A history of violence in the Fergana valley

Friday, July 09, 2010

Following the recent conflict in Kyrgyzstan, Anthony Tucker-Jones explains how the Fergana Valley has always been a hotbed of violent militancy

The recent inter-ethnic violence in the cities of Osh and Jalalabad in southern Kyrgyzstan has not only brought to a head long simmering tensions, it also once again raises the spectre of the Central Asian states becoming overtly Islamic rather than secular states. The vast Fergana Valley stretching across eastern Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan has long been a hotbed of Islamic militancy. The geographic divisions, a Soviet legacy based on divide and rule, have left an uneasy geopolitical patchwork amongst the former Soviet 'Stans' of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

While Moscow was seeking to disentangle itself from its Afghanistan intervention in the late 1980s there were regular demonstrations across the Soviet Union involving up to 100,000 people. In particular vicious inter-ethnic fighting spread to the Fergana region of Uzbekistan. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan emerged from the Fergana under Juma Namangani and Tohir Abdouhalivitch Yuldeshev. Namangani was a Soviet army veteran who had fought in Afghanistan and served with the Tajik Islamic Renaissance Party guerrillas. During this period Soviet troops were sent into Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Some 12,000 troops were deployed to the Fergana valley, 16,000 to the Transcaucasus and 7,000 to Tajikistan.

In May 2005, Uzbek security forces killed hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators in the town of Andijan in the Fergana Valley, which led to a souring of relations with Washington. It was evident that militant Islam fostered for so long in Afghanistan had spread to the Central Asia. However, it was also clear that certain states were using the war on terror as an excuse to clamp down on political opposition betraying their true undemocratic credentials. Washington had little choice but abandon its military relationship with Uzbekistan, but maintained its base at Manas in Kyrgyzstan, which acts as a logistical hub for its troops in Afghanistan.

In the meantime Moscow's concern for its five Muslim Central Asian republics was such that when Presidents Boris Yeltsin of Russia, Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine and Stanislav Shuskevich of Belarus got together in 1991 to sign the Minsk Treaty, ending the Soviet Union and creating the Commonwealth of Independent Sates (CIS) these states were not consulted. Russia largely abandoned the troublesome former Soviet 'Stans' to their fate and independence.

It was not until 1996 that Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan signed the Shanghai treaty with China, designed to demilitarize their mutual borders and the following year they signed a follow on treaty demilitarizing the 4,300 mile former Soviet-Chinese border. This did not solve the problem of the vast, largely unpoliced borders with turbulent Afghanistan.

During the 1960s the Soviet Union sought to curry favour with the Muslim states adopting socialism or Marxism as their political ideology. Ironically some of these such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen ended up plagued by Islamic militancy. As Moscow cynically sought to win support amongst the wider Muslim world it had to offer the pretence of tolerating Islam at home. This resulted in two religious schools being opened in Bukhara and Tashkent. The Fergana valley became home to itinerant mullahs who took no notice of the edicts of Moscow or communism.

Following its withdrawal from Afghanistan, Moscow became increasingly concerned at what it perceived as a reawakening of Islam in Soviet Central Asia, though the truth was that it had never gone away despite decades of Soviet cultural and religious repression. The largely closed world of Central Asia was increasingly conscious of the wider Muslim community or umma thanks to the growing availability of Islamic literature distributed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistani. At this stage the Soviet Union had a population of some 50 million Muslims (from a total of 287 million) the majority of who were living in Third World conditions - unrest seemed unavoidable.

Many Tajik and Uzbek Islamists felt that Islamic revolutions in Central Asia would be triggered by a Mujahideen victory in Afghanistan. Throughout the 1980s Shia Iran had held the monopoly with jihad, but the Deobandi madrassahs in Pakistan were to have a major influence on the Taliban in Afghanistan and in turn former Soviet Central Asia. Deobandism (a Sunni sect that had been established in British India, which disliked Shia Islam), spread the word in the Fergana Valley.

Sunni Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia also took root in Central Asia again finding the Fergana valley a fertile recruiting ground. However, its restrictive creed was not that popular with largely moderate Central Asia until the 1980s when the Wahhabi Mujahideen leaders in Afghanistan wielded greater power. In the face of the Pakistani backed Taliban marching westward through Afghanistan in the 1990s Moscow had little choice but help step up security in the region with 3,000 troops based at Termez on the Uzbekistan border, 25,000 on the Tajik-Afghan border and placed those in Turkmenistan on high alert. It was at about this point that the Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HuT) and the IMU began to make their presence felt. While HuT was a peaceful movement the IMU was very firmly a guerrilla organisation. HuT found a foothold in the Fergana Valley. To keep such organisations at bay the region's governments became increasingly repressive.

The latest violence in Kyrgyzstan has resulted in tens of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks fleeing toward Uzbekistan. All this follows the bloody ousting of Kyrgyz President Kurmanek Bakiyev in April. Both Russia and America, who continue to maintain military bases in Kyrgyzstan, can only watch developments with a sense of growing alarm. In Moscow's mind it is a prophecy fulfilled.

Anthony Tucker-Jones is author of the recently published 'The Rise of Militant Islam.'