Tajikistan

[davidbfpo]

Not exactly a great shock given shared interests:

Radio Liberty reports officers from the Afghan National Security Agency arrested and took to Kabul Qari Wadud, commander of the security forces in the Shuhada district in Afghan Badakhshan Province. Qari Wadud is reportedly suspected of being involved in the events that took place in Khorog, the capital of Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) last week.

Link:http://news.tj/en/news/afghan-region...-khorog-events

[davidbfpo]

A review of this "Stan", five years since the last post, after twenty years since a short civil war and a peace settlement. Must have been bad if so many fled to Afghanistan:

Tajikistan’s civil war dragged on for over five years, leading to huge casualties. Over its course, between 35,000 and 157,000 people were killed, 37,500 households were destroyed. Some 600,000 people fled to neighbouring Afghanistan, and 195,000 were dispersed across other post-Soviet states. More than 1.5m people became refugees within their own country, in this mountainous corner of the former Soviet empire.

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-rus...n-s-civil-war?

[davidbfpo]

Part Two by the same author as before, from Open Democracy; which examines the role of external actors (not Russia) who were once useful to the regime, but not now.
Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/bakhtiyor-sobiri/tajikistan-so-close-no-matter-how-far?

[davidbfpo]

An article via Open Democracy and subtitled:

Tajikistan is trying to persecute what was once Central Asia’s only legal Islamist party out of existence. But is this really about countering terrorism, or just cracking down on dissent in any form?

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-rus...led-islamists?

[AdamG]

File under 'poorly planned vacations'

Four cycling tourists, including two Americans, were killed in an attack in Tajikistan, authorities told ABC News. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in a Twitter post Monday. A group of seven cyclists was heading north in Danghara district, about 55 miles southeast of the capital Dushanbe, when they were struck by a car with five armed people onboard on Sunday. Tajikistan’s interior minister said that, after striking the cyclists, the people in the car got out and attacked them with a firearm and a knife.

The two Americans, a woman and a man, were killed along with a Swiss man and a Dutch national. Authorities said at the time they believed it may have been a deliberate terrorist attack, although they had not ruled out armed robbery. On Monday afternoon, an IS terror group issued a statement on Twitter in Arabic claiming the attack.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/2-american...opstories.html

[AdamG]

Typical NYT piece -
A Dream Ended on a Mountain Road: The Cyclists and the ISIS Militants
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/w...ke-attack.html

[davidbfpo]

Articles on this country are arely spotted, so thanks to a "lurker" for the pointer to this article in CTC's 'The Sentinel'. The author is a DoD analyst and ex-US Army veteran.

Abstract:

A confluence of factors signals an increasing terrorism threat to Tajikistan from the Islamic State in the near future. In late July 2018, Islamic State attackers conducted the group’s first attack in Tajikistan. An Islamic State Tajik spokesman threatened to increase attacks in Tajikistan the following week. Loss of Islamic State territory in Iraq and Syria may force the movement of the significant numbers of Tajik citizens fighting there. Separately, the Tajik group Jamaat Ansarullah reportedly pledged allegiance to Islamic State Khorasan, providing Islamic State Tajiks fleeing Syria a base in Afghanistan to join.

Link:https://ctc.usma.edu/converging-fact...at-tajikistan/

I note the defector from Tajikstan's OMON, Gulmurod Khalimov has a section about him and it appears he is alive, possibly now in Afghanistan. For a resume see:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulmurod_Khalimov