People from ex-Soviet Central Asia have been at the heart of high-profile attacks this year in the United States, Russia, Sweden and Turkey. Thousands of former residents of the region’s five countries known as the “stans”―Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan―have joined the ranks of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq since 2011. While the series of attacks appear to form a “Central Asian pattern,” Matusevich argues they are part of “a broader, more global form of radicalization” and the attackers’ “actual life situations were quite diverse”. Likewise in Russia, since the April bombing in Saint Petersburg, security services have visibly increased raids targeting Central Asian migrants, sometimes claiming to have foiled extremist plots. Well, the external enemy is the United States, but the internal enemy is (Central Asian) migrants,” Gannushkina said.

Source: The Standard November 03, 2017 12:11 UTC