RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service has been blocked in Kazakhstan after reporting on a video showing Kazakh militants calling for others to join the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria.

Radio Azattyq said on March 5 that the «Latest News» sections of both its Kazakh- and Russian-language sites were blocked on March 4 soon after the report on the video was published.

While previous reports by Radio Azattyq on Kazakh militants in Syria have also been blocked in Kazakhstan, the service said that this is the first time that the entire «Latest News» sections of both the Kazakh Service’s websites have been taken offline.

Radio Azattyq’s report examines a video that shows militants from a Kazakh jamaat, or fighting faction, within the IS group. One of the militants, who is identified as Abu Muaz, calls on Kazakhs to join them and come to Syria to fight.

A version of the video with Russian subtitles appeared in August 2014 on the IS group’s official Russian-language propaganda site, H-Center. The video was removed from YouTube very shortly after it was published, but a version of it has recently been re-uploaded and shared on social networks.

Radio Azattyq translated some of the video from Kazakh and reported that Abu Muaz criticized religious scholars in Kazakhstan for «poisoning» religion. «A lot of people come to us in Syria with their entire families and replenish our ranks,» Abu Muaz says.

Abu Muaz’s fluent Kazakh suggests that he is a native of Kazakhstan, Radio Azattyq said.

However, Radio Azattyq reported that the report had been blocked in Almaty and Astana on March 4, and that Kazakhtelecom, the largest Internet service provider in Kazakhstan, refused to comment.

Kazakh Authorities In Denial

This is not the first time that Kazakhstan has moved to block news sites from reporting on videos of Kazakh IS militants in Syria.

In November, Kazakhstan banned an IS video that showed Kazakh nationals, including children, participating in military and ideological drills in Syria.

The fallout from Kazakhstan’s banning of the video even reached neighboring Kyrgyzstan, where news sites showing the video were also blocked. One site accused the government of punishing reporters over fears of a backlash from Kazakhstan over the IS video.

Kazakhstan also tried to distance itself from reports that a Kazakh national had been killed by IS militants in Syria on suspicion of being a Russian spy. After a video showing a man identified as a Kazakh being apparently shotalongside another «spy,» Kazakhstan’s intelligence agency issued a statement denying that the victims were Kazakh nationals.

However, the extensive blocking of Radio Azattyq’s Russian and Kazakh sites suggests that the Kazakh authorities are beginning to crack down even harder on news outlets and journalists who report on Kazakh militants in Syria and Iraq.

The signs of the increased crackdown come amid ever-growing fears in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in Central Asia about the threat posed by the IS group to domestic security, as well as a sense that Astana does not want to broadcast the fact that Kazakh nationals are present, or even prolific, in the militant group.

The blocking comes after reports that a Kazakh teenager, Akhror Saidakhmetov, has been arrested in the United States on suspicion of aiding the IS group. While the Kazakh Interior Ministry issued a statement saying it was willing to help the U.S. authorities investigate Saidakhmetov, officials also appeared to distance themselves from the case, saying that the teen had left Kazakhstan in 2011 and had not returned.

— Joanna Paraszczuk

http://www.rferl.org/content/kazakhstan-blocked-rferl-over-islamic-state-reporting/26883669.html

Preliminary results in the latest rigged parliamentary elections in Tajikistan show the ruling People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan won another overwhelming victory.

But more importantly for the future, it was a defeat for the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) and the unofficial end of the power-sharing deal that was part of the Tajik Peace Accord of June 1997. And that raises questions about the future of Islam in politics not only in Tajikistan but in all the former Soviet republics that now make up Central Asia.

That Islam will play a role in the politics of Central Asia is undeniable, and the 1997 peace agreement in Tajikistan was an experiment that proved to some extent that Islam could have a political role in a secular state.

Under that agreement the United Tajik Opposition, an interesting mixture of the IRPT, and democratic and nationalist groups, received 30 percent of the positions in government at all levels, from local to ministerial.

The IRPT became and remains the only Islamic party registered in all of Central Asia.

The formation of such a government was a complicated and tense process, but it took root; and by the time the Taliban was chased from power in neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001, there were some who suggested the Tajik model of government might well suit Afghanistan.

For the Muslims of Tajikistan, and to some extent the rest of Central Asia, who were pious but interested in politics, it was a perceived opportunity for an Islamic point of view to find a legitimate place in governance.

The Muslims who fought with weapons in hand during the civil war were able to shift their efforts to battles in local and regional councils and parliament.

People such as Said Abdullo Nuri, the original IRPT leader, his deputy Hoja Akbar Turajonzoda, and the capable wartime field commander Mirzo Ziyoyev all found places in the government. And they were far more «radical» than the current IRPT leadership.

The idea never really caught on in neighboring Central Asian states. The current state of Uzbek-Tajik ties really dates back to the Tajik peace deal, since Uzbek President Islam Karimov was absolutely against the Tajik government allowing the IRPT to share power and furious when the peace agreement was signed.

But the Tajik government of former military adversaries, Islamic and secular, was able to work together and pull the country out of the catastrophic situation the country was in when the war ended. Tajikistan is not a rich country, it probably never will be, but it is stable and has been for more than a decade and a half.

That stability is now at risk — for no good reason, really. The IRPT had two of the 63 seats in parliament prior to the March 1 elections, nowhere near enough to influence the country’s politics, but at least the party was represented in parliament.

And having two seats preserved the IRPT’s hope that it could win more seats in future elections despite the many obstacles the party has faced and seem to suddenly face every time there are elections. Current IRPT leader Muhiddin Kabiri told me one week ago that he thought his party could win five seats in these latest elections.

The IRPT is the second-largest party in Tajikistan, so Kabiri’s prediction was plausible even knowing the deck might be stacked against him, so to speak.

Now the IRPT has no place in government; and for the roughly 44,000 registered members of the party and the many thousands more who support the IRPT, many under 30 years old, this is going to be a problem.

Analysts have warned for years that by driving the opposition, both secular and religious, underground, Central Asian governments were creating radicalized groups.

The lack of any voice whatsoever for the IRPT in government, after 18 years, is likely to come back to haunt the Tajik government one day.

— Bruce Pannier; Salimjon Aioubov and Tohir Safarov of RFE/RL’s Tajik contributed to this report

http://www.rferl.org/content/tajikistan-islam-elections-parliament-history/26883637.html

Two hundred labor migrants from Tajikistan have left their workplaces in Russia to go and fight alongside militants in Syria, Tajikistan’s Interior Minister, Ramazon Rakhimzoda has claimed. 

Rakhimzoda made his comments at a February meeting with young people in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, although information about the event was only published on March 3, RFE/RL’s Tajik service, Radio Ozodi, reported.

The Tajik Interior Minister blamed groups on the internet that «hunted» for «weak» youths in order to destabilize society.

«In order to achieve their goals, they finance young people and send them to unofficial Islamic schools abroad, and use other methods. As a result, over 200 wayward young people who found themselves as labor migrants in Russia, were sent to the fighting in Syria,» Rakhimzoda said.

It is not known how many Tajik nationals are fighting in Syria and Iraq. Official figures have put the number at 300. Edward Lemon from the UK’s University of Exeter, who tracks Tajik fighters in Syria, says there is online evidence of just 67 fighters, though there are likely to be more unreported Tajiks in Syria and Iraq.

While there is certainly evidence that young Tajik labor migrants in Russia are among those who have been radicalized and gone to fight in Syria, Rakhimzoda’s figure of 200 Tajiks who joined militant groups in the Middle East from Russia has not been quoted by any other analysts or government officials.

A recent study by researchers in Tajikistan’s Center for the Study of Modern Processes and Forecasting suggested that socioeconomic problems in the republic — Central Asia’s poorest — have indeed exacerbated the issue of radicalization.

The fact that Tajik labor migrants in Russia are offered only the very lowest paid, menial jobs leaves some of them open to being attracted by radical Islam, the study’s author Hafiz Boboerov found.

Boboerov recommended that the Tajik government try to address the root of the problem by tackling youth unemployment in Tajikistan, which would stem the tide of vulnerable youth labor migrants to Russia.

Rather than addressing the impact of Tajikistan’s socioeconomic problems on radicalization, including that of labor migrants, Rakhimzoda blamed «foreign intelligence services,» which he said had stepped in after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the weakening of the authorities in Tajikistan.

These foreign intelligence services — Rakhimzoda did not specify from which countries — were attracting «deceived youth» into  «extremist currents» like Hizb ut-Tahrir and militant groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Jamaat Ansarullah, in order to «achieve their objectives,» Rakhimzoda said.

Rakhimzoda is not the first government official in a former Soviet republic to blame radicalization on outside forces, specifically on foreign intelligence services.

The head of the Chechen republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, accused the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies of deliberately targeting young Chechens in order to radicalize them and persuade them to fight alongside the Islamic State group in Syria.

Kadyrov has also accused the United States and its Western allies of using the Islamic State group to wage a «hidden war on Islam.»

— Joanna Paraszczuk

http://www.rferl.org/content/islamic-state-tajik-migrants-fighting-syria/26881804.html

Opposition groups and figures in Central Asia face a very tough task. They are battling for a “political space” in a region where the ultimate priority for the governments is regime survival.

Simply put: Central Asian governments don’t look kindly upon challengers.

Indeed, there seems to be no opportunity for political opposition in some of the Central Asian states. But in the last half decade the world has seen challenges to entrenched authorities, for example in Burma and the Middle East, where five years ago few could have foreseen such changes taking place.

RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, organized a roundtable to examine the state of the opposition in Central Asia today, what opportunities such groups and people have to carve out a niche in politics, and the obstacles that stand in their way.

RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service Director Mohammad Tahir moderated a discussion on the topic. The panelists were Muhiddin Kabiri, the head of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan; Edil Baisalov, noted Kyrgyz political activist; John MacLeod, a senior editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and noted Central Asian specialist; and myself. (Both Kabiri and Baisalov also have experience as opposition leaders and members of the government.)

To understand where Central Asia’s opposition is today, and where it might be headed tomorrow, it is necessary to remember when it all started, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when there was a hope that Eastern Europe could prove a model for Central Asia.

MacLeod said at that time there were processes that looked similar. “I think that Central Asia had a lot in common with Eastern European and western portions of the Soviet Union at the beginning in that you had the Communist Party struggling to come to terms with the break-up and you had a kind of a broad popular movement…many of them [led by] former dissidents…”

In the first six months after the collapse of the USSR, opposition groups in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan moved quickly, perhaps too quickly, and they set the stage for the situation throughout Central Asia today.

In Uzbekistan, students, Islamic groups, and the parliament challenged President Islam Karimov. In Tajikistan, the various political forces unleashed by independence pulled the country into a civil war.

This contributed to the development of the regimes in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan where, as MacLeod explained, “the leaders of the then Communist Party effectively captured the state, they captured the agenda, they quickly rounded-up and removed the opposition either forcing them to leave the country, putting them in prison, and certainly destroying their ability to mobilize people.”

The governments in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were more tolerant allowing political parties to register and permitting independent media but working to rein in these forces when they became a nuisance.

Until mid-1997 Tajikistan was consumed by civil war. The war ended with a deal for government to share power with the opposition it had been fighting militarily. Originally the opposition, which included secular groups but was dominated by the Islamic Renaissance Party, had 30 percent of the places in government. That percentage has dwindled gradually (and after the March 1 parliamentary elections has disappeared) and along with it the political space for Tajikistan’s opposition.

Kabiri noted, “It’s very difficult now for our party to be the only [legally registered] Islamic party in the region. From one side we’re trying to keep our members and followers in favor of the law; from another side we have a lot of social and economic problems produced by migration and the situation in Afghanistan.”

Kyrgyzstan was the Western democracies’ great hope to be a model for Central Asia and in some ways it still is. Despite protests twice ousting the country’s presidents, and the violence that accompanied the second ouster and subsequent ethnic clashes in the south, Kyrgyzstan remains the only Central Asian country where the political opposition has ample space to maneuver.

But is it a model other Central Asian countries can follow?

According to Baisalov, not really. “I don’t think actually that Kyrgyzstan is different because of the strength of the opposition. I see it differently; it’s because of the weakness of the state,” he said.

The panelists looked at the near-term future for the opposition, keeping in mind that leadership, but not necessarily regime change is not far away as the two “old men” of the region — Karimov and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev — are well into their 70s and rumored to have health issues.

MacLeod predicted the change of leaders in those two countries “wouldn’t lead to a sudden upsurge in democratic debate and discussion.”

Kabiri pointed out the paradox of a strong opposition in Central Asia saying, “If the opposition wants to be stronger it means that the opposition should move to the right or become more radical. But to become more radical, to move further to the right, it means that the situation will become more dangerous in the region as a whole.” He concluded: “I feel that in our situation in Central Asia it’s not possible for opposition parties or groups to be stronger than they are now.”

And Kabiri gave a good reason why when comparing political change in Eastern Europe to Central Asia. “Because our area is different, surrounded by such countries as Russia, China, and Afghanistan so the priority in our region is stability and fighting against terrorism and radicalism, not human rights or democracy.”

Baisalov offered this view.“I think the future is more similar to our neighbors to the south like Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than the Eastern Europe that we wanted to have as a model,” he said.

And Baisalov indicated even within Central Asia there is an opinion that perhaps preserving the status quo is the best goal for the nearfuture. “We wish even more for ourselves for stability and security in our region because what we’ve seen in the past decade is [the] many lessons of the so-called Arab spring. What sort of toil and hardship and uncounted tragedies can bring some opening up of the political space in societies, which simply put are not ready?”

As one could imagine, there are many interesting and valid points in the discussion but space limitations prevent me from adding more to this text.

NOTES

* Due to the poor phone connection from Tajikistan, Kabiri’s audio is sometimes difficult to hear. What he said was important and we consider it important that the audience is aware of his full comments, therefore a text of what Kabiri said is below.

* The panel was conducted on February 26, so Kabiri was speaking before Tajik parliamentary elections were held.

Muhiddin Kabiri comments

3:46

«If I understood you right, why is it the opposition in Central Asia could not be so effective and I think that situation is the central issue, which is that the opposition cannot be effective. If the opposition would want to be more active, more effective, it would be very dangerous for at least the power regime. They consider the opposition as dangerous sources. In another case, if the opposition wants to be stronger it means that the opposition should move to the right or to become more radical. But to become more radical, to move further to the right, it means that the situation will become more dangerous in the region as a whole. That is why the opposition in Central Asia is trying to be moderate, to use the same rules, rules of game, and has failed. I feel that in our situation in Central Asia it’s not possible for opposition parties or groups to be stronger than they are now.»

Kabiri is asked why is it impossible for the Central Asia opposition to be active and play a prominent role?

3:55

«Because our area is different, surrounded by such countries as Russia, China and Afghanistan so the priority in our region is stability and fighting against terrorism and radicalism, not human rights or democracy. So I think the international community also understands [how] this situation is. I can say that now the priority for all of Central Asia is not democracy or human rights but stability.»

How is it possible for an Islamic party to exist?

12:33

«It’s very difficult now for our party to be the only Islamic party in the region. From one side we’re trying to keep our members and followers in favor of law from another side we have a lot of social and economic problems produced by migration and the situation in Afghanistan. All of these factors are making especially the young people more radical so our duty, the Islamic Party, is to keep this process under control and in the meantime defend ourselves from all of this propagandistic attack against us because the situation in the Middle East, in Syria, the situation with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria makes for us a lot of problems so our opponents use this situation against us and they want to show people [that] our party is part of the global Islamic movement, radical movement. So now the situation is more difficult for us especially in this period with parliamentary elections. You know on March 1 we have parliamentary elections so our duty as the only Islamic party in the region is on the one hand to improve democratic values, and on the other side to defend against this propaganda attack.»

Kabiri is asked how his party can absorb the likely loss in parliamentary elections and still remain a legitimate political force.

18:37

«You know, just two days before the elections, the question is very specific. Some people were hearing some comments that Tajikistan doesn’t need such kind of opposition in parliament especially Islamic opposition. Some people think that my country is in a different situation and our post-conflict era has finished so the activity of the Islamic party as the main opposition party, which was necessary in some years after the civil war somehow it’s not necessary [now] to have such kind of opposition. But I feel that if our party will be outside of parliament, which some people want, it will help radical groups especially extremist groups which are against any elections or parliamentary systems. So I think, I hope that our election will show to the people, to give them some positive or optimistic feelings that Tajikistan will be a democracy and [there will be] rule of law. But if the results of the elections are falsified, I think that pessimism will increase, it will be a more dangerous situation for the regime.

Kibiri is asked how many seats he thinks the IRP will win in the election.

20:52

«At least to have a faction in parliament, so at least five seats but now we have only two seats but when I meet the people I see we have strong supporters in our society.

http://www.rferl.org/content/political-space-for-central-asia-opposition/26879510.html

A new video shared on the Internet shows the photographs of 19 men identified as ethnic Tajiks who are claimed to have died fighting alongside the militant group Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

The five-minute video, titled Martyrs Inshallah Tajik Brothers of the Caliphate, in Tajik Persian, was first shared on YouTube on February 19, according toRFE/RL’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi. Since then, the video has been uploaded and re-shared on other YouTube accounts.

The video shows a series of still photographs of militants who were purportedly killed in battle in Syria or Iraq, with the name of each dead militant displayed prominently. A Tajik Persian nashid, or hymn, is used as a soundtrack to the video.

The 19 militants shown in the video are identified only by their noms de guerre, nicknames the militants chose in place of their real names when they joined IS. They are named as: Abdullokh, Zayd, Mukhammad, Kori Abu Abdurakhmon, Anas Abdullakh, Abduvoris, Abu Hafs, Abu Aisha, Imron, Islom, Abu Hureira Forsi, Akoi Bobokhon, Abu Yusuf, Abu Hureira, Ali, Abu Sufiyon, Abu Boro, Said, and Sa’ad. The «director» of the video is listed as Abu Talha.

None of the militants shown in the video has been identified by Radio Ozodi. It is also not possible to independently verify when the militants shown in the video were killed.

However, the video looks authentic and is typical of IS «martyr videos» produced by Russian-speaking and militants and those from elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Such videos are produced to glorify the jamaat’s «martyrs» and are «unofficial» in the sense that they are not made by the IS’s media wing but are rather curated by a member of the same jamaat (fighting group) of which the killed militants were members.

Such «martyr videos» usually feature militants who were killed over a period of several months rather than all in the same battle. It is likely, therefore, that the Tajik militants shown in this video were not all killed very recently, but over the past several months.

It is not known how many Tajik nationals are fighting in Syria and Iraq. Official figures, according to Radio Ozodi, put the number at 300. According to Edward Lemon, who tracks Tajik fighters in Syria, there is online evidence of just 67 fighters, though there are likely to be more unreported Tajiks in Syria and Iraq.

— Joanna Paraszczuk

http://www.rferl.org/content/tajikistan-isis-fighters-killed-syria-iraq/26880270.html

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, has accused the United States of supplying food and weapons to the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria, and of seeking to control, not destroy the extremists.

Abdollahian said that U.S. warplanes have dropped ammunition and weapons in areas that are under the control of IS militants, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported on March 2.

The Iranian deputy foreign minister made his comments at an international conference in Tehran on Iranian foreign policy.

«America has formed a coalition of 60 countries to fight Daesh [the Arabic and Persian shorthand for IS] in Iraq and Syria, but what we are seeing and what regional intelligence services are saying indicate that America has formed a coalition to fight against [IS], but the actions of this country is purely to manage [IS],» Abdollahian was quoted as saying.

According to Abdollahian, the United States has been dropping «packages of food aid and propaganda» into areas controlled by IS forces.

The Iranian deputy foreign minister was likely referring to an incident in October 2014 in which weapons and ammunition dropped by U.S.-led forces and intended for Kurdish militias ended up in the hands of IS militants. IS fighters claimed last month to have seized American-made weapons, including M-16s and heavy machine guns, from Iraq’s military north of Baghdad.

Abdollahian said that the United States had claimed «computational errors» were behind the incident of weapons caches falling into IS hands, but said that these are «usually within the 50-100 km range» whereas the U.S. is «aiming for the center of Iraq, a distance of 800-900 km» from the intended targets in northern Iraq.

Abdollahian’s theory that the United States is secretly supporting IS in Iraq and Syria by supplying it with food and weapons is a theory that has gained ground on a number of conspiracy-theorist websites, including Infowars, which repeated claims made by Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency, close to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

The Iranian deputy foreign minister’s accusations also come amid reports that Iran’s influence on Iraq’s military affairs, particularly in the fight against IS militants, is increasing, with Iran taking a leading role in an Iraqi offensive to reclaim the city of Tikrit, 80 kilometers north of Baghdad.

Iran has supplied drones and ground troops to assist in the offensive, which began on March 2, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The Iranian fighters, who are from the IRGC, are mainly operating artillery and rocket batteries, according to a U.S. military official.

Iranian news agencies including Fars News reported on March 2 that the powerful commander of Iran’s Quds Force, the IRGC’s wing operating outside Iran — has arrived in Tikrit where he will «supervise and advise» Iraqi troops.

Suleimani, and by extension Iran and its Quds Force, has played a visible and key role in Iran’s involvement in the fight against IS in Iraq. Suleimani was reportedly involved in offensives against the miliants, including in battles to retake Iraqi towns in Diyala province from IS.

— Joanna Paraszczuk

http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-isis-us/26879880.html

Tajikistan holds parliamentary elections on 1 March and Reporters Without Borders is concerned about the toxic climate in which news organizations are forced to work in the country, noting that democratic elections cannot take place unless there is freedom of information. Читать далее ELECTIONS CANNOT BE DEMOCRATIC WITHOUT FREEDOM OF INFORMATION →

TAJIKISTAN

Elections cannot be democratic without freedom of information

 

ALMATY, Kazakhstan —  A court in Kazakhstan has rejected journalist Gulzhan Erghalieva’s challenge against closure of her magazine, upholding a ruling ordering Adam Bol (Be a Human) to shut down.

Erghalieva said after the Almaty City Court’s decision was pronounced on February 26 that she has not yet decided whether she will appeal.

She said she had started a new media project, called Adam (Human), which she plans to launch on March 13.

In December, an Almaty court ordered Adam Bol to be closed for «propagating war.»

That ruling came weeks after the magazine published an interview with opposition activist Aidos Sadyqov, who lives in exile in Ukraine.

In the interview, Sadyqov lambasted Russia for its involvement in the military conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Erghalieva, whose magazine published reports on alleged corruption and rights abuses by officials, has been under pressure from the authorities for years.

http://www.rferl.org/content/almaty-court-upholds-kazakh-journal-closure/26870802.html