BACKGROUND: On 11 February 2000, the Kyrgyz Security Council Secretary Bolot Januzakov warned of an impending incursion by 700 strong Islamic fighters from northern Tajikistan into Kyrgyz territory. These Islamic fighters were said to be under the command of Juma Namangani and running a campaign against President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. Namangani's guerrillas were reportedly involved in the kidnapping of four Japanese citizens in southern Kyrgyzstan in October 1999. That episode ended when Namangani’s forces withdrew from Kyrgyzstan into northern Tajikistan, and released their hostages. Authorities in Bishkek and Tashkent take the threat of a repeat scenario very seriously. A week after Januzakov's warning, Uzbek and Kyrgyz officials held a meeting to assess the situation.

Uzbek state leaders are concerned about the ability of Kyrgyz border patrols to prevent the penetration of Islamic bands from crossing the Tajik-Kyrgyz border. Central Asian borders are difficult to patrol, partly because of the mountainous terrain and partly because of the imprecision of borders. This has made Tashkent extremely anxious about its security. To the south of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan is still struggling to regain a semblance of stability and establish state authority throughout the country. Even if successful, Tajikistan will have a number of Islamic leaders in positions of authority, setting an unacceptable precedent for Uzbekistan.

The Ferghana Valley region of Kyrgyzstan is home to large Uzbek communities whose allegiance to President Karimov is questionable. Both Tashkent and Bishkek tend to see Uzbeks of Osh and Jalalabad as potential recruits to the Islamic cause, whatever that may be. Given the inefficiency of Kyrgyz border control, Tashkent has no guarantee that anti-Karimov Muslim bands will not use the Uzbek populated regions of Kyrgyzstan as a stepping stone for incursions into Uzbekistan.

Tashkent has responded to this security challenge by stepping-up its own border control. The deployment of Uzbek forces and strengthening of border controls, however, has revived suspicions in Bishkek and Astana that Uzbekistan is using this opportunity to redraw borders unilaterally. In 1999, Kyrgyz parliamentarians accused Tashkent of advancing Uzbekistan's borders well into Kyrgyz territory in the Ferghana Valley. A similar claim in Kazakhstan led the Kazakh Prime Minister Kasymzhomart Tokaev to publicly state on 15 February that no excuse can be used to justify Uzbekistan's unilateral action.

IMPLICATIONS: Media reports present Namangani's Islamic group, known as Hizb-e-Tahrir (Party of Purification), as staunchly anti-Karimov and fighting to establish an Islamic government. This force, therefore, poses an obvious challenge to the current leadership in Uzbekistan. But beyond that, the objectives of Hizb-e-Tahrir and other similar associations, are unclear. It is not at all clear, even to its advocates, what shape and form the Islamic alternative should take. Will it emulate the Iranian model of clerical rule? Will it realize the Islamic ideal of Muslim unity (umma) across national boundaries? The Tajik experience, often cited as proof of the devastating potential of Islamic activism, undermines anti-Islamic assumptions on two counts. On the first count, the political crisis in Tajikistan (1991-92), which led to a protracted civil war, was firstly the result of the inability of state leaders to cope with change and the growing need of Tajiks to assert their identity. Secondly, the profound regional suspicions and rivalries that played into political alignments deepened the crisis.

The Islamic movement in Tajikistan has agreed to operate within the legal-framework of the state. That framework is in a state of transition and the constitution has been revised to remove the ban on Islamic political parties. But this does not detract from the fact that the Islamic movement in Tajikistan favors the politics of compromise and inclusion, and is prepared to work within a secular legal and political system. The success of this endeavor is not predetermined, but it is clear that Islamic activism, even when toughened by war, is not a barrier to political compromise.

The political stability of Central Asia would be seriously challenged should Islamic activists pursue the ideal of umma unity. This, however, is a highly unlikely scenario. There has been no suggestion from Islamic leaders regarding the illegitimacy of state borders as temporal constructs, and the need to remove them. The experience of the Central Asian Muftiyat in 1993, that suffered a break into five nationally-defined pieces, is testimony to the irrelevance of a common Islamic identity to Central Asians, except in a spiritual abstract form.

CONCLUSION: The Islamic threat to stability is more of an imagined one. Small, disgruntled armed bands obviously exist, but there is no evidence to suggest a radical political alternative. Adopting a policy of inclusion that is similar to Tajikistan’s current policies may ease the antagonism of such groups against state officials. Instead, state leaders, especially in Uzbekistan, have opted for the exclusion and stigmatization of Islamists. Tashkent has used the imagined Islamic threat as an excuse for its authoritarian politics internally, and territorial consolidation externally. Tashkent's border initiatives are ostensibly aimed at securing its territory against Islamic infiltration, but they are seen as evidence of Uzbek hegemonic mind-set in other Central Asian republics.

Given the strength of the Uzbek population in Central Asia, and the strategic location of Uzbek communities beyond the borders of Uzbekistan living in regions adjacent to Uzbek territories, there are fears that Tashkent may feel justified in expanding its borders. This is likely to adversely affect inter-ethnic relations, as Uzbekistan's neighbors would view their Uzbek minorities as a liability - a fifth column. Uzbekistan's policies pose a challenge to regional stability more serious than the imagined Islamic peril.

AUTHOR BIO:: Dr Shahram Akbarzadeh is a Lecturer at the School of Sociology, Politics and Anthropology, La Trobe University and is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Arts Faculty at Monash University, Australia. He is the author of "Why Did Nationalism Fail in Tajikistan?", Europe-Asia Studies, Vol.48, No.7 (November 1996), pp.1105-29.

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