In July of 2014, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the leader of the radical Islamist militant group Islamic State (IS), called upon the Muslims around the world to pledge their allegiance to him. He claimed that Muslim rights are subjugated in many countries, and vowed to liberate those “brothers” he views as suppressed, with China topping Al-Baghdadi’s list of states that needed liberation. Although this news has been widely circulated in the Chinese media, with Hong Kong-based news magazine Phoenix Weekly even making the threats of IS its cover story, Al-Baghdadi’s statements largely have had little impact in China.
China’s current cultural makeup makes it susceptible to radical calls for insurgencies from one social group to another. Therefore, since Al-Baghadi’s speech, many Chinese viewed Al-Baghdadi’s call as a legitimate justification not only to get rid of IS and its threats, but also as a welcoming opportunity for the Chinese authorities to crack down on separatist insurgency within the country. Officials in Beijing have been fighting a separatist insurgency of its own for years now in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which has witnessed surges of violence between the ethnic Uyghurs and the Han Chinese. As a result, one of the prevailing fears remains that Central Asia and Afghanistan can be used as a fertile ground by radical Islamists to breed instability in neighbouring Xinjiang. The question remains whether Central Asia can be subjected to wider radicalization.
There is a popular discourse both within and outside of the region that rapid processes of Muslim radicalisation are taking place in Central Asia. The widespread view is that the region is harboring violent religiously motivated extremism–yet, in reality there is little evidence to support the idea of significant infiltration of Central Asia by violent Islamic extremist organisations. As John Heathershaw of the University of Exeter and David Montgomery of the University of Pittsburgh argued in one of their recent works, the threat of violent extremism is both of a lower magnitude and different in form than that identified in the public discourses. It is isolated, localised localized and inhibited by secularization as much as it is driven by radicalization. The scholars denote that from 2001 to 2013, there were only three attacks in Central Asia that have been claimed by violent Islamic groups, with a total of eleven deaths. Out of 51 organizations on the U.S. State Department’s Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, only two – the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Islamic Jihad Union – had any links to the Central Asian republics; yet still their aims and prospects are rather external and found in the context of the politics of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
However, there is a political aspect of such “a myth of radicalization,” as labelled by Heathershaw and Montgomery,[1] which has much wider ramifications. These discourses may be used by ruling elites as the basis for legitimate recourse to extraordinary state measures that may range from controlling facial hair length, to sanctioning full-scale military operations. As a result, the pretext of the war on Islamic radicalism can be exploited by the ruling regimes to maintain their grip on power through the strengthening of security services, suppression of political opposition and attraction of international security assistance.
Indeed, at the moment, it appears that there is a low interest amongst Central Asians to join radical Islamic organisations. According to a recent policy paper by the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), notwithstanding significant differences in the estimates of the actual recruits, Central Asia still sends far less fighters to Iraq and Syria than the countries of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.[2] For instance, PISM reports that state by state 1 in 14,400 Turkmen, 1 in 40,000 Tajiks, 1 in 56,000 Kyrgyz, 1 in 58,000 Uzbeks, and 1 in 72,000 Kazakhs have become foreign fighters in Syria. In some countries of the Middle East and North Africa these numbers are more staggering. For example, 1 in 6,500 in Lebanon, 1 in 5,300 in Jordan, 1 in 7,300 in Tunisia, 1 in 18,200 in Saudi Arabia, and 1 in 22,000 in Morocco have joined foreign fighter ranks in Syria and Iraq. In Europe, 1 in 11,700 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1 in 23,800 in Belgium, and 1 in 55,200 in France have gone to fight for Islamic radicals in Syria and Iraq.
Nonetheless, this does not mean that Central Asia is free from the dangers of Muslim radicalization. Central Asia remains one of the most vulnerable and volatile regions of the world, with persistent corruption, poor economic performance, weak political institutions, and ethnic tensions. In this regard, religion is part of the context, but not necessarily the whole context. Thus, it is important to recognize both religious and non-religious factors that contribute to why Central Asians join violent extremist organizations such as the lack of religious knowledge, social exclusion, or opportunity to rebel in order to understand Muslim radicalization in Central Asia more granularly.
[1] https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/field/field_document/20141111PostSovietRadicalizationHeathershawMontgomery.pdf
[2] https://www.pism.pl/files/?id_plik=20020