Winter woes – and Tajikistan

Kyrgyzstan isn’t the only country looking forward to the winter with trepidation.  This story from Eurasianet goes into detail regarding upcoming food shortages in Tajikistan.  Economic mismanagement coupled with last year’s crippling winter weather have left the country in sad shape.  While Rahmonov builds Presidential residences, the people of Tajikistan wonder what they’ll be eating in February.  Should I make a joke about Santa Claus’ Kyrgyz homebase?  Not as funny this year.

This kind of mismanagement doesn’t spread to the Security Forces, however.  Perhaps the only arm of each government in Central Asia to continue to operate at full capacity and in full cooperation with neighbors, the successors to the Republics’ KGB organizations continue to cooperate.  Following extraditions and cross-border arrests after the Andijan massacre, it became increasingly clear that the Kommitet is alive and well.  Most recently, Dodojon Atovullo has fled his refuge in Moscow for Western Europe, fearing Russia would grant Tajikistan’s extradition request.  The exiled editor-in-chief of a Tajik opposition newspaper and the leader of Vatandor movement, Atovullo has a warrant against him, issued in September.  It accuses Atovullo of slandering President Imomali Rahmonov and carrying out anti-state activities.  He fled Moscow after learning of the arrival of Tajik agents, and credits the presence of a German film crew at the airport for ensuring a safe exit.  He’s currently in Paris, en route eventually to Hamburg, to wait out the hostilities.

Tajikistan also made the news [in my RSS reader, anyway] because the Supreme Court finally sentenced the murderer of BBC Journalist Mukhiddin Olimpur, the BBC’s chief Farsi language service correspondent in Tajikistan.  Olimpur was killed in 1995 during Tajikistan’s civil war [1992-97] between the Russian-backed government and a coalition of Islamists and liberals.  Tajikistan doesn’t get terribly much attention on Registan – but I’ll do what I can to rectify the situation.

This post was written by...

Michael Hancock-Parmer – author of 153 posts on Registan.net.

Michael earned an MA in Central Eurasian Studies in 2011 and remains a student at Indiana University pursuing a dual PhD in Russian History and Central Eurasian Studies. He served 6 months in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan in 2005. After the events in Andijan and the subsequent closure of the program, he served 2 years in southern Kazakhstan, returning to the Midwest in 2007. His general area of interest is on post-Timur Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, centered on the Syr Darya river valley.