JUNE 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s military has been testing using drones at night in Tajikistan’s Pamir mountains, Russian media reported quoting a military press release. Russia is worried about the threat from the Taliban to Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan has extended its military draft, websites reported, perhaps to bolster units along the increasingly tense border with Afghanistan.
“According to incoming reports, the majority of young men, who have been recently drafted in Lebap and Balkan velayats, will be sent to the military units based in Kushka, i.e. near the Turkmen-Afghan border,” the website reported.
Senior military officials have previously said that they need to boost the number of soldiers in the army to counter perceived threat from the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Last year reports from the border said that Turkmen army units clashed with Taliban units in a number of skirmishes. This year, though, reports from the border of military activity have been much reduced.
Even so, the Chronicles of Turkmenistan website reported that the Turkmen military has extended the draft for con- scripts to July 25 from the end of June.
“According to incoming reports, the majority of young men, who have been recently drafted in Lebap and Balkan velayats, will be sent to the military units based in Kushka, i.e. near the Turkmen-Afghan border,” the website reported.
The countries that border Afghanistan — Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan — have been warning that the Taliban is preparing to move to Central Asia.
Russia has supported this assessment and sent various military advisers to the region as well as offering to boost its military presence along the border.
But many Western analysts have scorned this viewpoint and said instead that the narrative has been designed to bolster strict military and authoritarian rule in the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Tajikistan lifted a ban on Facebook and YouTube imposed after a police chief defected to the radical group IS in Syria last month, the AFP news agency reported.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s prosecutor-general issued an arrest warrant for Gulmurod Khalimov, the paramilitary police chief who defected to IS in Syria.
Mr Khalimov was also formally stripped of his military title. He had been a colonel.
He appeared at the end of May in a video from Syria in which he cradled a sniper rifle and pledged to ferment revolution in Tajikistan.
Mr Khalimov had left his home in April, telling his wife that he was going away on a business trip for a few days.
Instead he became IS’ most high-profile recruit from Central Asia.
Central Asian countries are increasingly worried about the ability of IS to recruit disenfranchised and poor young men from the region. With his glamour and seniority, Mr Khalimov’s recruitment has added extra weight to the IS propaganda programme.
Mr Khalimov had led Tajikistan’s paramilitary OMON unit and had been trained by special forces in the United States and in Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
MAY 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Wearing a black scarf wrapped around his head and cradling a sniper rifle, Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov, Tajikistan’s paramilitary police chief, appeared in a video for IS to confirm that he had defected to the extremist group.
Colonel Khalimov’s defection is a major blow to Tajikistan and a major victory for IS. It has targeted Central Asia as a prime recruiting ground and has released videos showing Central Asian recruits training and also of a Kazakh boy shooting dead Russian captives.
In the slickly-made 12 minute video, 40-year-old Colonel Khalimov explained that he had defected from Tajikistan because of the authorities’ crackdown on Islamic dress and prayers.
He called on other Tajiks to join him in Syria and described Americans as pigs.
“Listen, you dogs, President and ministers, if only you knew how many of our boys, our brothers are here, waiting, eager to return to Tajikistan to establish sharia law,” he said.
At the end of the video, Colonel Khalimov shows off his skills as a trained sniper by shooting a ripe tomato.
Colonel Khalimov has been missing since late April and rumours had been flying around Dushanbe that he had headed to Syria to join IS.
And he is high-profile recruit for IS. As head of Tajikistan’s paramilitary police force, Colonel Khalimov wielded large powers and responsibilities.
His defection poses more problems for Central Asian states which say they are already struggling to fight against the IS recruitment drive.
The International Crisis Group has estimated that there are 4,000 men from Central Asia fighting for IS in Syria.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia’s military said it had started drills with drones in Tajikistan’s mountains aimed at potentially stopping Taliban forces, media reported. Russia and Central Asian countries are increasingly concerned about the threat from the Taliban.
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(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MAY 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Online reports have said that one of Tajikistan’s most senior police chiefs Gulmurod Halimov, who has been missing since April, has tried to cross into Syria to fight for the extremist group IS. These reports cannot be confirmed but, if they are true, it will embarrass the Tajik government.
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(News report from Issue No. 232, published on May 20 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek cinemas are showing a slickly made feature-length film which appears designed to project the government’s version of events in the town of Andijan 10 years ago when soldiers killed hundreds of people.
The 2-1/2 hour long film, called Sotqin and made by the government backed UzFilm studios, tells the story of two disenchanted brothers from a provincial town.
With the help of a foreign spy and agitators linked to Western non-governmental organisations they become increasingly religious and are persuaded to launch an attack on government buildings with a group of Islamic extremists.
Human rights groups have accused the Uzbek government of using the film, released in March, as a propaganda tool.
“It [the Uzbek government] wants to provide its own narrative — a quite strident, assertive narrative that Andijan for us is closed and any violence that was committed — or any harm that was done — was done by outsiders, not by us,” Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia programme director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Uzbekistan has always disputed the widely-accepted Western version of the Andijan killings of May 13 2005. It has said that 187 people died in Anijan and that most were armed Islamic extremists. Human rights groups said that the death toll was far higher and that those killed were unarmed civilians.
The killings in Andijan triggered an international outcry. Uzbekistan was seen as a pariah state and was shunned by the West. This changed, though, over the past few years because NATO has needed Uzbekistan to help it withdraw its military kit from Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s interior ministry said that it would not prose- cute men who have fought for the extremist IS group in Syria or Iraq if they repent and want to return home. Tajikistan is increasingly concerned about the number of young men who have moved to Syria to fight for IS.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in south Tajikistan sentenced 10 men to 8-1/2 years in prison each for being members of the banned Islamic extremist group Jamaat Ansarullah. Jamaat Ansarullah is an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, blamed for a series of attacks over the past couple of decades in Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)
