Tajik Forces in Second Week of Counter-Insurgency

As government troops continue hunting for Islamic militants who killed 25 of their colleagues in an ambush last month, access to the mountainous Rasht district remains blocked.

Journalists are concerned about what they see is a media blackout, with the authorities saying they will discuss details of the counter-insurgent operation only when it is over. Some say there is a danger that rumour will replace hard facts in public perceptions of the ongoing violence.

At a political level, there are big differences over the right approach to ending the tensions. Rahmatillo Zoirov of the opposition Social Democrats is calling for negotiations with the rebels, arguing that brute force will not work. 

Suhrob Sharipov, head of the Institute for Strategic Studies, says there can be no compromise with “terrorist organisations, which include international ones" - they must simply be eliminated.
 

The audio programme, in Russian and Tajik, went out on national radio stations in Tajikistan, as part of IWPR project work funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.