POLITICS: A Hiccup In The Tajik Peace Process

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis Dilip Hiro

LONDON, Jan 21 1998 (IPS) - Peace processes throughout the world have one thing in common: they do not progress in a linear fashion. They tend to move three steps forward, followed by two steps backward, along a path that is more often zigzag than straight.

The peace process in the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan, which endured a five-year civil war, fits the pattern.

After steady progress in the peace process, highlighted by the return to Dushanbe of Said Abdullah Nouri, the leader of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), in mid-September to head the 26- member National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), there has been a setback.

On Jan. 15 Nouri declared that the UTO, holding half of the seats on the NRC, was suspending its participation in the Commission, charged with monitoring the enforcement of the peace accords signed in Moscow in late June, until the Tajik government, headed by President Imamali Rahmanov, clarified its position on the agreements.

An umbrella body, the United Tajik Opposition consists of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), led by Nouri, as well as such secular groups as the Rastakhiz People’s Organisation, the small Democratic Party, and the Lal-e-Badakhshan, popular with the residents of the sparsely populated, but vast, Autonomous Region of Gorno Badakhshan.

Nouri cited a list of complaints against the Rahmanov administration, all of these pertaining to the implementation of the peace accords, which among other things require the Tajik government to release all political prisoners and allow the UTO activists, based in Afghanistan and Iran, to return home.

Furthermore, there has been scant progress in integrating the opposition Islamic Movement Army, popularly known as the Mujahedin, into the regular military, and create a new national defence force, according to Nouri.

Most of the Mujahedin are still at their bases in the eastern mountains and in North Afghanistan, and have yet to assemble at 10 agreed points to be re-drafted into the newly formed military units along with regular soldiers.

All that has happened in this field so far is that in order to assure Nouri’s safety in Dushanbe, the government had allowed the Mujahedin to establish a garrison there.

According to Nouri, President Rahmanov has not only failed to implement these requirements but also has shown no interest in forming a transitional national unity coalition government, with the UTO acquiring 30 percent of the posts in the cabinet and the top civil service bureaucracy, which includes the crucial director- generalship of the state-controlled broadcasting media, as specified by the Moscow peace accords.

“The government only speaks of cooperation with the United Tajik Opposition but is in this way trying to strengthen its own position and receive (financial) credits from the international community, ‘ said Nouri.

He appealed to the United Nations and the sponsor states of the peace accords — principally Russia and Iran — to pressure the Rahmanov administration to honour its side of the agreements.

However, Nouri added that the United Tajik Opposition stood by the peace accords it had signed. In response, Rahmanov blamed the UTO for showing bad faith and lacking a spirit of cooperation and compromise.

Both sides are in touch with the independent International Contact Group which currently oversees the implementation of the peace accords.

Insiders claim that major differences have arisen between the two camps on the composition of the coalition government — charged with modifying the constitution, holding a referendum on the amendments, and arranging free and fair elections — especially about the role to be assigned to Haji Akbar Turajanzade, the 45- year-old seniormost deputy of Nouri.

Nouri wants an important ministerial post for Turajanzade, and this is opposed vehemently by Rahmanov.

Before the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Turajanzade was the head of the Tajikistan branch of the official Muslim Spiritual Directorate of Central Asia, based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

During the turmoil that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse, Turjanzade became the catalyst who brought together the traditional rural mullahs, the clandestine IRP, and the underground Sufi brotherhoods.

This alliance, nurtured by Turjanzade’s directorate, played an important role in welding a united opposition to the neo-Communist administration in Tajikistan, which later became involved in a civil war that erupted in May 1992.

During that conflict Turjanzade led a militia which in October 1992 beat off an offensive by the neo-Communist forces, aided by Uzbekistan.

Such a record makes Turjanzade a persona non grata to the Rahmanov camp. It fears that were Turjanzade to combine power with his charisma and leadership qualities, he could emerge as an unbeatable opponent.

This may especially be so when he is likely to reiterate that he had always emphasised that the aim of establishing an Islamic state could only be realised through law, and that such an outcome would requite the electoral support of a substantial majority of Muslims.

In an ethnically mixed, Soviet-educated population of five million in Tajikistan, Turjanzade had argued repeatedly that an Islamic state was unlikely to be in the rigid Iranian mould, with women wearing veils, etc.

The Rahmanov loyalists know that in the only free poll allowed in Tajikistan — in November 1991 for the republic’s president — Davlat Khudanazarov, the candidate backed by the IRP-dominated opposition bloc, won 34 per cent of the vote despite the broadcasting monopoly enjoyed by the Communist candidate, Rahman Nabiyev, the predecessor of Rahmanov. They are therefore intent on keeping Turjanzade out of a high profile job.

Following the peace accords in June, local and foreign observers speculated that the tussle between the opposing camps as to who gets what in the state power structure would be long and acrimonious, in which an occasional bout of violence could not be ruled out.

It seems Tajikistan is now witnessing the first battle of this kind. The international community can only hope that it will not lead to blood-letting and damage the peace process irrevocably.