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| The Road From Tashkent to the Taliban |
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Zeyno Baran, the Nixon Center’s international security program director, outlines a view that Islamic political parties working to re-establish the Caliphate, represent a threat to US interests. Her article is published below and is followed by a response from Dr Abdullah Robin.
Uzbekistan, a predominantly Muslim U.S. ally bordering Afghanistan, has been shaken by terrorist attacks this week. Hosting a U.S. military base in Khanabad, supporting U.S actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and insisting on a secular regime while repressing political dissent, this former Soviet republic has for years been a prime target for the spread of radical Islamist ideology and its terrorist adherents.
The developments in Uzbekistan have important implications for the next stage of the war on terror. First, two female suicide bombers were involved; the use of women signals the spreading influence of radical Islamism with roots in the Middle East. We can expect more female terrorists and suicide bombings globally.
Second, these attacks were not directed towards Westerners but targeted fellow Muslims. One of the bombings occurred outside a children's store near Tashkent's largest market, and the other, near a madrassah. This clearly indicates that the terrorists no longer mind killing other Muslims to achieve their ends.
Third, on March 28 Uzbek authorities reported a blast in a private house in Bukhara that allegedly was being used as a bomb factory and as a hiding place for Kalashnikov assault rifles and Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) propaganda. Given the Uzbek government's credibility gap, many doubt these reports on the involvement of HT, a radical Islamist political party that seeks to overthrow the secular governments of Central Asia and replace them with a single Islamist state - the caliphate. If, in this case, an HT site was used to store weapons, it would undermine HT's claims that it is neither a violent nor a terrorist organization.
Whether HT employs violence is of great importance in the context of the global war on terror. HT was founded in 1952 in Jordan by Taqi ud-Din an-Nabahani, a Palestinian judge. Nabahani received his education in Egypt's al-Azhar university, a leading Islamic institute which, over the decades, became corrupted by the influence of radical Wahhabi teachings. Nabahani was a member of the radical Muslim Brotherhood, and following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, became a refugee in the Jordanian-ruled East Jerusalem. There he created HT, which attracted Palestinian youth and produced anti-Semitic material. What made HT particularly popular was its promotion of the caliphate, an entity which has no borders and unites the global Muslim ummah (community).
After (unsuccessful) coup attempts in Jordan and Egypt, HT was banned throughout most of the Middle East owing to its promotion of sedition - although it always claimed to be doing so in theory and not in action. HT then moved to Western Europe, where it benefited from liberal societies that allowed freedom of speech, even speech that filled people's minds and hearts with hatred. Following the demise of the Soviet Union, HT spread into Central Asia, where people had a yearning to learn Islam yet lacked resources. Today, HT is active all over the world, including in the United States.
Because HT itself has not been implicated in a "terrorist act" so far, and has meticulously stayed on the right side of the law, the U.S. and its European allies have turned a blind eye to its activities - with one exception. Germany banned HT owing to its anti-Semitic nature.
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