Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 16 – Many have
been struck by the fact that the amount of Islamist violence in Central Asia
has remained relatively low over the last two decades even though officials
there constantly talk about the threat, Nargiza Murataliyeva says, often
ignoring the fact that the repressive means the authorities are using now set
the stage for more serious problems in the future.
The Central Asian political
scientist spoke with Kuat Rakhimberdin, a Kazakh lawyer and specialist on human
rights and criminal policy. He says that
there is increasing reason to worry about the convergence of the criminal and
Islamist worlds precisely because they are coming together in the jails of the
region (caa-network.org/archives/18256).
Among the factors promoting the growth
of Islamist fundamentalism in Central Asia are the socio-economic problems of the
population, the influence of foreign centers of radical Islam, and the heritage
of state atheism and its collapse which has led to an upsurge in the number of
mosques and far greater possibilities for the spread of radical ideas.
Just how serious the problem is, Rakhimberdin
says, is difficult to specify because reasonably reliable data are available
only from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In the other three Central Asian countries
– Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – it is largely unavailable for
public examination.
At the present time, he continues, there
are some 19,000 cases open against Salafis in Kazakhstan alone and already 665
who have been convicted and sent to prison, up from 400 three years ago. In
Kyrgyzstan, there were 170 prisoners who had been convicted of extremism, Rakhimberdin
says. Now that figure is “higher.”
In Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan such figures aren’t available, but the situations in these countries
strongly suggest that the numbers are “much higher than in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.” For example, a Russian official reported last
year that there were 29,000 “Islamic extremists” from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan
and Kyrgyzstan in Russian prisons.
The ranks of such prisoners will certainly
grow as officials in the five countries arrest those returning from fighting for
ISIS in the Middle East. Estimates suggest there were 1500 such fighters from
Uzbekistan, with lesser but significant numbers from all four other countries
in the region.
And what is happening in Central
Asian prisons, Rakhimberdin says, is worrisome. There, the ideology and
practice of the Islamist extremists is combining with the ideology of the criminal
world, “accelerating the processes of further criminalization and moral
degradation of those who have been convicted.”
“Even while being a relatively small
group, the [Islamist] prisoners are an extremely aggressive part of the criminal
milieu, among the most negatively inclined toward the corrective labor system
and refusing to accept the social values of contemporary society,” the Kazakhstan
legal specialist says.
“At the same time, the concentration
of such prisoners creates the risk for the commission of various kinds of
violations of human rights and ‘justifies’ the excessive cruelty and repressiveness
of the penal regime,” creating a vicious cycle certain to lead to more
radicalization and criminalization.
Those who work with individuals convicted
and sent to prison for extremist and terrorist crimes, he says, say that “the
process of deradicalization of the convicts is very complicated and difficult.”
Consequently, the more such people are put behind bars, the larger the problem
is going to become.
According to Rakhimberdin, “the main
goal now must be directed at the prevention of radicalization” in society,
something that can be achieved only if there is more social justice and more
openness in the discussion of the problems Islamists present and that give rise
to their influence.
No comments:
Post a Comment