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Turkmenbashi era, where the modern legal system combined with feudal traditions were removed from the Constitution of the country,. The principle of separation of powers was restored, a classical unicameral parliament, the Mejlis, was established. In these days the president calls for setting up the second official political party, which would make a pair to the ruling party - the Democratic Party. The coming to power of the new President of Turkmenistan was a turning point in the modern history of this republic. A new stage of democratic reforms has begun in the country.
The process of democratization in the states of the Caspian region in question has both specific and common features that do not always fit into the notion of "democratization", the researcher concludes.
The author of the abstract V.N. Schensnovich
2017.03.002. SERGEI ABASHIN. ISLAMIC CHALLENGE TO THE IDEA OF THE NATION? SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON THE EXAMPLE OF CENTRAL ASIA // "Cross-border Challenges to the National State", SPb., 2015, P. 375-387.
Keywords: nation, national state, Islam, Central Asia, Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Hizb ut-Tahrir
Sergei Abashin,
Dr.Sc. (Hist.), professor, European University, St. Petersburg
The author considers the interaction of the idea of nation and Islam in modern Central Asia (hereinafter CA). National statehood has appeared in Central Asia relatively recently. The principle of national statehood was brought there from the imperial and later Soviet Russia, as well as from the Ottoman Empire, then Turkey, which, under the influence of Europe, was
then experiencing the stage of its own national reorganization. The union republics, created in the 1920s in CA, were not fully-fledged states, since they were parts of one political community, the USSR. But they had all the attributes of statehood in its national form, that is, they had an indispensable "titular nation" in the capacity of their ethnic basis.
Central Asian states gained independence in 1991 and after that the policy of forming and strengthening the nation became even stronger. This process must be viewed not as theologically predetermined and self-deploying, but as the sum of the effects of various, often chaotic events and actions.
Understanding, that nationalism is determined by specific subtexts, permits to see various trajectories of nationalism in the states of CA. With all similar features, national ideologies and practices of the construction of the states of the region differ significantly from each other. Not a single version of dominant nationalism exists, but its different versions, which are in the state of constant discussion and competition between themselves. In addition, alongside with the political and intellectual elite, which is not united itself, in the countries of CA there are many different social communities having their own interests and strategies. Sometimes these interests fit into national projects and strengthen them, sometimes they do not, and then there arise some effects alternative to nationalism. These include, for example, formation of influential regional groups of elites in all the countries of the region. In Tajikistan, the rivalry between them led to the civil war in the 1990s, in Kyrgyzstan, periodic revolutions are also based on the conflict of regional identities.
The interaction of nationalism and Islam in Central Asia is of a special and ambiguous nature, due not only to the general contradiction between particularism and universalism, which are interpreted differently in these ideologies, but also by the peculiarities of the region's history. Islam in the past, even before creation of national states, was the main force in CA, with the help of which any political or proto-political union gained its
legitimacy. Moslem identity was the transcultural framework that permitted to create social coalitions from multi-tribal and multilingual societies. The Soviet power viewed any religion, Islam in particular, as a reactionary ideology, and therefore, along with the construction of Soviet nations, fought a fierce struggle against religiosity, opposing these two identities to each other. The policy of modernization and emancipation, which was being enforced, could not completely destroy religiousness and religious practices, but it transformed them.
After 1991, national states, freed from the Soviet ideology, began to make even greater efforts to nationalize Islam, regarding the latter both as an additional cultural resource, and as a new source of strengthening their legitimacy. References to religion were included in public speeches of local politicians, religious attributes appeared in the official space, major Moslem holidays were recognized, many Moslem figures of the past entered the pantheon of glorified cultural heroes, religious literature was published widely, numerous religious buildings and monuments were restored or rebuilt. At the same time, one of the main conditions for recognition was the opportunity to fit religious symbols and practices in the national framework. The governments of the CA states attempted to maintain effective institutional control over religious activities, using for this purpose spiritual departments and committees for religious affairs.
However, despite the efforts in the sphere of nationalization, Islam retained its transcultural potential. Even in the Soviet times, sometimes secretly, sometimes semi-legally, there existed grassroots, sometimes competing networks, which united believers of different nationalities. The activists of these networks formed their own intellectual and political agenda criticizing the existing order and putting forward the demand for religious unification of local practices as conditions for overcoming moral and social flaws. Return of Islam to public life at the turn of the 1980s - 1990s turned these activists into participants in the political struggle for power, and inevitably
there arose a confrontation between the idea of the nation and calls for the Islamic revival. The idea of nation and national statehood were monopolized by a narrow group of the ruling elite of Soviet origin, the political opposition lost to it in this field and was forced to oppose the idea of religious solidarity and religious moralizing to the idea of the nation.
The opposition, having declared itself a religious party, gained access to the financial and organizational resources of international and regional Islamist networks that had been formed by then in the Middle East. This international influence also brought to CA the notion of an Islamic state as a special political form, different from the national. political one, which was actively discussed by various political forces. The attempts to establish this form in practice, undertaken in a number of neighboring countries, such as Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, have now become an important experience for evaluation and a model to emulate.
Further S. Abashin cites three examples of Islamic challenge to the idea of nation in modern CA and shows three different versions of development of the conflicts derived from this challenge.
The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). Members of the party date its birth back to 1973, when its previous leader Sayd (Sayid) Abdullo Nuri organized the first secret religious group. However, it is better to count from 1990, when there was established the Islamic Party of Renaissance, which tried to unite all the Moslem communities of the USSR. In coalition with other nationalist and democratic parties, the IRPT in the middle of 1992 achieved a certain political success. A few months later, the political struggle escalated into a civil war, won by the former Communists. The IRPT became the central force of the United Tajik Opposition which entered into struggle against the regime, many of its leaders fled abroad, some to Iran, some to the Middle East, and key positions were occupied by warlords who did not care much about ideology. The confrontation lasted
from 1992 to 1997, it was a purely inland Tajik conflict and the lines of separation often ran not in conformance with the attitude to Islam, but along regional lines. However, the IRPT attempted to mobilize supporters by references to Islam, to emphasize its universal and traditional for the region values, to attract to its ranks people of different nationalities. At the same time the leaders of the party were forced to seek the assistance of Islamist forces outside the country: primarily in Afghanistan, where they were at first supported by the Northern Alliance, and then cooperation with the Taliban was established.
The conclusion of peace in 1997 changed the situation. The opposition managed to achieve a very favorable agreement having received 30% of the seats in the higher echelons of power in Tajikistan. The IRPT obtained legal status and could compete in the elections. The former Islamic opposition, having occupied important positions and established control over certain sectors of the economy, strengthened national orientation. The links with the Arab and Afghan paramilitary groups were broken, the party no more maintained close contacts with the Uzbek and Russian Islamist movements. The new leader of the IRPT Mukhiddin Kabiri chose a new political trend of combining moderate Islam with the secular statehood refocusing the interests to the Tajik political arena.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). This movement also rose in the wave of local conflicts generating unstable political associations or protoparties with religious overtones. The most famous of such protoparties was the Namangan group Adolat (Justice), which had in its program many features of the late-Soviet anti-communism. In the early 1990s, the leaders and supporters of the Adolat and similar groups were arrested, many of them disappeared, fled or went underground. The flight automatically included members of the Uzbek opposition in transnational Islamist networks. Part of those who fled found their way to military camps and madrassas in Afghanistan and Pakistan , others joined the United Tajik Opposition.
After reconciliation in Tajikistan, natives of Uzbekistan declared themselves a separate Uzbek Islamic party, named the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The culmination of the new phase was a series of terrorist and military actions in 1999 and 2000, At the same time there appeared proclamations of the leaders of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, declaring that the new party aimed to overthrow the ruling, "tyrannical", in their opinion, regime in Uzbekistan and create an Islamic state. But, it seems, within the movement there existed different currents, with different views of the future of the region. However, the contradictions between them, if any, had no fundamental importance, and, in general, the IMU, most probably, was guided by the experience and relative success of the IRPT. Apparently, initially there were plans to unite the forces of the Uzbek opposition with the opposition forces in neighboring countries, including Uighur resistance in China, into a single organization. However, in 2001, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was overthrown, which resulted in changing configuration of the networks in which IMU fitted. The bases of the movement shifted to southern Afghanistan and the border areas of Pakistan (Waziristan), where creation of the nonnational Islamic state was declared.
Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HT), or the Islamic Liberation Party. This cross-border religious-political party is not tied to a specific country, it operates everywhere where there are Moslems. It was founded in 1952 by members of the Palestinian branch of another well-known religious party, Moslem Brotherhood. The cross-border nature is declared by the main program attitude of the HT, which sets recreating a global Caliphate recognizing no national borders its ultimate goal.
Hizb ut-Tahrir has some differences from the IRPT and the IMU. It clamours against the armed seizure of power. In the dogmatic sphere the HT members propose a not very strict version of Islam, that in many respects appeals to the society to a certain extent modernized but preserving the Islamic identity. They are much less concerned about the reforms of local rites and
customs. In politics and economics the XT program features superequalitarianism and criticizes the "capitalist" reforms. Based on the goal to recreate a global Caliphate, HT openly criticizes the principle of nationality, labeling it as the idea of colonizers, specially introduced in the Islamic world in order to destroy the Moslem solidarity. Ideological attitudes of Hizb ut-Tahrir contradict not only the Quran and Sunnah, but also the teachings of the Hanafi madhab (traditional Islamic school), practiced by the population of Tajikistan .
The relationship between nation and Islam in modern Central Asia is of a contradictory, dual nature. On the one hand, they are in clear opposition to each other, which stems both from the universalistic, supranational claims of the world religion and from the history of secular-national building in the region and the nature of the political confrontation between different elites. On the other hand, there is a constant interaction and interdependence of nation and of Islam, the desire to nationalize religion encounters with the desire to strengthen, remaining within the national framework, the religiosity of the society, which results in collaborative, symbiotic projects. These two tendencies coexist and occasionally interchange. Islam promotes establishment of cross-border networks and implementation of joint actions, and in the political field the Islamic identity and rhetoric are most rapidly mobilized among the part of the opposition devoid of legal opportunities to fight for power. Today, this opposition turns for support to international Islamic organizations. Some opposition movements come to a radical criticism of a national state and offer completely new political forms such as a supra-national Caliphate. The ruling Central Asian elites begin to experience difficulties because the cross-border networks fall out of their control because the moralistic religious language poorly conforms to the principle of national exclusivity.
Depending on the circumstances, the opposition Islamist parties pragmatically use both national and non-national ideas. The opposition turns to cross-border networks, finance, actively
exploits them, but it quits the networks easily if it turns out that the national state provides for it its own resource. The Islamists, too, either enter cross-border networks and are fighting for Islamic values or quit these networks and begin to protect their national specificity and autonomy. The challenge that Islam presents to the idea of nation is not absolute and unidirectional. The death of the national statehood and its replacement by the Islamic statehood as the result of the actions of Islamist opposition forces is not predetermined. It is more likely, says Sergei Abashin, that under the impact of cross-border networks and ideas a complex process of reconfiguration of the political and ideological fields is under way, and it, in its turn, causes the destabilization of many institutions and principles and generally increases the unpredictability of events.
The author of the abstract V.N. Schensnovich
2017.03.003. DMITRY POPOV. CENTRAL ASIA IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY. CENTRAL ASIAN LOBBY IN WASHINGTON // "Tsentralnaya Aziya vo vneshney politike SShA. 1991-2016", Moscow, RISI, 2016, P. 189-195.
Keywords: lobbyists, lobbyist organizations, lobbying activity, Central Asian states, Kazakhstan, Astana, the "Aliyev case".
Dmitry Popov,
PhD (legal),
Head of the Ural Regional Information and Analytical Center of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Yekaterinburg
The author notes that at present many countries, formerly part of the USSR, secretly promote their interests in the United States through a system of lobbyist organizations legalized there.
