Activation of radical Islamist groups in Central Asia: a threat to security in Kyrgyzstan
altn.news - Covers the detention of nine members of the religious extremist movement ‘Yakyn Inkar’ by the GKNB of Kyrgyzstan the previous day. During the search of the suspects, books, notebooks, brochures and electronic media containing extremist information were found.
The threat of the activation of various radical Islamist groups in Central Asian countries, including Kyrgyzstan, is evidenced by fairly frequent reports of the detention of supporters of such banned organisations in that country. For example, in late December 2023, officers of the State National Security Committee of Kyrgyzstan prevented a terrorist act and an armed attack on an Orthodox church that members of the Islamic State terrorist group were planning to carry out before the new year in the city of Jalal-Abad. At that time, juvenile members of the militant wing of the international terrorist organisation ISIS - ‘Wilayat Khorasan’ - were detained; the detainees had previously been recruited by the terrorist organisation via the Internet. And in April 2024, Turkish law enforcement agencies detained two suspects in the preparation of a terrorist act on behalf of the ‘Islamic State’ - a citizen of Tajikistan and a citizen of Kyrgyzstan. And the day before, a new episode concerning the detention of a cell of the religious extremist movement ‘Yakyn Inkar’ in the same city of Jalal-Abad took place.
It should be noted that this is not the first detention of representatives of this extremist organisation, in January 2024 it became known that in Batken region of Kyrgyzstan detained the leader of the religious extremist movement ‘Yakyn Inkar’, Together with him, fourteen other adherents of banned ideas were brought to the GKNB department of Kyrgyzstan, all of whom were members of the same Jalal-Abad cell of the above-mentioned religious extremist movement and were working on propaganda and dissemination of extremist ideology in the Suzak district of Kyrgyzstan.
It should be recalled that the extremist religious movement ‘Yakyn Inkar’ emerged in Kyrgyzstan, presumably in the Issyk-Kul region, around the beginning of the 2010s. It is not known exactly where and when, because Yakyn Inkar does not recognise laws regulating spiritual activity and, accordingly, has not been officially registered anywhere. ‘Yakyn Inkar’ translates as ‘total denial’ - the organisation uses this phrase as a shorter version of ‘denial of everything but God’, i.e. it adheres to a ‘pure’ form of radical Islam and abstains from all worldly affairs, rejecting material and cultural values, shunning modern healthcare and secular schools, and denying the right to the existence of other religions.
In 2017, at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office of Kyrgyzstan, this religious movement was recognised as extremist, but it should be noted that until 2016, there was no true knowledge of the activities of this new religious phenomenon in Kyrgyzstan, and Yakyn Inkar was considered a wing of another terrorist group, Tablighi Jamaat, an organisation whose activities are banned by courts in Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and recognised as extremist by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) Tablighi Jamaat's ultimate goal is to create an ‘Islamic caliphate’ by seizing power in Central Asian countries, but the Kyrgyz authorities and law enforcement agencies have no complaints against Tablighi Jamaat, which is why it is believed that the terrorist group enjoys active support in Kyrgyzstan's Jogorku Kenesh, where its supporters are among the deputies. And according to some reports, it is Tablighi Jamaat that is currently creating its own extensive terrorist underground in Kyrgyzstan, bringing militant groups to the southern borders of the country and other states in the Central Asian region.
All this creates risks of destabilising the socio-political situation in Kyrgyzstan, of which the country's authorities are apparently well aware. In the future, the Kyrgyz authorities will probably rely on official Moscow, which has a clear position on guaranteeing the security of its CSTO allies in Central Asia to effectively counteract and neutralise Islamist cells established within a number of Central Asian countries.
From information sent by an anonymous source
