Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: Tajikistan

Tajikistan

Tajikistan government’s story about IS attack already crumbling

AAN • Thomas Ruttig •

Eurasianet, 8 November 2019 On 6 November, a 20-strong armed group masked individuals assaulted a border outpost at the Tajik-Uzbek border, according to Tajikistan’s authorities. It claimed the group had crossed over from Afghanistan’s Qala-ye Zal district of Kunduz province which was rejected by Afghan military officials in Kabul. The Russian and other governments used the report to […]

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Emomali Rahmon, President of Tajikistan. Credit: Kate Dixon (Flickr)

Attack on the Opposition in Tajikistan: Afghan concerns and comparisons

Christian Bleuer •

Despite its 1300 kilometre-long border with Tajikistan, Afghanistan is rarely worried by the internal political strife and occasional violence to its north. The situation is, however, worsening. The Dushanbe government’s relentless attack on its domestic political (non-military) opposition, including the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), threatens to undo the relative peace and prosperity of […]

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Tajik gentlemen discussing in Dushanbe. Photo: Thomas Ruttig

‘Peace-for-Power’ versus Participatory Solutions: Lessons of Tajikistan’s civil war – a book review

Arne C Seifert •

In a highly relevant 2013 book, Central Asia analysts Kirill Nourzhanov and Christian Bleuer (*) have looked at social relations and the political system in Tajikistan at the end of the 1990s civil war in this Central Asian neighbour of Afghanistan. Our guest author Arne C. Seifert (**) has read the book and argues that […]

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To Syria, not Afghanistan: Central Asian jihadis ‘neglect’ their neighbour

Christian Bleuer •

Since the American and Northern Alliance defeat of the Taleban and their Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) allies in northern Afghanistan in late 2001, the arrival of would-be fighters from the former Soviet countries of Central Asia to Afghanistan has been a very small trickle. And yet, over the last year, the number of Central […]

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Little Bridges: AAN’s new report on the slowly growing links between Afghanistan and the Central Asia republics

Christian Bleuer • S Reza Kazemi •

Reports about Afghanistan and its neighbours to the north usually lump the five former Soviet Central Asia republics together as an undifferentiated block  – ‘the Stans’. Such an approach does not reflect the reality of five countries with very different, mainly bilateral and very local relationships with Afghanistan. The distortion has only been worsened by […]

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Kremlin’s Blunder Backfires in Central Asia

AAN Team •

Turkish Weekly, 1 November 2013 Ryskeldi Satke looks at the Afghan spill-over potential to Central Asia. He quotes AAN’s Thomas Ruttig: “German expert Thomas Ruttig with the Afghanistan Analyst Network underscores the comments made by the Tajik opposition figure according to whom the threat of the Taliban marching over the borders to Central Asia is […]

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Talebs in Tajikistan? Part 2 on the alleged IMU-Taleban nexus

Thomas Ruttig •

If one listens to ISAF and to Central Asian governments, there are overlapping networks of jihadist terrorists subverting Afghanistan and Tajikistan, if not the whole region. Few of these reports are substantiated by details that can be independently scrutinised. But they are often picked up by media and other outlets, presented as proven facts and […]

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Talebs in Tajikistan? The ‘terrorist spill-over’ hype

Thomas Ruttig •

If one listens to ISAF and to Central Asian governments, there are overlapping networks of jihadist terrorists subverting Afghanistan and Tajikistan, if not the whole region. Those networks, it is said, link the Taleban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) with al-Qaeda and other Pakistan-based groups. Few of these reports are substantiated by details […]

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End of a Peace Process? Pressure on Islamist party undermines Tajik post-civil war consensus

Thomas Ruttig •

Tajikistan’s government is cracking down on the main opposition party, the Islamist IRPT. Some say this is just part of a pre-election campaign (the country is to elect its president in November); others see longer-term implications that could jeopardise the 1997 peace agreement that still shapes the country’s political reality. The IRPT – the only […]

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The Other Side of the Amu Darya: Tajik and Afghans, neighbours apart

Thomas Ruttig •

Despite pushes from the West and economic needs, Afghan-Central Asian economic cooperation has not taken off, yet. The people of Tajikistan, for example, are not very interested in or even prejudiced towards their southern neighbours, as they concentrate on their troubles with their former Uzbek brothers. The Tajik government and the other more or less authoritarian […]

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