Uzbeks Silent on Tajik Terror Claims
Uzbeks Silent on Tajik Terror Claims
Uzbekistan has yet to react to allegations by Tajikistan’s top judge that it sponsored an attack in Dushanbe last year. NBCentralAsia analysts say relations between the two states are so poor that the allegations will have little impact.
At a July 16 press conference, Tajik Supreme Court chairman Nusratullo Abdulloev accused the Uzbek secret police of complicity in two blasts in the capital exactly one year early. The explosions shattered windows in the Supreme Court building but caused no casualties.
On July 10, the municipal court in Dushanbe sentenced Komiljon Ishonkulov, a Tajikistan national, to 22 years in prison for planting the bombs. Abdulloev said the convicted man was paid 5,000 US dollars to carry out the attack by a National Security Service officer in Denau, a town in southern Uzbekistan.
Tashkent has so far made no reaction to the Tajik judge’s revelations.
Analysts based in both countries say the Uzbek government appears to have decided to simply to sit the storm out. That being the case, they do not anticipate a seismic shift in relations between the two states.
Although Tajikistan and Uzbekistan signed an agreement on “eternal friendship” in 2000, their relationship remains troubled one, with tensions played out through convoluted visa arrangements, occasional arrests of each other’s nationals on espionage charges, and mutual accusations of plotting to undermine the other state. Major disputes on border delineation, customs arrangements, water and energy remain unresolved.
Rashid Abdullo, a political analyst in Dushanbe, said the problems are likely to continue until both countries complete the process of building self-sufficient nation states.
“Wherever you look in the Commonwealth of Independent States, you can see former Soviet republics busily creating an image of the enemy other,” he said.
According to another Tajik political analyst who did not want to be named, one reason why secret services are so active at the moment may be tensions over Tajikistan’s plan to develop water and energy projects which Uzbekistan opposes. For example, the Tajiks want to build hydroelectric power stations on the Amu Darya and Zaravshan rivers, while the Uzbeks, located downstream, are hostile to the plan, fearing it would starve them of water.
This analyst doubts the Dushanbe bomb case will have wider reverberations. “There will be mutual recriminations but no particular heightening of tensions” he said. “This kind of unpleasantness has been going on for many years now.”
Meanwhile, a political analyst in Uzbekistan said he suspected the Tajik allegations could be pretty close to the truth. “They [Uzbek authorities] may have calculated that the [blasts] would be viewed as the handiwork of international terrorists,” he said.
Other international affairs experts predict that the “quiet confrontation” between Tashkent and Dushanbe will persist.
“On the surface, it’s all fairly civilised, but in practice things are dysfunctional and strained,” said Iskandar Asadullaev, director of Simurg, a think-tank in Tajikistan.
Asadullaev believes Uzbek president Islam Karimov will fail to appear at the August summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – a regional grouping including Central Asian states, Russia and China – because it is to take place in the Tajik capital. He is likely to send his foreign minister to represent him.
Orozbek Moldaliev, director of the Politics, Religion and Security Centre, a Central Asia-wide think-tank in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, said Tajik-Uzbek tensions were liable to affect wider relations across the region. Allegations of internal interference make it hard for the two countries to work together on common problems within the framework of various regional groupings.
“Vociferous accusatory statements made by one country against another do nothing to promote consolidation and integration among members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation and the Commonwealth of Independent States,” said Moldaliev.
(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service is resuming, covering only Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for the moment.)
At a July 16 press conference, Tajik Supreme Court chairman Nusratullo Abdulloev accused the Uzbek secret police of complicity in two blasts in the capital exactly one year early. The explosions shattered windows in the Supreme Court building but caused no casualties.
On July 10, the municipal court in Dushanbe sentenced Komiljon Ishonkulov, a Tajikistan national, to 22 years in prison for planting the bombs. Abdulloev said the convicted man was paid 5,000 US dollars to carry out the attack by a National Security Service officer in Denau, a town in southern Uzbekistan.
Tashkent has so far made no reaction to the Tajik judge’s revelations.
Analysts based in both countries say the Uzbek government appears to have decided to simply to sit the storm out. That being the case, they do not anticipate a seismic shift in relations between the two states.
Although Tajikistan and Uzbekistan signed an agreement on “eternal friendship” in 2000, their relationship remains troubled one, with tensions played out through convoluted visa arrangements, occasional arrests of each other’s nationals on espionage charges, and mutual accusations of plotting to undermine the other state. Major disputes on border delineation, customs arrangements, water and energy remain unresolved.
Rashid Abdullo, a political analyst in Dushanbe, said the problems are likely to continue until both countries complete the process of building self-sufficient nation states.
“Wherever you look in the Commonwealth of Independent States, you can see former Soviet republics busily creating an image of the enemy other,” he said.
According to another Tajik political analyst who did not want to be named, one reason why secret services are so active at the moment may be tensions over Tajikistan’s plan to develop water and energy projects which Uzbekistan opposes. For example, the Tajiks want to build hydroelectric power stations on the Amu Darya and Zaravshan rivers, while the Uzbeks, located downstream, are hostile to the plan, fearing it would starve them of water.
This analyst doubts the Dushanbe bomb case will have wider reverberations. “There will be mutual recriminations but no particular heightening of tensions” he said. “This kind of unpleasantness has been going on for many years now.”
Meanwhile, a political analyst in Uzbekistan said he suspected the Tajik allegations could be pretty close to the truth. “They [Uzbek authorities] may have calculated that the [blasts] would be viewed as the handiwork of international terrorists,” he said.
Other international affairs experts predict that the “quiet confrontation” between Tashkent and Dushanbe will persist.
“On the surface, it’s all fairly civilised, but in practice things are dysfunctional and strained,” said Iskandar Asadullaev, director of Simurg, a think-tank in Tajikistan.
Asadullaev believes Uzbek president Islam Karimov will fail to appear at the August summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – a regional grouping including Central Asian states, Russia and China – because it is to take place in the Tajik capital. He is likely to send his foreign minister to represent him.
Orozbek Moldaliev, director of the Politics, Religion and Security Centre, a Central Asia-wide think-tank in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, said Tajik-Uzbek tensions were liable to affect wider relations across the region. Allegations of internal interference make it hard for the two countries to work together on common problems within the framework of various regional groupings.
“Vociferous accusatory statements made by one country against another do nothing to promote consolidation and integration among members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation and the Commonwealth of Independent States,” said Moldaliev.
(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service is resuming, covering only Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for the moment.)
