Military decay

Newsweek correspondent traveled all over Tajikistan in search of the real enemies of President Emomali Rahmon

At the Dushanbe airport, after customs officers and border guards, you get to a gloomy Tajik with a portable photocopier. This man is from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and appears simply as Misha. He copies passports, asks where and why he came, weeds out suspicious ones and sends them to the ministry for a more thorough interrogation. I, of course, fell into the number of suspicious.

Misha looked for a long time from the photo in my passport, where I had a long “Wahhabi” beard, to my week-long stubble and snarled angrily: “You look like a Dagestani, we killed him yesterday, now we’ll go deal with you.” I didn’t feel like sorting it out at all: in the pocket of my backpack was a notebook with the phone numbers of employees of various Tajik special services and leaders of the armed Islamic opposition. I didn't want to say that I was a journalist either. Then the chances of getting into the Rasht zone, where the war seemed to start, would be reduced to zero. But then Misha suddenly became kinder. “Put a thousand here and go,” he said, the bill slid behind the photocopier, I threw my backpack on my shoulder and hurried out of the airport.

There was a smell of fried in Tajikistan back in August, when 25 people, accused of attempting a coup d'état and overthrowing President Emomali Rahmon, fled from the pre-trial detention center in Dushanbe at once. Chekists, police and the army were thrown in search of the fugitives. In September, a column of the Ministry of Defense came under fire near the Rasht district center of Gharm. According to the latest data, 28 people were killed, 10 were injured, more than 40 were missing. Now there will be a cleansing, repressions, and soon a civil war, many experts decided (see the article "War and Pamir", "Russian Newsweek" No. 40, 2010). But everything turned out to be much more complicated. In Tajik solitaire, real enemies and ghost enemies, Islamic oppositionists and clumsy military men, a coal tycoon and local Osama bin Laden mixed up. In this scenario, Rahmon's regime can last a week or an eternity.

OSAMA TAJIKSKY

After the attack on the military convoy in Tajikistan, cleansing really began. In response to the ambush in Gharm, the house of local informal leader Mirzokhuja Akhmadov was bombed. Once he headed one of the detachments of the Mujahideen, and after reconciliation in 1997, he received the post of head of the OBOP in the Rasht group of regions. Two years ago, his department was reduced, and a capture group led by Oleg Zakharchenko, the commander of the Republican OMON, was sent to him. As a result, the chief riot policeman was killed, and his companions were disarmed and sent home.

Then in Dushanbe they decided to put the matter on the brakes. The former head of the OBOP was forgiven, and Mirzokhudzhi lived openly in Garm, officially considered a simple farmer. Local residents claim that he still went with armed guards, continued to command policemen and generally decided almost all cases in the area. After the execution of the column, he was named one of the organizers of the attack.

The role of organizers is also tried on by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has settled in the Afghan-Pakistani border area. And the secretary of the Republican Security Council, Amirkul Azimov, points to the intrigues of "some countries." Now the main topic of conversation in the kitchens of Dushanbe is whether it is the Russians, whom President Rakhmon no longer likes, or the Uzbeks, whom he angered by building a grandiose dam at the Rogun hydroelectric power station, which will be able to regulate the flow of rivers originating in mountainous Tajikistan, and thereby create problems. for neighbors.

Another suspect in the ambush is named Mullo Abdullo. He is a field commander from the irreconcilable, who gained notoriety in 1996 during negotiations between the opposition and the government, massacring several dozen border guards in the town of Sicharog. Then he spent 10 years in Afghanistan, and then in the spring of last year he returned to his homeland.

Director of the OSCE media center Jamshed Mamadzhanov met with Mullo Abdullo during the civil war: “He was an ordinary drug addict, he constantly added opium to his tea. In the morning you negotiate with him about the work of some humanitarian organization, and in the afternoon you don’t remember about the morning meeting. I can't believe he's not dead yet."

Another of my interlocutors, who held a high position in the Tajik Ministry of Defense and at the same time was an officer of the Russian GRU, compares Abdullo with bin Laden: “Everyone is looking for him, no one can catch him, but anything can be attributed to him.” In 1997, the secular regime agreed with the Islamized opposition to lay down their arms in exchange for 30% of government seats. Over time, Emomali Rahmon began to slowly get rid of both yesterday's allies and yesterday's opponents, who considered their posts a war trophy. My interlocutor believes that the irreconcilable field commander appears when Rahmon needs to deal with another opponent.

And now Mullah Abdullah is remembered again. Again, no one saw him, but according to the official version, it was to him that the prisoners of the Dushanbe pre-trial detention center fled, and it was in search of him that a column of soldiers went to the Kamarob gorge. “There was a shot from a grenade launcher, the blast wave threw me back and burned my face. I had time to think that the ammunition was about to explode, and I lost consciousness, ”recalls one of the fighters who survived the Kamarob massacre. The fact that the real target was not fugitive convicts, but a detachment of Mujahideen Mullah Abdullah, he learned only in the hospital.

ULTIMATUM

After the execution of the convoy and a retaliatory strike on the house of Mirzokhuja Akhmadov, Rasht and the surrounding areas became the zone of the counter-terrorist operation. The head of the Security Council, Amirkul Azimov, took an ultimatum to the mountains: to disarm and surrender within three days. To whom exactly he is going to announce it, it was not said.

Mobile communications were cut off in the region, and roads leading to Gharm were blocked by roadblocks. Two weeks ago, local journalists made their way through the cordons, and then wrote how they had to distribute bribes at the posts. The day after the publication, all the police officers at their posts became honest and principled.

Therefore, in order to get to the Rasht zone, I had to make a detour of 1500 km, passing through the whole of southern Kyrgyzstan, and enter from the rear, from the side opposite from Dushanbe. Two passes, three replacement spares. At the Kyrgyz post, it turned out that the border guards were forbidden to let out and let in citizens of third countries on this site. I had to break it: I traveled 19 neutral kilometers to the Tajik border post on a passing KamAZ truck, which was carrying some goods from China to Afghanistan. Fortunately, the Tajik border guards did not find fault with the absence of a Kyrgyz exit stamp.

The area I ended up in is controlled by Shokh Iskandarov. Three years ago, the colonel of the border troops retired semi-voluntarily and became the commander of the Mujahideen detachment. This did not diminish his influence. Even at the border post and customs through which I passed, only people agreed with him are assigned. However, it should be noted that his border guards, unlike their Kyrgyz and Dushanbe colleagues, were collected, polite and friendly. The head of the shift Bakhrom checked the documents and offered tea. And while we were drinking it, he told me that from here to Garm there was an unspoken curfew, so you couldn’t move on, but you could spend the night with him or at customs. The customs officers fed me and put me to sleep on mattresses, apologizing for a long time that they did not have sheets. I learned from them that Shokh Iskandarov was at his home in Khait, although the Dushanbe newspapers, citing sources in law enforcement agencies, wrote that the former colonel was also involved in the attack on the column of the Ministry of Defense and is now hiding in the mountains.

VITYA AND JUMABOY

In the village of Khait, time seems to have stopped. A mountain range littered with eternal snow sticks out from behind a clay duval. In its center is the peak of Communism. “But there,” the old man waves in the opposite direction, “you can go through the gorges to Uzbekistan, to the Ferghana Valley. Jumaboy used to come to us from there.” This is how the murdered militant leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan Juma Namangani is called here. The owner of the house where I stayed tells in detail that Dzhuma lived on this street for many years, and that “he did not allow lawlessness with ordinary people, he only killed Vitya in vain.” The old man says that the Russian guy Vitya worked in a nearby gorge at a seismic station, and here he was considered one of his own. Juma decided to set up a base there, and Vitya, to his misfortune, caught his eye. Juma, seeing the "Russian kafir", was indignant. And killed him.

“And where you came from,” the old man nods towards the border, “he went on raids on Kyrgyzstan, captured some generals and more Japanese, released them for a large ransom, and distributed money to all our guys.” After the truce with the opposition, the authorities put pressure on local warlords, and they said that the Uzbeks should leave. Juma was offended, dropped: “I used to be your brother, but now I have become an Uzbek for you” - and flew to Afghanistan. He flew away - his militants were transferred to a new "place of residence" by military helicopters provided by the government.

In these places, people have always lived according to their unwritten laws: three hemp bushes in the garden are considered “for personal use,” and the district police officer only makes sure that they do not plant any more. In order to bring down the fever, children are given opium poppies to chew on. At the same time, not only vodka, but also cigarettes are not available in the store. “We have Sharia law,” explains the seller. I asked a boy on the street if they were learning Russian at school. He nodded and laid out all his baggage of knowledge: "stand up", "sit down", "shut up everyone."

THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR

Shokh Iskandarov avoided meeting with the Russian journalist, but while I was rubbing at his gate, I saw the younger brother of the rebellious Mirzokhuja Akhmedov. And I learned from Shokh's guards that Amirkul Azimov flew here a couple of days ago with his ultimatum, Shokh received the head of the Security Council at his home and promised to stay away from the militants gathered in the Komarob Gorge, whoever they were.

The villages in his “zone of responsibility” really look surprisingly peaceful, but the lower we went down, the more nervous the people at the checkpoints became. Near Garm, a major in a police uniform angrily demanded that I show him a visa in my passport, and did not want to hear about the visa-free regime.

The bombed-out house of Mirzokhuja Akhmedov is located in Gharm. His neighbors claim that immediately after the attack on the column, he appeared at the city executive committee and sat there for five days, until the attack on his house. Akhmedov wanted everyone to see that he was not in the mountains with a machine gun, but quietly sitting in front of the entire district authorities. Around the ruins of his house, there are no traces of trenches, which were mentioned in official statements, nor traces of the underground passage through which he allegedly left. The militants killed during the bombardment, according to neighbors, were Kyrgyz construction workers.

Then I descended to Dushanbe, completing the detour maneuver in the same place where I started it. And soon a bus with the wounded arrived. At that hour the ultimatum ended and the first day of the war began. Its result: a KamAZ that ran into a mine (six dead) and a helicopter with special forces crashed (27 dead). The helicopter was not shot down - just a pilot, flying around the mountain, crashed into a makeshift funicular. On the other side, according to official reports, five were killed.

“We have many internal reasons for such conflicts,” says a Dushanbe military expert who asked to remain anonymous. According to him, all the most promising business in Tajikistan is gradually being taken over by the president's brother-in-law, Khasan Sadulloev. Last year, in one of the districts - Tavildara - they did not prevent an attempt to seize power, as it was announced, but they found out who would control the gold deposit. This year, the Nazar-Ailok coal deposit is at stake.

High-quality anthracite is needed by the aluminum company TALCO, which is controlled by the same Sadulloev. But coal mining in Nazar-Ailok is in the hands of Shokh Iskandarov and Mirzokhuja Akhmadov. With the first, apparently, they reached a compromise, but it was not possible to agree with Akhmadov. He openly warned: "Climb to us with the troops - I will go to the mountains and start fighting." The military expert mockingly calls this the cost of building the economic vertical of the president.