TAJIKISTAN: Failed Assassination Triggers Clampdown On Opposition

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Dilip Hiro

LONDON, May 7 1997 (IPS) - Following a failed assassination attempt against its president, Imamali Rahmanov, in the northern city of Hojand last week, the Tajik government is settling scores with its leftist opponents in the north.

Among those backing this policy of the authorities in Dushanbe, the national capital, are the Islamist forces. They fear that if Rahmanov is killed the peace process, of which they are an integral part, would be derailed.

This would deprive them of their imminent sharing of power with the secularist forces, now led by Rahmanov, as provided by the treaty they signed in March.

The attack on the Rahmanov came when he visited Hojand to inaugurate the Hojand University. An assailant aimed a hand- grenade at him. He escaped with minor injuries, but two of his bodyguards were killed.

Since then the authorities have carried out searches and arrests in and around Hojand. In an attack on a hideout of an armed group in a village near Hojand on Sunday, the security forces killed four suspects. The government has also despatched its detectives abroad to check the foreign connections of the conspirators.

The fact that the assassination attempt on Rahmanov, who comes from the Kulyab region in the south, occurred in Hojand is significant. It underlines the geographic, ethnic and clannish divisions of Tajikistan.

Hojand, which is part of the fertile Fergana Valley that runs from Uzbekistan in the west to Kirgizstan in the east, is physically separated from the rest of the country by a mountain range. Its population is predominantly ethnic Uzbek, who form about a quarter of the national population of over five million.

During the Soviet era this region was more solidly Communist, and atheist, than the rest of the state. It was called Leninabad. Its economy, based on cotton, was healthier than that of the other regions. It was also the site of much industry.

In contrast, the southern part of the republic is predominantly ethnic Tajik. The Soviet system failed to destroy completely their feudal, clannish way of life and their devotion to Islam. Except for the cotton growing areas in the valleys, the economy was weak.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the differences between the north and the south became acute, with Dushanbe, situated in the central zone, briefly coming under the influence of Islamists, who are strong in the south and the centre but have scant support in the north.

During this period the Hojand region repeatedly threatened to break away. When the security situation in Dushanbe deteriorated in late 1992, the Tajik parliament assembled in Hojand, and elected Rahmanov, then governor of the Kulyab province, its Speaker, and thus the effective head of state.

He in turn appointed Abdul Malik Abdullah Janov, a former Communist economist turned businessman from Hojand, the prime minister. Abdullah Janov selected his ministers from the regions of Hojand and Kulyab.

Once in office, Rahmanov consolidated his position. He became president of the republic under a constitution amended by the parliament. Aided by Russia, he tried had to defeat the Islamist forces, operating from neighbouring Afghanistan, but failed.

Later, in order to improve his chances of a rapprochement with the armed Islamists, he sidelined Abdullah Janov.

As secularists under Rahmanov, and Islamists under Sayyid Abdullah Nouri, encouraged respectively by Russia and Iran, inched towards formal reconciliation over the past year, the leftist forces led by Abdullah Janov felt increasingly alienated from the political system.

They viewed these developments as a deliberate move by the southerners to marginalise the northerners whose dominance in the economy and politics of the republic the latter had always disliked.

Protest by the Abdullah Janov group in Hojand reached such an intensity late last year that the government almost lost control of the city. This was an experience which left a deep impression on Rahmanov’s mind.

It was partly to demonstrate that the events of last winter were history, and that the central government was in full control of the Hojand area, that Rahmanov decided to visit the city. By opening of a new university there he wished to illustrate the importance that his administration attached to the region.

After the attack, perhaps not surprisingly, many inside and outside the government pointed their accusing finger at Abdullah Janov. He denied any involvement with the assassination attempt.

As elsewhere in former Soviet Union, armed mafia groups have sprouted in Tajikistan. Then there are rogue units from the regular army and the armed Islamist militia.

So long as the authorities lack conclusive proof to prosecute the suspects it arrests, speculation about the perpetrators of the attack on the republic’s president will be rife.

Meanwhile it is to the political advantage of the Rahmanov’s government to malign its leftist opponents in the north, an exercise in which its newly-found allies, the Islamists, are only too happy to participate.

If nothing else, the attempt on the Tajik president’s life has given a new life to the effort to implement the treaty between the government and its erstwhile opponents, the Islamists.