Terror in the Name of…
The region of Central Asia is home to several functioning and capable radical terrorist groups. Just last May, Interpol rounded up 176 terrorist suspects in Europe from 19 countries, and unfortunately all 5 major CA states were represented. French authorities also announced the arrest of 10 other suspects for financing Islamic terrorist groups, including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).
Speaking of IMU, Turkish Weekly released their ‘Country Reports on Terrorism 2007: South and Central Asia Overview,’ which provides their overall analysis of the region’s terrorist situation and describes Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan’s situation in-depth. The report does a solid job going over active terrorist groups, terrorist incidents throughout the past year, and US/CA state security cooperation to counter terrorism in Afghanistan and in each respective CA state. The report is very ‘matter of fact’ but it does offer one policy prescription or symptom of why terrorism exists and how it can be curbed in the region; they argue that widespread poverty and government repression, especially of religious groups, has helped create an environment for breeding terrorist elements.
The Turkish Weekly report discusses a few instances where American interests were directly targeted for terrorist acts by CA Islamic terrorist groups, specifically 2004 Islamic Jihad Group’s suicide bombing at the US Embassy in Tashkent. But in reading the report one gets the impression that these groups are mainly after disrupting and overthrowing their CA state autocrats, Matthew Crosston of The Middle East Review of International Affairs believes this is dangerous thing to believe and rely on. He writes an in-depth article on the Ferghana Valley radical Islamist terrorist group Hizb al-Tahrir (HT) and argues that the group has aims that go beyond the Valley and hope to reach US interests where ever they lie. His analysis and breakdown of HT’s ideology and purpose is well-researched and thought-out. Crosston believes that the groups beliefs and aims, which he describes as similar to Bin Ladin’s, are completely contrary to the US’s and that there will butt heads sooner or later. How should the US combat this group and others like it in CA one might ask? Crosston is highly critical of the current US policy, which he believes just overlooks political and religious repression in order to secure short term gains in Afghanistan and regional security. He asserts ‘The problem is that it {US} does not attempt to make its voice heard on these issues {democratic rights in CA}. Instead, issues of security and cooperation in assisting in the global war against terror have taken sole priority.’ In the long term, Crosston argues that this type of policy will come back to haunt the US.
What do you think about all this? Are the HT and other CA based terrorist groups capable of, and do they even really desire to, hurt the US and its interests? Is the current US policy in the region to favorable to security concerns over democracy promotion? Does poverty and religious/political suppression create terrorist or are other factors at play, religious ideals for instance?