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Week of January 23, 1998
Central-Asia Syndrome
Shortly after a minor Uzbek government official was decapitated in November, President Islam Karimov launched a heavy-handed crackdown on the Islamic fundamentalist Wahhabi sect in their Ferghana Valley stronghold. In early December, Uzbek Interior Ministry troops moved into the valley, which lies in Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan. After a Dec. 17 shootout with a Wahhabi suspect killed three Uzbek police officers , hundreds of Wahhabis were rounded up. But the group has no history of violence, and the initial killing looked more like a gangland assassination in an area notorious for Central Asian narcotics trading than an act of religious retribution.Karimov's moves against the Wahhabis might be a pre-emptive bid to crush them, rather than a mere attempt at finding the killers. In neighboring Tajikistan, the ex-communist government reached an accommodation with its Islamic opposition in July, and members of the I slamic Republican Party will soon be taking up government posts there. The Uzbeks - who long ago banned their own Islamic Republican Party - viewed that move with undisguised concern. And Kyrgystan, the third country in the mix, has set up a special committee to tackle "extreme religious groups." But for Karimov, the danger remains that rough treatment of the Ferghana Wahhabis may fan the very Islamic sympathies he is trying to quell.
News from Central Asia in 1997
News from Central Asia in 1996
News from Central Asia in 1995
