Troubling Times for Kyrgyzstan

President Kurmanbek Bakiev’s government is in trouble on two fronts: with a growing political scandal that has cost him his security chief, he faces a possible threat from Islamic militants.



While most of NBCentralAsia’s analyst contacts dismiss the idea that Kyrgyzstan could see a major armed incursion this autumn, they say it is possible that smaller groups might make forays, especially now that the government has lost its tough anti-terror chief, National Security Service boss Busurmankul Tabaldiev.



The threat of militant action was heightened by a new audio recording purporting to come from Tahir Yuldashev, formerly number two in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, IMU. The recording, emailed to media outlets on September 13, warned the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan that they would be punished for oppressing Muslims.



Yuldashev was the right hand man of IMU leader Juma Namangani, killed during the United States-led assault on Afghanistan in late 2001. Since then the IMU has largely disappeared as an organised force. Some experts believe it has been supplanted by a new group called the Islamic Party of Turkestan, IPT.



The perceived threat from the IMU/IPT comes as Kyrgyzstan’s security service has claimed major successes in its own “war on terror”, boasting that it effectively decapitated the Islamic fundamentalist movement over the summer. In early September, Rasul Akhunov – allegedly a leading figure in the IPT - died during a security operation in the southern Kyrgyz town of Osh. The government said Akhunov was behind armed raids on Tajik and Kyrgyz border guards in May.



Yet the man credited with driving the beefed up anti-terror campaign has now gone. Security agency chief Tabaldiev stepped down this week following a scandal in which his deputy Janysh Bakiev was accused of attempting to smear a prominent politician by planting drugs in his luggage.



Despite Tabaldiev’s departure, NBCentralAsia’s political observers are not sounding the alarm just yet. It is unlikely, they say, that we will see a repeat of 1999, when a group of insurgents took hostages in Kyrgyzstan’s southern Batken region and demanded to be allowed to push on into Uzbekistan. It appears more likely that any insurgent action would involve small, mobile groups infiltrating southern Kyrgyzstan, from where they would mount attacks.



The risk of infiltration increases in early autumn, when mountain passes blocked by last winter’s snows finally open and armed groups can slip into Kyrgyzstan. There is also a danger that IMU/IPT members based in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries might come to Kyrgyzstan to help their comrades.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)