The Washington Post
September 27

He belongs to a five-member cell of a secretive Islamic group pursuing the overthrow of secular governments. His organization historically has promoted peaceful means to that revolutionary end. But he has grown fed up of living underground and is ready to pick up a gun.

"Our authorities are so strict, it can force us to resort to violent ways of reaching our goals," said the 30-year-old member of the outlawed Hizb ut-Tahrir, or Party of Liberation. "Islam doesn't prohibit use of armed violence when you are attacked." He said he would prefer the peaceful establishment of an Islamic state as his group preaches. But "if an uprising happens first, I'll join that," said the man, who spoke on condition he not be identified.

In Uzbekistan, a new season of Islamic militancy may be opening, the result of harsh government crackdowns by President Islam Karimov, who has become an ally of the United States. Rather than smother militancy, Karimov's campaign threatens to radicalize some of those Muslims who previously eschewed violence, according to an array of Islamic activists, scholars, human rights workers and foreign diplomats.

"Even the Koran says take such arms as your enemy possesses," said a 55-year-old man who belongs to the openly violent Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) , which has cooperated with al Qaeda. "Karimov and the authorities are pushing people into becoming armed. Such a hard situation in Uzbekistan can bring civil war," said the man, who also declined to be identified.

The potential for renewed Islamic militancy in Central Asia worries policymakers in Washington. The State Department issued an alert in April warning that the IMU might be regrouping in Uzbekistan after being scattered in 2001 during the war in Afghanistan. The department issued a similar alert a month later about Islamic terrorists possibly planning attacks in neighboring Kyrgyzstan. Uzbek intelligence reports suggest the IMU is trying to reconstitute itself as the Islamic Movement of Central Asia.

While President Bush has embraced Karimov, hosting him in Washington, the U.S. administration has had little success pressuring the Uzbek leader into easing his policies.

A few half steps by Karimov last year, including the amnesty of 900 Muslims held in prison and the registration of a few human rights groups, have been dismissed by human rights groups as cosmetic moves intended to placate the United States. Uzbekistan continues to hold more than 6,000 other Muslims behind bars because of their beliefs, according to human rights activists who say they are still harassed for speaking out. Torture remains common; last year two prisoners were killed by boiling water, according to human rights organizations.

"Repression hasn't lessened," said Sotiboldiev Kuchkar, director of the Namangan office of Freedom House, a human rights organization funded by the U.S. government and private groups. "It's just changed tactics. . . . They're trying to chase [Muslims] in other ways."

"Nothing has changed," said Mutabar Akhmedova, a 61-year-old Islamic activist in the capital Tashkent, who once called Karimov a killer to his face and has been arrested numerous times. "They started repression against Islam in '92, and it continues until now." If official arrest numbers have fallen, she added, it simply means "they had had nobody left to detain because everybody was already in prison."

In the last few weeks alone, a prominent human rights activist was convicted on charges of homosexuality and his lawyer was subsequently kidnapped by masked men on a street in Tashkent at midday and beaten. A representative of the International Crisis Group, a private organization that reports on Uzbekistan, fled the country after threatening visits by government agents.

Uzbek leaders play down such incidents as aberrations or justifiable law enforcement. In their contacts with U.S. officials, they stress that they understand the danger of provoking Islamic radicalism with too heavy a hand and have committed to democratic and economic reforms.

"It's not cosmetic change here," Foreign Minister Sodiq Safayev, an eloquent English-speaking former ambassador to Washington, said in an interview at his headquarters in Tashkent. "There are still some incidents, and we know about them and will continue to tackle them. However, I think some important institutional changes are happening here."

The rise of militant Islam in Central Asia has its roots in the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, when Muslims long prevented from practicing their faith suddenly began doing so.. Radical preachers from Arab countries flocked in to school neophytes in more militant variants of Islam, particularly here in the Fergana Valley, which straddles the borders of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Feeling threatened, Karimov began cracking down, jailing many men simply for wearing a beard, a traditional sign of Muslim piety.

Starting in 1999, the newly formed IMU under the leadership of a pair of radicals, Juma Namangani and Tahir Yuldash, took aim at Karimov. Vowing to oust him from office, they staged attacks and bombings, including a simultaneous series of blasts in Tashkent that killed 16 people on Feb. 16, 1999. Later, the group moved to Afghanistan and linked up with al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In May 2001, just months before the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden named Namangani head of a brigade of foreign guerrillas called Livo that encompassed Uzbeks, Turks, Uighurs, Pakistanis and some Arabs. But U.S. bombers smashed Livo and the IMU during the Afghanistan campaign that fall, reportedly killing Namangani. Yuldash fled to Pakistan, where he remains with scores of followers, according to former IMU members and Uzbek intelligence officers.

"All he has left are women and old people and injured fighters," said Khasanboy Sotimov, 27, a former bodyguard for Yuldash, who escaped with the help of his father and returned to his home near here, where he was granted amnesty.. "The IMU's back has been broken. The rest have left him. There is no unity like there used to be."

But as some analysts and intelligence experts are concerned that the IMU is regrouping in neighboring Tajikistan, many others have turned their attention to the Hizb ut-Tahrir as the next potential threat. With an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 members in Central Asia, it has become by far the largest radical Islamic organization in the region.

It was founded in 1952 in the Middle East to reestablish the caliphate, or the Islamic state envisioned by the prophet Mohammed. It would be governed by the strict Islamic law that would virtually segregate women, return to the gold standard and declare a constant state of war against Israel and jihad against non-believers. In the group's philosophy, even the conservative states of Iran and Saudi Arabia fail to live up to Islamic principles. And while it espouses non-violence, many people who have studied the group say that it supported coups in the Middle East in the 1960s and '70s.

Western governments are divided on Hizb ut-Tahrir. Both Germany and Russia banned it this year, but the United States has declined to put the group on a list of terrorist organizations, on the grounds that it has not been linked to violent actions. The party's leader, Abdul Qadeem Zalloom, died in April, according to the group's Web site, and was succeeded by Palestinian Ata Abu-i-Rushta.

The party first attracted recruits in Central Asia about five years ago and has grown, particularly since the demise of the IMU.

Uzbek intelligence officers said that while Hizb ut-Tahrir has never been linked to violent events, it could easily turn that direction, or splinter off into smaller groups that would be. "Recent events show they've stepped away from ideological work and they're openly propagandizing for an armed struggle," said Rustam Yockubdjanov ,an Uzbek intelligence official. "Their consolidation with the IMU can be a threat not just for Uzbekistan but for other states."

The Tashkent government said it would continue to target Hizb ut-Tahrir despite U.S. pressure to back off. "The only option is to destroy them," said Ilya Pyagai, deputy director of counter-terrorism at the Uzbek Interior Ministry, which controls the national police force. "Let's first bring things in order. Then we'll talk about democracy and human rights."

But critics say they have it backwards. Without human rights, they say, there will be no order. "If they allowed freedom to study orthodox Islam, Hizb ut-Tahrir would not exist," said Mohammad Sadik Mohammad Yusuf, the country's most prominent Islamic scholar, who returned from exile in 2001 and remains an outspoken critic of both Karimov and Hizb ut-Tahrir. "If they organized full-fledged Islamic education in the correct way, then people would find answers to all the questions they have...and they would discover that everything Hizb ut-Tahrir says is nonsense."

Instead, more Muslims here in the Fergana Valley are becoming intrigued by the group. "The forbidden fruit is sweeter," said Akhmad Madmarov, 59, an activist with the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan. "We know from history that any movement forbidden by the state will be the center of attention and more people will join it."

Madmarov also knows it from his own family's history. Over the years, three of his sons have been arrested, accused of being members of Hizb ut-Tahrir. None of them was at the time, he said. However, "now they are all real Hizb ut-Tahrir in prison."

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