Special operation on the day of Ruhnama

Two-day battle in Ashgabat

Yesterday, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry announced “the neutralization of a criminal group involved in drug trafficking in Ashgabat.” The message, citing the country's Prosecutor General's Office, states that "special units of law enforcement agencies of Turkmenistan conducted an operation to detain the criminals on September 13." As a result, “the said group was neutralized, and the Prosecutor General’s Office is currently conducting an investigation.”

This laconic message appeared only on the third day after the fierce firefight that began on September 12 in the Turkmen capital. There is nothing in the press release distributed by the Turkmen Foreign Ministry that would indicate the location of the operation, its nature, human losses incurred by special forces, casualties among civilians... It seems that the Turkmen authorities were simply forced to somehow react to numerous reports , which appeared the day before in the Russian and world media, which talked about a shootout in Ashgabat that lasted from the morning of September 12th to the second half of September 13th with the use of heavy weapons.

This first became known on Saturday morning from a publication by the opposition Turkmen website Gundogar, which reported that the police had cordoned off the area that Ashgabat residents call Khitrovka. It was there that armed clashes took place between government forces and certain militants, presumably of a radical Islamic persuasion. It was claimed that about 20 law enforcement officers were killed in the clashes. Later, Vremya Novostei sources in Ashgabat reported that the epicenter of the events was a drinking water bottling plant located in the northeast of the capital, in which well-armed militants, including grenade launchers, had taken refuge.

For a long time, as some eyewitnesses testify, the militants did not allow armored vehicles sent to help the special forces to come close to the building. Rumors about numerous casualties in battles involving tanks and artillery in Ashgabat spread throughout the city the more easily the louder the gunfire was heard throughout the city. It was heard, in particular, at the US Embassy in Ashgabat, whose employees confirmed to the Turkmen service of Radio Liberty that shots were heard throughout the night of September 13. It is strange, however, that the employees of the Russian embassy did not hear anything that night, answering with a monosyllabic “no” to the corresponding questions from the correspondent of the Russia Today TV channel.

Yesterday, citing an anonymous major of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Turkmenistan, the organization "Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights" on its website (www.chrono-tm.org) reported the death in a clash of nine employees of the Turkmen special services - five from the Ministry of National Security and four from Ministry of Internal Affairs The officer said that repeated attempts by the Turkmen security forces to attack the militants holed up in the building were in vain, and “a special group of the FSB (according to another version, the Ministry of Internal Affairs) was called from Moscow, and Russian professionals quickly dealt with” the armed militants. If you believe the major, there were only two of them (?!) - a certain Azhdar, who was allegedly already wanted, and his accomplice. Both were killed. The authorities unexpectedly quickly filled the capital and other Turkmen cities with their “photographs.” Azhdar looks to them like a bearded man of about thirty.

The events in Ashgabat raise many questions among observers. And not at all because the Turkmen authorities, who hid them for a long time, essentially did not explain their essence in any way, which caused an avalanche of the most diverse rumors that excited the country. An attempt to “silence” information that could undermine the myth of stability in the post-Niyazov “kingdom” is fully consistent with the spirit of a totalitarian state, which Turkmenistan remains under the new ruler Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. In the capital, rumors were passed from mouth to mouth about the many deaths during the assault among the workers of the second shift of the drinking water plant. And if the information is confirmed that there were only two terrorists who held back the onslaught of government forces for almost two days, then all the reports about the combat capability of the Turkmen armed forces, which just a couple of weeks ago the head of state Berdymukhamedov himself personally inspected after taking a ride in a tank “under the so-called river”, will turn out to be exaggerated. "

It is also necessary to answer the question of how, almost in the very center of the country’s capital, the “drug dealers” ended up with so many serious weapons in their hands. Is it because, as experts and observers have stated many times over the past 10-15 years, the Turkmen drug business is still “protected” directly by the highest ranks of the security forces of Turkmenistan. Evidence of this is the criminal cases on charges of involvement in the drug businessof the former head of the country's national security, General Nazarov , and the children of the former Prosecutor General Atajanova , who were sentenced to many years in prison. The real reasons for the latest armed clashes could be a showdown between various “clans” of Turkmen “werewolves in uniform.” It is obvious that the general public will never know about the results of the investigation launched by the Turkmen Prosecutor General's Office. Indirectly, it will be possible to judge them by the regular and now habitual reshuffles among Turkmen leaders.

And the fact that the shootout in Ashgabat began on September 12, the Ruhnama holiday, is most likely a simple coincidence. On this day seven years ago, the day after the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York, a book by the late Saparmurat Turkmenbashi the Great was published, which, as the official press in Ashgabat claims, is “a reference book for every Turkmenistan.” Last Friday, it is unlikely that any of them would have thought of taking the Ruhnama from this “table”.

Arkady DUBNOV