Conflict Dynamics, Local Strategies and Trans-local Ties in the Fergana Valley
Aksana Ismailbekova
One of the aims of the research project is to reveal macro level influences on the micro level of localities in the Fergana region where the violence made the headlines for a historical moment in 2010, while granting all due attention to the intermediate level of the relationships between the governments and political movements of the immediate geo-political environment.
The origins of the current conflict in the Fergana region have local, national, and international dimensions. They are embedded in the country’s history over the past few decades, most prominently the collapse of the USSR, the restructuring of the geopolitical field, of the economic relations within and across nation states and of the power relations in the new nation states. The project targets the interrelation of local conflict dynamics and survival strategies with trans-local discourse flows and actor networks across the regional divide, linking them with other neighbouring Central Asian states, but also with centres of religious-political activity in South and West Asia (Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran).
Fergana has a highly mobile, ethnically diverse, and politically complex demography. The city of Osh is a focal point of broad ranging familial, religious, and exchange networks, where it is critical to take into account the role of local institutions, ethnicity, missionary movements (Dawah) etc., yet also the set of external influences and trans-regional actors (Tablighi Jama'at and Hizb ut-Tahrir) for understanding dynamics of conflict and coping mechanisms in the post conflict period.
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