Kyrgyzstan: Returning Islamic militants may not cause rise in persecution

Kyrgyzstan | 17 July 2018

According to Radio Free Europe on 28 June 2018, Kyrgyzstan's Anti-terrorist Center has stated that altogether an estimated 850 Kyrgyz citizens had joined the ranks of the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria and that 150 Kyrgyz nationals had been killed in Syria since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. Rolf Zeegers, persecution analyst at World Watch Research, notes that the official number of Kyrgyz citizens fighting for IS has now risen from 600 to 850. "This means that the number of fighters that may return to their home country at any given moment now stands at 700. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan is the ideal place for a guerilla war and there are fears that hundreds of battle-hardened fighters will return home and begin fighting against their own government. However, it may well be that the Kyrgyz government"s fears are exaggerated. Would returning fighters really want to destroy their ancestral homeland and their fellow people? And how long could a force of 700 fighters stand against the Kyrgyz army, numbering tens of thousands of soldiers? It seems unlikely that Christians in Kyrgyzstan will face an increase in persecution from these Islamic militants. The pressure from normal citizens on converts from Islam to Christianity is a much bigger threat to them."