Fragile Peace Teetering on the Brink
Muhiba Jakubaba, mayor of the Tajik regional capital Isfara, says that there have been no disturbances; nor has she heard any reports of tension with the Islamic community. As a matter of fact, according to Jakubaba, peace reigns supreme in the Fergana Valley.
OSCE observers tell a different story. They say that there have been repeated clashes between the authorities and Islamists in the oasis city of Isfara over the past few years. The removal of eight imams from the city council for being members of the Party of Islamic Rebirth (which is banned by the constitution) led to violent riots in which numerous people were killed.
It took a visit from President Emomali Rahmonov and the involvement of the security forces to restore order. While Muhiba Jakubaba does go as far as to concede that Emomali Rahmonov did indeed come to Isfara, she says that the reason for his visit was his love of the city's gardens.
Power-sharing with the Islamists
Mayor Jakubaba has every reason to be circumspect; the Fergana Valley, known to its inhabitants as the "paradise of the world", is a troubled region. While Gorbachev was still in power, the preachers in the valley's mosques called for the introduction of the Sharia, the Islamic code of religious law.
When the Islamists attempted to seize power after the country gained independence in 1991, the old cadre called on Russian tanks for assistance. They got the upper hand in the lowlands, but the Islamic fundamentalists took shelter in the inaccessible mountains. Tajikistan slid into a bloody civil war that lasted several years and was responsible for the death of 100,000 people.
The conflict ended in 1997 when the Islamists were allowed to join the government. But the Islamists are no longer as united as they were then: while their moderate leaders grow accustomed to the conveniences and advantages of power, the young radicals are fighting for a caliphate, a theocracy in Central Asia.
Out with bolshevism, in with the Koran
And so the Fergana Valley remains a retreat for militant Islamists. The artificial borders between Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan that were drawn by Stalin many years ago carve up the valley that is surrounded by the towering Tian Shan and Alay mountain ranges.
The cross-border region, which is home to just under ten million people, can barely be controlled by the apparatus of one single state because despite heavy border patrols, religious fundamentalists slip backwards and forwards across the borders via hidden passes. And support for these fundamentalists is steadily growing: the preachers are using the Koran to fill the void left by bolshevism.
Economic collapse
The powers that be are still grappling to come to terms with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In Khujand, the largest city in the Tajik part of the Fergana Valley, Abduchakim Sharipov sits in the offices of the old district authorities whose entrance is still decorated with the hammer and sickle.
Sharipov is a politician and is responsible for "social contacts". When he looks out the window during our interview, his gaze inadvertently falls on a statue of Lenin. Throughout the city, the heroes of the working class continue to stand where they have always stood. It's as if time ground to halt in Khujand sometime in the 1980s.
"We look back on our history with fondness," confirms Sharipov. "Moscow industrialized our country." The Soviet Union pumped up to one billion dollars into the Republic every year.
Today, most of the crumbling factories have closed. While Tajikistan has natural resources such as oil and coal, it doesn't have the financial means to mine and drill for these treasures.
The average monthly wage here is 20 dollars. Many young people are unemployed. This is a catastrophe for a country where almost half of its six million inhabitants have not yet turned 30.
Sharipov reels off statistic after statistic as if he was filling me in on the status of a Soviet five-year plan and as if rattling off the numbers out loud could somehow heal the country. But the truth of the matter is that some of the new technical universities exist on paper only and many of the purported joint ventures with foreign companies are no more than vague declarations of intent.
The country is bleeding to death. Men are leaving for Russia in search of work, and women and children are left behind to bear the burden. Illiteracy rates are on the rise because children are not going to school any more. Despairing women regularly burn themselves to death on village squares because their husbands have left them.
Growing support for the Islamists
The Islamists are benefiting from this desolate situation. New supporters are joining the banned Islamist party Hisb al-Tahrir every month, says Bobojon Ikromov, the publisher of the weekly newspaper Varorud (Tajik for "beyond the great river"). Ikromov has invited me to an interview in the garden in front of the newspaper's tiny editorial office in the heart of Khujand.
The paper's seven journalists have had to move premises eight times over the past two years because their electricity and water were cut off. Those journalists in Tajikistan who don't toe the line dictated by the presidential palace in the capital, Dushanbe, can count themselves lucky to be allowed to publish their newspapers at all.
Even though Ikromov does not support the Islamists, he is critical of the way the state is handling the situation. "Being found in possession of a Hisb al-Tahrir flyer will get you a five-year prison sentence," he says. "Such absurd measures make martyrs of the Islamists."
He goes on to say that while it is difficult to give figures because Hisb al-Tahrir organises itself into independent cells of no more than five men, he estimates that in the Tajik part of the Fergana Valley alone, Hisb al-Tahrir has 10,000 members:
"The organisation receives financial support from the Gulf states. Every member is given between 20 and 50 dollars a month." That's a lot of money in a country where teachers and doctors earn between 2 and 7 dollars a month.
Links to al-Qaida?
But it is more than just social need that drives people into the arms of the radicals. "The Islamists give people a goal towards which they can work," says Ikromov, "namely a caliphate that centres on the Fergana Valley."
To date, Hisb al-Tahrir has always claimed to want to reach this target without the use of arms. Even international observers in the Fergana Valley admit that Hisb al-Tahrir has not been proven to have launched any terrorist attacks.
But ever since the government has restricted religious freedom and is monitoring mosques more closely, the demands of the Islamists have become increasingly radical. Above all, American terrorism experts are warning that individual groups within Hisb al-Tahrir may be maintaining links to the al-Qaida network.
Fragile peace threatens to collapse
Such speculations give Emomali Rahmonov, the man who nurtures a passion for the gardens of Isfara, the ideal excuse to crack down on Islamist groups. The former communist civil servant has been president of Tajikistan since 1994.
Even though he signed the peace agreement in 1997, relations between the secular powers of state and the Islamists have remained strained since the end of the civil war. Since Rahmonov's security forces have been arresting Hisb al-Tahrir members and issuing bans against the organisation, the fragile peace has been teetering on the brink.
They are modelling themselves on neighbouring Uzbekistan, where thousands of Islamists have been interned without trial under the pretext of the international war on terror and organisations like Human Rights Watch criticise brutal methods of torture and state show trials.
To date, the state persecution of Islamists in Uzbekistan has only drummed up new support for the Islamists. And the situation is getting worse, a fact illustrated by the bomb attacks on the American and Israeli embassies in Tashkent in July 2004.
"War on terror"
Ikromov fears that Tajikistan will end up treading a similar path. The state wants to do away with the Islamists. As long as the West continues to condone all means of doing so because they are being used in the war against terror, he says, we can expect the worst. Says Ikromov: "The situation reminds me of the time before the civil war."
In Isfara, the front line runs right through the middle of the mosque. While the imam says the prayers, two police officers observe the faithful kneeling at prayer. Mayor Muhiba Jakubaba assures me that this is quite normal: the police, she explains, are regulating the traffic in the empty, dusty streets in front of the mosque.
Tobias Asmuth
© Qantara.de 2005
Translation from German: Aingeal Flanagan