Joshua Kucera has a piece up on Eurasianet implying that the US could be involved in violence in Tajikistan -- but with really not a shred of evidence, just conjecture.
Sure, indeed evil Amerika could be up to no good with its not-a-lot-of-troops and not-much-money in military aid to this impoverished Central Asian nation on the porous border of Afghanistan. Indeed it could.
But I have to wonder if this piece is merely part of the knee-jerk anti-Americanism often emanating from this set that goes soft on Central Asian terrorists and militants and then claims that US involvement with Central Asian tyrants makes the US fully responsible for those dictatorships' violence against such forces. The critics of the US -- which isn't actually journalistically established as complicit yet -- don't have a plan for addressing the militants.
I'm just as concerned about the possibly negative role of the US presence in Central Asia as anyone -- it's a key role I started this blog.
But I'm also concerned about the problem of terrorists and extremists and militants, and the way in which these Central Asian dictators can bolster their own case for continuance in power -- and the Pentagon can bolster its case for continued embrace of these tyrants -- because there isn't anything that contends those challenges to them.
I think the argument to get rid of the tyrants of Central Asia has to involve getting rid of the tyranny of terrorism, too. EurasiaNet and Human Rights Watch never worry about that problem. Get rid of the tyrants, get rid of US aid, and the peoples of these countries will auto-magically emerge as liberal democrats, they seem to imply.
Kucera doesn't have any inside story or allegations or rumors -- what he has are some old WikiLeaks cables from 2009 and 2010 that talk about US special forces training the Tajik military.
That's worrisome, given that any uniformed force in Tajikistan is going to be by its nature abusive and unaccountable in this authoritarian state. But then you could have the argument that the State Department and Pentagon no doubt have, that it's better to have these abusive forces exposed to American training that might make them "better" than not.
I'm not persuaded those democratic values rub off so easily, but I think there's a more pragmatic thing to say: training? from Americans? Like...that works? Come on guys, the Americans have been training the Afghan National Army just over the border from Tajikistan for years, and look at how well that's working out! They're shooting our people!
The problem is that neither Kucera nor anyone else I can see has actually been able to point to any bad actor from the American forces who has somehow colluded with some bad military guy doing bad things -- to be able to show this training to this unit or individual commander relates to this shoot-out.
And we'd have to also agree what's bad here. Here's a series of events that started with the murder of a top KGB official and involved security forces being killed in gun clashes and a state of emergency being declared in Badakshan. So how can you ask for the Tajik government to treat this as a mere "law-enforcement matter"? That's really stretching it. It's a profound challenge to this brittle authoritarian bunch and they are fighting for their lives -- in a context where the civil war between the post-Soviet secular authoritarians and the Islamists was not so long ago.
This is, of course, the very deep-seated belief of "progressives" in the Soros-funded circles -- that there shouldn't be anything defined as "terrorism," but there should just be individual criminal acts that are dealt with by criminal law, not some "war on terrorism".
Yeah, we get it that the "war on terror" waged by the Tajiks is clumsy indeed. But wait a sec -- their KGB guy and dozens of security people are killed in clashes with mafias or armed groups or terrorists or whatever they are, and they are supposed to treat it just like a one-off axe murder or shooting a convenience-store clerk? Please.
Kucera quotes Mamadsho Ilolov, President of the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan Mamadsho Ilolov, saying that the government shouldn't have used the anti-insurrection methods they did in the mountains, but should have "done it another way". How? And who says the assassination of a national security chief should be treated even as a police chief or other prominent official? This is the KGB; in these countries, it's hyper-special. It's a profound challenge to the state to have the KGB affected, truly. It seems to me to be a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of "state security" in these countries and how it is viewed to expect the Tajik government to see this as merely a policing operation. It was seen as civil war -- and maybe rightly so.
I'm all ears to hear how this is a human rights violating operation that had terrible human rights effects. Maybe it did, especially if civilians were killed as "collateral damage."
But... no civilians have been confirmed as killed, as far as we know from available news sources. There were 12 security agents and about 30 militants killed, says RFE/RL
Let's look at it in detail:
Nozirjon Buriev, a spokesman for the State Committee for National
Security, told RFE/RL's Tajik Service that some 40 militants, including
eight Afghan nationals, were arrested during the military operation in
the eastern Badakhshon Province.
Buriev rejected earlier reports about civilian casualties.
"Unfortunately, 12 law enforcement officers were killed and 23 were
wounded during the operation," he said. "There were no civilian
casualties."
The official said the government operation was targeting Tolib
Ayombekov, a former opposition commander and current regional border
guard head.
"The armed, illegal group led by Ayombekov has, over the years, been
involved in drug trafficking and also tobacco smuggling and the
trafficking of minerals. It has also committed numerous, serious
crimes," Buriev said. "On July 21st, the group brutally murdered General
Abdullo Asadulloevich Nazarov, the regional head of the State Committee
for National Security."
So, can anybody tell me that any of these 40 people were just shepherds or farmers caught up in a raid? If 12 of the Tajik government forces are killed, doesn't that let us know that these militants were armed and deadly?
Sure, it's better not to kill militants, but it's better to capture and bring them to trial in the courts. They shot government troops, however. What was the plan?
The tendency of the "progressives" to look at a story like this an automatically assume that there was something done wrong. But what was it, exactly? What *are* you supposed to do with people who murder your provincial national security chief and then shoot and kill a dozen of your men? If you're an illegitimate authoritarian government, you're a problem, but so are those challening you. That's what I come up against in this story and I wish others would.
Of course, the usual experts on this have been all over it trying to talk all those purported "hysterics" out there who see terrorists behind every bush that these are really just drug lords. Or mafia lords. Or turf-warlords.
Except, we don't really know that. Few people can really get in there and report it, and it's quite possible that these turf-warring drug lords are inspired by belief systems that could involve extremist ideas and theologies. It's ok to posit that in this part of the world; it's ok to examine it. Truly, it is. You have to keep an open mind -- and this gang never does.
Always, when there is violence in Central Asia, people begin asking: is it ethnic hatred, or drugs, or turf wars, or terrorists? And it's unlikely that these things appear only in pure, isolated, strains with no admixtures. Likely it's a little of all of these "challenges of the modern era" as Berdymukhamedov euphemistically calls all these problems.
Those who are knowledgeable about this region like Lola Olimova say that terrorism "can't" be the issue here:
Unlike other former rebel strongholds, Badakhshan has been less of a worry for central government over the years. In eastern valleys nearer to Dushanbe, there have been sporadic incidents since the civil war, which though localised, raised concerns of a Sunni Islamic insurgency with possible links to the Taleban or al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. (See Tajikistan: Islamic Militancy No Phantom Menace and Tajik Authorities Struggle to Quell Militants.) People in Badakhshan are mostly Ismaili Muslims, so that kind of link is of little direct concern.
Well, except, what if it is? Are you sure? When we are dealing with pundits who keep telling us that Islamic militance *is* a phantom menace and it's really all just local turn skirmishes among clans and whatnot, whom are we to believe?
And Olimova's story talks about this region's warlords being involved in the heroin trade from Afghanistan. Why does anybody think the drug trade is isolated from the Taliban and Al Qaeda?
Olimova is worried that if the government is too heavy-handed in cracking down on these warlords, they will have a counterintuitive effect of alienating the population and cause more unrest.
Here's an interesting bit of analysis that discounts that:
These powerful men under attack in the Pamirs are not like the businessmen arrested in Andijon. They are not moral pillars of the community who provide gainful employment and assistance to the masses. They are not governing like traditional khans. They may have made some gestures of charity, but they are very likely not strongly tied to the community in a manner that will lead the community to fight for them. Pamiris may be unhappy, but how many do you think will want to put their life on the line for those guys who hide behind their tinted windows? I generally find that in Tajikistan there is not the same Western style/level of resentment towards the wealthy, the corrupt and the mafia, but there is no strong bond.
The area's isolation also means that the central government could blockade it and strangle an insurrection, adds the author.
At the end of the day, Kucera's piece doesn't perform any new journalism or any new thinking, and it's the sort of piece that not only enrages the US embassies and troops in the region, it makes them ridicule EurasiaNet (which was something I found out more of after I left there myself). And that's unfortunate, because an informed and credible critique of the US and these tyrants they embrace is needed.
Kucera links to a Wall Street Journal piece that sounds the alarm about the links between the drug trade and Rahmon and other Central Asian dictators. Everybody knows they are up to their eyeballs in this drug trade, but this drug trade isn't just for the sake of buying SUVs -- it's about belief systems and power networks, too -- drugs are a means to an end.
The US, if it is serious about combating illegal drugs, wouldn't necessarily favour Rahmon over his enemies. But the US may want to call all things post-Afghan-war as "combating the drug trade" or "combating terrorism" when it may not be. These problems are real; we don't know how much our government will fake them.
But if we are to make the case, I think we have to have more than just a hunch that presence=complicity.
And this isn't just a police matter, and Kucera leaves this part out from the WSJ piece:
The Tajik crisis, meanwhile, has reverberated across the frontier in Afghanistan, where Mr. Ayombekov has high-level friendships and business connections, especially among fellow members of the Ismaili sect of Islam that dominates Gorno-Badakhshan, according to Tajik officials. Afghan authorities said Wednesday they arrested the chief of Afghan police in a district not far from Khorog on suspicion of helping the Gorno-Badakhshan fighters.
So there are networks and there are networks -- Kucera quoted the WSJ source that this was about a turf war -- "This was about economic control, and a dispute between the center and local structures over the region's business, legal and illegal," says Parviz Mullojanov, a political analyst in Dushanbe -- but if it has a dimension stretching across the border to Afghan officials as well, it's more than a local turf battle.
What's interesting and faintly reassuring about this story is that the government proposed a cease-fire an an amnesty for other rebel leaders at large, as if they realize they don't all this to go too far. They are managing their own turf war.
I don't know if the crisis is subsiding, but it's not clear that the US has done anything wrong.
Nonetheless, obsessed with the antagonism that all the Soros-funded gang seem always and everywhere to have to all US authority, Kucera asks:
To what extent did U.S. aid abet the use of these special forces to carry out a turf war? One which resulted in a substantial number of civilian casualties? At this point, it's hard to say. But it's safe to assume the question is being asked in the State Department and the Pentagon. Stay tuned.
As for the reports of civilian casualties -- they may well have occurred, knowing how these countries work, yet there's a puzzle as to why RFE/RL didn't reiterate the claim from their Tajik service cited by EurasiaNet July 25, in their story dated July 24.
It's impossible for me to gather every news story on this now and parse it further -- I'm not an expert on Tajikistan and Tajikistan in general tends to be neglected by those people who are regional experts, with a few exceptions.
But I do think that jerking the knee on the US, we have to ask whether the US really has such involvement here as to be complicit, and whether or not its involvement mattered or maybe made a difference. Hey, it's okay to recognize the limits of American power to do good or bad. We have to ask lots more questions that EurasiaNet is prepared to ask about the nature of violent movements challenging governments in these countries, too, even if the governments themselves are violent and illegitimate. More violence continues in Tajikistan and the question of how many civilians have been killed remains open; the protesters in Khorog asked the government to put an end to the violence.