From Overseas Press

Militant gains unlikely in Kyrgyz unrest

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-06-17 10:59

The United States watches regional militancy closely because it uses its Manas air base in the north of the country to supply forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Kyrgyzstan borders Xinjiang, the frontier region of China that is home to the Uighurs.

Two Russian analysts said the unrest would have little if any effect on Islamist activity in the short term.

But if the situation deteriorated and slid toward total chaos, Islamist groups could take advantage of that and step up their activity. Also, long-term unrest and the perception of unfairness could drive people toward radical Islam as they sought justice or redress for wrongs.

Vitaly Ponomaryov, director of the Central Asia programme for the Moscow-based human rights group Memorial, said the unrest in Kyrgyzstan has little to do with Islam and has not produced an uptick in Islamic militant activity.

ISLAMIST RULE NOT LIKELY

"If the situation gets totally out of control, of course the role of jihadists' groups may rise, but at the moment this is not happening," Ponomaryov said.

Teymur Huseynov, head of Eurasia Forecasting at Exclusive Analysis consultants, said radical militant groups would exploit the unrest to the "greatest extent possible" but the creation of a separatist Islamist government was not likely at this point.

He said liberal political reform plans by interim leader Roza Otunbayeva, who took power after an April revolt that ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, had wrong footed hardline opposition Islamists who had seen Bakiyev as repressive.

"And of course some Islamists actually support the interim government because its agenda is different (from Bakiyev's)."

Another Islamist guerrilla group active in the region is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), but its leaders are holed up in northern Pakistan under military pressure from the authorities there, said Kamran Bokhari of Stratfor consultatncy.

"The chaos in Kyrgyzstan is unlikely to be exploited by Islamists," he said. "Most of the IMU folks are isolated in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region and thus unable to project power back home," he said.