US embassy cable - 05ALMATY3431

S E C R E T  ALMATY 003431 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR R, P, AND EUR/CACEN 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/26/2015 
TAGS: PREL, PHUM, EAID, KDEM, KZ, POLITICAL, Counterterrorism 
SUBJECT: KAZAKHSTAN: COMBATING EXTREMISM 
 
REF: A. A. STATE 159129 
     B. B. 04 ALMATY 4562 
     C. C. ALMATY 2724 
 
Classified By: Amb. John Ordway, reasons 1.4 (B) and (D). 
 
1. (S) Summary:  Efforts to insure stability by supporting 
political reform and countering terrorism are at the top of 
the bilateral U.S.-Kazakhstan relationship, as reflected in 
the first two performance goal's of the Kazakhstan MPP.  Post 
engages in a continuous dialogue with all levels of the 
Kazakhstani government about the need to balance law 
enforcement activities with greater respect for human rights. 
 While the GOK does not always strike an equitable balance, 
as evidenced by the very troublesome legislation on extremism 
adopted earlier this year, overall the country's leadership 
understands the need to counter extremist and terrorist 
threats without exacerbating the situation.  The U.S. 
government implements an extremely wide-ranging assistance 
program in Kazakhstan, with programs ranging from threat 
reduction and non-proliferation to HIV/AIDS prevention to 
English teaching.  Many of these programs address the problem 
of countering extremism either indirectly, by alleviating 
conditions that provide fertile ground for extremists, or 
directly by advancing tolerance and understanding.  End 
summary. 
 
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U.S. Programs Addressing Extremism 
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2. (SBU) USAID programs:  Most of USAID's   programming in 
Kazakhstan indirectly contributes to USG counter-extremism 
efforts, since it aims to alleviate the conditions 
(unemployment, economic disparity, lack of access to primary 
health care, limited educational opportunities, absence of 
political freedom, and corruption) that foster the growth of 
extremism. Unaddressed, these factors may lead to 
disillusionment and cause the disenfranchised to become more 
susceptible to the allure of extremist messages.  USAID also 
undertakes more targeted, direct interventions to address the 
potential threat of Islamic extremism in Kazakhstan.  To help 
coordinate such programming, USAID hired a Religion, State, 
and Society (RSS) specialist in September 2004 to work 
directly with religious communities and local governments to 
develop and implement interventions aimed at preventing the 
spread of Islamic extremism in the region.  The RSS 
specialist, who is based in Tashkent, works with State 
Department and USAID colleagues in all countries of Central 
Asia to achieve this outcome.  The strategic approach entails 
active engagement with religious groups, where appropriate, 
to generate a sense of partnership and to increase overall 
understanding of USG assistance priorities, and the inclusion 
of religious believers in civil society and the promotion of 
religious freedom as a means of reducing the pool of 
discontented and disaffected individuals from which 
extremists might recruit.  Programs to date which directly 
address extremism in Kazakhstan include: 
 
 -- Religious leaders/media tours:  USAID conducts tours of 
program sites for religious leaders, community leaders, 
students, and the media in order to showcase USG assistance 
programs and their benefits through the eyes of 
beneficiaries.  The tours have resulted in a greater 
understanding of USG goals in the region, have created an 
alternate message to extremist rhetoric through positive 
reporting on USG assistance programs and goals. 
 
--  Conflict Mitigation Program:   In Kazakhstan, USAID has 
worked to engage vulnerable communities in the three-year 
Community Action Investment Program (CAIP), which ended in 
summer 2005.  Through a community participatory development 
process, USAID brought together disparate groups of citizens 
to help resolve community-based issues which could breed 
extremism in isolated areas in southern Kazakhstan (South 
Kazakhstan, Zhambul, and Almaty oblasts).  CAIP's 
community-based organizations invite local religious and 
spiritual leaders to participate with other members of their 
communities to resolve issues through social and 
infrastructure programs.  Many religious leaders are at the 
forefront of efforts to mobilize communities to implement 
programs, such as school reconstruction and refurbishment, 
which target at-risk youth groups.  CAIP has worked in 30 
communities, directly benefiting more than 246,000 people and 
employing over 2500 people.  Although the USAID program has 
ended, CAIP local staff formed an NGO to continue to work 
closely with the religious community on issues of tolerance, 
fighting extremism, and general community development in 
targeted locations. 
 
-- Micro-Finance to Rural Entrepreneurs:  Micro and rural 
finance programs support stable democratic and 
market-oriented development by working with the portion of 
 
the population that is generally not reached by banks or 
integrated into the formal economy.  As poverty is alleviated 
and jobs created, the likelihood that individuals will resort 
to extremism is decreased.  USAID is working on two 
microfinance projects in Kazakhstan that, in part, benefit 
groups susceptible to recruitment by extremists:  the Central 
Asia Microfinance Alliance (CAMFA) and the EBRD Micro and 
Small Business Lending Program.  CAMFA, which began in 
October 2002 and will end in October 2006, addresses three 
primary constraints in the regional microfinance sector: 
limited capacity and capital for existing microfinance 
institutions, the unclear legal and regulatory environment, 
and limited availability of microfinance services.  So far, 
27 microfinance institutions serving 63,000 clients have 
directly benefited from CAMFA assistance.  The EBRD Micro and 
Small Business Lending Program, which began in July 2002 and 
ends in September 2007, USAID funds technical assistance to 
commercial banks that operate EBRD-funded micro and small 
finance facilities, helping their lending officers better 
assess loan applications from small business owners and 
expand their loan portfolios.  49,600 clients have been 
assisted through this program to date. 
 
-- Training for Religious Leaders on Trafficking Issues: 
USAID's three-year follow-on trafficking in persons program, 
scheduled to begin in January 2006, contains a component 
designed to raise the awareness of religious leaders 
regarding the issues of labor and sex trafficking.  The goal 
is to encourage religious leaders to spread information in 
mosques regarding labor trafficking and to promote local 
tolerance for returning victims of sex trafficking.  This 
program is expected to reduce the chances that trafficking 
victims will fall prey to extremist propaganda. 
 
3. (SBU) Peace Corps:  There are 80 Peace Corps Volunteers 
(PCVs) teaching English in Kazakhstan, primarily to the rural 
non-elite.  With English language skills, isolated youth have 
the option of accessing a much broader range of news reports 
and other information sources than they would get from local 
Kazakh and Russian-language media.  In addition, PC's 
Education program focuses on enhancing critical thinking 
skills that are largely absent in the local curriculum.  This 
skill results in youths' enhanced ability to question the 
status quo and opens their minds to other possibilities and 
value systems.  While PCVs are not involved in political 
activities and do not advocate for one political system over 
another, on a daily basis they model openness, respect and 
tolerance of all people regardless of religion or ethnic 
background.  Forty other PCVs work in youth- and 
civic-oriented NGOs, helping develop the capacity of these 
domestic organizations to address the key problems facing 
at-risk youth and their communities.  The youth NGOs also 
teach tolerance in practice, by bringing together diverse 
groups of Kazakhstani young people for events such as girls' 
leadership camps.  The exposure to youth of different faiths 
and ethnicities inculcates a more tolerant attitude in the 
participants. 
 
4. (SBU) Public Affairs:  Complimenting the longer-term 
projects undertaken by USAID and Peace Corps, the Public 
Affairs Section regularly uses its shorter-term exchange and 
outreach programs to underscore the message of tolerance. 
Examples of such programs in FY05 include: 
 
-- U.S. speaker Hibba Abugideri gave a series of lectures on 
"African-Americans and Islam in the U.S." in February. 
Several of her lectures attracted young head-scarved Kazakh 
women eager to discuss ways of balancing their faith with 
their political rights. 
 
-- Also in February, Ambassador Ordway met with Islamic 
leaders in Shymkent who had participated in PA's 
International Visitor and Community Connections programs to 
discuss the impact of their U.S. experience on their efforts 
to promote religious freedom and interethnic understanding in 
Kazakhstan. 
 
-- A Kazakhstani television crew traveled to the U.S. in July 
through a PA-sponsored TV COOP program to produce a 
documentary on Muslim life in America.  The program is 
expected to air this fall on Mir TV, a cable company with 
affiliates throughout Central Asia; the expected audience is 
upwards of 500,000. 
 
-- Post's Democracy Commission, managed by PA, approved a 
$13,000 grant in July for the creation of a Center for 
Religious Tolerance in Shymkent, South Kazakhstan Oblast, 
which is expected to open in mid-October.  The project, which 
will be undertaken by an organization called Youth for the 
Development of Democratic Processes, will provide the general 
public with access to information about religions of the 
world, with the aim of promoting religious tolerance and 
pluralism.  The center will provide Internet access and 
 
contain books, reference materials, and publications about 
religion, sociology, theology, and anthropology of religion. 
The center will offer monthly training sessions on the basics 
of religion, the role of religions in democracies, and the 
role of religion in resolving social issues.  It will also 
organize inter-religious forums and roundtable discussions 
with religious and public leaders to discuss urgent social 
and political questions. 
 
-- from 2003 to 2005, through a program called "Religion, 
Human Rights, and Democracy: Peer Interactions between U.S. 
and Kazakhstani Religious and Civic Leaders," participants 
from Taraz and Shymkent in southern Kazakhstan traveled to 
the U.S. on exchange programs focused on religious and 
cultural tolerance. 
 
5. (SBU) While not directly targeted at extremism, the 
variety of training programs and joint military exercises for 
Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry 
of Emergency Situations, and Border Guard personnel offered 
by DAO, SAO, DTRA, INL, and EXBS serve to raise the standards 
of professionalism in these organizations.  This in turn 
decreases the likelihood that the security forces would abuse 
the general population and thereby provoke extremism. 
 
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The GOK's Approach 
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6. (S)  In general as it confronts a small but growing 
extremist threat (analysis to be provided septel), the 
government of Kazakhstan focuses more on the law enforcement 
aspect than on efforts to reach out to at-risk groups.  The 
GOK's overall program of economic diversification, if 
successful, will have a beneficial impact on the problem by 
alleviating the dire economic conditions in rural areas that 
create breeding grounds for extremism.  The economic 
development plan is not targeted specifically at the most 
at-risk groups or regions, however.  The overall strong 
growth of the Kazakhstani economy in the past decade -- 
averaging 9% a year with inflation remaining under control -- 
is the GOK's best ally in the fight, as it is raising the 
standard of living for Kazakhstani citizens across the board. 
 As a secular government, the GOK ensures equal access to 
education for women and girls, is trying to modernize the 
educational system, and devotes substantial resources to 
scientific endeavors such as Bolashak scholarships and a new 
$60 million National Center for Biotechnology.  President 
Nazarbayev is rightly proud of Kazakhstan's record of 
interethnic and interfaith harmony; it is one of the few 
former Soviet republics that has not experienced violent 
conflict within its borders since independence.  He 
frequently holds and attends events highlighting tolerance 
issues. 
 
7. (S)  Like the U.S., the GOK is extremely concerned about 
the activities of Hizb'ut Tahrir (HT) in Central Asia.  In 
large part because the GOK could not ban HT under existing 
Kazakhstani counterterrorism legislation, President 
Nazarbayev signed legislation in February banning "extremist" 
organizations (ref B). The new legislation provided a very 
imprecise definition of extremism, including "fomenting 
social unrest." Although the GOK has stated that the 
legislation will be used only against groups such as HT, 
there is widespread concern in the human rights community 
that it could be used to limit basic freedoms.  Such concerns 
appear justified, as opposition political party activists 
report that local authorities have seized complete print runs 
of independent newspapers and party literature on several 
occasions on the pretext that it had be to reviewed for 
extremist content. 
 
8. (S) Kazakhstani authorities frequently arrest HT activists 
and those found distributing HT literature.  Human rights 
groups that focus on religious freedom issues and prison 
conditions, such as the Almaty Helsinki Committee and Prison 
Reform International, believe that by jailing young people 
who are hired to distribute HT pamphlets, the GOK contributes 
to their radicalization.  In an effort to impede HT's 
recruiting efforts in prisons, which are reportedly 
relatively successful, the GOK has begun to segregate HT 
members from the general prison population.  It is currently 
grappling with the fact that such segregation hinders efforts 
to rehabilitate HT members. 
 
9. (S) In conversations with the Embassy, the GOK-affiliated 
"Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Kazakhstan," the 
official hierarchy of the Islamic faith in Kazakhstan, 
minimizes the threat posed by HT and similar groups.  They do 
not appear to have a proactive approach to countering HT's 
propaganda.  When asked about outreach efforts during a 
conversation with the Ambassador (ref C), the Deputy Mufti 
explained that "only Allah can bring them to the mosque; if 
 
they come, we will teach them."  A new group, the "Union of 
Muslims of Kazakhstan," emerged in April 2005 with the goals 
of reforming Islam in Kazakhstan and democratization.  When 
the Union issued a statement that the revolutions in 
Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Ukraine were the result of desperate 
social injustice, the Spiritual Administration immediately 
filed a lawsuit charging the new group with "fanning 
religious conflicts." The Union has maintained a low public 
profile since that time. 
 
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Comment 
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10. (S)  Post believes that its assistance programs address a 
broad range of the fundamental problems that contribute to 
extremism.  We will continue to look for more opportunities 
to direct assistance efforts toward this issue.  We will also 
continue our dialogue with the GOK on the need to focus its 
law enforcement efforts only on those groups and individuals 
that present a genuine threat, as well as the need to devote 
greater attention to the root causes of extremism. 
ORDWAY 
 
 
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