TAJIKISTAN: Regional and Global Powers Queue To ‘Help’ Dushanbe

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW, Mar 15 1996 (IPS) - Talks on options to end the civil conflict in Tajikistan at a special session of the Tajik parliament have seen unprecedented international involvement in what is the thorniest problem troubling post-Soviet Central Asia.

But while it was attended by a number of international observers, including the United Nations, the representatives of the opposition have stayed away from the parliament (Milli Mejlis) session, which opened in Dushanbe this week.

After the Feb. 26 expiry of a six-month truce between the Moscow- backed Tajik government led by Imomali Rakhmonov and opposition groups operating out of bases in Northern Afghanistan, fears were high hostilities would resume.

Instead U.N. envoy Ismat Kittani has had written assurances from opposition leader Sayed Abdullo Nuri expressing willingness to prolong the cease-fire for another three months. However scattered fighting continues across the country.

Dushanbe officials Thursday claimed the recapture of a strategic road link between the capital and the east, reporting 25 rebels killed and 40 wounded in what was called a “local operation”.

However, the truce continues to be observed in general. Rebel leaders dismissed Dushanbe’s accusations that they plan a new offensive and say they will abide by the ceasefire agreement.

Rakhmonov says he “remains committed to the idea of a political settlement of the conflict and favours a continuation of the negotiating process”. However he will not tolerate “pressure, blackmail and threat,” he told the Milli Mejlis session.

Under pressure from the U.N. and Russia, Iran and Uzbekistan, Rakhmonov invited the opposition to the special session. The opposition agreed, but withdrew after the kidnapping of one of their representatives in Dushanbe last month.

Since the end of a full-scale civil war in 1992 that put Rakhmonov in power, Russian-backed government forces have battled guerrillas from both Islamic and democratic opposition groups.

In an attempt to consolidate his position Rakhmonov secured an agreement signed Mar. 9 by the representatives of six political parties, national communities and religious confessions — armed rebels not included — as a basis for the discussion.

He promised to meet rebel leaders any time and says his government will soon “reconsider previous decisions and will allow banned political parties and movements to legalise after changing their statutes in accordance with the new constitution”.

The opposition demands seats in the government and new elections to replace the legislature elected in February 1995. International monitors agreed that the opposition was not given time to prepare for the vote.

However, the fact that the fragile truce still holds owes less to Rakhmonov’s overtures or the opposition’s reluctance to resume fighting and more to the pressure put on all sides by other nations, including Russia, Iran, Afghanistan and the United States.

Indeed, the growing involvement of these parties in the troubled Central Asian republic has been dubbed by some experts as “a contest of peace initiatives”.

A Central Asian tour by Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov in early February was followed in quick succession by visits by Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and a U.S. delegation headed by special envoy James Collins in March.

U.S. President Bill Clinton’s aide Strobe Talbott, currently in Moscow, is also expected to go to Dushanbe shortly.

All the participant countries in the U.N. sponsored Tajik peace process are calling for a formal extension of the ceasefire and continuation of talks on ‘national reconciliation’.

During their sojourn in Moscow on Mar. 8 Iranian and Russian foreign ministers announced a joint intention “for better coordination between them to solve the Tajik conflict”.

“My tour of the Commonwealth of Independent States inspired new hopes for the earliest political settlement in Tajikistan,” Velayati told journalists in Moscow.

If, outwardly, Moscow, Kabul and Teheran seem to toe the same line in Tajikistan, each of these countries have different motives.

“Moscow’s position is still to keep Rakhmonov in power, if necessary, by military means,” said Sergei Solodovnik, a senior research fellow at the Moscow-based Institute of International Relations. “Its main aim is to secure the ‘underbelly of Russia’, as Primakov puts it, from what many here see as the incursion of Islamic fundamentalism.”

Moscow keeps an armoured division in the republic and its border guards patrol the troubled Tajik border with Afghanistan. Though Kabul has been reluctant to do more to halt the incursions and Iran upset the Tajiks by granting asylum to opposition leaders, they are more than happy to line up with Moscow in support of Rakhmonov.

“The reason why Teheran and Kabul find it convenient to agree with the Kremlin is that for both of them friendship with Moscow is more important than Tajik opposition,” said Moscow Asian affairs analyst Sanobar Shermatova.

“Velayati’s tour has become a turning point in Russian-Iranian relations, who now see themselves as ‘strategic partners’. On the other hand, looking out of besieged Kabul, president Rabbani looks at Russia as his main remaining supplier for arms and food.” The Afghan mujahedeen led by ‘General Dustum’, who host the Tajik guerrillas, are opponents of the present Kabul regime.

At the same time both Kabul and Teheran look askance at the attempts of the U.S. to join the game in Tajikistan. “Washington follows closely the developments in Tajikistan and around it,” said U.S. envoy James Collins, bringing a message from Clinton to Rakhmonov this month.

Calling on the conflicting sides to formally extend the ceasefire, he warned that refusal to do so may lead to the U.N. renouncing its mandatory mission as mediator in Tajikistan. Collins also said that Clinton’s message called for Tajikistan to establish stronger ties with the International Monetary Fund and other Western financial institutions.

“For the present the U.N. remains the principal leverage of the U.S. in Tajikistan,” said Oleg Panfilov, a Moscow-based source close to Tajik opposition. ‘But if Dushanbe is convinced that the neighbouring countries can do a better job now, it can decide to forego the U.N. role, especially since such action deprives the opposition of any semblance of international status.

“This, in turn, may drive the rebels to all-out war, and Russia would be left in an unenviable position of a participant in protracted bloodshed”