Search

This article examines the relationship between youth, the family, and the authoritarian state in Tajikistan. We argue that the state works through both young people and the family in its attempts to produce loyal citizens through values education that focuses on patriotism, national identity, and allegiance to the state. We examine how the government frames this relationship through discourse analysis of 13 speeches by President Emomali Rahmon, an analysis of the content of laws on education and youth, a close reading of the official training program of the course “Family Education,” and an ethnographic study of a “Girls’ Competition.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1997, the Chinese Party-state has engaged in a campaign of transnational repression against the Uyghur diaspora. This campaign has grown in severity since the 2014 declaration of the People's War on Terror and Strike Hard campaigns, which, taken together, involved a program of mass incarceration for the Turkic peoples of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). This article examines the everyday impacts of extraterritorial persecution on the Uyghur diaspora and their ability to successfully integrate into their new host societies and exercise their political and cultural agency. The article draws from nineteen in-depth interviews with Uyghurs living around the world and a dataset of over 7,000 incidents of China's targeting of Uyghurs globally since 1997. We examine how Chinese practices and the everyday effects of transnational repression vary between different regime types. We argue that Uyghurs experience both marginalization in their host country and the threat of transnational repression from China, a particularly precarious situation that we term double precarity. This double precarity is felt most acutely in more authoritarian contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese Communist Party has unleashed a campaign of repression against Turkic minorities residing in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). This campaign does not stop at China's borders. This study introduces the Transnational Repression of Uyghurs Dataset, which contains 7108 cases of Uyghurs being targeted in 44 states from 1997 to 2021, the largest public dataset on transnational repression published to date. Unlike other regimes, the Chinese state has been indiscriminate in its persecution, often pursuing apolitical diaspora members on account of their ethnicity rather than political activism. China's transnational repression of Uyghurs has expanded rapidly in recent years as domestic repression has increased in XUAR. We documented 238 incidents from 1997 to 2014, and an additional 6870 events since 2014. The paper argues that globalization is producing a new trend of transnational minority persecution, offering new insights for our understanding of twenty-first century genocides and minority persecution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there have been a number of studies of the political economy of knowledge production in Central Asia, the often exploitative relations between foreign and local researcher, there has been less discussion of what Elizabeth Perry recently described as the 'scholar–state' nexus: how authoritarian rule rests on the suppression of independent academics, the 'educated acquiescence' of academia or their incorporation into the 'factory of answers'. Through the concepts of suppression, acquiescence and incorporation, this article examines how restrictions on academic freedom have an impact on knowledge production in Tajikistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorises the repressive security practices of authoritarian states in the context of transnationalism and globalisation. While emerging research on transnational repression has identified a range of extraterritorial and exceptional security practices adopted by authoritarian states, it has not fully studied the implications of such practices on space and statecraft. Using data from the Central Asia Political Exile Database project (CAPE) and interviews conducted with exiled Tajik opposition groups based in Russia and Europe, we theorise the spatial connections between the territorial and extraterritorial security practices using the concept of assemblages. We further outline how these practices escalate in a three-stage model, in which exiles go on notice, are detained and then rendered or assassinated. Such an approach sheds light on the inherent links between the normalisation of security practices and the creation of transnational space with distinct forms of geographical state power that is embedded in non-national spaces and is manifested through spatially organised actors, networks, and technologies within assemblages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with common threats to their regimes from independent civil society, organized opposition groups and protest movements, authoritarian governments in the former Soviet Union have learned from one another and adopted similar policies to consolidate their power. This article examines the process of authoritarian policy transfer in three fields: peaceful assembly, civil society and political participation, focusing on Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The article examines the role played by the Commonwealth of Independent States- Inter-parliamentary Assembly, the body charged with legal harmonization in the former Soviet Union and ignored thus far by scholars of authoritarian diffusion. Through causal process tracing and the use of document comparison software, we compare 34 laws and decrees. Our findings indicate that diffusion is no illusion in the former Soviet Union. Autocrats have adopted similar legislation in all three fields, with the greatest degree of convergence in laws related to extremism, terrorism and operational searches, all of which are used to pursue political opponents. Russia is usually, but not always, the policy innovator. The region's poorest states – Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – both dependent on Russia in economic, political and security spheres display the highest levels of legal harmonization with the former Soviet centre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The armed rebellion of Deputy Defense Minister Abduhalim Nazarzoda in September 2015 was a critical moment in the post-war history of Tajikistan. The rebellion, which the government blamed on the Islamic Renaissance Party, formed the justification for the Supreme Court to classify the party as a terrorist organization and arrest its leadership. While the government framed the events as a coup attempt, supported by the IRPT, the narrative had inconsistencies and Nazarzoda had been loyal to the state since the end of the civil war. Using the ideas of Carl Schmitt, who argued that sovereignty lies in the ability of a strong executive to monopolize decision-making, define when there is an emergency, and how to resolve it. In this case, president Rahmon used the the sense of emergency and threat created by the "coup" attempt to dismantle the IRPT and then have himself legally declared "Leader of the Nation." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpol, the world's leading police-cooperation body, aims to "connect police for a safer world." Although the organization's constitution states that Interpol cannot engage in "any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character," it is increasingly being subverted by autocratic regimes seeking to pursue their exiled political opponents. The number of Red Notices (a type of arrest request issued through Interpol) has increased tenfold in the past fifteen years. Those targeted face the risk of arrest if they travel across borders; have difficulties obtaining visas and open bank accounts; and suffer reputational damage. Interpol remains opaque and lacks accountability for its actions. Recent reforms have started to address some of these issues. But more needs to be done to prevent the hijacking, repurposing, and weaponizing of Interpol by today's globalized authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including everyday experiences of (in)security by Central Asians, how actors frame security issues and Islamic extremism.

Counter-extremism has become an important tool for the authoritarian government of Tajikistan to consolidate its position. In this article, we argue that counter-extremism is not purely about destructive acts, such as banning groups or arresting individuals: it is productive, too. Using a Foucauldian understanding of disciplinary power and biopower, we argue that counter-extremism in Tajikistan is an attempt to produce secular, docile citizen subjects who are resistant to extremist ideas. Using ethnography and discourse analysis, we focus on the way in which these practices are gendered, targeting the bodies of those deemed ‘dangerous’. Counter-extremism, we argue, is exercised not only by the state but also by citizens, who monitor themselves and others for signs of radicalization. Although some support state secularism, most merely accept it. A smaller group resist practices that target certain forms of religious belief and practice. We explore these everyday forms of resistance against disciplinary power and biopower. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In August 1918, 1500 British troops sailed across the Caspian Sea and occupied Baku. Dunsterforce – named after its leader Lionel Dunsterville – ended in tactical failure. One month after entering the city, the British force withdrew. Many historians have written Dunsterforce off as an ambitious, but ultimately unsuccessful, intervention on a peripheral front. In this article, however, I argue that the operation achieved greater strategic success than it is often given credit for. Dunsterforce's achievements, however, cannot be disentangled from broader developments on other fronts in late 1918. As such, this success was largely incidental. Although some authors have argued that Britain was driven by economic interests, the principal objective of Dunsterforce was the protection of Britain's position in the Middle East and India. By occupying Baku and thus controlling the Caspian, Britain hoped to forestall a Turko-German invasion of India. Operating in an unpredictable strategic environment, Dunsterforce's objectives evolved over time; the operation suffered from what modern strategists have labelled ‘mission creep’. Originally tasked with training local levies, Dunsterville's mission had evolved into a field force: Dunsterforce. Under relative autonomy from London, Dunsterville drove the intervention. His ambitions extended to restoring the entire Eastern Front by linking up with forces in the Ukraine. Three factors contributed to Dunsterforce's failure. First, it arrived too late. By the time Dunsterforce disembarked in Baku, the city was already under siege by the Turkish army. Second, the resources available to Dunsterville – both in terms of men and materiel – were insufficient to accomplish the mission's tactical end: holding Baku. Third, the residents of Baku were too occupied with in-fighting to mount a united defence. Despite being a military defeat, Dunsterforce achieved some successes. The British presence in Baku helped deny the Central Powers access to Baku's oil for six vital weeks. No oil from Baku travelled further than Tiflis (modern-day Tbilisi) by the time the armistice was signed. At a time when German forces on the Western Front were hampered by chronic fuel shortages, this was a significant feat. Indeed, on 17 November, a British force occupied Baku once more. The capture of Baku by the Army of Islam proved the zenith of the Pan-Turanian dream, and Turkey's expansionist plans were never realized. The British retained command of the Caspian from their base at Enzeli in north-west Persia, giving the British a foothold from which the successor of Dunsterforce, Noperforce, could operate against the Bolsheviks. India remained unthreatened, and thus Britain had secured its strategic objectives in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]