Inventing Akromiya: The Role of Uzbek Propagandists in the Andijon Massacre

Abstract

IntroductionOn May 16, 2006, a group of scholars, policy experts, and journalists convened at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, for the unveiling of a video that promised to reveal the truth about the violent events in the city of Andijon, Uzbekistan, one year before. "This video demonstrates that the organizers of the uprising may not have been, as some have claimed, 'peaceful Muslims,'" proclaimed the cohosts of the event, Zeyno Baran of the Hudson Institute and S. Frederick Starr of the Central Asia Caucasus Institute, in an invitation to colleagues.1 According to Baran and Starr, this new video, which had been made available to them by the Uzbek embassy, would put to rest reports declaring the Andijon events to be a Tiananmen Square-style massacre of defenseless citizens by the Uzbek government. Proof of the falseness of this allegation, they claimed, lies in the fact that the video "shows clips recorded by members of Akromiya (a Hizbut Tahrir splinter group) during the uprising in Andijon on May 14, 2005."2Roughly twenty-six minutes long, the video consisted of three main parts: clips of remorseful Akromiya members pleading for the forgiveness of the government; conversations with alleged witnesses and victims; and an interview with Shirin Akiner, a professor and close colleague of Starr who has condemned Akromiya and supported Uzbek President Islam Karimov's claim that the use of force was necessary. Titled "Andijan Tragedy: The Course of Investigation," the Englishlanguage documentary was shown to an audience composed largely of Westerners, many of whom remained doubtful of the video's veracity given the policies of the Karimov administration toward independent Muslims. Had an average Uzbek television viewer been in attendance, however, he or she might have been skeptical for wholly different reasons. "Andijan Tragedy: The Course of Investigation" is known, in Uzbekistan, as Qabohat (Villainy), a state-produced propaganda video about the attacks that Uzbek television played repeatedly during the summer of 2005. A comparison of the video with English-language transcripts of Qabohat, made available by Eurasianet.org last summer, shows that the two contain many identical segments,3 a fact mentioned by neither Starr nor Baran.The creation and promulgation of "Andijan Tragedy: The Course of Investigation" is only the latest move by certain Uzbek and international scholars, policy analysts, and state propagandists against Akromiya, the alleged Islamic terrorist group blamed for the attacks in Andijon. According to these individuals, Akromiya armed the militants, Akromiya gave the orders, Akromiya was responsible for the deaths of Uzbek citizens in Andijon.4 There is one significant problem with this theory. Akromiya, by the accounts of many Uzbek and international human rights groups, political organizations, journalists, citizens, and accused Akromists themselves, does not exist.In researching Akromiya, one is struck not only by the paucity of sources on the group, but of what these few sources consist. Unlike other Central Asian radical Islamic organizations such as Hizb-ut Tahrir or the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Akromiya went almost completely unnoticed and unexamined by both Uzbek and international scholars and policymakers prior to May 2005. While organizations such as Hizb-ut Tahrir have developed elaborate Web sites and distributed literature to advance their goals and win adherents, Akromiya has produced no publicly available materials, save one work by the group's eponymous leader, Akrom Yo'ldoshev. While the violent actions of organizations such as the IMU are a genuine threat to Central Asian security, Akromiya has remained dormant since its alleged founding in 1992, only to suddenly be held accountable for the Andijon massacre.Given Akromiya's negligible status as an organized force prior to 2005-if, indeed, it existed as an organization at all-the few resources available on Akromiya raise serious concerns about the reliability of the group's public profile. …