Explaining the Radicalization of Central Asian Migrants

Radicalization in Central Asia has been a long-standing concern. Yet, historically, violence from the region has been relatively rare. While the immediate post-Soviet period was marked by internal conflict, including the civil war in Tajikistan, these conflicts largely remained local.

This appears to be changing. The past couple of years have been marked by a noticeable increase in instances of international terrorism linked to Central Asians. A further number have shown up as foreign terrorist fighters. The New York City truck attack, the attack on a nightclub in Istanbul, a vehicle attack in Stockholm, and the bombing of the St. Petersburg metro system were all linked to Central Asians. While the exact reasons for this pattern are still being uncovered by investigators, one feature that appears common among Central Asians who end up in Syria and Iraq, at least, is a history of working as labor migrants in Russia. This provokes the following question: why do a minority of labor migrants from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan leave Russia (a second country) to take part in somebody else’s violent conflict (a third country)?

In order to try to address this lacuna in understanding, the authors worked with a group of researchers from Central Asia and Russia to try to understand this phenomenon through a data-rich approach driven by interviews of Central Asians working in Russia. The research team was led by a consortium of institutions headed by Search for Common Ground (SFCG) in Kyrgyzstan and the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), with the support of the authors’ U.K.-based think tank employer, the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI). The research on the ground was conducted by teams of Central Asian researchers (from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) identified by SFCG with individuals from RAS. The researchers conducted 218 interviews of migrant labor workers, experts, and local officials in 13 cities across seven areas in Russia. This article captures the key findings from the final report drafted by RUSI.

The Challenges of Conducting Research on Radicalization to Violent Extremism

Before looking at our findings, it is necessary to step back and look at some concepts. Research on radicalization to violent extremism is beset by definitional, conceptual, and methodological challenges. First, experts do not agree on the definitions of terms like “radicalization” and “violent extremism.” These are relatively new terms (radicalization gained currency between 2005 and 2007, with violent extremism emerging more prominently in the field after 2015). Such terms seek to explain the phenomenon of terrorism (another value-laden term) and its pathways, but some critics argue that these terms cause more confusion, simplify complex processes, and get us no closer to understanding how individuals become terrorists.

The old cliché goes that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, but when we consider the issue of extremism, we start to veer into even murkier waters. What you consider extreme is something that is shaped by your own environment, political choices, and beliefs – something that varies between countries, political parties, and individuals. Finally, when trying to analyze the process of radicalization to violence, extremism, or somewhere in between, it is never a direct causal chain. Reflecting the complicated nature of human behavior, it tends to be highly personal and individualized. There is no single clear path to radicalization.

Added to all of this, there are serious obstacles to gathering relevant data on terrorists. First, there is the issue of access. It is difficult to interview terrorists – they are usually either dead, incarcerated, or in a situation where they have little desire to highlight their illegal deeds. In addition, the relatively low number of incidents or people involved makes it even harder to be able to draw scientifically conclusive numbers. And anyway, the sheer psychological and sociological diversity of violent extremist militants, coupled with both the individualized and context specific nature of pathways toward violence, renders conclusive attempts to identify definitive answers difficult.

These methodological issues may seem tediously academic, but they are important to illustrate from the outset as they highlight the complexity of undertaking such research. The fact that members of the community targeted for research – Central Asian labor migrants in Russia – are living in a precarious situation and being asked about subjects of great sensitivity merely accentuates the complexity of this research. It also highlights why we ended up taking a novel approach to research and understanding to try to broaden understanding of why some Central Asian labor migrants go to fight in Syria and Iraq.

Methodology and Analytical Framework

Given the complexities highlighted above, our researchers were not able (or expected) to interview actual violent extremists. Our way around this problem and aforementioned challenges was to adopt an innovative milieu-based qualitative methodology. It sought to conduct research in one or more locations that has experienced cases of recruitment or radicalization – major Russian cities where Central Asians have worked who have subsequently gone on to fight in Syria and Iraq. The approach uses a pyramid model of radicalization, which understands that violent extremists emerge from broader communities of support known as the “radical milieu.” These communities comprise the physical or social setting in which radicalization occurs. Although no interviews were ultimately conducted with those who have been recruited or radicalized, some interviewees had information based on actual (primarily second-hand but also anecdotal) knowledge of radicalization processes. The research is therefore based on the understanding that the information received was not simply assumptions among migrant workers about potential grievances or incentives driving radicalization, but in some cases, based on actual knowledge of radicalization – on their lived experiences of friends, colleagues, family members.

The sampling of respondents was driven by the interviewers on the ground who went to areas where Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek labor migrants were known to gather, or reached out through contact networks to identify labor migrants. These included 13 cities across seven of Russia’s eight federal districts: Khabarovsk in the Far East; Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, and Novosibirsk in Siberia; Yekaterinburg in the Urals; Samara and Saratov in Privolzhsky; Astrakhan, Krasnodar, and Sochi in the Southern district; Moscow and the Moscow region; and St. Petersburg.

In addition to these direct interviews, key-informant interviews were conducted with community elites – local officials, experts, and others. While efforts were made to ensure a balance of subjects across gender, age, experience, etc., given the topicality and sometimes difficult nature of the locations in which interviews took place, this was difficult to maintain. None of the participants had direct experience of recruitment and radicalization. However, a minority had direct knowledge of someone who had been radicalized and recruited. While our report draws on the bulk of the sample, our analyses prioritizes these accounts. Notably, only a minority of participants had no knowledge of the topic.

Having gathered the data together, RUSI then used an analytical framework highlighted below to assess the data.

Typology of Drivers of Radicalization