After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the people of Kazakhstan, like those in the rest of the former Soviet Republics, experienced a revival in religious affiliation.

In some sectors of Kazakh society, the repression of spiritual life in the Soviet days was reversed when Kazakhstan became independent in December of that year. Previously non-existent elements of Salafism crept to the surface in Kazakhstan and are now apparent, especially in the southern and western regions of the country located near the Caspian Sea and the volatile North Caucasus.

Salafism is a reform movement of Islam in which followers believe that the life of their Prophet Mohammad and the earliest Muslim community constitutes a universal paradigm for interpreting world events and history. Salafists consider the founding years of Islam to be the prototype for their cultural and religious validation and use examples from that era as a template to build relationships with "infidel" or non-Salafist Muslim communities in the contemporary world.

"Jihadi-Salafists" see historical evolution as the unfolding of a single contest: the struggle of Good (true Islam) versus Evil (false Islam and Disbelief). [1] Although Salafist doctrine is largely rejected by the Islamic world, Saudi Arabia stands apart as the leading country that preaches the doctrine.

Although "Salafists", or "Wahabbis" - as Central Asians and Russians commonly call them - are still a small minority at less than 1% of the population in Kazakhstan, they are having a more significant impact on the country than this would suggest.

Increasing numbers of Salafists in Kazakhstan are being influenced by calls to violence from jihadis in the North Caucasus and from Jund al-Khilafa (JaK - Army of the Caliphate), a terrorist group led by Kazakhs based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

According to its online statements, JaK is comprised of "mujahideen from different nationalities, but is made up 90% Kazakh nationals who are interested in the military, faith, intellectual, and political support for our brothers in order for them to rise to an acceptable level of ability to wage the fight" against the regime of President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Three videos that JaK released in 2011 attest that the group has operated in Khost province, Afghanistan, against US forces along with Taliban-supported foot soldiers.

While not all Salafists promote violence and not all aspiring jihadis are Salafists, there is a link between Salafist fundamentalist interpretations of Islam and terrorist attacks that have been carried out in Kazakhstan. In 2011, three terror incidents in claimed by JaK - in Atyrau, Taraz and Boraldai, Almaty - bore the mark of Jihadist-Salafist influence.

On November 12, 2011, in Taraz, southeastern Kazakhstan, Maksat Kariyev went on a noontime rampage killing five security officers, one gun shop guard, and himself in a suicide bombing that he detonated when a police commander approached him.

The interrogation of six members of the cell that prepared Kariyev for the attack revealed that one was a "spiritual mentor" who drew up the attack plan for Kariyev and helped purchase and store the RPG-26 grenade launcher, RGD-5 grenade, Makarov pistol and two sawed-off shotguns that Kariyev used in the attack, which lasted several hours.

Kariyev, who has a background as former senior rifleman in the Kazakh army, was an ideal fighter to carry out the attack from an operational standpoint. However, from an ideological standpoint, Kariyev was weak. He was a drinker who suffered from fits of temper tantrums and could not hold a job or live in a permanent residence after leaving the army.

Kariyev consulted with local imams prior to his attack and asked about the consequences of him committing a suicide attack to kill infidels. The cell’s "spiritual leader" ultimately persuaded Kariyev and the other cell members to conduct jihad and kill police officers in order to establish an Islamic caliphate. When Kariyev carried out the attack, he drugged himself up on narcotics and followed those orders.

JaK said in a statement the day after the attack that:
In Taraz, you saw with your own eyes what one soldier did to you, and God willing you will see horrors by the hands of men who don't fear death and give their souls easily to support the religion of Islam and defend the honor of the Muslims.
On October 31, in Atyrau, a port city on the Caspian Sea in western Kazakhstan, a terrorist blew himself up next to an apartment building near the intended target - the Prosecutor-General's office - and another bomb detonated in a garbage can blocks away. The terrorist who blew himself up did so by mistake. A claim of credit by JaK following the attack stated that:
We refute that the last attack was carried out as a martyrdom-operation. It seems that the bomb exploded accidentally, which led to the martyrdom of its carrier. We ask Allah to accept him among the martyrs.
The cell responsible for the two explosions in Atyrau was formed in 2009 by 20-year-olds who were inspired by the ethnic Buryat Russian-born Islamic convert Said Buryatsky, who became a jihadi leader in the North Caucasus before Russian forces killed him in 2010.

In 2011, the Atyrau cell connected with JaK's leadership in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and received orders to carry out the bombings.

That Atyrau was the site of the October 31 explosions is symptomatic of the growing extremism in the province. According the Director of Religion Department in Atyrau, 90% of Atyrau province's 8,000 practicing Muslims are between the ages of 13 and 30 and 70% of those 8,000 young people are influenced by Salafism. If those numbers are correct, then there are more than 5,000 Salafists in Atyrau alone. In the case of these Atyrau bombings, it required only four of those young Salafists to carry out what could have been a deadly attack.

In Boraldai Village outside of Alamaty, five JaK fighters were killed on December 3, 2011, when Kazakhstan security forces surrounded them inside their safe house. Kazakh authorities suspected the cell of carrying out a drive-by shooting that killed two police officers on November 8 and possibly another November 11 shooting in Almaty in which two other police officers were killed.

The cell was reportedly planning additional terror attacks in Almaty before its elimination.

Only the leader of the cell, Yerik Ayazbayev, escaped from Boraldai at the time of the shootout, but he was killed on December 29 in Kyzylorda, southern Kazakhstan after police investigated what appeared to be an accidental explosion that Ayazbayev set off in his apartment building.

Like Kariyev's cell, the Boraldai cell also had a "spiritual mentor", Aghzan Khasen, who died in the shootout in Boraldai. This appears to be a standard model of Jak cells in Kazakhstan: six or seven fighters under the lead of a "spiritual mentor" who is a Jihadist-Salafist.

On December 6, three days after the Boraldai shootout, JaK issued a statement saying that JaK fighters were "ready to be killed in the thousands in order to support [Islam]" and that "losing our lives is a cheap price that we pay for this cause". JaK asked that "God give glory" to the fighters who were killed by "the apostate forces of the Nazarbayev regime" at "a base where the five lions of the al-Zahir Baybars Battalion of Jund al Khilafa were gathered".

Members of the Salafist community in western Kazakhstan, were also suspected of killing policemen in the Aktobe region on July 1, 2011, and another special unit officer on July 2 during the raid to capture the killers. Although no connection with JaK has been proven, six suspects were alleged to have taken part in the attacks, which is consistent with the size of JaK cells.

In an effort to curb Salafist influence in the country, Nazarbayev introduced a bill in September, 2011, to combat religious extremism, but one that also restrains basic religious freedoms. The bill, which has been approved by the lower house of parliament and the senate, requires religious organizations to dissolve and register again through a procedure that is virtually guaranteed to exclude smaller religious groups, including most Muslim groups and also minority Christian groups.

The merits of clamping on down on religion in the wake of the rising Jihadi-Salafist undercurrent in Kazakhstan needs to be weighed against the risks of alienating practicing Muslims with new religion law. But regardless, one thing is for certain. Any policy or law that affects religion will become propaganda for JaK and possibly a recruiting boon for the terror group.

On October 26, 2011, JaK released a video in which it said:
We call upon you to abolish these laws, and we also demand that you offer an apology to the people for that mistake. We demand complete freedom for Muslims to carry out their rituals of worship. In the event you insist on your position, then we will be forced to make a move against you. Know that the policy that you are following is the same that was applied in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt; however, as you have seen, it only caused loss to those who exercised it.
Five days after delivering this message, the Atyrau bombers attempted their attack. This showed that JaK could follow up on its warnings and that its words were not hollow. With JaK cells entrenched in Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev will have to add JaK's capabilities to his calculus when he considers other measures to combat the growth of Salafism in his country.

Jacob Zenn is a lawyer and international security analyst based in Washington, DC. He writes regularly on the Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Horn of Africa and Nigeria and runs an open-source research, translation, and due diligence team through http://zopensource.net/ and can be reached at jaz@Zopensource.net.