Constructing Rahmonistan
Tajikistan is the president’s personal kingdom.
Constructing Rahmonistan
Tajikistan is the president’s personal kingdom.
In April, staff at state media organizations in Tajikistan were given orders to always refer to President Emomali Rahmon by his full title: “The Founder of Peace and National Unity — Leader of the Nation.”
A state media worker told RFE/RL’s Tajik service, “Previously, we were permitted to use the abbreviated form — Leader of the Nation — instead of the long form: The Founder of Peace and National Unity — Leader of the Nation.”
The director of the Tajikistan state radio broadcaster, Farrukh Ziyoyev, told EurasiaNet that the “requirement was in line with the December 2015 law titled, fittingly enough, ‘The Founder of Peace and National Unity — Leader of the Nation.’”
Tajikistan is a country that remains deeply sensitive to the remembered horrors of its five-year post-Soviet collapse civil war while also willfully ignorant — in a top-down fashion — of the fact that the conflict’s causes remain festering wounds, at best.
Brent Hierman, a comparative politics professor at the Virginia Military Institute and Central Asia scholar, summarized the civil war like this: “a war fought between regional elites; specifically, following the collapse of the center, networks of elites, organized according to region, mobilized their supporters against one another in an effort to gain control of the existing state institutions.”
The end of the war — officially on June 27, 1997 — was not truly the end of this process, just its most violent and tumultuous phrase. In the 20 years since, Rahmon has carefully consolidated control over the country. At first Rahmon worked within the peace structure, which had admitted the opposition into government. Then, when the time was right, Rahmon effectively reneged on his end of the peace deal, ejecting the opposition from government by dismantling the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) and branding it a terrorist organization. At the same time he claimed to have been the Founder of Peace and Unity.
Flouncy titles, legal tinkering, and flagrant nepotism are features of the latest phase of power consolidation in Rahmonistan.
Rahmon’s title, and insistence on its repeated use, is reflective of the president’s efforts to place himself, and his family, at the core of the country’s 20 years of post-war peace. As Christian Bleuer noted in last month’s cover story:
If any Tajiks complain [about conditions in the country], the retort from Rahmon’s supporters usually includes the time-proven scare tactic: remember what happened the last time Tajiks came into the streets and protested? The civil war.
The legislation passed in late 2015 not only bestowed upon Rahmon the title Leader of the Nation, but also granted him immunity from prosecution for life. Insulting the president was criminalized. Immunity was extended to cover Rahmon’s relatives, whose property was exempted by the law from being subjected to any future legal wrangling. Subsequent rule changes passed in spring 2016 via referendum removed term limits for Rahmon and also lowered the age at which an individual could run for president from 35 to 30.
Tajikistan’s next presidential election is slated for 2020. It’s likely that Rahmon will run for a fifth term, but in the case he choses not to the age limit change has opened the possibility that his eldest son, Rustam Emomali — who will be 32 — will be eligible to run.
It is difficult to not only see a calculated plan to defend the gains the Rahmon family have made in Tajikistan — protecting, in technical perpetuity, their positions and possessions — but also the active laying of groundwork for a family dynasty.
Rustam, at the age of 29, was appointed mayor of Dushanbe by his father’s decree in January, displacing Mahmadsaid Ubaydulloyev. Ubaydulloyev, who was part of the Tajik government delegation negotiating with the opposition from 1994 to 1996, became mayor of Dushanbe before the war ended. Bruce Pannier wrote that “during the last years of the 1990s… many felt it was actually Ubaidulloev who was running Tajikistan.”
Shortly after Ubaydulloyev was dismissed, the deputy chief of Tajikistan's Anticorruption Agency, Abdukarim Zarifzoda, announced a preliminary investigation into possible embezzlement of state funds during Ubaydulloyev’s tenure. Zarifzoda said the investigation had been requested by the mayor of Dushanbe after receiving complaints from citizens.
Incidentally, Rustam’s last father-provided post was his 2015 appointment as head of the Anticorruption Agency. Who says irony is dead on the steppe?
Ubaydulloyev remains speaker of the Senate, a position that technically places him second in line for the presidency (that is, if the Tajik constitution were to be followed, which is unlikely in the event Rahmon meets an untimely demise), but the rumor mills predict his resignation or sidelining by way of corruption charges. In any case, Ubaydulloyev doesn’t have the kind of immunity that Rustam does.
Rustam isn’t the only child of Rahmon well-positioned in the government. Ozoda Rahmonova, 38 years old and the president’s second daughter, served as a deputy foreign minister until her appointment, in January 2016, as her father’s chief of staff. In June 2017 she was given the rank of state justice counselor by presidential decree. Another daughter, Rukhshona, became a deputy department head at the foreign ministry in November 2016.
The dynasty doesn’t just include direct relatives; the extended Rahmon family reaches deep into nearly every sector in Tajikistan. For example, Ozoda’s husband, Jamoliddin Nuraliev, is deputy head of Tajikistan's central bank and is also a deputy finance minister. Rahmon’s nine children, along with their spouses and children, are part of the extensive network controlling political and economic power in the country.
Constructing Rahmonistan may have secured the Rahmon family in power and consolidated their familial economic gains, but it hasn’t made the country prosperous.