The Effectiveness of Counterterrorist Policies in Uzbekistan
Abstract : This thesis analyzes the effectiveness of Uzbekistan's counterterrorist policies during the period 1990 to 2012. The thesis begins with an overview of the evolution and radicalization of Islam in Uzbekistan, the threat of Islamic terrorism, and the threat of nonviolent Islamic radicalism. The effectiveness of Uzbekistan's counterterrorist policies is analyzed through a comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of radical Islamist organizations and the Uzbek government. Public support for the government's policies is the primary factor in determining the effectiveness of Uzbekistan's counterterrorist policies. Another important factor to consider is international influence on Uzbekistan's counterterrorist policies. International and regional counterterrorist cooperation is an important factor in the longevity of the highly repressive regime of President Islam Karimov. The thesis demonstrates that Uzbekistan's repressive and indiscriminate counterterrorism policies may remain effective in the long-term due to unique historic, economic, social, and geopolitical factors.
Shaping an Islamic Identity: Religion, Islamism, and the State in Central Asia
The vast majority of Central Asians consider Islam to be part of their social identity - as it has been for centuries. Yet seventy years of official Soviet atheism decimated Islamic institutions of learning, leaving both imams and the population largely unfamiliar with traditional Islamic teachings. There is now a strugge within the five formerly Soviet republics of Central Asia between Islamists and governments to reconstruct an Islam and to capture the allegiance of the populace. Central Asia is not now engaged in a dash of its Islamic civilization with a Christian West or an Orthodox North - and far less a Confucian East. Rather, it is struggling to construct its own Islamic identity (or identities) on the foundation of a glorious ancient past, a harsh recent past, and a bleak economic and political future. This paper discusses the different aspects of religion in Central Asia (including Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school, Sufism, Shi'ism, "popular Islam," and Islamism), and describes political efforts to control (or "manage") religion - particularly the "Islamist threat." Such governmental efforts, however, appear to be exacerbating the very Islamist threat that they seek to contain.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1