Over the past year, Kyrgyz security forces have confronted extremism head-on. They have uncovered underground extremist organizations, arrested suspected terrorists and disrupted transport routes for terrorist recruits traveling to join the wars in the Middle East.
“In 2014, the activities of three underground groups of [an extremist organization] came to light in southern Kyrgyzstan,” Deputy Prime Minister Abdyrakhman Mamataliyev said in February 2015 at a meeting of the Co-ordination Council of Law Enforcement Agencies of Osh Province. “The authorities … opened 12 criminal cases and arrested 15 suspects.”
The bulk of the Kyrgyz fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria come from Osh city and Osh province, police say.
“In spite of our progress in solving such crimes, our work must continue on preventing crimes that could … destabilize our country,” Mamataliyev said. “In 2014, we detained 40 citizens affiliated with terrorist groups,” he added. “The majority of them had already undergone combat training in Syria.”
The Kyrgyz Republic is cracking down on extremists indoctrinating youth. For example, one fighter, Dilyorbek Makhkamov of Osh province, returned home from Syria and tried to recruit uneducated youth, including his own nephew, to fight in Syria in November 2013. He persuaded two other young men to join them, but their parents stopped them. Police arrested Makhkamov in September 2014. He was charged with committing mercenary activities and inciting interfaith hatred. Authorities also investigated his accomplices for ties to international terrorist organizations and other efforts to recruit Kyrgyz youth to fight in war zones.
Recruiters benefit from ignorance of Islam. “It’s easy for the [extremists] to brainwash them by distorting … the Quran,” Jakyp Zulpuyev, chief of the Osh province police’s 10th Department said. The Kyrgyz government and citizens are working together to thwart militant activities. Mosques, apartment blocks, women’s councils and local youth groups have all been sites of outreach events, Zulpuyev said.
The public is trusting law enforcement more, said Mirlan Toktomushev, imam of the Osh Sheyit-Dobo Mosque. “Thanks to the continuing meetings, congregations have come to realize that the police and clergy want to protect them against reckless deeds, crimes and radical groups,” he said. “The public now is willing to tell the police about strangers who are recruiting youths.”
Teachers and pupils discuss religious literacy in high school and are helping to defeat extremist and terrorist recruiting, Zulpuyev said.
“Such [informational] activities are taking place among high school students in Osh city and in Aravan, Kara-Suu and Uzgen districts, where the ‘jihadists’ are the most active,” Zulpuyev said. “The children present their own essays, poems and drawings. [These activities] lead to the children forming anti-extremism opinions and arouse patriotic spirit in them.”