Category: Region

Tajikistan: Islamic Militancy No Phantom Menace

By John MacLeod – Central Asia – 14 May 2011
Shortly before al-Qaeda’s leader died in a high-profile raid in Pakistan, security forces in the Central Asian republic scored their own coup against a militant leader dubbed the “Tajik Bin Laden”.

Mullo Abdullo died as he lived, in conflict. His death in a firefight with Tajik security forces on April 16 will force analysts to rethink the threat posed by Islamic militants groups in Tajikistan and elsewhere in Central Asia.

 

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Assessing Tajikistan’s “Mujahedin”

A public statement by a group calling itself the Mujahedin of Tajikistan has set the experts guessing about whether such an organisation really exists. What they do agree on, however, is that Tajikistan is increasingly vulnerable to militant activity from a mix of dissatisfied Islamists at home, and armed groups over the border in Afghanistan.

The Mujahedin of Tajikistan issued a statement posted on Islamist websites on April 24, warning of revenge attacks against the Tajik government for the death of veteran militant leader Mullo Abdullo, killed by the security forces on April 26 during a military operation in the Rasht valley in the eastern mountains. (For more on this incident, see Few Tears Shed for “Tajik Bin Laden”.)

The Tajik government has not publicly addressed the various permutations of the threat – ranging from insignificant local groups to a coordinated network of local and foreign fighters. One senior official, quoted anonymously by the Regnum news agency, said the threat should not be taken seriously, there was no destabilising force left now that Mullo Abdullo was dead, and the law enforcement forces were in full control of the situation.

A Tajik security source told IWPR, also anonymously, that such statements might well emanate from disgruntled civil war-era commanders now living in Russia – and incapable of doing anything more than make threats. “They’re able to sit and disseminate information via the internet, but they are not capable of fighting against government forces,” he said.

Lola Olimova is IWPR’s Tajikistan editor.

This article was produced jointly under two IWPR projects: Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education Through the Media, funded by the European Commission; and the Human Rights Reporting, Confidence Building and Conflict Information Programme, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway.


Village “Lost” Between Tajik and Uzbek Lands

Residents of a village on Tajikistan’s northern border with Uzbekistan feel they have been cast adrift by their government.

The village of Platina, with around 1,600 residents, lies in the Spitamen district of Tajikistan.

Tajiks and Uzbeks live happily side by side, but both face the same difficulties – lack of medical facilities in the area and a shortage of work.

Tajik families, however, face an additional difficulty as there is no local school, so their children have to attend an Uzbek school six kilometres away. As well as having to travel a long way to school, they are studying the curriculum and history of Uzbekistan, and using Uzbek instead of their native Tajik as the learning medium. Apart from the linguistic differences, they have to learn Latin script for Uzbek instead of the Cyrillic used for Tajik.

The audio programme, in Russian and Tajik, went out on national radio stations in Tajikistan, as part of IWPR project work funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 

 

Tajiks to Strengthen Border With Afghanistan

As the international troop withdrawal from Afghanistan draws closer, Tajikistan is trying to strengthen its long frontier with that country as a safeguard against attempts to export instability.

Since Tajikistan took over border protection from Russia, whose troops performed the role until 2005, it has sought donor funding to modernise and consolidate its defences.

New border posts have been built or are planned, but existing ones are in need of refurbishment. And the Tajik frontier force is still using obsolete arms, equipment and radios from the Soviet era. Its vehicles date mostly from the early 1980s.

The audio programme, in Russian and Tajik, went out on national radio stations in Tajikistan, as part of IWPR project work funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Up the Khyber Pass – Pakistan / Drug Baron – Afghanistan / Exporting the Taliban Revolution – Afghanistan

Up the Khyber Pass – Pakistan

Drug Baron – Afghanistan

Exporting the Taliban Revolution – Afghanistan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading Up the Khyber Pass – Pakistan / Drug Baron – Afghanistan / Exporting the Taliban Revolution – Afghanistan

Drugs Blight – Tajikistan

http://youtu.be/i7gD5bwsLH8

Nov 2007
Tajikistan is struggling to cope with an influx of cheap drugs from Afghanistan. The country has just one rehab clinic and on average, ten soldiers a year die in shoot outs with drug traffickers.

Last year, more than two billion dollars worth of heroin was smuggled from Afghanistan. “No matter how much effort we put into fighting the trafficking, the real problem is in Afghanistan”, complains General Nazarov. Many are nostalgic of the days of the Taliban, when heroin was much harder to obtain.

Tajiks of China (Gulibita)

Tajik (Persian: تاجيک Tājīk; Tajik: Тоҷик ) is a general designation for a wide range of Persian-speaking peoples of Iranian origin with traditional homelands in present-day Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and southern Uzbekistan. Smaller numbers also live in Iran and Pakistan; they are mostly refugees from Afghanistan.

The Tajiks of China, although known by the name Tajik, speak Eastern Iranian languages and are distinct from Persian Tajiks. The music is a Chinese Tajik song, “Gulibita” (direct translation from the sound). It’s a girl’s name.

The lyric says, Gulibita, you are so beautiful that even the prettiest flower could not match your beauty, and there is no word available on this world that could describe your beauty. I will reach you, even if I have to across the dessert and sand storms, even if I have to risk my own life.

Tajikistan in the context of Central Asia

Central Asia is known by many names, including Eurasia, Middle Asia, and Inner Asia. At its core, the region is composed of five states that became independent nations following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Scholars sometimes include Afghanistan, Mongolia and the Xinjiang province of China within the label Central Asia. For this project, Central Asia is restricted to the five former Soviet countries, while Afghanistan is classified in Southwest Asia, and Mongolia and Xinjiang as part of East Asia. These states have a shared landmass of 1.5 million square miles, about one-half the size of the United States.

The region’s unity comes from a shared history and religion. Central Asia saw two cultural and economic traditions blossom and intermix along the famed Silk Road: nomadic and sedentary. Nomadic herdsmen, organized into kinship groupings of clans, lived beside sedentary farmers and oasis city dwellers. Four of the countries share Turkic roots, while the Tajiks are of Indo-European descent, linguistically re- lated to the Iranians. While still recognizable today, this shared heritage has devel- oped into distinct ethnic communities. Continue reading Tajikistan in the context of Central Asia