How Serious is Religious Radicalization in Turkmenistan?
By Akram UmarovThe worsening economic situation, growing poverty and unemployment, inadequate and limited opportunities to gain both secular and religious education, tight control of all religious activities of the people, and numerous state restrictions on these activities are contributing to the increased religious radicalization.
Photo: RFE/RL
For many years, Turkmenistan has had a distinguished status among the Central Asian countries of being the least affected by religious radicalization and terrorism. The country did not face any largescale terrorist attacks, nor a wide-scale insurgent movement within its territory during its independence period. The minor terrorist incidents that have occurred, related to the radical religious groups, were not widely discussed in official information sources.
However, the number of Turkmen citizens present in Syria and Iraq, fighting under the auspices of various terrorist groups, demonstrates that despite the avoidance of huge bombings on its territory, Turkmenistan suffers from a similar degree of radicalization as its neighbours. The lack of education, poverty, increasing migration, and isolationist policy of the country contribute to this radicalization in Turkmenistan.
CURRENT SITUATION
The only significant terrorist incident related to religious radicalization in Turkmenistan happened on 12-13 September 2008 in Ashgabat, when a group of people led by Khudaiberdy Amandurdiyev, commonly known as “Ajdar” and described in some sources as a “radical Islamic militant”, took over a water-bottling factory and clashed with government troops for a day, as recorded by Richard Pomfret in “The Central Asian Economies in the Twenty-First Century: Paving a New Silk Road” published this year (Princeton Univ. Press). The number of victims from this terrorist attack is uncertain with estimates varying from only one to dozens of dead.
The main radicalization trend could be observed in the high numbers of Turkmen citizens who joined the terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq after 2011. According to reports in 2015, as documented by Richard Barret in “Beyond the caliphate: Foreign fighters and the Threat of Returnees” published in October 2017 by the Soufan Center, more than 400 Turkmen citizens joined the Islamic State (Daesh) and other radical religious groups in the Levant. This is only slightly less than the other Central Asian republics such as Kazakhstan (500 people) and Kyrgyzstan (also 500), according to Barret. In addition, four supposed fighters of Daesh were arrested in the southeast of Turkmenistan close to the borders with Afghanistan and Iran in June 2017.
CAUSES OF RADICALISATION
Turkmenistan has a relatively small population of 5.8 million people and vast natural mineral resources that give it a GDP of 42.4 billion USD. The country has proven reserves of oil equal to 600 million barrels and up to 19.5 trillion cubic metres of natural gas. With a GDP per capita of 7.4 thousand USD, the World Bank has included Turkmenistan in the category of upper-middle income countries since 2012. Despite these comparatively high economic rates, the country could not avoid the tendency of religious radicalization due to the following factors:
One: In spite of tangible economic growth in the years since Turkmenistan was released from the Soviet Union, the quality of human capital in the country, especially in the education sector, does not receive enough attention from the government. Scholars Victoria Clement and Zumrad Kataeve consider that while the working age of the population is projected to increase by one-third in 2030, “investment in human capital is insufficient to allow the next generation of Turkmen citizens to find jobs”. (Victoria Clement and Zumrad Kataeva. The Transformation of Higher Education in Turkmenistan: Continuity and Change. In: Huisman J., Smolentseva A., Froumin I. (eds) 25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries. Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2018. p.388) The population is youthful, with 43 percent of the population being under-24-years-old. Every year, more than 100,000 young people graduate from schools, and the existing higher education institutions can admit only seven percent of them. Low quality education, existing corruption, and insufficiently qualified personnel in all levels of education have severely influenced the overall poor situation in this sphere.
A related issue appears to be inadequate religious education among both the population at large and the clerics trusted to provide understanding to others in the mosques. There is only one madrassah (religious seminary) that was established in 1991 after the independence of the country in Dashhowuz to solve the problem of high demand for qualified staff able to work in mosques. At the same time, the government does not support mullahs traveling abroad to train in foreign religious education centers.
Two: After the world financial crisis in 2008, the economic situation in Turkmenistan has been gradually deteriorating. The high percentage of the budget that is reliant on natural gas export revenues, together with the limited number of buyers of this gas, means that Turkmenistan is dependent on its buyer states. The explosion at the gas pipeline in 2009 significantly impaired the cooperation between Russia and Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan halted its gas export to Iran in January 2017 due to disputes with Tehran about price and regular payment. After these decisions, China has become the only external purchaser of Turkmen gas, and thus revenues from gas exports have decreased substantially.
The second-order problems from this were so severe that it led to a restriction of the national currency’s open conversion, to increasing migration of population, and even to a food shortage in the state-owned retail networks throughout the country, where prices had been fixed and subsidized. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates the unemployment rate at 4 percent, but some analysts suppose that these numbers are in reality higher — perhaps much higher, around 50-60 percent of the adult population. Together with the unstable economic situation, growing inflation, and the increasing difference between the official and real rate of the national currency, these conditions stimulate people to seek new opportunities abroad.
The primary destination for Turkmen migrants has been Turkey, which has a visa-free regime with Turkmenistan, and the other main destination, albeit to a lesser extent, is Russia. In both cases, this created new opportunities for radical terrorist groups to recruit more Turkmen in their structures. According to reports, Turkmen citizens became members of Daesh, Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda in Syria), and many others. Interestingly, per capita foreign fighter flows from Turkmenistan in Syria are 1 in 14,000, and this is very close to the results of countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa that are main suppliers of militants to this conflict zone.
Three: Turkmenistan conducts a very isolationist policy and strictly controls all inflows and outflows of people, and these strictures create their own problems. It is very difficult to obtain reliable information regarding internal processes in the country and statistics about its socio-economic development. Religious activities are under tight oversight by government agencies and even the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina is restricted to only 188 people annually, which is much less than the allocated quota to Turkmenistan by the Saudi Arabian government. The policy is aimed at controlling the migration of the population by using broad “black lists” of people who are banned from leaving the country, which leads to people seeking alternative, illegal ways of leaving Turkmenistan and increases the openings for radicals to exploit discontent.
CONCLUSION
Turkmenistan is rarely mentioned in the world media as a target of radical groups or as a supplier of men to their ranks. This is at least partly because it has never faced large, persistent terrorist attacks by religious radicals. However, the country has been coping with a similar radical tendency as its neighbors in Central Asia are. The worsening economic situation, growing poverty and unemployment, inadequate and limited opportunities to gain both secular and religious education, tight control of all religious activities of the people, and numerous state restrictions on these activities are contributing to the increased religious radicalization. At the same time, Turkmenistan still has many advantages that would allow it to improve this situation, notably its vast energy resources, small population, strategic economic location, and ability, if it chooses, to increase its cooperation with moderate regional and international Islamic centers. Efficient use of these opportunities could substantially reverse the radicalization trend in the country.
(The author is a political analyst. The above is the slightly edited version of the original article which appeared here.)
