Inheritors of a lost cause: A comparative analysis of the origins and fates of the Basmachi Movement and the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan

In his 1942 philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus, French writer Albert Camus reflects, “knowing that there are no victorious causes, I have a liking for lost causes: they require an uncontaminated soul, equal to its defeat as to its temporary victories.” Camus suggests he would rather prefer the certainty of history than seek truth in the process of the ever-changing future. A study of Central Asia’s past, wrapped in the mythos of imperial espionage, heroic figures and national struggles present an epic where the drama itself becomes history. The fate of the Basmachi movement and the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) fit well into the region’s grand narrative of protagonists, antagonists and lost causes. 

The Basmachi as a movement emerged in East Bukhara, modern day Tajikistan, in resistance to the Bolsheviks marching into the region to consolidate the Russian Empire’s Central Asian frontier. Their struggle proved futile as the Bolsheviks stood victorious after sporadic though numerous uprisings. Defeated, the Basmachi retreated into the mountains of Afghanistan and Iran. Though drawing no direct link to the Basmachi, it is observable that the IRPT, both as a faction in the Tajik Civil War (1992-1997) and as a political actor until 2015, faced similar challenges and outcomes of the Basmachi. Yet, there remain peculiarities that differentiate the IRPT from the Basmachi deserving of further discussion. The following pages will critically analyze the Basmachi movement and the IRPT by asking the following questions: First, what were the origins and goals of the Basmachi and the IRPT? Second, what was their fate and how do they compare? 

Our discussion is centered upon two articles, one by Kirill Nourzhnov, “Bandits, warlords, national heroes: interpretations of the Basmachi movement in Tajikistan,” recounts how the Basmachi movement has been viewed throughout Tajikistan’s Soviet and post-Soviet experience. The second article by Dastan Aleef, “Identity and Power – The Discursive Transformation of the Former Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan,” provides an overview of the IRPT’s evolution and adaptation as a political actor during the late Soviet era until recent times. Nourzhanov’s piece critically analyzed the Basmachi narrative partially as a reflection of Soviet historiography and Tajikistan’s post-Soviet and post-civil war nation building experience. Aleef adopted a different approach and illustrated the IRPT’s political evolution through several means, primarily by accounting for the IRPT’s language and topics discussed in its political journal and through its domestic activities as a political actor. Both of these pieces provided valuable insight to an area of research rarely covered by modern scholarship, however, to diversify and deepen our comparative discussion of the Basmachi movement and the IRPT, I included other sources which cover the topic of our concern. 

Origins and goals of the Basmachi & IRPT in comparison

The history of the Basmachi movement was itself a subject of contestation in Tajikistan during the Soviet and post-Soviet years. As the diktat of Soviet historiography not only required consistency with Marxism-Leninism, the revolutionary Bolsheviks themselves had to be presented as heroes while those who opposed them were antagonistic reactionaries. Soviet Tajik historians like Mullo Irkaev presented several assumptions of the Basmachi. Irkaev asserted that prior to 1917, the Basmachi were “bandits and criminal gangs” who were used by the Tsars and local vassals to suppress revolutionary peasants. The Basmachi were also painted as reactionaries for wanting to restore the Emir of Bukhara Sayyid Mir Muhammad Alim Khan who was overthrown “by the toiling masses” and simultaneously serving as agents of British imperialists and “reactionary circles of Oriental states.” While the movement certainly had interests to defend the status-quo in light of the perceived threat of the Bolsheviks who wanted the complete upending of the old order, Soviet historians set in motion the process of reducing the Basmachis to opportunistic brigands without a cause. Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who has extensively covered Central Asia, described the Basmachi in The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism as a movement in response to the Bolshevik refusal to “acknowledge the particularities of the Islamic tribal system of the region.” In fact, Rashid reminds us that the term ‘Basmachi” is in fact a derogatory Turkic term meaning ‘robber’ or ‘bandit’. Members of the movement, in fact, self-identified as “mujahed,” but the term Basmachi stuck. 

However, focusing on the Basmachi Movement alone without recognizing where it sprouted from would be a disservice to this discussion. The end of the Romanov dynasty and weakness of the subsequent Provisional Government opened opportunities for independent minded Central Asians to coalesce. Calls for an autonomous Turkestan within Russia grew louder and picking up the cause were two factions: the Qadimists supporters of Usul Qadim or the old method and the Jadids supporters of Usul Jadid or the new method. The two would form the Shurayi-Islamiya advocating Turkestan autonomy but the Qadamists would later splinter and form the clerically dominated Ulema Jameti. With a Soviet internal takeover in Tashkent on 12 September 1917, the Ulema Jameti  and Shurayi-Islamiya united and declared the formation of the Turkestan Autonomy (Kokand Autonomy). The first measure taken by the new state was the promulgation of Sharia law and the restoration of private property rights. No longer willing to endure the “counter-revolutionary” and “anti-proletarian” threat, the Tashkent Soviet in January 1918 dispatched military units southward to Kokand. The Bolshevik plunder of the city sealed the fate of the short-lived state, but the peasants, robbers and highwaymen of Kokand, led by notable figures like Irgash Bey and Enver Pasha, retreated into the rural areas of Ferghana Valley carrying out an almost two-decade guerilla resistance that we now know as the Basmachi Movement. If we were to be critical towards the Soviet’s historical treatment of the Basmachi, we must then recognize that the movement was a continuation of a failed political cause that envisioned an autonomous Turkestan. 

The Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) – which would later refashion into the IRPT – began in the 1970s as an underground network of faithful Muslims who rejected the Soviet way of life. The goals of the network were to inter alia reintroduce Islamic culture and teaching, fight against superstition and define societal moral values. Said Abdullohi Nuri, a notable Muslim activist and founder of the IRP, first participated in debates on Islamic values and practices, which, by 1985-1990 turned political. Nuri went as far as to advocate for the creation of an independent Islamic republic on the territory of Tajikistan. Unsurprisingly, this drew harsh responses from Moscow which began to soften its position during Mikhail Gorbachev’s period of reforms. The IRP, as a movement, included members throughout the Soviet Union Tatars, Chechens and Ingushetians. The party maintained a non-violent pro-democracy line with the intent of opposing the godless and anti-Muslim Soviet state, however its pan-Islamic goals failed to materialize. Banned in 1993, it joined the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), where it became the dominant faction, alongside the country’s nationalist and democratic forces. By 1997, the termination of the Civil War through the “General Agreement” resulted in a 70/30 power-sharing arrangement with the government maintaining the majority of positions. Until its second ban in 2015, the IRPT would remain an oppositional voice within the Tajik government. 

A cursory observation of the Basmachi movement and the IRPT could give the impression that one is the predecessor to the other; yet, this may not necessarily be the case. As Nourzhanov illustrated, the Soviet treatment of the Basmachi legacy was that of vilification and derision. Although the Basmachi and IRPT shared Islamic and “regional tribal values”, the rejection of the Basmachi legacy in the upbringing of Soviet Tajiks meant that the IRPT’s origins were of a separate root. The Basmachi were holdouts of the crushed Kokand Autonomy and, most importantly, fought for an autonomous Turkestan. They also were provided material support by foreign powers especially from the British in hopes to counter the Bolsheviks, whereas the IRPT, though receiving modest support from Iran, did not even consider the Turkestan question. Moreover, Tajikistan’s post-civil war situation necessitated the push for unity and reconciliation. President Emomali Rahmon ignored the “revisionist discourse” of the Basmachi’s legacy and instead gave more emphasis to Tajikistan’s Samanid legacy. Despite the similarities in the character of the Basmachi and the IRPT in its infancy, this can be explained by the fact that the two found reason in their cause from the rejectionism of the “other.” For the Basmachi, it was the invading Bolsheviks, while the IRPT resisted the central authority of Dushanbe and in the post-civil war years, campaigned against the Rahmon regime’s “radical secularism.” As Aleef points out, the IRPT “repeatedly criticized government policies targeting religion and religious institutions, such as impeding the public promotion of Islamic values and symbols” along with the ban of the hijab and beard. These all added onto the IRPT’s grievances.  

Fates of the Basmachi & IRPT in comparison

As the Bolsheviks consolidated their control over Central Asia, Basmachi uprisings became few and infrequent. Most Basmachi fighters found themselves seeking refuge in neighboring Afghanistan from where they could stage future attacks. By 1928, the Soviets sealed its borders with Afghanistan and Iran in hopes to wall off the Basmachi threat. Somehow, the movement was able to conduct operations in Uzbekistan from 1930-35, but that was to be their final campaign. There were several reasons as to why the Basmachi movement failed to recover after the defeat of the Kokand Autonomy in 1918. First, the Basmachi simply did not have the military strength and organization necessary to counter the Bolsheviks. Despite initial support from the British, London eventually retracted its assistance when it was clear the Basmachi had no further prospects. Second, the Soviet stereotyping and villainization of the Basmachi was not entirely untrue as the years 1923-27 saw the movement descend into banditry, as its leaders either became old, tired or were killed. Thirdly, the Bolsheviks eventually softened their policies towards the Central Asians and were able to provide supplies to the local populace during times of famine. Additionally, General Mikhail Frunze granted amnesty to Basmachi fighters, later recruiting them into the ranks of the Red Army. Lastly, the Basmachi movement’s hope to create an independent, or at least an autonomous, Turkestan were dashed especially after the liquidation of the Kokand Autonomy and the subsequent formation of the Central Asian Soviet Socialist Republics. As Mustafa Chokaev, Minister-President of the short-lived state, reflected, “the Basmaji Movement, having begun with the motive of the defense of autonomy, found itself deprived of a definite political meaning with the transference of the struggle from the streets of Khokand to the surrounding country-sides.” 

Signs of the IRPT’s challenges were evident even prior to the end of the civil war when in 1994 the UTO began considering peace talks with the central government. Recalling that the IRPT was the most influential faction of the UTO, the coalition recognized that: Firstly, most Tajikistanis preferred a secular system over an Islamist. Secondly, the civil war had served to divide the country into ethno-regional groups, which ran counter to the IRPT’s vision of a united Islamic Tajikistan. Third, and lastly, the UTO as a whole did not have the military capabilities to defeat the central government. In the post-civil war years after 1997, the IRPT pursued a political strategy to transform itself into a moderate party. Though it began accepting democratic practices, it was done so with the intent of signaling to outside observers of the progressive tendencies of the party in contrast to Rahmon’s authoritarianism. But the result of this strategy was that the IRPT failed to formulate a coherent ideological program of its own, both due to internal divisions and the regime’s pressure on the party. The IRPT also demonstrated its sympathies to other political movements in the Islamic world most notably with the Muslim Brotherhood. As Aleef highlighted, from this angle, this “may have been a worrisome prospect for the secular segment of the Tajik public… and for the government which was notoriously irritable at any sign of support from political Islam.” The fear of Islamic extremism with the rise of the Islamic State by 2015 prompted the Rahmon regime to dissolve the IRPT ostensibly on the grounds that the party lacked membership. It was later designated a terrorist organization by Tajikistan’s supreme court. In the year following the ban, Tajikistan amended its constitution to prohibit the establishment of political parties on the basis of a religious platform, thus preventing the return of the IRPT. 

Neither the Basmachi movement nor the IRPT met the fate they desired. Though not entirely sharing the same origins or goals, the two seem to have failed due to similar reasons. Both the Basmachi and the IRPT as combatants did not have the means to defeat their opponents militarily and either had to resort to guerilla warfare or political compromise, respectively. While the Basmachi envisioned the formation of a united Turkestan, the IRPT evolved from a pan-Soviet Islamic party to an opposition party pushing against strict secular policies of the Rahmon regime, though hoping for a Tajikistan based on Islamic law. For the Basmachi, its grand ambitions were extinguished as the Soviets forced a new political reality with the creation of the union republics while the IRPT continuously tempered its political Islamic agenda to be a “democratic” party with the intention to appeal to the outside world. Now, IRPT leaders just like the Basmachi are exiled from their homeland. 

Conclusion: Sisyphus climbs Ismoil Somoni Peak

The comparative analysis of the Basmachi and the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan does reinforce one fact about the struggle for power, that it comes from the barrel of a gun. Both the Basmachi and the IRPT lacked the means to incur a military defeat upon their adversaries and were therefore trapped in the downward cycle of fading into insignificance. Our discussion has focused on the origins and fates of the Basmachi movement and the IRPT. Both emerged as political movements of resistance who later found their reality far divorced from the future they fought for. Might we be too harsh to claim that both the Basmachi of the previous century and the IRPT today are inheritors of “lost causes”? What defines a lost cause is the fact that what one had hoped for may longer be possible despite any and all efforts made towards achieving it. Yet, to an extent, was the independence of the Central Asian states – as unwilling as they may have been then after the fall of the Soviet Union – not an indirect realization of Basmachi dreams? If the unexpected events of 1991 led to such a result, perhaps the IRPT awaits the opportunities that arise when unexpected events take place in personalist regimes of which Tajikistan is no exception. Even if opportunities present themselves and the political space opens for a return of the IRPT, it will still have to fight an uphill battle and hope that someone else does not reach the peak first and roll a boulder down. 

Prepared by Nigel Li. October 26, 2023.

Works Cited

Abdullaev, Kamoludin and Catherine Barnes (eds.) Accord – Politics of Compromise: The Tajikistan peace process. London, Conciliation Resources. 2001.

Aleef, D. Identity and Power—The Discursive Transformation of the Former Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan. In: Mihr, A. (eds) Between Peace and Conflict in the East and the West. Springer, Cham. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77489-9_9.

Marwat, Fazal-Ur-Rahim Khan. The Basmachi Movement in Soviet Central Asia. Peshawar, Emjay Books International, 1985. 

Michel, Casey. “Trouble in Tajikistan” Al-Jazeera, 5 Nov 2015, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2015/11/5/trouble-in-tajikistan. 

Kirill Nourzhanov (2015) Bandits, warlords, national heroes: interpretations

of the Basmachi movement in Tajikistan, Central Asian Survey, 34:2, 177-189, DOI:

10.1080/02634937.2014.987969. Rashid, Ahmed. The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationalism?. New York, The New York Review of Books, 2017.