On December 5, the Government of Kazakhstan admitted publicly for the first time that Jund al-Khilafah (JaK) posed a threat to national security. The statement was issued by the National Security Committee’s Deputy Chairman, Kabdulkarim Abdikazymov, who said that JaK was composed largely of Kazakh nationals and was based in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. JaK cells are also believed to operate in the North Caucasus. Although JaK has not carried out any attacks in Kazakhstan since December 2011, JaK remains the primary Islamist militant group targeting Kazakhstan and is one of a host of security concerns that Kazakhstan envisions in 2013.

BACKGROUND: Jund al-Khilafah, meaning “Army of the Caliphate” in Arabic, is believed to have been founded by three Kazakhs from Atyrau, western Kazakhstan. They fled the country because at least one of them was denied permission by the Kazakh authorities to study Islam in Saudi Arabia. They traveled to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region to join the militants fighting against the international and Afghan forces.

JaK first drew attention from the international community and other jihadists when in September and October 2011 it released videos of two attacks that it claimed to have led against U.S. forces in Khost, Afghanistan during the previous summer. Prior to this video, there had been Kazakhstani citizens – possibly of Chechen descent – reported to be fighting Russian forces in the North Caucasus and of a number of Kazakhs fighting in Afghanistan, but there was no known militant group targeting Kazakhstan.

JaK carried out terrorist attacks in Kazakhstan in each of the last three months of 2011. In May 2011, Kazakhstan witnessed its first-ever suicide bombing when an attacker entered the National Security Committee headquarters in Aktobe and detonated a bomb, killing himself and two others. No group claimed that attack, which the government blamed on “mafias.” But on October 31, when an attacker blew himself up accidentally next to an apartment building and another bomb was detonated in a garbage can near a government building in Atyrau, JaK made a claim on online forums the next day, which the government did not contradict.

JaK conducted another attack on November 12 in Taraz when a 34-year-old former senior rifleman in the Kazakh army hijacked a car, robbed arms from a gun store, stole a police car by killing two special security police officers, drove home to pick up an RPG-26 grenade launcher and then shot at the regional office of the National Security Committee. He killed himself in a suicide bombing that killed a police officer. In total, seven people, including the attacker, were killed.

On December 3, five members of a JaK cell and two Kazakh Special Forces soldiers were killed in a night raid on the cell’s safe house outside Almaty after the cell refused to surrender. The members of the cell were responsible for killing two Almaty police officers in the same village in a roadside shooting on November 8 and were planning new attacks in Almaty. In October 2012, JaK’s amir was killed in a drone strike in Miran Shah, Pakistan. He was a Tunisian-born Swiss citizen who had trained the three founders of JaK and Kazakhs in Afghanistan and Pakistan and been the inspiration for Mohammed Merah’s shooting rampage in southwest France that killed seven people, including French paratroopers of North African descent and Jews. 

IMPLICATIONS: Although one year has passed since JaK carried out its last attacks on Kazakh soil, the government has only now announced that JaK is a threat to the country. The government is aware that Kazakhstan is facing a host of security threats, but JaK is one of the few that is identifiable. In reality, JaK probably represents only a small portion of the estimated 200 to 300 Kazakhs fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Kazakhs in the North Caucasus. The timing of the announcement coincides with forecasts about a more dangerous security environment in Central Asia in 2013. Like its neighbors, Kazakhstan views 2013 as a dangerous and unpredictable year because of impending withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan.

In recent months, there has also been an increase in arrests of Hizb ut-Tahrir members in northern Kyrgyzstan not far from the Kazakh border in Issyk Kul and Bishkek, but still few reported cases of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Kazakhstan. Previously, Hizb ut-Tahrir activities in Kyrgyzstan were limited to the Fergana Valley in predominantly ethnic Uzbek cities such as Osh and Jalalabad. Further south, in Tajikistan, the recent unrest in the Gorno-Badakhshan region between a local warlord and the central government highlights the possibility of instability on the Afghan-Tajik border, which could be exploited by the Taliban, the IMU or Jamaat Ansurallah. Jamaat Ansarullah is a group which is believed to be affiliated with the IMU and responsible for attacks in Tajikistan now the IMU is entrenched in Afghanistan. If Islamist militants can establish a base head anywhere in the region, such as Gorno-Badakshan or in the Fergana Valley, it would allow militants to target other countries in the region, including Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan is also worried about the changing security environment in Russia. While the North Caucasus has long been a conflict zone, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, which are located just north of Kazakhstan, have not historically been hotbeds of extremism. Now both of those regions, as well as Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow have all reported infiltration of Hizb ut-Tahrir among the Russian Muslim population and Central Asian Muslims. For the first time since the end of the Soviet Union, on December 8, Russia’s Internal Forces “carried out joint special operations” to find a “training camp” for Bashkir militants in Chelyabinsk Oblast or Perm Krai, but the internal troops came up empty-handed.

Tatarstan has also seen an upsurge of religious extremism. On July 19, a Salafist militant group injured Tatarstan’s chief mufti, Idlus Faizov, in a car-bomb assassination attempt in Tatarstan’s capital, Kazan. One hour before that attack, different members of the same militant group succeeded in killing the chief of the education department of the Spiritual Board of the Muslims of Tatarstan, Valiulla Yakupov, in a shooting outside his residence. Both religious leaders were known for their efforts to cleanse Salafism from Tatarstan’s religious institutions. Weeks after the attacks, a group of militants led by a self-proclaimed “amir of the mujahideen in Tatartan” claimed the attacks and warned that any imams who do not adhere to Sharia Law will be assassinated.

CONCLUSIONS: There are a variety of factors causing Kazakhstan to feel insecure about the changing regional environment, and it appears that the government has pointed out JaK as a threat when, in fact, JaK is but one of a number of threats. JaK is not an existential threat to Kazakhstan, but it is likely that JaK is still capable of carrying out attacks in Kazakhstan. Like many other Central Asian militant groups, JaK is probably focusing on Afghanistan now and, once the U.S. withdrawal is complete, planning to target Kazakhstan again. If history is any indication, the U.S. withdrawal is likely to have a negative effect on the security environment in Kazakhstan because some fighters will return home and bring with them new skills and the militant ideology prevalent among the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which have interacted with JaK in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Jacob Zenn is an analyst for Eurasian and African affairs at the Jamestown Foundation, a Non-Resident Research Fellow of the Center of Shanghai Cooperation Organization Studies (COSCOS) in Shanghai, China, and a legal adviser specializing in the international law and best practices related the freedom of association in Washington D.C.