Tag Archives: Tajikistan

Tajikistan holds war games with Russia

MARCH 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan and Russia started a four day military exercise near the border with Afghanistan in a show of force designed to demonstrate the resolve of the two countries and the strength of their alliance. Media reports said that the military exercise involved 40,000 Tajik soldiers, 2,000 Russian soldiers and several hundred tanks and artillery pieces. Russia has said it is worried about the potential of Taliban encroachment into Tajikistan from Afghanistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)

Small fire damages Tajik parliament

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MARCH 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A small fire damaged the Tajik parliament building, media reported quoting interior ministry officials. They said that a computer overheating was to blame for the fire a parliamentary reception area. Photos from parliament showed two windows with black scorch marks. Nobody was injured in the fire.

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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)

ABD demands reforms from Tajikistan

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MARCH 20 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has linked another $50m loan to Tajikistan to reforms that it said the government needs to make to 14 areas to improve economic conditions, mainly focused on protecting businesses from tax inspections and official pressure, media reported. Tajikistan’s economy is under pressure from a recession in Russia and it has been looking for handouts from international lenders.

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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)

Tajik court increases lawyers sentence

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MARCH 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Tajikistan extended by two years a jail sentence imposed on human rights lawyer Buzurgmehr Yorov who was imprisoned in October 2016 for 23 years for allegedly calling for a coup. At his trial, Yorov called the allegations against him politically motivated. He then read out a verse from a poem likening officials to fools, leading to a charge of contempt of court and the additional two year prison sentence which have now been passed down.

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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)

Comment: SCO expansion should not threaten the West, says Pantucci

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MARCH 20 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has achieved remarkably little in its decade plus life.

Established formally in 2001, it grew out of a regional grouping aimed at seeking to define China’s borders with the former Soviet Union. Over time, it has expanded beyond its immediate neighbourhood to include countries as distant at Belarus and Sri Lanka as ‘dialogue partners’.

The current push to welcome both India and Pakistan is likely to further test the organisation’s already limited capability. The practical implications for Central Asia are unlikely to be dramatic, though in the longer term it may help bind Central and South Asia closer together and foster a greater sense of community across the Eurasian heartland.

In practical terms, the SCO has always been a fairly limited organisation. Seen initially by Russia as a way of controlling Chinese activity in Central Asia, for Beijing it has provided a useful umbrella under which to pursue their stealthy expansion in the region. For Central Asian powers, it provided another format in which to engage their larger neighbours. While the primary thrust of its activity has been in the security space, China has regularly sought to push it in an economic direction.

Yet, at the same time, all of the countries involved have largely pursued their own national interests through other pathways. The most recent demonstration was the establishment by Beijing of the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism (QCCM). Focused on managing the security threats from Afghanistan, the QCCM in many ways replicates a function which one would have expected the SCO to deliver.

The addition of Pakistan and India to the grouping is unlikely to change this dynamic.

All of the nations involved in the SCO will continue to function through their own bilateral and other multilateral engagements. But it will offer another forum in which India and Pakistan are obliged to interact and will also help further tie Central and South Asia together. These ties have been growing for some time. Kazakhstan has expressed an interest in participating in the China- Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Indian President Narendra Modi visited Central Asia last year.

If India and Pakistan join the SCO, it will further help tie them together.

By Raffaello Pantucci, director of International Security Studies at the London-based Royal United Service Institute (RUSI).

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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)

Tajikistan provides highest number of suicide bombers, says report

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MARCH 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan has provided the highest number of suicide bombers for the extremist group IS, Radio Free Europe/Radio/Liberty reported quoting a report by The Hague- based International Center for Counter-Terrorism. It said that 27 Tajiks had killed themselves in Syria and Iraq, more than any other group of foreigners.

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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)

Tajik police investigates Dushanbe ex-mayor

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MARCH 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Tajikistan are investigating the former mayor of Dushanbe, Mahmadsaid Ubaidulloev, for corruption linked to the construction of a shopping centre, media reported. Mr Ubaidulloev had served as the mayor of Dushanbe for 20 years before, surprisingly, resigning in January. He was replaced by Rustam Emomali, the son of Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon. Analysts have said that before he quit as mayor of Dushanbe, Mr Ubaidulloev was considered the ultimate elite insider and that the corruption allegations are part of a power struggle.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Row hurts mobile users in Tajikistan

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MARCH 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Telecoms companies in Tajikistan have, according to local media, stopped taking payments via terminals because of a dispute over the commission that the terminal operators were charging. The row has meant that long queues of people waiting to top up their mobiles are snaking out of telecoms shops in Dushanbe and other cities.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Comment: ISIS recruitment in Tajikistan is overstated, says Lemon

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MARCH 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Since 2013, as many as 4,000 Central Asians have travelled to fight in Syria and Iraq. Some of these militants play a crucial role in the organisation.

In September 2016, news agencies in Iraq reported that the former head of Tajikistan’s paramilitary police, Gulmurod Halimov, had been appointed ISIS’s supreme military commander. A recent report from the International Centre for Counter-terrorism revealed that Tajiks topped the list of foreign fighters used in suicide attacks.

For some observers, this development indicates that Central Asia is becoming a hotbed of radical Islam.

Long-suppressed during the Soviet Union, interest in religion has revived in Central Asia in the 25 years since independence and this revival has created concerns that the region’s population will embrace militant Islam.

Governments in the region, and some outside observers, argue that a cocktail of poverty, lack of education and rising religious piety drive radicalisation.

But the available evidence indicates a different story.

Almost half of the fighters from Tajikistan, for example, are well- educated graduates with degrees from secular universities and numerous fighters are from relatively wealthy families.

Only a handful of recruits have received any formal religious education. Far from being young and naïve as the government claims, the average age of fighters from Tajikistan is 28 years old, with over half of the fighters between the ages of 24 and 29. Numerous fighters experienced some form of trauma or personal crisis before joining Islamic State.

In other words, non-religious factors seem to be more important than religious ones in driving radicalisation in Central Asia.

Misdiagnosing radicalisation leads to counterproductive policies. Simply explaining recruitment through naivety and ignorance underestimates the conscious decision made by many to join an extremist group. Harsh measures that restrict the religious freedoms fail to address the underlying issues as well.

Instead, more needs to be done to counter ISIS’s propaganda, addressing social injustices and creating jobs and other opportunities so there is less incentive in the recruitment of extremist groups.

By Edward Lemon, a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia University. His research examines extremism in Central Asia.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

SCO chief: India & Pakistan will join within three months

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ALMATY, MARCH 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — India and Pakistan could become members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) by June, its Secretary-General Rashid Alimov said in a message that will raise concern in the West about the growing influence of the Russia and China-led security and economic alliance.

If, or perhaps when, India and Pakistan, join the SCO it will give the organisation leverage over roughly 40% of the world’s population and extend its geographical focus away from Central Asia towards South Asia.

Mr Alimov, Tajikistan’s former ambassador to Beijing who has been heading the SCO’s secretariat since 2016, put out the statement on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

There has been no official confirmation of Mr Alimov’s message but last year both Pakistan and India did sign an agreement pledging to join the six member group by the end of 2017. On June 8/9, the SCO plans to hold its annual summit in Astana.

Some analysts in the West have previously likened the SCO to an Asian version of NATO, set up to act as an alternative global rallying point to the West. Other observers have said that the comparison is off the mark and that the SCO is a long way off being as developed a military alliance as NATO.

Alongside Russia and China, the SCO members are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Iran, Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia also have ‘observer’ status in the SCO, which is headquartered in Beijing and was set up in 2001.

The SCO holds war exercises, hosts diplomatic and governmental get-togethers and shares intelligence between members. It also promotes economic cooperation, allowing China to invest in Central Asia.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)