Conflict in Central Asia - A Soviet Affair

Abstract: After the fall of the Soviet Union, two prominent Islamic groups, the IMU in Uzbekistan and the IRPT in Tajikistan, took to arms against their governments. To explain the contexts of these movements, this thesis utilises historical legacy theory to establish a continuity between the Soviet and post-Soviet regimes, which together with relative deprivation theory can explain why violent religious conflicts arose in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan after the collapse of the USSR. In conjunction with theory on state coercion, this thesis also establishes a framework for understanding the differing magnitudes of the Uzbek and Tajik conflicts. It concludes that the Soviet legacies of authoritarianism and state atheism conditioned the governments to respond coercively against the opposition movements in the respective countries. It proposes high levels of relative political and religious deprivation among Islamists as a reason for unrest, with the level of state coercion in the countries as a determinant for the magnitude of violence that followed.