Posted on 05/18/2005 2:51:19 AM PDT by HAL9000
The leader of a group of rebels claiming to control this Uzbek border town said Wednesday that he and his supporters intend to build an Islamic state and are ready to fight if government troops attempt to crush their revolt."We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Quran," Bakhtiyor Rakhimov told The Associated Press while leaning down from the back of a horse.
Tense but confident, the bearded 42-year-old farmer, wearing a traditional Uzbek embroidered black-and-white skull cup, snapped his fingers as he gave orders to an assistant. It was unclear how many people he commanded, but there was no sign of any government officials in the town of about 20,000.
"The town is in the hands of people. People are tired of slavery," he said as he kept an eye on two roads converging at an intersection in Korasuv.
However, Uzbek Interior Minister Zakir Almatov shrugged off the militant's claims.
"It's all sheer nonsense, everything is normal there," he said when asked whether the government intends to move against insurgents in Korasuv. "If anything had happened there, I already would have been there."
The uprising in Korasuv began Saturday, a day after government troops violently crushed an uprising in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan.
Protesters in Korasuv, 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Andijan, set fire to a police headquarters, a tax police office and several traffic police posts, and they looted several other government buildings. They also beat up several police officers and local officials, forcing them to flee the town.
President Islam Karimov blamed the unrest in Andijan on extremist Islamic groups that seek to overthrow his secular government and create an Islamic state.
At the Andijan protest, only social and economic demands could be heard as speaker after speaker complained about stark poverty and widespread unemployment and the government's stifling of private business. They denied having any Islamic agenda.
But observers of the impoverished Central Asia region have long feared that any social unrest could be used by Islamic groups to promote their own goals.
Karimov's government has been struggling with fundamentalist Islamic groups since the nation of 25 million gained independence with the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Radical Islam initially filled an ideological vacuum following years of Communist atheism, and many say Karimov's heavy-handed crackdown on Islamists, which has swept up many innocent Muslims, is responsible for its rapid spread.
His restrictive economic polices and widespread official graft in the government have created an army of desperately poor and jobless youth who have become an easy target for recruitment by Islamic groups.
Karimov banned all secular opposition political parties in the early 1990s and jailed or forced into exile their main leaders.
Rakhimov presented an idealistic view of the future in an Islamic state.
"We will turn this land into gardens," he said. "If I turn this land into a good place, if everybody here will have plenty of food on the table, it will spread further."
"We will work in the fields, we will open the borders with Kyrgyzstan and reach Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the rest of the world," he went on, reflecting one of the central ideas of most radical Islamic groups active in the region: the creation of a worldwide Islamic state.
One of the triggers of the uprising in Korasuv was the authorities' closure of the border with Kyrgyzstan two years ago. After Saturday's revolt, town residents restored the bridge spanning a river separating the two countries.
"All decisions will be taken by people at a mosque. There will be rule of Shariah law," Rakhimov went on. "Thieves and other criminals will be tried by the people themselves."
Among the groups that promote such ideas, the one that probably has the most followers in formerly Soviet Central Asia is the Hizb-ut-Tarir party, which Uzbek authorities accuse of inspiring a series of terror attacks in the capital Tashkent and the central city of Bukhara last year that killed more than 50. Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which claims to reject violence, denied responsibility.
Rakhimov said he and his supporters did not belong to any specific Islamic organization.
"We are just people," he said. "We just follow the Quran."
Asked if he was afraid that government soldiers would try to regain control of Korasuv by force, as they did in Andijan, he said: "They came here today, a few military people. I turned them back."
"It's the spirit of those killed in Andijan that protect us," said his assistant Arab-Polvon Badanboyev, 50.
"We will sort it out with Karimov," Rakhimov said.
"Soldiers and police are also sons of this people. We don't have weapons, but if they come and attack us we will fight even with knives," he said.
Uzbekistan Islamist theocracy alert ping!
Radical Islam and Communism what a choice ...
These little men with little brains imbibe the poison of islam and immediately imagine themselves rulers of all they survey.
"he and his supporters intend to build an Islamic state"
The islamic state they would build would be just another hellhole of hatred, murder, suicide-for-sex, and butcher all who disagree.
""We will work in the fields, we will open the borders with Kyrgyzstan and reach Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the rest of the world," he went on, reflecting one of the central ideas of most radical Islamic groups active in the region: the creation of a worldwide Islamic state."
Don't they realize that we would nuke Mecca and all other Muslim cities long before a worldwide Muslim state is created? Why would they seek their own destruction?
We wouldnt nuke Mecca because our leaders such as Jorge Bush believe Islam is a "religion of peace".
Crush them now.
That region is full of dictators!
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