Radical Islamist group Hizb al-Tahrir (HT), whose name translates as "Liberation Party," began spreading in Central Asia after the Soviet Union collapsed and moderate Islamist political opposition to post-Soviet leaders was intimidated, jailed or driven into exile. The group's ideology calls for the re-establishment of a global Islamic caliphate using nonviolent means and rejects democracy as un-Islamic. The intolerance of the region's post-Soviet governments to political opposition meant that HT's underground activities began to attract followers and prospective members as it quickly came to represent the only relatively coherent alternative view to corrupt autocracy. Central Asia's governments fear that unrest in Kyrgyzstan constitutes a power vacuum into which the group will step, creating a launching pad for destabilizing the region as a whole.