Tag: Persian people

Porous and Violent, Afghan-Tajik Border Is a Worry for the U.S.

HAMADONI DISTRICT, Tajikistan — Using a raft made of scrap wood and the inner tube of a truck tire, four armed men recently crossed the river from Afghanistan to a tiny, nameless border settlement here and kidnapped the two adolescent sons of a local army recruiter.

With their hostages, they then crossed back into Afghanistan and called the recruiter, demanding $55,000. They threatened to kill his sons and sell their organs on the black market if he refused.

Such kidnappings, along with murders, armed clashes and other violence, have become persistent features of life along Tajikistan’s extensive border with Afghanistan. A largely unprotected expanse of severe peaks and dusty plains, the border is practically all that separates the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and beyond from the chaos of one of the world’s most war-ravaged countries.

 

VIA: NY Times; Porous and Violent, Afghan-Tajik Border Is a Worry for the U.S. 

 

With a Russian in a Tajik Jail, Moscow Aims Its Reprisal at Migrant Workers

MOSCOW — The imprisonment of a Russian citizen in Tajikistan has touched off reprisals against ethnic Tajik migrant workers in Russiawho say they have been unjustly targeted for arrest and deportation.

Russia has had recent spats with other regional countries.

Immigration agents have rounded up at least 300 ethnic Tajiks in the last two weeks, according to the Federal Migration Service, though independent human rights workers said they believed that hundreds more might have been detained. Tajik officials said the first deportees began arriving home this week, though it was unclear how many would ultimately be expelled.

“Officers of the Federal Migration Service, together with agencies of the Interior Ministry, are conducting operations to expel citizens of Tajikistan, and we will do so rapidly,” Konstantin Romodanovsky, the head of the Federal Migration Service, told the Itar-Tass news agency last week. “We have been told to restore order, and we will employ the severest measures to do so.”

 

-Via NY Times- With a Russian in a Tajik Jail, Moscow Aims Its Reprisal at Migrant Workers

The History of a National Catastrophe by Rahim Masov

Editor’s Note, Preface, Tajiks Within the ASSRT, The Condition of the Tajiks in the PSRB, National-Administrative Divisions, Infringement Upon the Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights of the ASSRT.

Summary

Appendix

Preface

A number of issues in the history of Tajikistan demand careful scrutiny. The most compelling of these issues, however, belong to the early phases of Soviet rule in Central Asia. One such issue is the outcome of the national-administrative divisions of Central Asia, especially the treatment that the Tajiks received at the hand of their Soviet compatriots. Admittedly, this is a somewhat obscure issue, but one that merits attention-one that illustrates a disturbing aspect of Soviet history.

An involved issue, an understanding of the national-administrative divisions requires an intimate knowledge of the 1917 Revolution, the establishment of Soviet rule in Central Asia, and the extent of the authority of the Soviets and the Communist Party during the life time of V. I. Lenin and thereafter. It also requires documentation of glaring “mistakes” that, in the long run, complicated the Tajiks’ achievement of a national government at that time. Our understanding of this latter issue is contingent upon other factors like an understanding of Pan-Turkism, the retrogressive and anti-nationalistic movement that incurred great losses on the Tajiks and, of course, the availability of documents that prove the point. The fact that this movement continues to frustrate the Tajiks’ aspiration for self-government-it is an issue at the present-makes the need for dealing with it more imperative.

Continue reading The History of a National Catastrophe by Rahim Masov