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By Akbar Borisov
DUSHANBE, May 7 (AFP)-Tajik security services have detained around 100 suspected members of the Hizbi Tahrir movement so far this year in a wave of arrests that have highlighted the authorities' fears of Islamic movements. Seventy people accused of belonging to the banned movement, which wants to create a vast Islamic state across Central Asia, have already been charged with "incitement to overthrow the regime" in Dushanbe. "Members of Hizbi Tahrir are arrested almost on a daily basis," said Davlatbi Berdiyeva, spokesperson for the Tajik Interior Ministry. Hizbi Tahrir is particularly active in the north of this former Soviet republic, especially the industrial and agricultural region of Leninabad, where unemployment is high and poverty acute. Leninabad is also close to the border with Uzbekistan, which has its own problems with armed Islamic groups and which regularly complains about the presence of training camps run by Islamists on Tajik territory. A senior Tajik official said that around 350 Uzbek Islamists, including their leader Dzhumaboi Namangani, had left Tajikistan for Afghanistan. The Islamists hit the headlines last summer with a two-month hostage saga involving four Japanese geologists, seized in the neighboring republic of Kyrgyzstan. Jordanian Abdulkadum Zalum, whose ideology is close to that of the Wahhabite movement founded Hizbi Tahrir in 1953. However, its precise political demands remain unclear, says Saimiddin Negmatov, a member of Tajikistan's Theological Council. "We don't really know what the program of Hizbi Tahrir is. All we know is that it urges the people to get involved in illegal activities and rejects the government and society," he added. Negmatov expressed concern that Hizbi Tahrir was giving Islam a bad name and had provoked indiscriminate repression against practicing Muslims by the security services. Political analyst Sukhrob Sharipov said Hizbi Tahrir represented a real "threat to the stability of the region," and played into the hands of the political elite in Tajikistan. The country was ravaged by a five-year civil war between the government of Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov and Islamic opposition from 1992-97. Rakhmonov and other leaders in Central Asia have used the threat of religious movements to justify the authoritarian nature of regimes, which have never really shaken off their Soviet methods. During a tour of the region last month U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright urged regional states to fight extremism and terrorism by creating real democracy, where religious beliefs and opposition parties were respected. International observers branded last November's presidential elections in Tajikistan as a farce when all Rakhmonov's potential rivals were kicked out of the race on technical grounds. The main opposition grouping, the Islamic Renaissance Party, meanwhile has paid the price of public mistrust of religious parties - a suspicion played on by the authorities. It garnered only seven percent in February legislative elections, compared to 64.51 percent for Rakhmonov's Popular Democratic party. |
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