Author: Robert Canfield

[Friday, February 21, 2020]

Zohrab and Roy networks; find also the details on the swindle of the Soviet Union by the Uzbek bureaucrats [???]

2006. F. Robertson. 2006. Misunderstanding Corruption.  AT 22(2): 8-11. See

The JI was founded in Malaysia on 1 January 1993 by Abdullah Sungkar who was there in exile from Indonesia with Abu Bakar Ba’asyir (Conboy, 2005: 34). [FROM:  Al Qaeda’s Southeast Asia, Jamaah Islamiyah and Regional Terrorism: Kinship and Family Links, By Noor Huda Ismail, Jan 8, 07:  http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2318, accessed Jan 10,2007]

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The Underside of State Power in Greater Central Asia

1. Preliminaries

The collapse of the Soviet Union was an event of public note, not only formally announced by Gorbachev but also widely remarked around the world, but since then some very non-public developments have been taking place in Central Asia that may equal it in importance.  As the ex-Soviet states in Central Asia have sought to exercise their new sovereignty, as Iran and Pakistan have sought to establish new positions in the world, and as Afghanistan has tried to form a viable state, other developments have been taking place on the underside of these public affairs.  Secret activities — non-legal, illegal, criminal practices – have been becoming a way of life for growing numbers of otherwise ordinary “law-abiding” citizens.

What Nordstrom has called “shadow networks” have become a powerful force in many parts of the world.  Shadow networks are “vast extra-state networks who move goods and services worldwide – networks that broker power comparable to, and in many cases greater than, a number of the world’s states.”[1]  “While these networks are not comprised by states themselves, neither are they entirely distinct from, or opposite to states – they work both through and around formal state representatives and institutions.”  “They cross various divides between legal, quasi-legal, gray markets and downright illegal activities.”[2]  They “forge economic policies, … operate within political realms, … fashion foreign policy. … [develop] dispute resolution systems and systems of enforcements… [and] have codes of conduct and rules of behavior set in social and cultural systems …”[3]  Because they persist even when states collapse they provide vital mechanisms of social integration.  Black markets are, in effect, “more powerful than formal institutions:  they set the ‘true’ currency prices for an entire nation.”  Such extra-state mechanisms of pricing are “both vast and powerful, transmitting untold fortunes through family and ethnic linkages, business partnership and triad associations.”[4]

They are significant in their economic importance and, owing to their informal connections with powerful people, in their political influence.  Altogether they “employ millions of people and generate more than a trillion dollars annually”; the combined annual value of illicit drug and weapons sales, for instance, amounts to one trillion dollars.[5]  The scale of the underground economy and its political mechanisms is something new.  As Manuel Castells puts it, “Crime is as old as humankind.  But global crime, the networking of powerful criminal organizations, and their associates, in shared activities throughout the planet, is a new phenomenon that profoundly affects international and natural economies, politics, security, and ultimately, societies at large.”[6]

Considered illicit in some contexts these networks are nonetheless integrated into the world market system, which operates outside the reach of all state controls.  Susan Strange says, “… the impersonal forces of world markets, integrated over the post-war period more by private enterprise in finance, industry and trade than by the cooperative decisions of government, are now more powerful than the state to whom ultimate political authority over society and economy is supposed to belong.”[7]

In this article I point out the significance of such networks in the region of our concern, Greater Central Asia, by examining the evidence for the rising power of shadow networks in the last few decades.

My project does have an obvious problem, however:  the inaccessibility and unreliability of information.  Shadow networks exist of course by avoiding public scrutiny and escaping state controls so that an attempt to describe how they are constituted, what they do, and how they have grown is hampered by the paucity of reliable information.  Enough is available, however – and much of it is undisputed even if it is of necessity only speculative – so that it is possible to construct from secondary sources a narrative of their activities over the last few decades in Greater Central Asia.

1. A fragmentary social history of shadow developments in Central Asia

I review the growth of these networks — non-statal “protection rackets” [8] – in the following periods:  (1) notable shadow activities extant in the 1970s; (2) the decade of the 1980s ending in 1991 when the Soviet Union evaporated; (3) the first half of the 1990s to 1996 when the Taliban seized Kabul and Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan; (4) the latter half of the 1990s up to autumn, 2001, when the Americans attacked the Taliban; and finally (5) the period from late 2001 to the present (2006).

(1) Some notable shadow activities in the 1970s. 

As a general rule it appears that many ordinary people in the countries of greater Central Asia fear and resent their governments and use various devices of holding officials at a distance.  Subterfuge is a way of life.  But it takes different forms in different places.  In the Central Asian states of the Soviet Union the government had in the 1970s so thoroughly penetrated local affairs and the economy that most people effectively worked in the service of the Soviet Union.  We know little about how carefully ordinary people complied with government regulations, but we do know that some officials in the Soviet system found ways to subvert the system to their own benefit, the most famous of them being Sharif Rashidov, head of the Communist Party, Uzbekistan, from 1959 to 1983, who bilked the Soviet Union of millions of dollars by over reporting cotton production.[9]

In the countries to the south of the Soviet Union political affairs were generally unsettled in the 1980s.  In 1978 and 1979 Iran and Afghanistan were in the throes of “revolutions”.  The Iranian Revolution was a broadly supported popular movement, although the specific nature of the new system being established under Ayatollah Khomeini was as yet unclear.  But Afghanistan’s “revolution” was something different altogether.  Despite their “revolutionary” claims, those who seized power in spring, 1978, were a relatively unknown group of Communists, and hardly had they come to power than they faced rebellions in many rural communities.  By mid-1979 they were losing their army to desertions and defections, a situation that prompted the Soviet Union to make the fatal decision to send troops into Afghanistan to stabilize the situation.  The war that continued for the next decade provided a context for the development of shadow activities that have become important today.

Pakistan, whose fortunes became more linked with inner Asia, was closely involved in activities in the Afghanistan war.  But another development that would become a vital secret project for the country started in 1976.  Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan had recently returned to Pakistan from Europe bringing “stolen uranium enrichment technologies from Europe,” acquired through his position at the classified URENCO uranium enrichment plant in the Netherlands.  Put in charge of building, equipping and operating Pakistan’s Kahuta facility, he developed an extensive clandestine network in order to obtain the necessary materials and technology to enrich uranium preparatory to developing a nuclear bomb.[10]  As a government sponsored program this project was kept under wraps for years, but Dr. Khan would – perhaps without the knowledge of Pakistani authorities (?) – eventually peddle his nuclear expertise to other countries, notably (as far as we know so far) to Libya, North Korea, and Iran.  What was a state-sponsored clandestine activity in the 1970s became a private “shadow” enterprise unmonitored by any state in the 1980s and 1990s.

Another sub rosa activity, with the Pakistan government’s consent if not connivance, was the anti-American activity of the Jamaat-i Islami party – a small elite party in which “full membership … was given only after years of proven service …”  The party had, according to Abbas “thousands of adherents, mostly among the student community, many of whom were toughs adept at strong-arm tactics.”[11]  They showed off their skills in November, 1979, when they organized a mob to storm and burn down the United States Embassy in Islamabad, killing two Americans and two Pakistani employees.  Mobs also attacked American cultural centers in Rawalpindi and Lahore.  The demonstrations had apparently been prompted by Iranian-inspired rumors that Americans were responsible for an attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, but they were less spontaneous than they appeared:  the Jama’at-i Islami party had been looking for an excuse to mimic the student attack on the American in Tehran few weeks earlier and the rumors provided it.[12]

1980 -1991:  A decade of many changes

In the 1980s new conflicts and abrupt shifts in social and political situations would upset the lives of people in many parts of the region, culminating in one of the momentous events in history, the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Intending to remain in Afghanistan for only a brief period, the Soviets had found themselves bogged down in what became an unwinable war.  American support for the opposition was one of the reasons and its involvement gave birth to several important “shadow” movements that would affect the rest of the world.  Essentially to punish the Soviets for their part in the Viet Nam war, the American CIA was  pouring billions of dollars into the opposition groups who called themselves “mujahedin.”  The conduit for this wealth was Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), originally a modest agency that was transformed by the war effort into a huge “parallel structure to the Pakistani state”[13] that funneled billions of dollars worth of assistance to the mujahedin.

But as the war dragged on, despite the large infusions of cash, more was required.  The CIA/ISI hatched the idea of expanding the financial resources of the opposition effort by encouraging the Afghan peasants to produce opium for international consumption.  The relatively limited practice by a few peasants of cultivating some opium poppies for local consumption, often for medicinal purposes, was transformed into a huge international drug industry that nourished the insatiable demand of the capitalist world.  “As the Mujahedin advanced and conquered new regions, they were told to impose a levy on opium to finance the revolution.  To pay the tax, farmers planted more poppies.  Drug merchants from Iran… offered growers credit in advance of their crops … [W]ith the help of the ISI the Mujahedin opened hundreds of heroin laboratories.  Within two years the Pakistan –Afghanistan borderland had become the biggest center for the production of heroin in the world … Annual profits were estimated between $100 billion and $200 billion.”[14]

Broadening of the drug trade:  Global corrupt networks

N93  “Between 1983 and 1992, narcotics revenues for Pakistan rose from $384 million to $1.8 Billion thanks to the intervention of the ISI.  “

The opium/heroin industry in turn financed other forms of illicit trade.  “While heroin was smuggled out of the region, high-tech equipment was smuggled in.  … [The ISI started] a prosperous smuggling business of duty-free goods.  The trucks were ‘taxed’ at various roadblocks by corrupt Pakistani customs officers and the transport Mafia; warlords who controlled the territories they had to cross levied their own taxes and even customs officials in Kabul took their own cut.”[15]  By the 1990s the smuggling network would “extend into Central Asia, Iran and the Persian Gulf, [and would represent] a crippling loss of revenue for all these countries but particularly Pakistan, where local industry has been decimated by the smuggling of foreign consumer goods.”  It became the biggest smuggling racket in the world.  Rashid reports that in the 1990s “[m]any of the huge Mercedes and Bedford trucks [passing through the Afghanistan-Pakistan border] are stolen and have false number plates.  The goods they carry have no invoices.  The drivers may cross up to six international frontiers on false driving licenses and without route permits or passports.  The consignments range from Japanese camcorders to English underwear and Earl Grey tea, Chinese silk to American computer parts, Afghan heroin to Pakistani wheat and sugar, East European Kalashnikovs to Iranian petroleum – and nobody pays customs duties or sales tax.”[16]

N86:  “The costs throughout the anti-Soviet Jihad were phenomenal. … To function, the pipeline relied on complex and expensive infrastructures located around the world.  The keep arms, drugs, duty-free good, smuggled products and cash moving, money had to change hands many times, and each exchange had a cost.  … handled by very expensive hidden banking structures … Theft was rampant …”

The impact of this contraband industry was to corrupt a widening circle of Pakistani officials, especially those directly engaged in the war effort.   “Pakistani customs officers at the various borders with Afghanistan … often demanded bribes to let the convoys of supplies pass. Commanders and fighters needed cash to buy their way out of jail.”[17]  “All the Pakistani agencies involved were taking bribes – Customs, Customs Intelligence, CBR [Central Board of Revenue], the Frontier Constabulary and the administrators in the tribal belt.  Lucrative customs jobs on the Afghan border were ‘bought’ by applicants who paid bribes to senior bureaucrats ….”[18]

To enable the flow of cash for this enterprise the CIA sought “an ad hoc infrastructure” of international finance.  The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) turned out to be an ideal vehicle for transferring and laundering money.  “[T]he CIA regularly utilized BCCI accounts to fund its covert operations.  Moreover, the BCCI was extremely well connected in the murky underworld of illegal arms.  … its ‘black network’ [was] virtually a secret banking institution within the bank [BCCI].”   “By the mid-1980s, the black network had gained control of the port of Karachi and handled all customs operations for CIA shipments to Afghanistan, including the necessary bribes for the ISI.”[19]

Another underground funding activity of the BCCI was the nuclear project already underway in Pakistan.  “From the mid-1980s, the bank [BCCI] donated large sums of money (up to $10 million) to finance a secret science laboratory run by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan …”[20]  Its support would have been vital to the success of the project.  “In 1985 Pakistan crossed the threshold of weapons-grade uranium production, and by 1986 it is thought to have produced enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Pakistan continued advancing its uranium enrichment program, and according to Pakistani sources, the nation acquired the ability to carry out a nuclear explosion in 1987.”[21]

There was another source of shadow activity that would be born and nourished in this setting and then exported to many other places.  In “[a] joint venture between the Saudis, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jamaat-e-Islami, put together by the ISI”[22] Muslims from other countries were invited to participate in the “holy war” against the Soviets.  Most of them came from the Arab world, although many were from elsewhere.  Rashid calls those who came “radicals”:  “Between 1982 and 1992 some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan Mujahedin.  Tens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new madrassas that Zia’s military government began to fund in Pakistan and along the Afghan border.  Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced by the jihad.”[23]  But I wonder if some of them were perhaps less radical Islamists than disaffected progressives, frustrated with the repressions of their own Middle Eastern governments.  In those countries mere criticism was taken as evidence of disloyalty, even treason, so that those who objected to state abuses of power were effectively criminalized.  Kohlman says that “[a]mong these radical youth, talk of overthrowing hated Middle Eastern governments in a suicidal wave of terror resonated much more clearly than manning an artillery post … in Afghanistan.”[24]  No wonder their governments were happy to ship off such people to fight “holy war” elsewhere.[25]

The arrival of the “Arab-Afghans” in Afghanistan was facilitated by a devout Wahhabi cleric from Saudi Arabia named Sheikh Abdullah Azzam.  In 1984 with funds received from Saudi Intelligence, the Saudi Red Crescent, the World Muslim League and individual Saudi princes, he established an organization in Peshawar, Makhtab al Khidmat (“services center”), to support the Arab-Afghan project.  In 1985 he reached an agreement with Abd-i-Rab Rasoul Sayyaf, head of the “Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen” organization, for one of its training camps to be used to train the first twenty-five Arab-Afghans.  At about that time, among those who came from the Middle East[26] was a former student of Azzam, Osama Bin Laden, whose wealth and connections gave him prominence and influence among the Arab-Afghan visitors.  When Azzam was mysteriously assassinated in November, 1989, Bin Ladin took over the organization, and under his leadership the organization transform into something new.  Wht began as an organization to support the holy war against the Soviet Union became an international “web of radical organizations that helped carry out the World Trade Centre bombing and the bombings of US Embassies in Africa in 1998.”[27]  And more.

Thus, in the 1980s several notable shadow enterprises took form and rose in scale and financial importance in greater Central Asia.  The CIA’s “secret” supply system for the mujahedin was developed in this period; the illicit drug industry and the attendant system of smuggling manufactured goods into the area was encouraged and financially enabled by the CIA/ISI and the BCCI; and Dr. Khan’s secret nuclear project for the Pakistan government and his private marketing network to other governments began to develop in this period.

1989-1992

But systemic changes were in the offing throughout the region that would allow and in some cases require adjustments in the shadow already operating.  In 1988 it became clear to everyone that the effort in Afghanistan against the Soviets was paying off, for on January 11 Gorbachev announced that the Soviets would withdraw their troops from Afghanistan and be completely out by spring of the next year.  Also, the Soviets and Americans jointly announced an agreement to cease support for their respective sides by December, 1991.   That alignments would have to change was now clear.  Everyone would have to scramble for new ways to protect themselves and their interests as the old relations of power gave way.  On element of the coming realignment could scarcely have been foreseen by many:  The mighty Soviet Union would expire with scarcely a whimper.

Momentous events began to take place in rapid succession.  By February, 1989, Soviet troops had quit Afghanistan.  Within the Soviet Union there were signs that the integrity of the empire was weakening:  In 1987 the Polish government recognized the Solidarity movement and within a few months the Communists would be voted out in Poland.

1988:  In Tajikistan a three-sided struggle for dominance was already underway – Communists (centered in Khojand), officially recognized Islamic leaders (centered in Dushambe), and revivalist-democratic forces (centered in Kulab).

In 1988 there is ethnic unrest in the Baltic republics; the Nagorno-Karabakh soviet breaks for Azerbaijan to join with the Armenian republic, creating a violent conflict.  In June Gorbachev becomes president of the Soviet Union.  In 1989 the first multi-candidate elections are held in various sectors of the Soviet Union; Yeltsin and Sakharov overwhelmingly win seats in the Congress of People’s Deputies.  In the mean time protesters in Georgia demand independence; Coal miners strike in Siberia, Ukraine, Central Asia; there are demonstrations in the Baltic states and the Ukraine for independence; Armenia and Azerbaijani engaged in civil war.  And in eastern Europe the Berlin Wall comes down.  In 1990 Lithuania declares independence; Yeltsin resigns from the Communist Party; the Russian republic declares its own sovereignty.  The year 1991 was decisive: Boris Yeltsin became the first democratically elected President of independent Russia; an attempted coup fails; Latvia declares its independence; Gorbachev resigns as head of CP and Yeltsin closes Pravda and disbands CP; the independence of the Baltic states is  recognized; Ukraine becomes independent; the Presidents of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, without consulting any other republic presidents, sign a treaty to abolish USSR and form themselves as a Commonwealth of Independent States; Gorbachev announces his resignation and USSR ceases to exist.

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell.  The Soviet bloc collapsed as communist governments lost elections or underwent democratization in Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania.  The first elections for the Congress of People’s Deputies were held in the USSR.  In June, 1989, riots and other disturbances broke out in Soviet Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan).  New political parties were formed in Soviet Central Asia:  Birlik in Uzbekistan (May, 1989), Rastokhiz (Rebirth) National Front, which would become important in Tajikistan (September, 1989), the Democratic Party of Tajikistan (January, 1990), Erk, which broke away from Birlik in February, 1990.  In May, 1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian Republic in the first free election in the Soviet Union.  In August, 1991, a putsch attempt against Gorbachev collapsed in four days, but not before several leaders of Central Asian republics had embarrassed themselves by supporting the putsch.   In December Kazakhstan seceded from the Soviet Union, several Slavic republic leaders formed the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union, effectively announcing its final expiration.  The Communist government of Afghanistan survives for three more months but finally falls in April, 1992, marking the conclusion of a long struggle in Afghanistan, and of an era.  But it would almost immediately segue into another painful war, only perhaps even more cruel than ever, among the mujahedin themselves.

The impact on the Islamist imagination was extreme elation.  As the Muslims who had fought the Soviets saw it, they had defeated the second most powerful empire in the world.  Some of them now believed they were ready to take on the other great world empire in the name of Islam, the United States.  But also it was perhaps time to bring their skills to bear on the apostate regimes in their various home countries.  Many of the “Arab Afghans” began to disperse back to their home countries, where they would promote Islamism.

They were a new kind of ideological force.  By 1990 “a small group of motivated fundamentalists, upset by the degraded state of the Muslim world, had been transformed in five short years into an influential transnational terrorist army backed by the fabulous wealth of Usama Bin Laden, ….”[28]  What the Arab-Afghans took back to their respective countries was a knowledge of warfare and a commitment to Islamism that would generate crises wherever they went.  “[T]he Afghan jihad, with the support of the CIA, had spawned dozens of fundamentalist movements across the Muslim world which were led by militants who had grievances, not so much against the Americans, but their own corrupt, incompetent regimes.”[29]  The first notable indication of their impact would take place in Algeria in 1991, when the Islamic Salvation Front won the first round of parliamentary elections, prompting a military crackdown and a civil war that in the next seven years would take the lives of  70,000 Algerians.[30]  Similarly, the activities of “Afghan Arabs” in Egypt, Chechnya, Bosnia, and the Philippines would be expressed in violent activities.

In the mean time they had become unwelcome back in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  By 1993 the Pakistani government was closing down the Arab-Afghan offices, creating a problem for the unbroken flow of new volunteers for holy war coming from virtually all over the world by now.  The Bosnian civil war conveniently provided a new site for them to fight in the name of God. [31]

Osama Bin Laden himself had left Afghanistan in 1990, disappointed at the internal bickering among the mujahedin.  His return to Saudi Arabia at that time seemed to be fortuitous, as it was just before Saddam Hussein’s August invasion of Kuwait.  Bin Laden volunteered the services of the Arab-Afghans, confident of their ability to repulse the Iraqi army.  He opposed the use of American troops as they become ensconced on the sacred soil where Islam began.  But his proposal was rejected, and the clash that eventuated between him and the Saudi establishement became so intense that the was expelled from the country and deprived of his citizenship.  [Griffin]

These events stimulated the imagination of young Muslims all over the Middle East and Central and South Asia.  Young volunteers were still coming forward to join the holy war, inspired by the successes of the Afghanistan war.  They reflected the growing sense among many that the secular tradition that had dominated public affairs in the Muslim world had not worked, and they were ready to consider Islam as a way to deal with the problems of their world.  Young people in many parts of the Muslim world were reading the works of Ibn Taymiya and Sayyed Qutb[32].  In Pakistan “The jihad literature became a popular genre in the 1990s …Readers of these materials are often younger people who are searching for meaning in their lives and who have little to look forward to in a stagnant economy and disintegrating society.”[33]  Zia’s emphasis on Islam as a way of legitimating his claims on power and of directing attention to Kashmir no doublt contributed to this new interest in Islam.

As the war in Afghanistan wound down the Pakistan government in 1989 instigated a new “Kashmir insurgency”[34] where the young warriors graduating from the many local madrassas of the country could be absorbed.  They had been educated in the Saudi Arabian funded madrassas that become every more important to the citizenry as the Pakistan government failed to provide sufficient funds for its own educational system.[35]

Moreover, the Pakistan government committed itself clandestinely to promoting Islam all over the Central Asian world left high and dry by the demise of the Soviet Union.

1. 89: “The ISI continued to export Islamist warriors from Pakistan to Central Asia and the Caucasus.  While Soviet troops began a painful retreat from Afghanistan, a stream of covert operations was launched in Central Asia.  The ISI acted as ‘a catalyst for the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of new republics in Central Asia’.  … [with the demise of the Sov Un] the ISI played a pivotal role in supporting Islamist armed insurgencies which destabilized [the Central Asian republics].”

N94  [re Chechnya] The Pakistani plan was to encourage Islamist insurgency in Chechnya, forcing the Russians to fight in the Caucasus.  Accordingly, in 1994 the ISI began nurturing Shamil Basayev, a young Chechen field commander.  He was trained and indoctrinated among with a small group of lieutenants at the Amir Muawi camp in the Khost province in Afghanistan.  … Experienced instructors … were also sent to Chechnya to train future fighters. … [95] The master plan for Islamist insurgency in the Caucasus and Kashmir was drawn up at a meeting held in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1996 and attended by the ISI and various Islamist armed groups.  Osama bin Laden and high-ranking Iranian intelligence officers were also present.”

N 95 [in 1995] Basyev, and later Khattab [his deputy], linked up with criminal organizations in Russia as well as with Albanian organized crime and the Kosovo Liberation Army… These alliances proved fruitful in generating profits from the drug trade and contraband, especially that of arms.  Chechnya soon became an important hub for various rackets, including kidnapping and the trade in counterfeit dollars…”

N96:  “… from Chechnya, Mujahedin fighters would continue to move west along the drug route to Albania and Kosovo, reaching the eastern frontier of Europe

Moreover, inside Pakistan many local Islamist organizations took form.  For instance, Lashkar-i Tayba.

1. 213: LT “receives grants from around the world, mostly from well-to-do Ahle-Hadith/Wahhabi sympathizers, though their primary source has been contributions from Saudi Arabia. … Handsome monetary rewards to the families of boys who sacrificed their lives in Kashmir and regular monthly income for the families of jihadis fighting in Kashmir made jihad an attractive venture for unemployed youth …”[36]

Another factor in the grown numbers of young men committing themselves to holy war was the weak economy.  In the region of the former Soviet states of Central Asia, as Pakistan survived by soaking up funds for holy war from the oil-rich Muslim nations, the economy faltered.  All across Central Asia there was a collapse of employment opportunity created by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

N 109  “from 1990 to 2000, income inequality more than tripled, a third of the world population was forced to live below the poverty line …  Along the periphery of the former Soviet Union, extreme poverty supplied armed groups with fertile ground for recruitment. Secessionist movements inside the new federation, as in the Caucasus, produced ethnic conflicts, as did nationalist movements within newly formed states.”

While Pakistan was skimping on funds for its own educational system it was funding Islamist groups in the ex-Soviet states of Central Asia, especially the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

N 92 “Financially and militarily backed by ISI, the IMU found widespread support among the local tribes of the Fergana valley in its fight against the newly formed governments of the republics.

N 92 “Given that 60 percent of the [Fergana] valley’s population is below the age of 25, it is a fertile recruitment ground for Islamist armed groups.

Criminal connections with Islamism

P207:  “Realizing that sectarian outfits were untouchable entities, professional criminals hastened to join these groups and benefit from this window of opportunity.  For instance, when about five hundred trained gunmen belonging to MQM [????] were abandoned by their masters [date???] , they tentatively turned to the SSP [Sepahi Sahaba] in search of a job.  They found it to be a promising career.  All they had to do was grow beards and learn a few anti-Shia lessons.  The rest they were accustomed to – butchering people.”

P206:  “local criminals and thugs were hired [by the SSP] to do the “needful” [eliminate Shias].  Criminal elements soon realized that this was a mutually beneficial deal – coming under the umbrella of religious outfits provided a perfect cover for their own activities.  Over time, the drug traders also developed their ties with sectarian groups, especially the SSP, reproducing in Pakistan relationships between militant groups and drug traffickers that had already evolved in Afghanistan.”

p.207:  “… other small outfits were mainly ‘personal mafias of influential feudals, led by local mullahs’” [source:  Herald, Karachi, June 1994, p. 29].

P 206-7:  Riaz Basra [who murdered someone on behalf of SSP] was arrested “but he had ‘influential’ friends … who helped Basra escape …  Basra was operating in league with some junior ISI agents …”

The illicit trade that linked Afghanistan and Pakistan with the rest of the world was matched by some specifidc attempts of Pakistani intelligence to foster Islamist movements in Kashmir but also in Chechnya and elsewhere.

Islamism and illicit support is exported to Central Asia and elsewhere

N 119:  Partnership in the Afghan heroin trade financed Islamist groups all over Asia, including China.  Opium and heroin flooded the province of Xinjiang and also helped to support the Uighur rebellion against the government of Beijing.”

2.23 Afghanistan

2.23.1  1992-96:  Afghanistan – Mujahedin war

Destruction of Kabul [Rashid, griffin]

All these affairs were taking place as the Mujahedin were fighting over control of Kabul, destroying the city.

2.23.2  1994:   Rise of the Taliban

>  Taliban:  appeal to local demand for order, Islamic ideals [early Taliban, later Pak Taliban, ;

Powerful link with Pakistan:

Benazir’s involvement:  linking up of Pakistan’s NWFP to Afghanistan

2.3 1996-2001

In Afghanistan:

>  1996:

Two critical events in 1996:  Taliban take Kabul; Osama returns.  This time to wage holy war against the U.S.

Taliban vs Northern Alliance

N119:  “… relations between state-shells, Muslim and Islamic states tend to be cooperative and characterized by trust, sometimes even among enemies. … A delegation from [the two sides] met and negotiated a deal.  Accordingly, a corridor was opened between the two forces to allow the drug couriers through, while Northern Alliance and Taliban warriors continued killing each other.”

Osama returns from Sudan

Bin Laden himself left Afghanistan in 1990 disillusioned by the local bickering among the parties and many were already establishing themselves elsewhere.

1996-2001:  the radicalization of Islamism in Afghanistan and the wider region

>  1996-2001  Northern Alliance vs Taliban

>  1998: [1996?]

Osama declares war

In Pakistan?

Pak has acquired the bomb?  When?

Abbas 232:  A possible “Pakistani hand in the development of North Korea’s nuclear program…“It is widely known that Pak had imported North Korean missle technology, and its nuclear-capable missile “Ghauri” greatly resembles North Korea’s Nodong …

Abbas 231:  “… Pakistan nuclear scientists’ links with Iranian and Libyan nuclear programs were unearthed in late 2003….

Nuclear Tests:  “On May 28, 1998 Pakistan announced that it had successfully conducted five nuclear tests.”  http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/index.html

Lee 2006:27-28:  “state-sponsored proliferation” [of corruption] ‘in which high government officials covertly transfer strategic nuclear goods to client states or groups, either for personal gain or as a matter of policy.  The black market network run by Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan … pioneered the centrifuge enrichment program that enabled Pakistan to prodeuce nuclear arms.  Khan is known to have sold key components of a nuclear weapons program … to Iran, North Korea and Lybia.  Libya also received blueprints … .  [A]n Iranian exile group claims that the network provided an undisclosed quantity of HEU [????] to the Iranian government in 2001.

P293:  “… a U.S. State Department report [released April 2000]… pinpointed South Asia for the first time as a major center of international terrorism… asserted that Pakistan ‘has tolerated terrorists living and moving freely within its territory’ besides supporting ‘groups that engage in violence in Kashmir’… The report concluded that the treat of terrorism now came less from state-sponsored attacks than form ‘loose networks’ of groups and individuals motivated more by religion or ideology than by politics and financed increasingly by drug trafficking, crime, and illegal trade.”

>  Central Asian movements:  Chechnya

By this time the deals were done and the secrets [all of them?] were out.  In March, 2001, Qadeer Khan was removed from his position in the Khan research laboratories  and given a ceremonial positon… … to a majority of Pakistanis, Qadeer Khan continues to be viewed as a national hero because very few people in Pakistan are ready to believe that he did all this [deception] on his own.””

2. history

2.4  2001 – 2006.  After the attacks of 9/11/01.

2.41.  Pakistan and Afghanistan.  At this time the two countries – at least the southern part of Afghanistan – were linked up.  Phone exchange.

2.41.1 After the attack:

P223-4:  “General Hamed Gul …[argued] that, besides Zionist collaborators, elements from within the U.S. government were involved in the terrorist act.”

2.41.2  Musharaf changes course

Musharraf forced to change course away from Taliban [but not Kashmir]

Internally Pak is conflicted:  Islamists vs secular/westernized Pak

Kashmir continues

2.41.3:  Continued popular support fort the Taliban in Pakistan

>  Taliban, with many Pakistanis helping:  popular and government

Abbas 223: “… the call for jihad in support of the Taliban [against the Americans in Oct, 2001] resounded from mosques all across Pakistan. …. It is estimated that around ten thousand Pakistani jihadis crossed into Afghanistan to fight along with the Taliban.”

2.41.4:   Taliban defeated:  Pakistan allowed to bring out its people [gov’t and popular] [Griffin??]

2.42  Afghanistan

2.42.1     In Afghanistan a government is formed, elections

“warlords” and tribal elements

Progressives come in, with support of outside $

Local drug industry continues

2.42.2 Iraq war upstages the Afghanistan war

2002:  Americans start leaving even though they have not caught Osama

Madrassahs gain in importance and Pak $ goes into armaments

Criminal elements join the cause

Pakistan public objects

2002/??  American attack on Iraq

Pak public objects

2.43 Central Asian states
Uzbekistan gives airport to Americans [date??]

2.5  Contemporary picture

Mihalka 2006:  136.  In addition to corruption, drug trafficking and criminality continue to destabilize the countries in the region. … In 2001, 26 metric tons of heroin and morphine were seized in the countries surrounding Afghanistan, 48 percent in Iran and 33 pe3rcent in Pakistan.  Tajikistan accounted for 16 percent …  Of opium seizures 84 percent were in Iran, 9 percent in Pakistan and 4 percent in Tajikistan … UNODC estimates that 23 percent of Afghanistan’s drugs transit Tajikistan … … [G]ross profits from illegal drug trade in Central Asia exceed US$2 billion a year and make up more than 7 percent of the region’s GDP … Moreover, the relative size of the drug abusing population in Central Asia is about three times higher than in Western Europe, with 2.3 percent of the population over 15 in Kyrgyzstan, 1.2 percent on Tajikistan and 1.1 percent in Kazakhstan estimated to be drug users.

2.50 Blank 2006:  122:  “… at least three states in Central Asia: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan appear to be increasingly unstable. …[and] far too many of [Tajikistan’s] people and to much of its economy depend on the drug trade for sustenance to be complacent about its chance.”

2.50 Guang 2006: 22.  “…the new surge of terrorist attacks sweeping the world following the Iraq War, the formation of a ‘terrorist arc’ stretching across the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia is being formed. … [entailing] intellectual connections, organizational networks, and activities.”

2.50 Another part is that so many issues in the region are contested:  the several wars in the region generate, of course, various and competing “official” definitions of the situation, all of them presumably driven by particular interests.

2.50 Blank 2006: 115:  “… in Central Asia … there is already what Lord George Robertson, as Secretary General of NATO, called ‘a guaranteed supply chain of instability.’”

2.51  Afghanistan

In Afghanistan:  state institutions have been formed, hope for an independent government

Jalal, and women

Still:  drug industry, little development

2.52  China, Xinjiang

Shichor 2006: 108.  “Chinese have underlined Uyghur activism and Islamic radicalism and have frequently exaggerated their threat.  For one reason, they want to forestall and preempt a likely deterioration in the ethno-religious power balance in Xinjiang … For another, …to justify and legitimize a further crackdown campaign – ultimately aimed at integrating China’s restive nationalists into the ‘people’ .. or to educate and …  warn other nationalists about the consequences… Finally by depicting national separatism and religious radicalism as a threat  … Beijing can (and does) scare potential external supporters … This has opened the door for the PRC to join the U.S.-led international crusade against terrorism…”

2.53 In Pak:  gov’t and criminal elements are both involved in the same institutions [parliament, military]

2.53.1  Pakistan on the ground, local levels

I Pak growing resentment

Tribal Territory

Abbas 234:  “The military operation against Al-Qaeda operators in the Waziristan region in March-April 2004 resulted in heavy casualties for the Pakistan army.”  [p230, was “For the first time the Pak Army is operating in the Waziristan region.”

Zeb 2006: 72.  Talk of building a fence between Pakistan and Afghanistan [can’t be serious]

Pakistan’s independent Islamist movements, now out of control [or too strong for M. to control?]

Abbas 240:  “No one has a clear idea about their exact numbers [the Jehadis of Pakistan], but their potential capability resides in the subconscious of those in authority [in Pakistan], and this stays there because the reality of it is too hard to confront.  Their funding will not dry up because thousands of Pakistanis and Arabs believe in them and contribute to them.”

N105.  “The country’s [Pakistan] formal economy is on the verge of collapse; with 65.5 percent of GDP takern up by debt servicing and 40 percent by defense, the financial year starts with a negative balance.  The country’s wealth has been depleted by a deeply corrupted oligarchy… Over $88 billion has been deposited in American and European banks, more than the $67 billion and the $82 billion of the country’s total domestic and foreign debt respectively.  Unemployment is rampant; of the 800,000 people who enter the labor market every year, very few find work.  …Every year 135,000 women die in childbirth due to lack of medical assistance…. [106] Against this bleak background, the black economy has been growing steadily and, at the end of the 1990s, was three times the size of the formal economy.”

Abbas 229:  “The military campaign in Iraq created such an anti-American perception in Pakistan that Musharraf’s pro-U.S. policies came under increasing attack.”

Abbas 232:  “General Aziz Khan, Musharraf’s longtime right-hand man … said that America was the No. 1 enemy of the Muslim world…”

Nek M.  Paracha/Dalrymple

Abbas 214:  “LT… around half a million people attend this gathering annual, which is second only to Tableeghi-Jamaat’s (preaching group) assembly, which attracts around a million people every year.  LT used these occasions to expand its network …, by linking up wht extremist groups oerating in other parts of the world…”

Abbas 240:  “Resulting from a lack of educational opportunities, and ongoing sense of strategic insecurity, and streams of financial support from Wahhabi sources in the Arab states, the Madrasa industry [in Pakistan] … was producing tens of thousands of deadly earnest future “heroes.”  Their one unity is their common hatred of the westernized Pakistani elite, India, America, and Israel.

Islamist beliefs / claims NOW

Abbas 211-12:  “Hafiz Saeed,.. [creator of Lashkar-i Taiba, the militant wing of the group Markaz Dawat-ul-Irshad] [212] [asserted that] ‘We believe in Huntington’s clash of civilizations, and our jihad will continue until Islam becomes the dominant religion.”

Who the jehadis are:

P202:  “These jehadis belong to all social classes, … the majority come from the nonweapon-bearing areas of the country [Pakistan], as opposed to the ‘marital’ areas, indicating that the generally peace-loving people of the country had been sufficiently militarized in the aftermath of the Afghan war. … On the news of the martyrdom of one sone, the family of the deceased celebrated the event by distributing sweets and offered another son to the cause. The unemployed youth of Pakistan had found an occupation, an ideology, and a new family in which they found bounding and brotherhood. … they consider themselves the elite in the cause of Allah, and they have developed the infectious pride to inspire thousands of others into following them.”[37]

Criminal connections in government

Mihalka 2006:  137. “Criminals have also been more aggressive in entering politics  For example, a reputed criminal boss. Ryspek Akmatbayev, won a special by-election with almost 80 percent of the vote in Kyrgyzstan on April 9, 2006.”

Pakistan power structures

P 228:  “… both Irfanullah Marwat, a despicable criminal, and Maulana Azam Tariq, a committed and self-advertised terrorist, became members of the houses of the legislature while some of the most corrupt politicians were also inducted into the King’s party.  It was obvious that Musharraf had not just forgiven corruption but sanctified it.”

1. 225: “The obstacle in the way of a complete and effective clampdown on jihadi outfits was Pakistan’ Kashmir policy. … giving up jihadis who had been groomed and financed to operate in Kashmir was considered a suicidal step for Musharraf and the army. … extremism inside Pakistan was inherently and inextricably linked with the actions and ideology of jihadi groups operating in Kashmir.”

Afghan after 2002

Afghan in Kandahar who misses the Taliban

>  Al Qaeda:  appeal to ME concerns (Saudi Arabian leadership, Israel), Islamist/Muslim ideals, networks, imagination around Muslim world

>  Osama’s original struggle with the royal family, Saudi Arabia.

>  IMU:  appeal to local struggle against repression, for Muslim regional integrity [early Islamist movement]

>  HT:  appeal to struggle against local oppression [woman’s comment]

III.  The trajectory, prospects

3.1  Principles, or general propositions that seem to be worth following.

“As war gives way to peace in the conflict zones … people begin to rebuild war- devastated economies … often rely on buying and selling the same goods they did during war, along the same non-state channels …Those most successful … amass economic fortunes that can be translated into political power, fortunes that can reshape social, economic and political landscapes.”[36]

Contemporary situation in CA:  instability.  Stephen Blank.

“Business people who profit from shadow transactions are unlikely to give up shadow sources of power, profit and supply as they develop legitimate enterprises, and in fact, their success may depend on keeping these networks current.”[43]

Ordinary people are involved in shadow systems

“Average people, to survive, must trade outside formal state channels.” [41]  “… drug and illicit weapons trade … is often the means by which citizens gain the currency to buy industrial necessities, agricultural supplies and development goods… purchase hard currency,.. broker power, … allow investments into land, legal industries and political partnerships.  They spawn and support subsidiary industries, both legal and illicit…”[43]

“Profiteers, smugglers and black/gray market merchants are not isolated actors loosely linked into a web of profit.  Farmers who plant drug related crops or miners … have families and children they must provide for… from paying mortgages to celebrating birthdays.  Truckers who transport illicit goods need tires and tune-ups for their trucks, and dental work …Pilots … fly smuggled goods, …  The banker that launders the money and the college student who buys a smuggled [object]… are as essential to the whole enterprise as the growers and transporters.  All of these polpe are deeply immersed in society and civil life.”[46] [these are not ] “merely markets – devoid of social, cultural, political and legal ramifications.”  “… up to a third of global transactional exchanges.” [46]

Shadow systems link into legitimate systems

Nordstrom has tried to show “links across areas of politico-economic activity that are traditionally divided in theory and analysis – links that show complex socio-cultural and political as well as economic organization …” [39].  “Networks overlap.  The dangerously criminal, the illicit and the informally mundane cannot, in actual practice, be always or easily disaggregated.” [40].

Conclusion

In fact, these social networks are not haphazard and are not without important social controls:  “From diamonds to drugs, dominions exist that follow hierarchies of authority, rules of conduct, ways of punishing transgression and codes of behavior.  Within these dominions, communities forms, ideologies evolve and worldwide alliances and antagonisms are developed.  These cannot be confused with states, but [they]… do have governing structures, law-like apparatuses and security forces.”[46]

The broadening of networks around the world and linking up criminal and state interests

CNp48 quotes Strange [1996:111]:  “what is new and of importance in the international political economy is the networks of links being forged between organized crime in different parts of the world.” CNp48 quotes Castells [1998:167] “there is money laundering by the hundreds of billions (maybe trillions) of dollars.  Complex financial schemes and international trade networks link up the criminal economy to the formal economy.”  CN: “I can stand in the most remote war zones of the world and watch a veritab le supermarket of goods move into and out of this country along extra-state lines. … it would appear that non-formal economies play a formidable role in countries like Japan, Germany and the USA as well as in areas of more rapid economic and political change and development.”[49]

Remember to end with the rapid pace of change in the modern world

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Blank, Stephen.  2006.  Strategic surprise?  Central Asia in 2006.  China and Eurasiua Forum Quarterly 4(2): 109-130.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E.  1962.  Social anthropology:  Past and present.  In:  Social Anthropology and Other Essays.  New York:  Free Press.

Guang, Pan. 2006.  East Turkestan terrorism and the terrorist arc:  China’s post-9/11 anti-terror strategy.  China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 4(2):19-24.

Lee, Rensselaer.  2006.  Nuclear smuggling, rogue states and terrorists.  China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 4(2): 25-32.

Nordstrom, Carolyn.  2000.  Shadows and Sovereigns.  Theory, Culture & Society 17(4): 35-74.

Shichor, Yitzhak.  2006.  Fact and fiction:  A Chinese documentary on Eastern Turkestan terrorism.  China and Eurasia Forum        Quarterly 4(2):80-108.

Sivan, Emmanuel.  1985.  Radical Islam:  Medieval Theology and Modern Politics.  New Haven:  Yale University.

Strange, Susan.  1996.  The Retreat of the State:  The Diffusions of Power in the World Economy.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University.

Tilly, Charles.  1985.  “War making and state making as organized crime”, in PB. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds.), Bring the State Back In.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University.

Zeb, Rizwan.  2006.  Cross border terrorism issues plaguing Pakistan-Afghanistan relations.  China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 4(2): 69-74.

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CN51:    “What theory lacks is an understanding of the ways in which shadow networks function in daily international life – how for example, disputes are settled and judgments enforced; who wields authority …; and how extra-state realities shape global markets and fashion political power.”

One informed observer of the region says “the pace of political developments [in Central Asia] has greatly accelerated and could develop in faster and even unpredictable ways in 2006.”[38]

Surprising turns of events, Stephen Blank has argued, “is intrinsic to the nature of the contemporary world order…”[39]

Charles Tilly’s terms,

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ICSSA.org ???

Lesson from ISI’s killing of a Journalist in Pakistan By abid ullah jan June 19, 2006. ——————————————————————————– It seems the conscience of humanity doesn’t stir until someone pays the price for resisting oppression and our right to know and tell the truth. On June 16, 2006, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) silenced another journalist, Hidayatullah Khan, forever. He was handcuffed and shot from behind after experiencing unknown torment at the hands of his abductors for six months. That is why you are reading this column, which I am writing with utter shame for not having said a word in Mr. Khan’s favor when he was alive. The question, however, is: What type of words would have saved his life? Appeals, protests, or exposing the real faces of his persecutors? Read at: http://www.icssa.org/isi_murder.html Also see: Journalism in Pakistan: http://www.icssa.org/Journalism%20in%20Pakistan.htm Unlearn old lessons of journalism: http://www.icssa.org/unlearn_old_lessons.htm

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Rashid Taliban 135-6:  on Arab-Afghans that went to Algeria [Islamic Salvation Front] and to Egypt[where they bombed…]

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Bin Laden himself left Afghanistan in 1990 disillusioned by the local bickering among the parties and many were already establishing themselves elsewhere.

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In July, 1977, Army chief of staff General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq deposed the duly elected Prime Minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, appointing himself Chief Marshall Law Administrator.  And in April, 1979 – another fatal decision — he hanged Bhutto, whom he accused of corruption.

[1] Nordstrom 2000: 36.

[2] Nordstrom 2000: 36.  Shadow powers are similar to what Napoleoni (2005:255) describes as “state shells”:  armed organizations that resemble the socio-economic infrastructure (taxation, employment services, etc.) of a state without the political claims of sovereignty and self-determination.

[3] Nordstrom 2000: 51.

[4] Nordstrom 2000: 45.

[5] Nordstrom 2000: 36-37.

[6] Castells 1998: 166, quoted in Nordstrom 2000: 38.  See also Wm Reno “shadow states” [“nation-based systems of power and patronage paralleling state power” Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone [Cambridge]; Warlord Politics and African States [Reinner]]]

[7] Strange 1996:4, quoted in Nordstrom 2000: 38)

[8] The term comes from Charles Tilly (1985:169) who actually used it for governments, calling them “quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy.”  His provocative language effectively places shadow networks on a par with states.  Certainly shadow networks are the real “protection rackets,” only lacking of course any semblance of legitimacy, which of course one reason they carry on their affairs surreptitiously and welcome all appearances of legitimacy they can muster.

[9] Rashid 2002:80.

[10] Pakistan Nuclear Weapons; A Brief History of Pakistan’s Nuclear Program http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/index.html

[11] Abbas 2005: 100.

[12] Steve Coll ????.  On the Jamaat-i Islami party of Pakistan see Abbas 2005: 100-101 and elsewhere.

[13] Napoleoni 2005: 82

[14] Napoleoni 2005:85

[15] Napoleoni 2005: 85, 86

[16] Rashid 2000:189.

[17] Napoleoni 2005: 83.

[18] Rashid 2000: 191.

[19] Napoleoni 2005: 84.

[20] Napoleoni 2005: 122

[21] http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/index.html.

[22] Roy 1995:86.

[23] Rashid 2000:130.

[24] Kohlman 2004: 10.

[25] Rashid 2000:129.

[26] Kohlman 2004: 7.

[27] Rashid 2000:131.

[28] Kohlman 2004: 11.

[29] Rashid 2000: 135.

[30] Rashid 2000: 135.

[31] Kohlman 2004:16-18.

[32] Sivan 1985.

[33] Abbas 2005: 213.

[34] Abbas 2005: 212.

[35] Abbas 2005: 203.

[36] Abbas 2005: 213.

[37] Darfur renegade groups:  P…Darfur:  97:  “Sociologically the Janjaweed seems to have been of six main origins:  former bandits and highwaymen who had been ‘in the trade’, since the 1980s; demobilized soldiers from the regular army; young members of Arab tribes having a running land conflict with a neighbouring ‘African’ group – most appeared to be members of the smaller Arab tribes; common criminals who were pardoned and released from gaol if they joined the militia; fanatical members of the Tajammu al-Arabi; and young unemployed ‘Arab’ men, quite similar to those who joined the rebels on the ‘African’ side.”

[38] Blank 2006:109.

[39] Blank 2006: 115.