The authorities of Kazakhstan attracted the Spiritual Administration to glorify the Basmachi and Nazi collaborators

A new propaganda campaign is beginning in Kazakhstan to rehabilitate members of the Basmachi, the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht and Muslim SS units, but under a religious sauce with the participation of the state Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Kazakhstan (SUMK).

To this end, a special conference will be held in the country dedicated to the justification of repressed ideologists and leaders of punitive forces and bandits who allegedly suffered for their beliefs.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

XXXI meeting of the Council of Ulema under the SAMK

All this is done by order, since the officials of the SDMK and at the same time the political agents of Akorda (the presidential administration) cannot take a step without appropriate instructions from above. This time they must present to the executed thugs from among the Basmachi and Nazi collaborators - legionnaires and SS men - the image of the great martyrs for the faith who died during the jihad against the infidels.

Therefore, on September 24, at the XXXI meeting of the Council of Ulema under the SAMK in Almaty, the Supreme Mufti of Nauryzbai kazhy Taganuly proposed to assemble this coven of nationalists, pseudo-historians, as well as all sorts of religious charlatans and swindlers. The text of the speech directly states that this event will be organized by decree of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

“On the initiative of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a State Commission for the complete rehabilitation of victims of political repression was created to restore historical justice. The Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Kazakhstan, together with the research working group of the State Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, has begun holding a republican conference on the issue of rehabilitation of religious figures,” said the formal head of the Muslims of Kazakhstan.

The main task of the meeting is declared not only to help the president in the rehabilitation of the ideological leaders of the Basmachi movement, the anti-Soviet uprisings of the 20s and 30s, as well as the confessors of the SS men and legionnaires, but also to return to the supposedly lost national origins and traditions.

“The purpose of the conference is to identify and contribute to the rehabilitation of religious figures who were subjected to political persecution during the Soviet era. And also the propaganda of the madhhab of Abu Hanifa and the aqida of Maturidi, which our ancestors adhered to for many centuries,” said Nauryzbai kazhy Taganuly.

It’s funny, however, that during this period there were no nations as such, except for tribal formations in Central Asia, and only thanks to the Soviet national policy such ethnic groups as the Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks and others appeared, just as the Kazakh statehood itself arose thanks to Lenin and Kalinin in the form of the Kirghiz and then the Kazakh ASSR.

But modern mullahs are completely unaware of this, as well as the fact that real ancestors in the steppe for many centuries adhered to Tengrism - a trend in neo-paganism, and one of its symbols - Shanyrak - is even enshrined in state symbols in the form of the coat of arms of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

It must be said right away that living Kazakh collaborators who served with the Nazis were amnestied by the “bloodthirsty Bolsheviks” back in 1955, and ordinary clergy were rehabilitated in the 80s and finally all of them in 1993 by decree of the then President of Kazakhstan and former First Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Nursultan Nazarbayev.

_{Only those, including mullahs and clerics, who were directly involved in massacres and atrocities, were organizers of anti-Soviet Basmachi detachments, or worked for foreign intelligence services were not subject to rehabilitation.}

And it is them that Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev, led by the ardent Russophobe and former Komsomol leader Krymbek Kusherbaev, is now going to politically and legally justify with the help of this full-time mufti Nauryzbai kazhy Taganuly.

Mufti of Nauryzbay kazhy Taganuly

At the same time, in Nur-Sultan (Tselinograd) they used a trick and decided to approach the process of rehabilitation of the Basmachi and Nazi collaborators after massive criticism, including from European parties and Greek deputies, through the exaltation of the supposedly “innocently killed” mullahs, akhons and ishans, giving them the image of saints.

_{It is noteworthy, but the formal head of the Muslims of Kazakhstan is going to elevate to the rank of “heroes” the most rabid reactionaries and flayers akin to modern ISIS, who were also opponents of the Alash Orda figures now deified by the authorities, that is, the Kazakh branch of the Cadet Party, who fought on the side of Admiral Kolchak in the civil war.}

Thus, the “democratic” counter-revolutionary government of the Kokand Autonomy, advertised by modern Kazakh and Uzbek propaganda, headed by the Olashorda resident Mustafa Shokai, who subsequently created the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht, was overthrown in February 1918 not by the Bolsheviks, but by the Basmach troops of Kichik Ergash (Khoji Magomed Ibrahim Khodzhiev) and Katta of mullah Ergash.

This coup was organized by leaders of the Shura-i-Ulema (Council of the Clergy), created by the Kadimists - a movement of Islamic traditionalists from among the mullahs and feudal lords, who were supporters and defenders of the patriarchal principles of life, carried out an active struggle against religious reform in the form of Jadidism and adhered to the scholastic system in the field of education and upbringing.

And local liberals and democrats from among the Jadids (“renovationists”) were mercilessly slaughtered by the same mullahs, akhons and ishans who organized the bloodbath and stood at the origins of the Basmach movement, whom they now want to justify in Kazakhstan.

Therefore, when the President of neighboring Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, after the rehabilitation of 115 leaders of Basmachi gangs, says that these are “Jadids” tortured by the Bolsheviks, he is clearly lying, since they were their killers.

Then these figures took part in the civil war from 1918 to 1923 in Central Asia as open mercenaries of Great Britain and Turkey. Taking the banner of Kokand (Turkestan) autonomy as a flag and relying on the support of the Bukhara Emirate, the Basmachi movement fought for the separation of Turkestan from Soviet Russia, and later from the USSR, and for the preservation of the independence of Khiva and Bukhara. The goal was also the establishment of Sharia, the former feudal order and the physical destruction of all infidels.

Basmachi flag since 1921

Since this armed struggle, organized by prominent mullahs and clergy, against Soviet power was under the slogans of jihad (holy war), it received the support of some of the believers, as well as pan-Turkist circles in Turkey.

As you know, Enver Pasha took an active part in the movement, as well as British emissaries interested in separating Central Asia. But the main detachments under the leadership of the mullahs were defeated by the Red Army by 1926, and the new wave of the late 20s and early 30s was already a response to collectivization.

_{As a result, the main reason for the collapse of this military-religious movement, which is like two peas in a pod to the modern ISIS movement, was that the people of the region refused to support it, seeing the civilizing and progressive role of the new government. Simple farmers and cattle breeders of the steppes simply did not want the return of the previous order and the tyranny of mullahs, bays, biys, beks, sultans and other feudal nobility.}

_{The terror unleashed by the Basmachi also hit mainly ordinary collective farmers from among the local residents, that is, the Uzbeks, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs and Tajiks themselves.}

Subsequently, the surviving mullahs and kurbashi already worked for the Nazi Abwehr, such as, for example, the same leader of the Kyrgyz Basmachi Kamchi-bek, who since September 1941 made several raids on Soviet territory. More than 15 thousand militants took part in attacks at the direction of Hitler’s special services from the territory of Afghanistan to Soviet Central Asia at the height of the Great Patriotic War until 1944.

The same role of spiritual leaders was played by mullahs as part of the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht and the Eastern Muslim units of the SS, personally participating in punitive actions against the local population and partisans in the territory of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, France and Belgium. Among the main themes of their propaganda were: the creation of an independent Turkestan, the fight against Bolshevism and liberation from Russian occupation. Also, a significant role was assigned to religious education and the maintenance of rituals among military personnel.

Mullahs of the Turkestan Legion, 1942. Photo: Bundesarchiv

And they now want to justify these ideological inspirers and direct perpetrators of Islamic terror in Nur-Sultan, and along with them all the Basmachi and collaborationism. At the same time, the mechanism itself has already been invented.

Soldiers of the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht perform prayer, France, 1943-1944. Photo: Bundesarchiv

Thus, a member of the state commission for rehabilitation and a deputy from the ruling Nazarbayev party Nur Otan Berik Abdygaliuly proposes to invalidate all legal decisions of the Soviet government, as well as court decisions of the 20s and 30s on proven facts of crimes on the part of the Basmachi in the form of murders of thousands of people by burning them alive, flaying them off or dipping them into boiling oil. It’s not a pity - after all, literally “the victims were only Reds.”

Deputy from Nur Otan Berik Abdygaliuly

This fledgling of the system in the 1990s studied at the American Agency for the Advancement of Science (USA) and completed an internship in the US government, as well as at Harvard University - at the School of Government. J. Kennedy on the subject of “Strategic planning and management.”

I think he can be considered an agent of influence who actively participates in the development of a new ideological concept of Kazakhstan based on anti-communism and radical nationalism, and now, together with Mufti Nauryzbai kazhy Taganuly, he plays the role of a “talking head.”

It is noteworthy, but the hand of the United States in these processes of rewriting history is visible in Central Asia with the naked eye, since in Kyrgyzstan one of the developers and lobbyists for the adoption of a similar bill for the rehabilitation of Basmachi and Nazi collaborators in 2019 was the “Open Government” created by USAID, as well as local Soros foundation.

In June of this year, an online conference “Memory of the Famine of the 1930s in Kazakhstan” was held in Washington, organized by the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan and funded by the Central Asian Studies program at George Washington University (GWU). Speakers at the round table included Sarah Cameron, a professor at the University of Maryland and the author of a book about Asharshylyk (Holodomor), Peter Rollberg, dean of the GWU Faculty of International Relations, Kazakh political scientist and director of the Risk Assessment Group Dosym Satpayev, as well as the director of the Institute of European, Russian and of GWU Eurasian Studies Marlene Laruelle.

In this regard, it is no coincidence that Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s simultaneous rehabilitation in Uzbekistan of 115 thugs, which gives grounds to say that the ongoing processes of political and legal justification of the Basmachi and Nazi collaborators in Central Asia are coordinated and controlled from a single Western center.

We can say that this is such a gift to Erdogan and a clear demonstration of the loyalty of the emerging Organization of Turkic States - a new integration association based on pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism.

_{But the worst and most alarming thing is that Nur-Sultan and Tashkent with this campaign are openly flirting with pan-Islamism and using the cultural and educational degradation of society for this. There is a clear desire to strengthen their throne due to the decline in youth literacy and the growth of religiosity.}

The propaganda by the hierarchs of the Kazakh SUMK of the Abu Hanifa madhhab and the Maturidi aqida is precisely the desire of the ruling elites to restore the former patriarchal and feudal order, but in reality they lead to the revival of the ideas of a “holy” war against the Russians and all “infidels”.

In fact, now the bleeding wound of the 20s is opening again, when the same participants in the person of Turkey and Great Britain with the participation of the United States are trying to tear Central Asia away from Russia and the EAEU using obscurantism and through such a restoration of “national memory.”