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Tajikistan
Internal Security
Preservation of internal security was impossible during the
civil war, whose concomitant disorder promoted the activities
of numerous illegal groups. Because of Tajikistan's location,
the international narcotics trade found these conditions especially
inviting in the early and mid-1990s.
Security Organizations
When Tajikistan was part of the Soviet Union, the republic's
Committee for State Security (KGB) was an integral part of the
Soviet-wide KGB. Neither the administration nor the majority of
personnel were Tajik. When Tajikistan became independent, the
organization was renamed the Committee of National Security and
a Tajik, Alimjon Solehboyev, was put in charge. In 1995 the committee
received full cabinet status as the Ministry of Security.
Police powers are divided between the forces of the Ministry
of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Security. The two most
significant characteristics of the current system are the failure
to observe the laws that are on the books in political cases and
the penetration of the current regime by criminal elements.
Narcotics
In the last years of the Soviet Union and in the Russian Federation
of the mid-1990s, the issue of drug trafficking was embroiled
in political rhetoric and public prejudices. The Yeltsin administration
used the combined threats of narcotics and Islamic fundamentalism
to justify Russian military involvement in Tajikistan, and the
Rahmonov regime used accusations of drug crimes to justify the
repression of domestic political opponents.
Despite the presence of Russian border guards, the border between
Afghanistan and Tajikistan has proved easily penetrable by narcotics
smugglers, for whom the lack of stable law enforcement on both
sides of the boundary provides great opportunities. For some Central
Asians, the opium trade has assumed great economic importance
in the difficult times of the post-Soviet era. An established
transit line moves opium from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Khorugh
in Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province, from which
it moves to Dushanbe and then to Osh on the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan
border. The ultimate destination of much of the narcotics passing
through Tajikistan is a burgeoning market in Moscow and other
Russian cities, as well as some markets in Western Europe and
in other CIS nations. Besides Pakistan and Afghanistan, sources
have been identified in Russia, Western Europe, Colombia, and
Southeast Asia. A shipment of heroin was confiscated for the first
time in 1995; previously, traffic apparently had been limited
to opium and hashish.
An organized-crime network reportedly has developed around the
Moscow narcotics market; Russian border guards, members of the
CIS peacekeeping force, and senior Tajikistani government officials
reportedly are involved in this activity. Besides corruption,
enforcement has been hampered by antiquated Soviet-era laws and
a lack of funding. In 1995 the number of drug arrests increased,
but more than two-thirds were for cultivation; only twenty were
for the sale of drugs. A national drug-control plan was under
government consideration in early 1996. Regional drug-control
cooperation broke down after independence. In 1995 the Tajikistani
government planned to implement a new regional program, based
in the UN Drug Control Program office in Tashkent, for drug interdiction
along the Murghob-Osh-Andijon overland route. The Ministry of
Internal Affairs, the customs authorities, the Ministry of Health,
and the procurator general all have responsibilities in drug interdiction,
but there are no formal lines of interagency cooperation.
Criminal Justice and the Penal System
Independent Tajikistan's system of courts and police evolved
from the institutional framework established in the Soviet era.
The judiciary is not fully independent; the 1994 constitution
gives the president the power to remove judges from office. In
the wake of the victors' wave of violence against actual or potential
supporters of the opposition at the end of the civil war, the
post-civil war regime continued to ignore due process of law in
dealing with opposition supporters. Numerous opposition figures
were arrested and held without trial for prolonged periods; representatives
of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Helsinki Watch
were not permitted to see political prisoners. Extrajudicial killings,
disappearances, warrantless searches, the probable planting of
incriminating evidence, arrests for conduct that was not illegal,
and physical abuse of prisoners were all part of the new regime's
treatment of opposition supporters. The regime established its
own secret prisons for those held on political charges.
In the new government installed at the end of the civil war,
the minister of internal affairs, hence the national head of police,
was Yaqub Salimov, who had no law enforcement experience and himself
had led a criminal gang. Salimov was an associate of Sangak Safarov,
a top antireformist military leader who also had an extensive
criminal record. Salimov used his law enforcement position to
shield his criminal confederates and to intimidate other members
of the cabinet. In 1995 President Rahmonov finally maneuvered
Salimov out of power by appointing him ambassador to Turkey. Salimov's
successor as minister of internal affairs was Saidomir Zuhurov,
a KGB veteran who had been minister of security in the post-civil
war government.
Thus, in the mid-1990s Tajikistan's national security condition
was tenuous from both domestic and international standpoints.
Internally, the concept of uniform law enforcement for the protection
of Tajikistani citizens had not taken hold, in spite of constitutional
guarantees. Instead, the republic's law enforcement agencies were
at the service of the political goals of those in power. Externally,
Tajikistan remained almost completely reliant upon Russia and
its Central Asian neighbors for military protection of its borders.
By 1996 years of internationally sponsored negotiations had failed
to bring about a satisfactory compromise between the government
and the opposition, offering little hope that CIS troops could
leave but providing the Rahmonov government a pretext for ongoing
restraint of civil liberties.
* * *
Relatively little has been written in English about Tajikistan.
An important study of the largely Persian civilization and political
history of southern Central Asia in the early centuries of the
Islamic era is Richard N. Frye's Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement
. The first three chapters of Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective
, edited by Robert L. Canfield, describe the interaction of Turkic-
and Persian-speaking peoples in the region. The Russian scholar
Vasilii V. Bartol'd wrote a seminal historical work that has been
translated as Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion .
Tajikistan's Persian-language literature is covered in the chapter
"Modern Tajik Literature" in Persian Literature , edited
by Ehsan Yarshater. Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone's Russia and
Nationalism in Central Asia describes Tajikistani politics
in the Stalin and Khrushchev eras from the Russian viewpoint.
Muriel Atkin's The Subtlest Battle and "Islam as Faith,
Politics and Bogeyman in Tajikistan" (a chapter in The Politics
of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia , edited
by Michael Bourdeaux) describe the role of Islam in Soviet and
post-Soviet times. A description of events leading to the 1992
civil war is contained in Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh's "The 'Tajik
Spring' of 1992." Sergei Gretsky has covered aspects of the civil
war in two articles, one appearing in Critique (Spring
1995) and the other in Central Asia Monitor (No. 1, 1994),
and an assessment of Russian-Tajikistani relations in a chapter
of Regional Power Rivalries in the New Eurasia , edited
by Alvin Z. Rubinstein and Oles M. Smolansky. (For further information
and complete citations, see Bibliography.)
Data as of March 1996
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