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CIAO DATE: 05/04
The IMU and the Hizb-ut-Tahrir: Implications of the Afghanistan Campaign
January 30, 2002
Abstract
The attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 and the U. S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan have intensified the scrutiny of Islamist movements across Central Asia. Of such movements, two - the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Hizb-ut-Tahrir al-Islami (" Party of Islamic Liberation") - have been of greatest concern to the governments of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and to the broader international community.
This briefing considers how the allied military action in Afghanistan has changed the dynamic regarding these two organisations in Central Asia and impacted their memberships, leaderships and structures. How Central Asia deals with these two very different movements is critical. Far too often, the region's non-democratic leadership has made repression its instrument of choice for dealing with religion and civil society as a whole, thus creating greater public sympathy for groups whose agendas, methods and rhetoric are deeply troubling. There is a danger that the international community, in its understandable eagerness to combat terrorism, will give the regions' governments a free hand to continue and expand repression of all groups that are viewed as political threats - a dynamic that will only boomerang and further destabilise the region over time.
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