Dealing With Hizb-ut-Tahrir

The heavy-handed tactics that governments in Central Asia have deployed against Hizb-ut Tahrir are not competing with the sophisticated approach the Islamic movement is using to win support from disaffected groups across the region.



It is understandable why Central Asian leaders regard a group that aims to overthrow secular governments and establish an Islamic state as a danger. However, the response - harsh treatment of suspected Hizb-ut-Tahrir members - far exceeds the real threat they pose.



Comparative figures in Kyrgyzstan - which has the most publicly visible Hizb-ut-Tahrir community in the region and probably the second largest membership after Uzbekistan - show that 10,000 people there have been converted by Christian Protestant missionaries while only an estimated 3,000 have joined the Islamic movement.




It is difficult to establish exact numbers of the group’s total membership in Central Asia. Most estimates vary between 15,000 and 20,000, with Hizb-ut-Tahrir activists quoting the upper end and human rights activists and observers citing the lower end of the range.



The Central Asian governments bundle Hizb-ut-Tahrir together with al-Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as a terrorist organisation, and it is banned across the region. As a result, thousands of suspected party members have been put behind bars. Accused of attempting to topple governments, they have received sentences to up to 15 years of imprisonment in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan for crimes including possession of material such as leaflets and video cassettes. Tashkent has accused Hizb-ut-Tahrir of involvement in an outbreak of violence in 2004 that left 47 people dead.



Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan, which until recently took a more lenient approach, have increasingly been following the Uzbek lead and carrying out their own crackdowns.



Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which originated in the Middle East in the Fifties, advocates the creation of a caliphate, or idealised Islamic state.



The movement spread to Central Asia in the early Nineties following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its first foothold was in Uzbekistan, where it won the biggest following, and it spread from there into neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakstan.



Hizb-ut-Tahrir activists convey their message in simple terms: poverty and inequality can be addressed once corrupt governments are replaced with the rule of Sharia or Islamic law.




Most in Central Asia would not want to see Sharia become a reality. Although the majority of people in the region consider themselves Muslims, they strongly favour a secular state. Afghanistan’s experience with an Islamic state under Taleban rule in 1996-2001 serves as a good illustration of what can happen when a radical group imposes on others its vision of the ideal society.



Yet there is widespread support for the criticism that Hizb-ut-Tahrir levels against corruption, inequality and the repression of devout Muslims. The call for social justice strikes a chord with hundreds of thousands of people in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan who have been forced to become migrant workers abroad because of unemployment at home, as well as impoverished people in the provincial towns and villages of Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan.



The authorities’ inability to deal with Hizb-ut-Tahrir is attributable to a combination of factors. As Yevgeni Zhovtis, the director of the Kazakstan Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, explains, there is no political will to acknowledge the cause-and-effect relationship between the failure of governments’ social policies, corruption and religious repression and Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s widening social appeal.



Moreover, there is no real understanding of Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s sophisticated approach to winning hearts and minds, or of its ability to alter its modus operandi to suit the prevailing political climate.



“There is a lack of experts able to lead an informed debate,” concludes Zhovtis.



The authoritarian Central Asian regimes thus employ the only method of dealing with dissent that they know: banning the organisation and cracking down on its members.




Some observers also point out that governments use the threat of Hizb-ut-Tahrir as a convenient excuse to justify their policy of repressing opponents and controlling the rise of political Islam in their states.



The spillover of Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s activities from Uzbekistan to neighbouring countries at the end of the Nineties is a direct consequence of the harsh policies pursued by the authorities in Tashkent. The Hizb-ut-Tahrir ideology was carried by members who were forced to leave the country and find refuge within ethnic Uzbek communities in neighbouring states.



The crackdown policy does not seem to have had any effect on the party, which has found ways of surviving through years of harassment and arrests.



The thousands of jailed Hizb-ut-Tahrir members stick together even in Uzbek jails. Solidarity unity gives them a sense of purpose and the courage to stage protests against harsh prison conditions. This phenomenon was witnessed by Uzbek journalist and civil society activist, Ruslan Sharipov, who spent ten months in prison as a result of his human rights activities in 2003.



Jailed Hizb-ut-Tahrir activists in Kazakstan continue their missionary work inside the prison system, recruiting followers from among the inmates. Journalist Sergey Duvanov, imprisoned in 2003 for his political writing, has reported how he observed a Hizb-ut-Tahrir activist in the prison recruit a group of followers within three weeks.



Party members claim that their aim is to achieve political change through peaceful means. But reports on the ground suggest that over the last couple of years, some splinter groups have emerged that favour more radical action in response to increasing pressure from regional governments.




Hizb-ut-Tahrir is constantly looking for ways to promote itself by attempting to participate in politics and improving its public outreach.



Last July, Hizb-ut-Tahrir members in southern Kyrgyzstan organised a campaign to support a candidate in the country’s presidential election. “They publicly backed a candidate who pledged to represent voters’ interests based on Islamic values he shares,” said Alisher Saipov, a journalist in southern Kyrgyzstan who covered the topic extensively. It was the first time the party had an opportunity to engage politically, a tactic which is central to its ideology and approach.



This ties in with Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s widely commented-on strategy, which seems to consist of the following stages: attract new members, build up a deeply-rooted network within the wider population, infiltrate government to win supporters among the powers that be, and to prepare the ground for establishing an Islamic state. This is not to say that political action in Kyrgyzstan means the party’s campaign is entering another phase. Nevertheless, an analysis of Hizb-ut Tahrir’s activities since the late Nineties, when the first trials brought them into the public spotlight, suggests that its leadership has a clear idea of what it wants and would seize any available opportunity to further its cause.



In the early days of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, propaganda literature was usually exchanged among members of the group. Next, party activists targeted big gatherings so as to spread the word. In Kazakstan, the first reported mass distribution of leaflets took place during celebrations of the history of the ancient town of Turkestan in 2000. This tactic was then followed by direct mailing, where activists place leaflets in people’s post boxes.



Members are also proactive in getting their message across by initiating contacts with local media and offering interviews and information. A personal encounter I had two years ago with Vadim Berestov, a media-savvy Hizb-ut-Tahrir representative in Shymkent, was a good example of this. Although wary of the the group’s propaganda, I was surprised to find Berestov rather friendly and extremely articulate.



Last year, Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s representative in Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan managed to register a television and radio broadcasting company called Ong (Consciousness). However, the company ceased broadcasting after just three days when its partner, the private TV channel Keremet, cancelled the cooperation agreement. A Hizb-ut-Tahrir spokesman claimed that Keremet caved in to pressure from the authorities.




Another aspect of Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s activities that has helped gain it more sympathy is the charitable work it does for vulnerable groups. This system was initially used to provide support for families of jailed party activists, but the network was subsequently extended beyond the party’s ranks to the wider community. Party members would provide support to poor families in dispute with the authorities over payment of utility bills, help out young families, and organise free distribution of food during religious holidays.



This now appears to become part of the movement’s policy. According to a local journalist, the practice resembles the way proselytising Protestant groups attract new members in Central Asia through free gifts of food, clothes and sometimes money.



All this contributes to the image of Hizb-ut Tahrir as a party that really cares about the common people, in contrast to the state which appears to have forgotten about them.



Given the growing disparity between rich and poor in Central Asia, groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir have the potential to win plenty more sympathisers.



Saule Mukhametrakhimova is IWPR’s Central Asia project manager.



This article is an edited version of a piece which first appeared in the May 2006 issue of href="http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/publications/CEF_quarterly.htm">China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, published by the Silk Road Studies Program of the Central Asian-Caucasus Institute.