Lecture Summary: After Andijan
Please do not reprint this summary without permission.
Professor Eric McGlinchey (George Mason University) gave a lecture at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, on January 17th titled “After Andijan: Authoritarianism, Islam, and Social Mobilization in Central Asia.”
His thesis is that the Uzbek state is now precariously weak, and much closer to collapse than many observers realize. This weakness stems from a new kind of social mobilization not seen before the Andijan uprising.
McGlinchey was careful to note that his conclusions are tentative because there are many questions that remain and will continue to remain for quite some time over what happened at the Andijan uprising. Furthermore, his findings are based on a more anthropological approach than typical political science research involving a large dataset.
The findings presented at the lecture differ markedly not only from those found in the Uzbek and Russian press (and advocated by some Western academics), but also from the perspectives put forth by NGOs like International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch. The former argue that Andijan was mostly a result of Islamist extremism, while the latter attribute the root cause to economic factors.
The argument presented by McGlinchey was a bit more specific. He contended that before Andijan, social mobilization did not see the same widespread success in Uzbekistan that it does now. To be sure, there were dedicated opposition groups, but they were for the most part unable to garner widespread and cohesive support. There were also Islamic groups, but they were mostly organized at the local level, often centered on an imam or mosque. Even Hizb ut-Tahrir cells were not very laterally cohesive.
The events surrounding the Andijan marked a stark departure from this trend, and a new social mobilization centered on the nexus of Islam and economics that can be observed across Uzbekistan.
To demonstrate this point, McGlinchey contrasted the Andijan uprising with the Kokand uprising of November 2004. In this incident, thousands of Uzbeks took to the streets, but the armed forces did not intervene as they did in Andijan. The demonstrating Uzbeks were upset by a new set of laws that unfairly targeted small businesses in the bazaar. McGlinchey noted that throughout Uzbekistan’s recent history, demonstrators have been all too willing to hit the street to protest economic injustice, but have been remarkably tolerant of the suppression of Islam.
McGlinchey argued that Andijan represented a fundamentally different kind of social movement in Uzbekistan from the sort observed in Kokand and numerous times before. In Andijan, the uprising was motivated by the confluence of economic factors and Islamic ideology. McGlinchey was careful to differentiate between “Islamist” ideology, which he said was not present at Andijan, and “Islamic” ideals, which were pursued by the 23 “Akromiya” businessmen arrested in Andijan.
Using Islamic principles, these businessmen were able to create a following that became economically prosperous, and recognized these Islamic ideals as the reason for their prosperity. In Uzbekistan, where there is a complete lack of property rights, the social mobilization set in motion by these businessmen effectively protected economic rights, not least of all by co-opting local elites in Andijan. As the center’s grip on power in Andijan weakened, the hold of these businessmen became infinitely more threatening to the government, and by jailing the businessmen, the Uzbek government hoped to “clean house” and reestablish its authority.
The government’s violent suppression of the demonstrations in Andijan was not, therefore, indicative of decisiveness and strength, but rather of panic from a very real threat to the survival of the regime. This threat is doubly dangerous, because while the government can backtrack on economic mismanagement, and take measures to promote reform, the Uzbek regime has practically defined itself as a counterweight to extremist Islam. Thus, with the new intermingling of Islamic ideals and economic injustice born in Andijan, the government is effectively backed into a corner.
This new trend is becoming widespread in Uzbekistan, and McGlinchey tentatively predicted the collapse of the regime in the near - though not immediate - future. He stipulated that based on current trends, it will most likely be an economically motivated movement brought together not by democratic principles, but by Islamic ones (again, differentiating from Islamist principles).
McGlinchey concluded by recommending engagement with imams at the local level, a policy that the US State department has pursued in recent years.
on January 18th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
McGlinchey’s analysis sounds a lot like statements I’ve seen from Erk founder Muhammed Salikh. Salikh predicted that Karimov would be gone 6 months after the US base was kicked out. McGlinchey’s academic distinction between “Islamist” and “Islamic” sounds like a distinction without a difference, IMHO.
Let’s see what happens in the near–but not immediate–future.
If Karimov manages to stay in power, perhaps the US State Department’s now publicly-acknowledged policy of “engagement with imams” may prove not to have been the smartest course for the American government to take.
on January 18th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
PS Thank you for reporting on this lecture!
on January 18th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
No problem, it was a really good one (IMO).
I definitely see where you are coming from on the “Islamic” vs. “Islamist” point. Word choice when differentiating between different strains of Islam is one of those tricky issues that most academics grapple with and are usually uncomfortable with, and consequently, there doesn’t seem to be much agreement on what terms to use, and what they mean. It ends up being necessary to clearly define the terms every time they are used. (For example, some use the term “fundamentalists,” but others are uncomfortable with that term because it has Christian connotations).
Based on what I heard at the lecture, I think McGlinchey was using the distinction to differentiate what was going on with the 23 “Akromiya” businessmen in Andijon from other modern Islamist movements. My understanding is that he was basically saying that these businessmen had little in common with movements like Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc., which arguably do have much in common, and are similar movements.
Re: imams- I’m actually not all that familiar with the program you and McGlinchey refer to. Do you have any links? Also, why would engagement with local imams prolong Karimov’s reign instead of the opposite?
Thanks for your interesting comments!
on January 19th, 2006 at 12:30 am
James,
I don’t anything about the details of the State Department’s program to engage with imams, just took the reference from your summary.I’d like to know more about it also. I guess Professor McGlinchey will have to tell us the details. It’s what the Uzbek government accused the US of doing at the Andijan show trials…
on January 19th, 2006 at 3:53 am
James, thank you for the great summary. I can only hope my presentation was as clear as your summary.
I’d also like to say thanks to all the contributors to NewEurasia. The coverage and even more so the conversation is stimulating. Several times your analysis has pushed me to think in new ways.
Laurence, the more I have worked with imams and activists in Central Asia, Uzbekistan in particular, the more I am convinced we must distinguish between Islamic groups and Islamist groups.
Islamic groups in Uzbekistan are religious organizations that do not pursue overtly political goals. In many ways, they are like many local church/synagogue/mosque community in the US. They are tightly knit, their members share strongly held religious beliefs, and these common beliefs create a sense of mutual trust which, in turn often translate into more accommodative and prosperous economic relations.
Islamist groups, in contrast, are groups that exist to pursue overtly political goals. HT, IMU, these are clearly Islamist groups that have, as their core, a political agenda—the overthrow of the Karimov regime.
Although by no means a perfect analogy, one can contrast, say the activities and goals of the Christian Coalition of America with those of an average neighborhood congregation. The CCA draws on religious beliefs in its pursuit of overtly political goals. The neighborhood congregation, in contrast, may believe in separation of church and state. The neighborhood congregation, moreover, brings people together, creates bonds of mutual trust, and these bonds of trust often spill over into the economic/business world.
A similar distinction exists in Uzbekistan between Islamist (political) and Islamic groups. Birodar, the group the Uzbek government has labeled Akramiya, does not appear to have had an overtly political agenda. It was an Islamic self-help group where shared religious built interpersonal trust which in turn fostered economic success (and an ever growing group of adherents as more and more people found employment with the Birodar businessmen).
The irony is that when the government cracked down on the group in 2004, it helped to fuse economics and religion—and create the sustained social movement we saw (and continue to see) in Fergana.
on January 19th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Eric, Thank you for your post.
The Christian Coalition organized political campaigns through church groups–to the extent that the organization was stripped of its IRS tax status for violating the federal ban on election campaigning by churches.
Here’s a 1999 Washington Post account: