Nate Schenkkan is the Project Director for Nations in Transit at Freedom House and a veteran host of The Central Asianist Podcast. EurasiaNet is excited to support The Central Asianst, which offers a unique take on developments in Central Asia, featuring top experts and journalists from around the world.

In this episode, Nate speaks with independent journalists Franco Galdini and Zukhra Iakupbaeva about “The Strange Case of Jaysh al-Mahdi and Mr. ISIS: How Kyrgyzstan’s Elites Manipulate the Threat of Terrorism for Their Own Benefit.” In this paper published by the Central Asia Program at George Washington University, Galdini and Iakupbaeva dissect in great detail a series of unusual alleged terrorist attacks in Kyrgyzstan from 2010 to 2016 that were blamed on the Islamic State and a supposed terrorist group called the Jaysh al-Mahdi.
 
Their paper situates these supposed terrorist attacks within a larger framework of the history of the management of Islam in Central Asia, state and elite insecurity in Kyrgyzstan, and American and Russian discourses about the war on terror.
 
Franco Galdini & Zukhra Iakupbaeva, The Strange Case of Jaysh al-Mahdi and Mr. ISIS: How Kyrgyzstan's Elites Manipulate the Threat of Terrorism, CAP Papers 179, October 2016
 
Sarah Kendzior, Inventing Akromiya: The Role of Uzbek Propagandists in the Andijon Massacre, Demokratizatsiya, September 2006