A wolf in Taliban clothing?

This is also not the first time that officials have warned of the threat of Islamic extremism. Kyrgyz authorities staged similar raids three years ago, in one case killing a prominent local imam. Gunmen also apparently attacked border posts, and in a series of incidents earlier in the decade, battled government forces in a remote mountain region and took hostages.

And as with earlier incidents, the governments’ assertions are being met with a large dose of skepticism. Some observers say that the proportion of the threat is being overblown, or may not exist at all. The region’s officials, they say, use the terrorist menace to justify beefing up their police forces, crack down on dissent or just curry favor with the West. Local “wars on terror” are still very much a topic that garners immediate sympathy in Washington and elsewhere.

“The reports about these events are coming primarily from the security services, which have a history of reporting false information” said Alisher Hamidov, an expert based in southern Kyrgyzstan who is pursuing a doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins University.

“What we are seeing are criminal groups being reported as extremists,” he added.

Others, however, insist the danger posed by these fighters is indeed very real.

“They are very hard to trace — they are very bad people who are planting bombs and are very experienced,” said one western official in Kyrgyzstan who asked to speak off-the-record. Part of the problem facing local security services, Western officials say, is that the gunmen are blowing themselves up, rather than permitting themselves to be taken into custody by law enforcement bodies — and therefore are denying themselves as further sources of intelligence.

Perhaps an indication that the terrorists are being taken seriously is the recent announcement that Russia will establish a base in Kyrgyzstan’s south in the sensitive Ferghana Valley — which stretches across Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The installation will be Russia’s second in the country, after an airbase in the north — and a U.S. transit base for Afghan operations at Bishkek’s main airport.

In Uzgen, in the Ferghana Valley, locals say extremists have appeared very rarely, and that they seem to be from outside the region. “Everyone knows everyone else here — our neighborhood is very quiet," says Murad, an elderly Uzgen native sitting quietly in a tea house across the street from one of the town’s main mosques, waiting for prayers to start. But he adds: “There are a lot of local youth who have traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan and come back acting as if they are brainwashed.”

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