government has been
very repressive toward people who simply want to
express their religion. And this has happened
in no place to more extreme degrees than Namagan
itself. Mosques have been shut down. Young men
with beards have been picked up en masse and put
in prisons. In an area where I worked, people I
knew personally have been put in prison for
four-year sentences for absolutely no good
reason, other than the fact that they chose to
become religious.
// END ACT //
Professor Zanca says this kind of oppression can
provoke the Islamist rebellion so widely feared -- a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
A former professor of Russian studies at Columbia
University, Edward Alworth, says revolt may come in
Uzbekistan and elsewhere in the region, but it will
not necessarily be Islamic.
In his opinion, the central Asian leadership is
reminiscent of the Soviets and may lead to the kind of
reaction that toppled them. So, he says, do not blame
Islam -- blame tyranny:
// ALWORTH ACT //
This is nothing more or less than the same old
Communist-style government that does not want to
relinquish authority to anyone. I continue to
believe that Islam is not going to be the source
of the effective opposition to this regime.
Actually, I think this is a pretense. It is a
way to justify rather than to face the real
problems there.
// END ACT //
Moscow says it will not send troops to Kyrgyzstan, but
Professor Zanco thinks it might if the situation
becomes desperate. Then in the name of defeating
Islam, the region could be restoring the empire it was
glad to escape. (SIGNED)
NEB/EW/RAE
06-Sep-1999 13:50 PM LOC (06-Sep-1999 1750 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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