Introduction

Books on security and danger in Central Asia could doubtlessly fill a small library. Many of them assume an outside gaze that presents the region as a foreign, hostile, and very unpleasant place. They emphasize threats such as geopolitical rivalries, Islamic terrorism, political instability, drug trafficking and organized crime, or political instability. Looking at Central Asia from the outside, for example, most people will probably think of the war-ravaged landscape of Afghanistan first. Associations that come to mind include heavily fortified military bases, suicidal car bombings, poppy fields, religious fanatics and corrupt government officials. Furthermore, even when widening the gaze beyond this single– unfortunate– country, many of the dangers that have become manifest there seem at least latently simmering in the region as a whole. Take the case of religiously motivated violence: for many observers, Central Asia can be considered a worrisome breeding ground for militant Islamist groups. The networks of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)– different parts of which are connected to either the so-called Islamic State/Daesh or al-Qaeda and the Taliban– allegedly also stretch across Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Furthermore, the threat of Islamist terrorism continues to dominate debates on security and insecurity in the region, both in international policy circles and academic conferences. Yet, it should be noted that fears of Islamist violence are by no means reserved for the outside perspective alone. Central Asian governments themselves frequently evoke this danger: sometimes in order to justify repressive political action, such as the banning of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan in 2015; and sometimes to excuse outright violence, such as the 2005 massacre committed by Uzbek security forces in the Fergana Valley, killing up to 600 demonstrators on the grounds of what was then labelled an ‘anti-terror’ operation.

In their critical interrogation of such ‘discourses of danger’, Nick Megoran and John Heathershaw (2011) urged scholars some years ago to broaden our understanding of what security and insecurity may mean in the region (see also Thompson and Heathershaw, 2005). How is it experienced by local communities or even individual people? Do they share these (inter)national and elitist discourses?