I haven't been blogging on the Kyrgyz developments for what I view as understandable time-consumption reasons, but the main thing I would watch for now that Akayev appears to be out of the way is what Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) and the remnants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan/Islamic Movement of Turkestan (IMU/IMT) do now that he is gone. The IMU/IMT is an al-Qaeda affiliate group, but they don't have anywhere near the infrastructure or clout that Hezbollah does in Lebanon.
Of these two groups, HuT is the better organized and the one most likely to attempt to seize advantage of the chaos.
There is a lot that is unknown about HuT, but (and Nathan may quibble with me on this one) whenever I see the group's name pop up I always think back to this comment from the wiretaps taken by the Milan prosecutor's office that were printed up in Il Nuovo:
On 16 of last month there was a confidential meeting with the shaykhs in Poland; the final decision was to completely change the Hizb al-Tahrir front and to build a new organization that concerns
itself with the national territory and with the international territory but we need highly trained people at every level.
The speaker is an unknown German Arab al-Qaeda member, possibly Abderrazak al-Mahjoub, and he is addressing Nasr Usama Mustafa (Abu Umar), the Egyptian imam of Milan's infamous Via Quaranta mosque. If the latter name sounds familiar to you, it may be because it appears quite likely that he was abducted by the CIA and sent back to his native country, where he may have been subject to torture at the hands of the Egyptian authorities. In any case, Abu Umar was unquestionably an al-Qaeda member and the fact that his unknown superior refers to Hizb-ut-Tahrir as a "front" certainly places anything they try in Kyrgyzstan in a far different perspective than simply being a large group of Islamist fundamentalists. I should also probably add the standard caveat that even if they are an al-Qaeda front I still don't support the policies of despots like Karimov with respect to their mass detention and torture of suspected HuT members.
All the same, I think that the comments of Abu Umar's unidentified visitor need to be seen within the context of the following excerpts from the Heritage Foundation report:
In documents drafted before 9/11, Hizb leaders accused the United States of imposing hegemony on the world. After 9/11, Hizb claimed that the U.S. had declared war against the global Muslim community (Umma), had established an international alliance under the "pretext" of fighting terrorism, and was reinforcing its grip on the countries of Central Asia. Hizb further claimed that the U.S. accused Osama bin Laden of being responsible for the 9/11 attacks "without any evidence or proof."
... In a June 2001 article published in the party's journal, Hizb ideologists claim that all methods are justified in the struggle against the unbelievers, including murder. They specifically mention that a pilot's diving a plane hit by enemy fire into a crowd of unbelievers without bailing out with a parachute is a legitimate form of armed struggle. Hizb also demands that Muslims come to the support of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
... more recently, Hizb representatives, together with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, participated in coordination meetings sponsored by al-Qaeda in the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
... Hizb has begun to penetrate the elites in Central Asia. Observers in the region have reported successes in penetrating the Parliament in Kyrgyzstan, the media in Kazakhstan, and customs offices in Uzbekistan.
... While reports of increasing Hizb activity abound, the extent to which local Hizb activities are part of a coordinated global plan is still unknown, just as the question of whether every region and country has an autonomous leadership that defines programs and sets deadlines remains unanswered. Hizb is rumored to be operating on a 13-year grand plan which, if it exists at all, is still unknown.
At its inception, Hizb likely had connections to Saudi Wahhabism, but it is unclear whether these links remain today. It is equally unclear whether Hizb has one or more state sponsors and, if so, who they are. At various times, experts have speculated that Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan have been involved. The international intelligence community is also uncertain as to who finances the organization; who controls the funds internally; what the mode of financing is (e.g., regional self-sufficiency or centralized funding); and how funds are transferred (e.g., via the Hawala informal banking system or couriers).
The current leader of Hizb is also unknown, as are where he resides and the identity of the senior officers of Hizb ... While anecdotal reports place the organization's headquarters in London and indicate that many European converts to Islam are staffing mid- and senior levels of the organization, very little evidence confirms this.
You put all of this together and I think that a very worrying picture starts to form. We have just had what I think that we can all agree is a positive development in Central Asia, but now, as in Lebanon, the issue is whether or not we (or rather, the Kyrgyz) can keep it that way.
UPDATE: Arthur Chrenkoff has some thoughts.
I've come to look at them as kind of a gateway to terrorism. The government of Uzbekistan took some heat for saying this, but I think they're right.
The thing with Kyrgyzstan though is that I can't see HT being very popular outside of the Uzbek border regions. The Kyrgyz, much moreso than most Uzbeks, aren't all that into Islam having an overwhelming presence in their lives.
I heard they had a marginal influence at best on only one region of the country, probably the Ferghana.
You heard right, prak.