How Central Asian Salafi-Jihadi Groups are exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic: New opportunities and challenges

Abstract

The global coronavirus pandemic crisis not only poses serious additional risks, challenges and threats to the security of the modern world, but also creates new opportunities and prospects for the global Salafi-Jihadi-Movement. This report seeks to analyze the actions of both Central Asian Salafi-Jihadi groups' view of Covid-19 and its original parent organizations such as the Taliban, al Qaeda and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham during the coronavirus crisis. The reason for this is the small and fragmented Uighur and Uzbek Islamist extremist groups from Chinese Xinjiang region and post-Soviet Central Asia are affiliated precisely with these major players of the Sunni jihadist world, such as ISIS and al Qaeda, which are their military patron and ideological banner.