Religion and Security in Central Asia: Recommendations for the Next U.S. Administration

The five countries in the Central Asian region have been of interest to US policy-makers since they were granted independence 25 years ago partly to prevent Russian revanchist policies, but also because of these countries’ inherent promise. Two of these countries, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, were a potential source of oil and gas reserves; Kyrgyzstan, even in its earliest days, seemed to be flirting with democracy, while Uzbekistan was the region’s historic center and its most populous nation. Tajikistan was initially mired in a civil war, making US engagement more difficult, but as a border state with Afghanistan it too became of greater strategic importance after 9/11, as did the region as a whole. Their location and natural resources will continue to make these countries of interest to the next US president. So too will China’s growing economic presence, Russia’s growing geopolitical assertiveness, and the Islamic State’s targeting of Central Asian populations in their recruiting efforts.

Yet to say that Central Asian states have been of interest to the US is not to say they been a priority for the US. Barring a cataclysmic event, this is not likely to change under the next administration. This region is not a major source of oil and gas for the US or its principal strategic partners, nor does the US or any major American ally share a border with any of these states, while both Russia and China do.

Most importantly, these countries share few core political and ideological values with the US. At best they have been slow to introduce democratic institutions, while at worst they have demonstrated scorn for them. Although the constitutions of these countries make reference to respecting the major principles that define international conventions on human rights, all five have been criticized with regularity by the US Department of State, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and by US non-governmental organizations that monitor human rights.

There have been improvements in some dimensions of human rights in some of these countries. Every one of these countries has introduced elements of reform in their judicial systems, be it better training for judges, the use of habeas corpus in selected instances, experimentation with trials by jury, and in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in particular, national watchdog mechanisms on the use of torture. But nowhere in the region, even where judicial reform has gone the furthest, are judicial institutions separate from political ones.

One of the areas that is most problematic for US policy-makers is the contrast between American understandings of religious freedom and the understandings held by some of the Central Asian countries’ elites (and seemingly their populations) on the proper relationship between religion and the state. All of the countries in the region provide some form of constitutional protection of freedom of conscience or guarantee of freedom of religious belief, but in each of these countries religious communities must meet tough registration requirements to operate, religious materials are subject to state inspection, and there are restrictions placed on parental ability to provide religious instruction for their children.

Central Asia’s leaders defend most of these provisions in the name of national security. While US policy-makers and Western-sponsored NGOs have tried to convince these leaders that their policies are likely to stimulate new domestic security risks, most of these efforts have fallen on deaf ears. The message being delivered requires that the Central Asians redefine their understanding of religion, faith, and tradition in order to make it correspond to Western democratic teachings about individual rights. This is something that the region’s leaders have been reluctant to do, and which the next US administration will need to find new ways to address.

The View from the Central Asian States

Governments in the region all view the relationship between religion and politics very differently from the way it is understood in Western democracies. All Central Asian states have legal systems that grant governments the responsibility to monitor religion in the interest of public well-being, and all have legislation in place that ensures that the needs of national security far outweigh any constitutional protections afforded citizens. In each country the rights of religious communities are covered by a law “on religion.” Criminal codes, and in some places laws on extremism, also define how religion can and cannot be practiced.

The legal systems’ elaboration of the rights of the state and the rights of religious believers still owe much to the Soviet system. As was true in the USSR, out of which all of the Central Asian states were carved, government’s key responsibility in the area of religion is to be the moral arbiter and not the protector of the religious rights of its citizens. This is how the states in the region understand “secular” rather than the Western notion of the separation of church and state. Each country has a state committee on religious affairs, whose job is to supervise and monitor the country’s legally recognized religious communities, while unregistered religious communities fall under the purview of the criminal justice system and security services.

There is an implicit hierarchy of religions, with “traditional” faiths, those practiced before communism took hold, being viewed as having greater rights than “new” faiths, because of the hardships that their practitioners suffered during Soviet rule. Throughout the region the main faiths of the Soviet era (Sunni Islam, Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism, and frequently Catholicism and Buddhism) have some place in the public sphere, but major Islamic holidays are now state holidays, and Islam as traditionally practiced is seen as a treasured part of the national past, and as a source of public morality.

Smaller Christian groups, including Evangelical Christians and those like the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses who focus on missionary work, have generally found it hard to register, and if registered they frequently find it very difficult to operate. Central Asian officials claim that the members of these religious communities can be socially disruptive, that through their efforts at proselytizing they undermine the traditional Islamic family unit.

Sunni Islam is the region’s largest religious community, and it is under the strict control of a “Spiritual Administration” whose leadership answers to the state. It is in charge of registering mosques, and madras and must approve the clerics who head them, as well as set the topics for Friday sermons and the curriculum in religious schools. Mosques or clerics that reject its authority are subject to arrest, as are their followers.

Over the past decade state control over religion has tightened in each of the countries in the region. Most of the changes have been defended as justified responses to religious-extremist inspired terrorism, while others are designed as “preventive,” like banning nonconforming Islamic groups.

Given the highly restrictive legislation on religion in each of the Central Asian countries, and the broad definitions of extremism that are employed, it is easy for the governments of the region to label any political opposition with a religious coloration as terrorist, justifying action against these individuals or groups.

Tajikistan

This has been the case in Tajikistan, where President Emomali Rahmon has faced armed insurgencies led by former allies as he institutes an increasingly family-focused regime (BBC News 2012). In recent years Rahmon has backed away from the concessions toward religion made to end the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1992 until 1997. The region’s only Islamic Party, the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), whose members had served as minority members of parliament and briefly even in government, is now banned. Many of its leaders have been jailed (Interview with Muhiddin Kabiri 2016).

The IRP has joined the list of banned groups which are considered extremist. This includes Hizb ut-Tahrir, al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, Taliban, Jamaat Tabligh, the Islamic Community of Pakistan, the Islamic Movement of Eastern Turkestan, the Islamic Party of Turkestan Lashkar-e-Tayba, Tojiksitoni Ozod, Sozmoni Tabligh Jamaot, Salafiya, Jamaat Ansarullah, and Group 24 (USDOS 2015e, 3). Individuals convicted of membership in extremist organizations can face between eight and 12 years in prison (USCIRF 2015, 121).

Tajikistan introduced a new law on religion in 2009 (see Zakon Respubliki Tadjikistan 2009) and further toughened this legislation through amendment in 2011. This law awards the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam a special status in the country. This is a deliberate slight against the country’s Ismaili minority (approximately 4 percent of the population) which is concentrated in and near the Khorog region and which has benefitted from the development programs funded by the Aga Khan, their spiritual leader.

Tajik authorities are reported as enforcing many of the provisions of the law, including those banning male teachers under 50 from having beards and not permitting the wearing of hijab in state schools. Restrictions on the number of guests attending weddings, funerals, circumcision ceremonies and celebrations for religious holidays are also being enforced. The restrictions on foreign Islamic study are also reportedly being enforced (USDOS 2015e, 8).

Tajik media has also been put under stricter control, with the government justifying its actions because of claims that some thousand Tajik citizens are fighting in Syria, numbers which experts have called into question (Tucker 2016c, 1), though there have been high-level defections from Tajikistan to ISIS, most prominently Special Forces Commander Gulmurad Halimov in May, 2015.

While most of the government’s attention has been focused on its Muslim citizens in recent years, Protestant groups complain of harassment, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been denied registration since 2007 (USDOS 2015e, 5). Christians make up under two percent of the population of Tajikistan, and the vast majority of them are Russian Orthodox (USCIRF 2015, 121).

Concerned with the deteriorating religious situation in Tajikistan, in 2015 the US Commission on International Religious Freedom has requested that Tajikistan be reclassified as a Country of Particular Concern.

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan has been classified as a Country of Particular Concern, but as with Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia the Secretary of State has applied waivers to protect Turkmenistan from sanctions for reasons of US national security (USCIRF 2015, 13). State policies toward religion in Turkmenistan, which are covered by a 2003 (see Zakon Turkmenistana 2003) law, closely resemble those introduced in all five countries. Although there were some minor reforms made to the law in 2007, further restrictions, including increased penalties for unregistered religious groups, were introduced when new administrative codes were promulgated in 2014 (USCIRF 2015, 72). Laws governing religious practice tend to be strictly enforced, and the overall closed nature of Turkmenistan, where there is relatively limited access to the internet, and where entering or leaving the country is subject to restrictions, further increases their effectiveness.

Sunni Islam (the Hanafi school) is the dominant faith in Turkmenistan, with about 85 percent of the population coming from this tradition. Approximately 9 percent are Russian Orthodox, and two percent are from other Christian communities, or Jewish (USCIRF 2015, 71).

As the State Department notes, there is “societal criticism and harassment” of ethnic Turkmen who convert to other faiths (USDOS 2015f, 1) and ethnic Turkmen are more likely to be targeted for arrest when in violation of the country’s laws governing religion. This includes holding religious services in private homes, effectively the only option to those from unregistered religious communities, or importing religious literature (which can only be done by legally registered religious groups). Since 2005, Bahai, the Society of Krishna, the Seventh Day Adventists, and various Evangelical and Pentecostal communities have been granted the right of legal registration, although registration can still be difficult (USCIRF 2015, 73).

Initially state control over Islam was focused on transforming the Sunni clerical establishment from being mainly ethnically Uzbek to mainly Turkmen. This was done at least in part through accusing the targeted clerics of committing political crimes. In recent years the focus has turned to Islamic groups considered to be terrorist, extremist, “Wahhabis” (a loose term applied to Muslims viewed as fundamentalist) or pro-Taliban. There have been Taliban-organized breeches of the long-quiet Turkmen–Afghan border since 2014, seemingly with some local support, and there are estimates that about 360 Turkmen are fighting in Syria (where indigenous ethnic Turkmen have been a target of the Assad regime) (Tucker and Turaeva 2016, 1).

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan’s population is 93 percent Sunni Muslim, 1 percent Shi’a, 4 percent Russian Orthodox, and 3 percent are Roman Catholic, Korean Christian, Baptist, Lutheran, Seventh Day Adventist, Bahai, Hare Krishna, belong to an Evangelical church, or Jewish (USDOS 2015g, 2). Registration is difficult, and Pentecostal and Evangelical or Protestant congregations that are predominantly ethnic Uzbek can find registration very difficult and may be subjected to harassment even when operating legally (as was the case with a Baptist summer camp that was raided in 2014). Uzbekistan was first designated as a Country of Particular Concern in 2006, in the aftermath of the deadly suppression demonstrations in Andijian, which resulted in several hundred deaths of largely unarmed demonstrators (Human Rights Watch 2006), and has been so designated every year since.

Uzbek leaders have long considered virtually all Islamic dissenters to be political enemies, and varying estimates place the number of religious prisoners at between 5,000 and 15,000 people (USDOS 2015g, 6). Some unknown percentage of them would undoubtedly have been prosecuted for posing a security risk to the state in a democratic political system, but given the restrictive nature of Uzbek legislation a substantial percentage of these people would by most international standards be considered prisoners of conscience.

Uzbekistan’s legislation on religion was introduced in 1993, and modified in 1998 (see Zakon Respubliki Uzbekistan 1998). The country’s legal system distinguishes between unregistered and prohibited religious groups. Those convicted of membership in unregistered groups (which includes holding services in unregistered meeting spaces, or distributing religious materials that have not been legally imported, or subject to official inspection) are subject to steep fines and risk imprisonment. Those convicted of membership in prohibited groups—which include Akromiya, Tabligh Jamoat, and Hizb ut-Tahrir and Nur (Fethullah Gulen’s movement)—face long periods of incarceration, and may be subject to inhumane treatment (USDOS 2015g, 4). Since August 2014, even when released from jail, they are placed on a state register of former offenders.

Islamic education is under the strict control of the state, including the 11 madrasas (two of which are for women) and the Tashkent Higher Islamic Institute, all of which are maintained by the Muslim Spiritual Administration. There is also a secular Tashkent Islamic University. Only graduates from these institutions can legally serve in the country’s mosques. State efforts at monitoring media notwithstanding, Uzbek youth do get exposed to foreign Islamic materials, and some 500 Uzbek citizens (and 1,000 ethnic Uzbeks) are reported to have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight (Tucker 2016d, 1).

Kyrgyz Republic

The greater religiosity of ethnic Uzbeks than ethnic Kyrgyz is a factor in efforts by Kyrgyz authorities to try to increase government supervision of the country’s religious communities. Draft legislation to this effect has been circulating since mid-2014 (but has still not been enacted, leaving the 2008 (see Zakon Kyrgyzskoi Respubliki 2008) law on religion in effect (USCIRF 2015, 199). Some of this concern is the product of the violent inter-ethnic clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010, which fostered concerns on the part of Kyrgyz nationalists in particular that ethnic Uzbeks feeling themselves second-class citizens in Kyrgyzstan would turn toward radical and potentially violent expressions of Islam. There is also concern that in the current global environment ethnic Kyrgyz might also be drawn toward these movements. To date, the presence of Kyrgyz citizens in jihadist groups in Iraq and Syria seems relatively limited, with estimates of some 200–400 people (Uzbeks and Kyrgyz) (Tucker 2016b, 2).

Kyrgyz authorities have labeled a number of Islamic groups extremist, and banned them in the country, including Al-Qaida, the Taliban, the Islamic Movement of Eastern Turkistan, the Kurdish Peoples’ Congress, the Organization for the Release of Eastern Turkistan, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Union of Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Party of Turkistan, Takfir Jihadist, Jaysh al-Mahdi, Jund al-Khilafah, Ansarullah, and Akromiya. They also have banned the Unification (Mun San Men) Church, and the Church of Scientology (USDOS 2015c, 3).

Sunni Muslims comprise 75 percent of the population, and Russian Orthodox another 20 percent, and the remaining 5 percent include Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Seventh day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roman Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and Baha’is (USDOS 2015c, 1). Nontraditional Muslims, like the followers of the Ahmadiyya movement, complain of problems with security registration and of official abuse more generally. Religious minorities also complain of harassment in the workplace. Kyrgyz courts have historically provided some relief for those complaining of unjust actions by law enforcement officials (USDOS 2015c, 1).

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is classified as a “tier-two” country by USCIRF, meaning that “violations are engaged in or tolerated by government.” Until the introduction of a restrictive law on religion in 2011, USCIRF considered the legal system of Kazakhstan the most tolerant toward religious groups in the region (USCIRF 2015, 166).

Between 65 and 70 percent of the population is Muslim, almost all of the Sunni Hanafi school, while Russian Orthodox makes up about 25 percent of the population. Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Seventh day Adventists, Methodists, Mennonites, Pentecostals, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Christian Scientists, Buddhists, Hare Krishnas, Bahais, Scientologists, and the Unification (Mun San Men) Church account for the remainder (USDOS 2015b, 1).

For Kazakhstan, a real turning point in the management of religious affairs was a series of small-scale bombings and attacks on security installations in the western regions of the country during 2011 and 2012 (McDermott 2014, 4–5). Kazakhstan had already banned most Islamic groups associated directly with extremists or even tangentially seen as potentially extremist, including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Hizb-ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HT), Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahedins, the Islamic Party of Eastern Turkestan, Lashkar-e-Tayba, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood (McDermott 2014, 2). The Tabligh Jamaat was also banned, and its members have been arrested and jailed for allegedly extremist activities. Changes in the criminal code and administrative law in 2014 further increased the penalties for association with them, and for any other forms of behavior that could be legally defined as extremist or increasing social tensions.

As part of the 2011 (see Zakon Respubliki Kazakhstan 2015) law, all religious groups had to apply for reregistration. Registration is now more difficult for smaller religious communities, as local registration requires 50 members, regional registration requires 500 members in two different regions, and national registration requires 5,000 members, with groups being banned from conducting any religious activities outside the localities or regions in which they are registered. The Baptist Council of Churches, with some 11,000 members, remains unregistered, refusing to apply because of requirements that it accept the primacy of the constitution of Kazakhstan (USDOS 2015b, 3).

Christian groups continue to feel pressure in Kazakhstan, as much because the public resents their activities as because of government restrictions. One well-reported case is that of Pastor Bakhytzhan Kushkumbayev who was arrested in Kazakhstan for “harming a parishioner’s health” as a result of the complaints of a family member) (USCIRF 2015, 161). For Kazakh authorities though, their greater priority lies with monitoring the situation in Iraq and Syria, where some 250–400 ethnic Kazakhs are reported as fighting as part of an all-Kazakh ISIS brigade (Tucker 2016a, 2).

US Policy in Central Asia

While the US government monitors this situation, US influence in the Central Asian region remains limited. The US spends far less money in the region than either Russia or China, but asks a lot more of the Central Asian countries by emphasizing “the human dimension.” China explicitly commits to noninterference in the domestic affairs of other countries in their “One Belt One Road” program, which plans to invest US $40 billion in infrastructure projects in the Central Asian region (Cheung and Lee 2015). China sees this strategy as facilitating economic domination of the region, making political influence only of indirect interest. Russia too is very critical of the US “human dimension” approach, and uses all of its available levers (including energy policy, Russian language media, and the presence of a large labor migrant population from Central Asia) to try to influence the economic, political, and security policies of the countries in the region.

By contrast, the US government budgeted $5.7 billion in total for all five Central Asian countries (excluding classified assistance) from 1992 through 2010, and since then budgeted assistance has dropped from $148.91 million in 2011 to the FY 2015 budget request of $113.7 million (Nichol 2014, Table 2).

Partly this reflects other US strategic priorities, but another reason for this is these countries’ flawed human rights records. The latter also explains why no US president has ever traveled to Central Asia and no Central Asian leader has ever been offered a state visit to the US. By contrast, Russian and Chinese leaders show up with regularity.

But given ongoing US engagement in Afghanistan, and Washington’s unwillingness to just let Russia and China expand their economic and security interests in the region in a wholly unchecked fashion, in late autumn 2015 Secretary of State John Kerry toured all five Central Asian countries and held a “5–1” summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan with all of the foreign ministers, the first event of its kind held in the region by a senior US official (Sanger 2015, New York Times).

The event was designed to foster an impression of increased US interest in the well-being of these countries as the security environment in Afghanistan deteriorates and both Russian and Chinese economic and security interests increase. Concurrent with the summit meeting, the US Department of State issued a new circular summarizing the goals and priorities of US assistance to the Central Asian countries, which outlined at length the projects (both through US bilateral and US donations in multi-lateral assistance) that were being developed to meet these goals (USDOS 2015d).

Most of the document is about cooperation in areas of mutual interest, including trans-boundary issues such as terrorism, regional trade, transportation and communication, energy linkages, and climate change. And of course, the document included a reference to the need to insure and bolster the independence and security of Afghanistan. The impact of the document should not be exaggerated, given that the new US State Department policy statement is not linked to any increase in funding for initiatives in Central Asia.

Even with restrictions and the various kinds of political pressures that US policy-makers have sought to introduce, Central Asian leaders remain eager for American security, technical, economic, and infrastructure assistance. They are desperate for investment from US companies and from international financial institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which the US and EU countries lead or dominate.

For this reason, the Foreign Ministers gathered in Samarkand were willing to sign a Joint Declaration of Partnership and Cooperation which included a commitment to:

Protect human rights, develop democratic institutions and practices, and strengthen civil society through respect for recognized norms and principles of international law, including the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration on Principles of International Law, and the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. (USDOS 2015a)

Conclusion

Signing declarations does not easily translate to changing policies. It will be very difficult to change the attitudes of these governments on questions of how to balance national security concerns with obligations to ensure religious freedom, or to modify the philosophy of governance upon which the treatment of religious communities and religious believers is based. But at the same time it would be a mistake for US policy-makers to just give up, particularly as the policies these governments are pursuing may be creating the very security threats that they are seeking to alleviate.

It would also be unfair to say that these countries have been oblivious to US criticism. All have been receptive to varying degrees, registering some of the minority faiths under US and EU pressure, and partially responding to complaints of how prisoners are treated. In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan national mechanisms against the use of torture have been introduced, and this has led to greater accountability of security officials, even if there are still complaints that this is unevenly applied.

This said

• US policy-makers and human rights advocates have to be cognizant of the changes going on in our own society when we engage these governments in discussions on religious questions. In the face of rising global terrorist threats, the US has also increased surveillance of its citizens, made access by foreigners to the US more difficult, and some current candidates for US president are demanding much greater restrictions.

• Discussions on religious freedom need to be focused and not appear as scolding by US-sponsored interlocutors. They are not children, but adults making different choices than are made in the US.

• In addition to pressing these countries on their international obligations, we should at least show awareness of the difference between US cultural values and their traditional cultures. We need to demonstrate that the US appreciates their concerns relating to the risks of social upheaval in multi-religious families, and help them find solutions (potentially through increased counseling opportunities at the local level) that will facilitate Kazakhstan's meeting their international religious freedom obligations.

• These are societies in which there is respect for elders, and in framing discussions the US also needs to be aware of the frequent age differences between those in US-supported NGOs doing outreach activities and those whose behavior they are seeking to modify. So the message needs to be tailored so that the way it is delivered conveys the necessary respect, and obviously to do this in a manner that does not substantially modify the content.

• There needs to be more dialogues on issues of religious freedom held at the local level with local officials and not just engagement at the national level. The security aspect of these policies is set at the national level, but concerns relating to the potential for social disruptions often come to the national level from local officials.

• More progress could be made on registration of minority (and particularly Christian) faiths if delegations focused directly on the social concerns relating to conversion by Muslims to Christian faiths, and did this by including in the delegations Muslim converts to Christianity who preserved close ties to their families.

• In order to prove more effective, the dialogue on the treatment of dissenting or schismatic Muslim groups needs to be disaggregated at least in part from discussions of religious freedom, and focused on raising the knowledge base of state officials charged with religious affairs. The arguments for restricting nontraditional Islamic groups are often given for self-interested reasons advanced by clerics from the dominant Hanafi school of law, who are appealing to secular officials who often lack the background in Islam to make informed decisions on what constitutes security threats.

• Regardless of where they fall on freedom of religion issues, US policy-makers should work with the Central Asian states to help them combat threats posed by groups that are internationally accepted as terrorists, such as ISIS and other jihadist groups.

• This assistance should take the form of limited and focused intelligence sharing, as much because the security agencies in these countries can have information that the US would otherwise be unable to obtain, as to help Central Asia’s security agencies better distinguish between potentially imminent and generally abstract threats.

• This assistance should also include enhanced professional training of the security forces of these countries, by the US and in the form of assistance through willing NATO partners, such as Turkey, and bilateral assistance of training of professionals working in the criminal justice system. This would help ensure that those arrested through the application of laws that fail to meet international human rights obligations of these countries would be able to receive more humane treatment while subject to the judicial and criminal authority systems.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martha Brill Olcott

Martha Brill Olcott is Visiting Professor at Michigan State University, Professor Emerita at Colgate University, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement. She is the author of numerous books on Central Asia, including Kazakhstan’s Second Chance, In The Whirlwind of Jihad, and Tajikistan’s Difficult Development Path. Olcott also spent 19 years as a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.