A VERY PEACEFUL JIHADPABLO ESCOBAR

CENTRAL ASIA'S ISLAMISTS ARE NO TERRORISTS;

ALL THEY WANT IS A MUSLIM UTOPIA WORLDWIDE

AND PEACE AND PROSPERITY IN THE REGION.

NOT QUITE HOW THE RULERS SEE IT

A constant smirk is imprinted on his face. In his black-padded traditional Uzbekcloak, black boots, white skullcap and sporting an incipient beard, Alisher (not hisreal name), a young man in his mid-20s, is either despondent, extremely selt-assured, or both. He is not rural madrassa fodder: he is college-educated, and hadno need for a religious school education. But he is unemployed nevertheless. Inmany ways, just by the power of his faith, he is more lethal than a suicide bomber.Alisher is a member of the Islamic movement Hizb ut-Tahrir (HUT). From thepoint of view of a repressive Central Asian regime like Uzbekistan's, he's aterrorist. If that is the case, he is the mode! of the terrorist of the future.

After Li tortuous negotiation via a Kyrgyz interpreter, Alisher agrees to speakabout HUT at a chaykhana (tea house) in the middle of Osh's legendary'Jaymabazaar, bursting with Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Tajiks buying and selling everythingunder the sun, or snow. With winter fast approaching and drizzle and snow fallingalmost every day, Osh can be a pretty grim place. Not only merchants congregatein the bazaar, but a cast of desperate characters selling the usual broken dolls andcheap socks - peasants who have come to the city dreaming of paradise.

The streets are totally dark at night, the pavement is cmmbling, there's notmuch else apart from a kiosk economy and no evidence of a central state'spresence. RougMy half of Osh's population is Uzbek - with no politicalrepresentation whatsoever in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek. Their eyes are focusedon Uzbekistan and the adjacent, fertile Fergana Valley. But Osh is cut off from thevalley by Joseph Stalin's demented geography; and the absurd border, less thanhalf an hour away, has been further solidified by the hardline Uzbek regime ofPresident Islam Karimov.

Most HUT members are, like Alisher, ethnic Uzbeks, living in the countryitself or in neighbouring Central Asian republics. Karimov simply does nottolerate what he views as radical Islam. His war against the Islamic Movement ofUzbekistan (IMU) - affiliated with the Taliban - has been merciless, and vice-versa. HUT is not the same thing as the IMU: IMU supporters are basicallyimpoverished farmers living in the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan, a denselypopulated area including the cities of Namangan, Andijan, Kokand and Fergana.HUT appeals to what passes as the urban intelligentsia in Central Asia: studentswho have finished college and who are unable to find a decent job. But thousands

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ot HUT militants now languish in Uzbek jails — HUT claims there are more than100,000 — as well as in other parts of Central Asia.

HUT - whose underground headquarters is now prob;ibly in Jordan - hasdefined itself in a conununique on its website as 'a political party that does notundertake material actions'. It has been branded as an illegal Islamic movement allover Central Asia. As configured by Alisher, it is above all a giant proselytisingmachine that has not resorted to guerrilla warfare - at least not yet. InsideKyrgyzstan, the movement has been blamed for two recent bombings, on amarket in Bishkek and an exchange office in Osh. But no evidence has beenproduced.

HUT is essentially a pan-Islamic secret society, founded in 1953 inSaudi Arabia and Jordan by a Palestinian from the diaspora. Sheikh Taqiuddinan-Nabham, who studied in the famous al-Azhar University in Cairo. Sheikh an-Nabhani's writings remain very influential: they are the letter of the law as far asHUT is concerned. The sheikh hates 'depraved democracies' imposed by theWest on Muslim nations and advocates 'a single state over the entire Muslimworld". He skilfully links Islam's great expansion through jihad in the seventhcentury with a possible new wave of expansion in the twenty-first century nowthat Muslims are under ^torture, internal and external propaganda and sanctions' —the actUiU state of things in Central Asia. He clearly equates Islam with apennanent, global revolution: Leon Trotsky meets the holy Quran. Alisherstresses: 'It will be a peaceful revolution that will make the regimes in Central Asiacrumble.'

In an analysis that could have been penned by Vladimir Lenin or Trotsky,Alisher says that people in all Central Asian fonner Soviet republics are politicallyripe to rise against their unjust rulers. In the first phase, the Central Asian republicsplus Afghanistan and China's Xinjiang province would be uuited in a caJiphate:then the caliphate - similar to the one that ruled Arabia between 632 (whenMohammed died) until 661 — will take over the rest of the world.

Forget about democracy — as well as capitalism, socialism or nationalism, all ofthem 'depraved Western notions'. Democracy as practised in the EuropeanUnion is considered 'a farce*. The US, the UK and Israel are 'the work of thedevil' - although they would be given the option of joining the caliphate. Forgetabout cinema, music, modem art, rap videos, fast food and Internet chat rooms.As for Jews, they will be invited to leave "because they do not belong in CentralAsia.'

As it's not the same thing as the IMU, HUT is also &r from^ being the samething as al-Qaeda. Essentially, HUT wants to follow the peacefiji way to sitaria,while the al-Qaeda virus has mutated into a total war against the West. In its earlydays, HUT was very close to the Muslim iJrotherhood in Egypt, historically thefirst group to devise a strategy of Islamic struggle against Westem colonialism, andalways in favour of the fomiation of modem Islamic states. The Jamiat-i-Islami inPakistan, as well as the late anti-Taliban Northern Alliance commander Ahmad

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Shah Masoud, and fomier Afghan prime minister and current US nemesisGulbuddin Hekniatyar iii Afghanistan have also shared the Muslim Brotherhood'sphilosophy.

It's iiiir to say, though, that HUT is not so far from the Wahhabi worldview ofal-Qaeda; and as fer as Karimov's repressive police apparatus in Uzbekistan isconcerned, the HUT and the IMU are definitely the same thing: 'bandits' inRussian President Vladimir Putin's terminology; 'thugs' in that of PresidentCeorge W 13ush. Karimov may be fighting a movement whose platfomi is noteven relevant to the harsh daily lives of most people in Uzbekistan, not tomention Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. But HUT is tremendously popular, not onlyin Central Asia but also in Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan and the Maghreb. HUT isnow active in at least 40 countries around the world.

Alisher makes the point that HUT is also anti-Sliia: like Jews, all Shi'ites livingin Central Asia - substantial communities in southem Uzbekistan and eastemTajikistan - would have to leave. Bukhara and Samarkand, the great, mythicalSilk Road cities, have a strong Shia minority. This HUT notion totally clasheswith the history of tolerance of Islam in Central Asia. Sufism - the tolerant Islamicmysticism - was born in Centra! Asia and Persia after the Arab invasions.

Salomon's throne, the 'stone tower' looming over Osh that has always greetedvoyagers on the Silk Road, is the second most important pilgrimage site inCentral Asia because the Prophet Mohammed may have prayed there. The mostimportant pilgrimage site is the tomb of Sufi mystic and saint BahauddinNaqshbandi outside Bukhara. HUT's intolerance proves its ideology is an Arabianimport that does not even bother to connect the Middle East with the realproblems of Central Asia. Any conversation in the Jayma bazaar in Osh revealsthat for anyone the real issues are not Sunni or Shia, but unemployment, inflationand lack of education.

While southem Kyrgyzstan is being Islamicised. northern Kyrgyzstan is beingslowly Christianised. This nationwide split in the long run is working towards theHUT's aims. Christians represent at least 17 per cent of the whole Kyrgyzpopulation of almost 5 million. Russian Orthodox followers are buildingchurches everywhere; Christian evangelists are active, profiting from Akayev'sdrive to halt the exodus of skilled Russians. HUT views this situation as a totaldisgrace.

Alisher is mum about HUT leadership. It may have been from T-ondonistan';but according to European intelligence sources, Londonistan has been effectivelyneutralised by Tony Blair's govemment via a couple of media-frenzy-inducingarrests. Alisher confimis that HUT usually operates invisible five-man daira (cellsor circles) in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Uzbek secret police mayhave arrested hundreds of cell members, but no leaders so far. HUT leadershipremains essentially invisible: no photos, no records, no addresses, just avalanchesof books, pamphlets and leaflets tran.slated from Arabic to Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Dari

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and Russian and churned out by a network of underground desktop publishingpresses all over Central Asia.

There are also posters and sliabnamas - night letters - surreptitiously appearingin the morning under people's doors. Although HUT only started infiltratingUzbekistan in the niid-1990s, via a solitary Jordanian in Tashkent, Alisher swearsthe HUT has spread like wildfire, or a vims, in the Kyrgyz and Tajik parts of theFergana Valley. There may be hundreds of thousands of memben in Uzbekistanalone. The popularity of HUT in Kyrgyzstan is attributed by Alisher to a mix ofpoverty, official corruption and the central govemment in Bishkek totallyignoring the problems of the region.

Like al-Qaeda, the HUT makes massive use of the Internet and digitaltechnology to propagate its own version of globahsation: not neo-liberalisni, butthe one-system, worldwide sharia govemment. Urbanised Uzbeks in the capitalTashkent say the model may be the Ottoman Empire, something that pan-TurkicUzbeks can easily relate to. Alisher, thougli, is vague on the economic and socialpolicies of this one-global-state caliphate.

Alisher vehemently denies HUT is affiliated in any way with al-Qaeda, theTaliban or the IMU. But Osama bin Laden is undeniably a very popular figure inthe Fergana Valley 'because he supports all Lslamic movements in Central Asia'.Alisher, though, reflects what may be the official HUT position: bin Ladenlaunched \m Jihad against the West too early and exposed militants of all shadesand colours to relentless Westem repression.

The key to the future is what will happen in the Fergana Valley. It is anenonnous oasis, less than 3(10 kilometres long, with the best soil and chmateanywhere in Central Asia, as the Greeks and the Persians knew more than twomillennia ago. It is also at the centre of silk production in Central Asia. The rootof the modem problem is the Soviet Union's decision to impose a monocultureof cotton on the valley: the Fergana is still an endless succession of cotton fieldstringed by mulberry trees and orchards and scattered villages. Agro-industrialcollectives are still the norm. The eastem side of the valley around Namangan andAndij.in in Uzbekistan and Osh and Jalalabad in Kyrgyzstan is ultra-conservative.Andijan is also at the centre of Uzbekistan's oil production, and Karimov doeseverything he can to make life in the valley more difficult.

Innumerable proposals for the development of the Fergana Valley havestressed the same point: this is an integrated area, a single valley with more than 10milhon people, not three regions from three different states. There's no way thewhole agricultural and industrial infrastructure of the valley can be modemisedwith a bunker mentality. And the stalemate is all due to Karimov. HUT and IMUview the valley as an organic whole and both trust that widespread economichardship will lead to Karimov's downfall.

Radicalisation is inevitable. For Russia HUT is a terrorist group; in Germanyit has been outlawed, because of its notorious anti-Semitic views. In Kyrgyzstan,the Ulema Council has approved what amounts to de facto censorship of religious

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Return of the mullah, Boklimi, UzhekistauCredit: Ahhas/Magiium Photo.-:

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literature: the Kyrgyz security service, working alongside the Spiritual Directorateof Muslims, is printing its own literature denouncing the HUT as 'extremists'. Asthe tbremost US client in Central Asia. Karimov is playing the usual game; HUTis equated with al-Qaeda and diis justifies the regime's brutal repression.

The HUT faithful are not suicide bombers. They are smiling idealists likeAlisher. In their peaceful jiluul - a war of conversion to an idealised world free ofall mundane problems — they are willing to wait 1,000 years to annex the West toa caliphate. But recent pamphlets confiscated in Tajikistan already suggest achange of tone. Apart from declaring the US a global threat that can only be curedby the caliphate, they are more viscerally anti-US and call for a jihad against theWest.

There's no political life to speak of in Central Asia, and for the absolutemajority of its population the economic future is also bleak. HUT members knowtime is on their side. With internal repression still at its peak, sooner or later thepeaceful jihadis may exchange the pamphlet for the bomb. •

Pabio Escobar is a correspondent for Asia Times Online

This article reproduced courtesy Courrier Intemational

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