The Pamir Powderkeg

On May 17, Tajik media outlet Asia-Plus announced that it would no longer be covering events in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) following threats of closure from the government. The same day, four journalists affiliated with Radio free Europe/Radio Liberty and Current Time were assaulted in Dushanbe after interviewing an activist from the region who was later arrested.

A day earlier, clashes between police and protestors in the region’s capital, Khorugh, resulted in the death of a 29-year-old man.

Asia-Plus’ note was a troubling signal of an authoritarian government preparing to do awful things – and a preference to do so where no one can see.

By May 18, the Tajik government cracked down, hard.

The latest outbreak of violence came after six months of tension and protests, but in a broader sense it followed nearly 30 years of pressure accompanied in alternating bouts with gross government neglect. The May 18 crackdown, which the government labeled an “anti-terrorist operation,” resulted in nine deaths, all but one protesters, according to official accounts. Officials also said that more than 70 “active members of a terrorist group” had been arrested.

Locals told RFE/RL that the bodies of 21 protesters had been returned to their families for burial after May 18 and that far more had been arrested for participating in the protests.

The Mighty Pamirs

GBAO encompases the entirely of eastern Tajikistan, laying itself over the mighty Pamir Mountains. Covering 24,800 square miles, the region makes up around 40 percent of Tajikistan’s total territory. Mountainous and rugged, GBAO sits to the north of Afghanistan’s famed Wakhan Corridor, runs alongside Xinjiang’s Kashgar Prefecture, and borders southern Kyrgyzstan. To travel to GBAO, foreign tourists need a special permit.

In the early days of Tajikistan’s independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the region became a center of opposition activity. Independence presented an opening for the Pamiri people, an ethnic and religious Ismaili Shia minority in Sunni-majority Tajikistan, to gain a voice in their government.

The Soviet Union had focused its political and development efforts in western Tajikistan, centered around the cities of Dushanbe and Leninabad (now Khujand) on the edge of the Fergana Valley. The Soviet Tajik government had been dominated by people from Khujand, with competing factions of people from Kulob, in southwestern Tajikistan, also well represented in the halls of power.

By 1992 a civil war broke out that roughly mapped onto the west-east divide, with a melange of Islamists and democrats joining the Pamiris in their mutual quest to gain a say in the new country. As the war progressed, power shifted – but not to the east. Emomali Rahmon, born in Kulob, rose to the presidency where he remains nearly 30 years later. The peace agreement reached in 1997 charted out quotas for opposition members in the Tajik government, an arrangement that Rahmon spent the better part of the last two decades eroding.

In 2012, violence exploded in GBAO, centered around a former opposition commander, Tolib Ayombekov. Following the peace deal, Ayombekov took up a government job commanding a border post. In July 2012, a major-general from the State Committee on National Security (the successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB) was killed; Tajik authorities accused Ayombekov of being behind the killing in addition to smuggling and human trafficking. When Tajik forces moved in, Ayombekov and his militia resisted.

The bloodshed was the worst the country had seen since the 1990s. Ultimately, Ayombekov was convinced to surrender, in part at the request of the Agha Khan, whose Shi’ite Ismaili sect is the majority religion in GBAO and whose development organization has invested far more in the region than Dushanbe.

Ayombekov’s removal from his post typified the erosion of the peace deal’s terms, with individuals and political parties slowly squeezed out of government. The political erosion reached a head in 2015 with the outlawing of Central Asia’s only legal Islamist political party, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), which contained the Tajik opposition’s most potent national political actors. In GBAO, every few years the central government would move against a local figure – in 2012, 2014, 2018 – bullets would fly, the internet would cut out, and on the other side a tense calm would return.

Neglect and Pressure in Alternating Measure

Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan remains the poorest among the 15 constituent republics (depending on the year, sometimes Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan trade places for the bottom rank). Within Tajikistan, GBAO is the poorest region. Asia-Plus reported in April that although nationwide unemployment stands at 4.1 percent, according to official statistics, unemployment in GBAO is an astounding 19.3 percent. Unofficial figures are even worse, with one political scientist suggesting that unemployment in GBAO was around 30 percent.

With unemployment a proxy for economic opportunity and prosperity, it’s not hard to see why the citizens of GBAO would be angry at the central government’s persistent neglect, punctuated only by routine shows of force.

Last November, Gulbiddin Ziyobekov, a local man, was shot and killed by security forces. The security forces were reportedly trying to arrest Ziyobekov, who in February 2020 assaulted a deputy governor after the man had allegedly sexually harassed a young woman when she approached him seeking help. After negotiations, GBAO Governor Yodgor Faizov had the investigation into Ziyobekov dropped. Faizov, an Ismaili from GBAO, had been appointed governor after a previous bout of unrest in 2018. He was generally respected in the region.

But as Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska explained in an article for The Diplomat in February 2022, Dushanbe did not let the matter rest:

Faizov, the governor, lost his post and the investigation against Ziyobekov was resumed. Soon after, Ziyobekov’s body was found with several gunshot wounds. According to the authorities, the security services shot him in self-defense. But nobody in Khorugh believed this version of events. When the news about the killing reached the local population, thousands took to the streets in central Khorugh to demand justice.

The initial late 2021 protests ended with the government promising to investigate the killing of Ziyobekov and the deaths of two other protesters. Dushanbe also promised to restore the internet, which it had severed. Neither happened with any kind of urgency.

Human Rights Watch noted in February 2022 that Dushanbe had “shut down access to both mobile data and most fixed-line internet access in Khorugh… Access to the internet was cut off later in the rest of the region.” As of February, the internet was only available at government buildings and banks and in three remote districts. It wasn’t restored to 2G capability until late March.

Meanwhile, Dushanbe looked further afield for problematic Pamiris. In December, Chorshanbe Chorshanbiev, a 26-year-old MMA fighter from GBAO, was arrested and deported from Russia. Officially, he was detained and deported over a speeding incident, but upon arrival in Tajikistan he was detained on charges that statements he’d posted to social media amounted to violations of articles 189 and 307 of the Tajik Criminal Code, which cover actions “arousing national, racial, local or religious hostility,” and “public calls for the forcible capture of state power.”

Chorshanbiev in a 2020 pre-fight trash-talk video proudly claimed his Pamiri identity, dismissing an opponent who’d called him merely a “Tajik fighter.” Later, after the November 2021 killing of Ziyobekov, Chorshanbiev took to social media to decry the situation as unfair. He said people should react to injustice: “I urge you to stand up against injustice and against the unjust death of innocent people.”

Although an initial linguistic expert told the Tajik court that Chorshanbiev’s statements did not amount to incitement, he was convicted on May 16 and sentenced to eight years in prison.

In addition, Amriddin Alovatshoev, a migrant leader from GBAO based in Russia, was disappeared from Russia sometime in January after organizing a picket of the Tajik embassy over the Ziyobekov affair. Russia is home to more than a million Tajik migrant workers, many of them from GBAO given the region’s dreadful economic situation and high unemployment. Alovatshoev appeared in detention in Tajikistan in early February facing unspecified criminal charges, later revealed to include “hostage taking,” though no details have been given.

The Powderkeg Explodes

Regional authorities, despite pledging to investigate Ziyobekov’s killing, have done little. Protests continued over the last few months, with new demands that the regional governor, Alisher Mirzonabot, and Rizo Nazarzoda, the mayor of Khorugh, (both centrally appointed) resign. A 29-year-old man, identified as Zamir Nazrishoev, was killed on May 16 and the protests escalated further.

Two days later, after warning off (or beating up) journalists that might cover the situation in GBAO – and cutting off internet access to Khorugh again – government forces moved in to disburse the protests. Protesters tried to block the road to Khorugh and the security forces responded harshly, killing nine, according to official reports (21, according to locals).

The following week, on May 22, a former opposition commander and informal local leader, Mahmadboqir Mahmadboqirov, was shot in Khorugh. Police said he was killed in an “internal clash among criminal groups,” while local say he was assassinated by government forces. In Dushanbe, journalist and civil activist Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva was arrested for allegedly organizing the protests, among others.

Dushanbe labeled its actons in the region an “anti-terrorist operation” and charaterized the protesters as either “militants” or “criminals.” And absent independent journalists on the ground, or the ability of locals to communicate effectively with the outside world, who can question them? That’s the aim, at least.

These events illustrate a worryingly well-developed plot on the part of the Tajik government that combines the language of the war on terror with the necessities of maintaining autocratic stability.

Dushanbe effectively eliminated potentially charismatic leaders, some with Russian assistance, and then pressured media into not covering the events either via verbal warnings or physical assaults. These efforts were not entirely successful, with RFE/RL covering the events despite the assaults and threats, but the diminishment of local coverage will invariably hamper outside understanding of what has actually happened. And then, in cutting off the internet, the Tajik authorities ensured that locals could not easily sound calls for international attention. Given the large Tajik diaspora, this has also not entirely been successful.

Rahmon, who was re-elected in 2020 in a sham contest, does not face another election until 2027. Over the years, he has positioned his son, Rustam Emomali, as a successor. The violence in Kazakhstan in January serves as a warning that even the best-laid transition plans can go awry, and GBAO is the powderkeg that could derail Rahmon’s dynastic dreams.

As this issue goes to print, it’s unclear whether the conflict will continue to escalate or – as happened after previous bouts of violence – subside. The killing of Mahmadboqirov fits into previous patterns of eliminating local leaders in order to prevent the conflict from continuing. But with the fundamental grievances of GBAO’s people unaddressed by Dushanbe, it’s only a matter of time before violence erupts again.