JUNE 8 2017 (The Bulletin) — The authorities in Kyrgyzstan said that they had arrested a man plotting a suicide attack in the country. In August 2016 a man drove a car bomb into the Chinese embassy in Bishkek. It was later blamed on Uighur separatists. No more details of the arrest or of the bomb attack plan were released.
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(News report from Issue No. 332, published on June 12 2017)
JUNE 7 2017 (The Bulletin) — Russia plan to reinforce its military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in response to the move north of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said during a visit to Kazakhstan for a summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Earlier this year, the Taliban moved to within a few miles of the Amu Darya river that acts as the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, its furthest north. Russia keeps one of its largest overseas military bases in Tajikistan. The Kyrgyzstan base, at Kant near Bishkek, is far smaller. It is mainly used as an air base.
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(News report from Issue No. 332, published on June 12 2017)
JUNE 1 2017 (The Bulletin) — Two unnamed Kazakh citizens were injured in a bomb in central Kabul that killed more than 90 people, media reported. Their injuries are not thought to be life- threatening. The bomb ripped through Kabul’s diplomatic quarter damaging several embassies.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
MAY 23 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in St Petersburg sentenced two ethnic Tajiks to prison for recruiting people for the extremist IS group. One of the men was given a 6-1/2 year sentence; the other a sentence of 6 years. Russia and countries in Central Asia have said that much of the alleged radicalisation of young Central Asians occurs in Russia where they work as labourers, removed from their family unit.
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(News report from Issue No. 330, published on May 28 2017)
MAY 15 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Reports from Afghanistan said that government forces had pushed back Taliban soldiers who had moved up to the border with Tajikistan. Worried about a possible incursion across into Tajikistan, the Tajik military earlier this month deployed extra forces along its border. Analysts are worried that any push into Tajikistan by the Taliban may destabilise the Central Asia region.
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(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)
DUSHANBE, MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan started reinforcing its army along the border with Afghanistan against a potential surge north by the Taliban, official sources told The Conway Bulletin.
At the end of last month, the Taliban captured the town of Zebak, 35km from the border with Tajikistan, its furthest advance north in years of fighting.
“Although the Talibs always claim not to cross the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, we have still decided to announce an intensified military situation in Tajikistan’s Ishkashim region,” a senior official in one of the regional emergencies ministries told a Bulletin correspondent.
Ishkashim region is part of Tajikistan’s Badakhshan province, which borders Afghanistan.
In Dushanbe, witnesses saw military transport planes take off from the airport and head in the direction of Badakhshan and, for the first time under a military pact agreed in 2012 between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, media reported that Tajik hospitals have been caring for injured Afghan government soldiers.
Analysts and some government officials have been warning for years that any Taliban move north towards Tajikistan threatens stability in Central Asia.
The risk is that a destabilised southern Tajikistan would drag the government into the fight against the Taliban. Russia, too, has a base in Tajikistan and could get pulled into the conflict.
People living in Ishkashim near the border with Afghanistan have started to flee their homes, witnesses said.
Parvina, a 47-year-old, teacher at the university in Khorog, the nearest Tajik town, said that although people in the region had lived with the threat of fighting in Afghanistan spilling over into Tajikistan, the situation was currently more serious than usual.
“Afghanistan has had this war for decades and of course I am afraid of it,” she told a Bulletin correspondent by telephone. “The only thing that is separating us from Afghanistan is the Amu Darya River and I do not think that it will be hard for the Talibs simply to cross it whenever they decide to.”
Over the past few years, Central Asian states have boosted trade and diplomatic ties with Afghanistan, making plans to build pipelines and electricity routes across the country, as well as trading gas and establishing air links.
But the threat from the Taliban has never been far away. In 2015, the Taliban briefly captured the city of Kundiz near the Tajik border. Turkmenistan has also been bolstering its border forces over the past few years after it said that Taliban forces attacked its border posts.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek interior minister Abdulsalom Azizov said that every day the security forces are uncovering militants who have fought for the radical group IS in Syria trying to return to Uzbekistan disguised as migrant workers. Western security services are increasingly concerned that Central Asia is becoming a hotbed of radical Islam.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
MAY 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Taliban militants have captured the Zebak district in Afghanistan, close to the border with Tajikistan, reports said. Security analysts have said that a surge north by the Taliban is a major threat to Tajikistan. Now, reports have said that Afghan government forces have been regrouping at a town on the border with Tajikistan after being defeated in a couple of battles.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
APRIL 25 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh MPs passed into law a bill that will strip people convicted of terrorism of their citizenship. Kazakhstan and the rest of Central Asia have been fighting to dampen a flow of recruits to the extremist IS group over the past few years. The main suspects behind an attack in Istanbul and St Petersburg this year were from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 326, published on April 28 2017)
APRIL 21 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan’s security services raided internet cafes across the country in an apparent attempt to clampdown on extremist networks, the Eurasianet website reported. Eyewitnesses said that it looked as if the security services were searching through log books and databases looking for signs that extremists had been using internet cafes to spread propaganda. Central Asian governments are under pressure to do more to hit extremist networks after an Uzbek and a Kyrgyz were accused of attacks in Istanbul and St Petersburg this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 326, published on April 28 2017)
