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The Caspian Sea Region's Key Position in the Rise of Militant Islam

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The Caspian Sea Region's Key Position in the Rise of Militant Islam University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2008 The Caspian Sea Region's Key Position In The Rise Of Militant Islam Graham Cage University of Central Florida Part of the Political Science Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Cage, Graham, "The Caspian Sea Region's Key Position In The Rise Of Militant Islam" (2008). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 3738. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/3738 THE CASPIAN SEA REGION’S KEY POSITION IN THE RISE OF MILITANT ISLAM by GRAHAM CAGE B.S. Baylor University, 2002 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Arts in the Department of Political Science in the College of Sciences at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Summer Term 2008 ABSTRACT Researchers and policy experts point to key issues and groups such as the Palestinian/Arab‐Israeli Conflict, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Saudi exported Wahhabism, and, in more recent times, the Iraq wars as being the source of militant Islam in this day in age. However, this perspective ignores key issues and ideals in to how this new form of Islam has emerged in recent decades. For instance, with all the conflicts that have occurred in recent decades, except for the 1979 Revolution in Iran, why have they not yielded Shari’a inspired Islamic states in Yemen, Lebanon, the Occupied Territories and Iraq? Currently the only Islamic states in the Arab world are ones that lay on the Persian Gulf that were established during their independence from colonial rule. One only has to look further east and to the north of the Middle East to see militant Islam taking hold in places like Chechnya, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Waziristan and a host of other areas which do not get the attention from many people in the West. After the demise of the Soviet Union and the years directly after, a political vacuum was formed that received almost no attention from the outside world except for states with historical and cultural similarities. Here Islam has and is being used as a military and political doctrine to accomplish goals and as an ideological base for launching new attacks against its proclaimed enemies. Indeed many of the key theologians and figures have come from the Arab world, but the rise of militant Islam could not have formed with this alone. Many of the fighters on the ii ground in al‐Qaeda and its direct affiliated groups are indeed not Arabs but come from a wide range of different ethnic groups such as Afghans, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Uyghurs and Pakistanis who have answered bin Laden’s call of lesser jihad against the West. Rather than examining militant Islam through a Middle Eastern perspective, this author wishes to give an alternate view that the current rise of militant Islam in the world is directly associated with the internal political situation of the Greater Caspian Sea Basin and not the Middle East as so many people have proposed in the past. To examine this idea, this author will look extensively at the internal conditions of states that have allowed militant Islam to arise and mature in such a short time span in this often forgotten region. The primary purpose of the proposed paper is to examine the rise of militant Islam through a Caspian Sea region lens rather than a Middle Eastern one. This study will also examine violent groups in various states to understand how groups are able to form and how they differ from each other. Countries ranging from as far as Turkey to the Xinxiang Province in China and from the southern reaches of the Russian Federation to Pakistan will be the primary focus. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................................. vi LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS ................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1 Militant Islam Today ................................................................................................................................. 1 The Road Less Studied .............................................................................................................................. 3 Past Works ................................................................................................................................................ 6 Providing a New Perspective .................................................................................................................. 16 Process of Examination ........................................................................................................................... 18 CHAPTER II: THE EVOLUTION OF ISLAM DURING THE SOVIET EMPIRE ....................................... 22 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 22 ‘An Army of Islam’ ................................................................................................................................... 23 The Soviet Union goes over the Caucasus .............................................................................................. 26 Remapping the Lands .............................................................................................................................. 28 The Political and Economic Environment During Soviet Rule ................................................................. 32 Political ................................................................................................................................................ 32 Economics ........................................................................................................................................... 36 A Second Chance for Success .................................................................................................................. 41 Remarks................................................................................................................................................... 45 CHAPTER III: THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE SINCE INDEPENDENCE ................................................ 46 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 46 ‘Tyrannical Apostates’ ............................................................................................................................. 48 The Rise of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan ................................................................................... 51 The Wolves Return .................................................................................................................................. 55 From the New Great Game to the War on Terror .................................................................................. 57 The al‐Qaeda Connection ........................................................................................................................ 61 iv Clash of Identities .................................................................................................................................... 64 CHAPTER IV: CONFLICTS OF THE CASPIAN REGION ...................................................................... 66 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 66 The War to Start all Wars ........................................................................................................................ 70 War Spreads to the North ....................................................................................................................... 75 War Spreads to the South ....................................................................................................................... 79 War spreads to China .............................................................................................................................. 83 War in the Caucasus ................................................................................................................................ 85 The Pan‐Islamist Party of Liberation ....................................................................................................... 86 Iran and Turkey’s Limited Role ................................................................................................................ 89 Remarks................................................................................................................................................... 92 CHAPTER V: IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT ......................................................................................... 95 A Caspian Centric View on Militant Islam ..............................................................................................
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