George Wallace
Army.ca Dinosaur
- Reaction score
- 127
- Points
- 710
The threats to Security from surrounding failing States in the Region are of great concern. The spread of radical Islam into the nations surrounding Afghanistan will destabilize the whole Region making all efforts in Afghanistan all for naught. Will NATO and its allies be drawn into an even larger conflict, or will they have to start sending more aid and advisors to these nations creating new alliances and calling on the Russians and Chinese in attempts to bring stability to the Region?
Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.
'There Will Be Another War'
An Islamist Uprising in Tajikistan
11/05/2010
SPIEGEL ONLINE
LINK
International observers consider Tajikistan to be a failed state in the midst of a national crisis. A growing mood of protest there is benefitting the Islamic opposition. Hundreds of new mosques have opened since the beginning of the year, and more women are seen wearing veils on the streets of Dushanbe.
Kishlak Belgi is a place travelers should only attempt to reach with an off-road vehicle. The village is in the foothills of the Pamir Mountains, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of the capital Dushanbe, in a corridor between the Kyrgyz and Afghan borders.
There is a restaurant in Belgi -- little more than a snack bar -- in a picturesque location on a bridge of the Surchob River. The chef, Mirzokhuja Ahmadov, 51, has a white beard and many gold teeth in his mouth.
Ahmadov owns a house in the nearby county seat of Gharm. He has seven children, some livestock and a quarter of a hectare of land (about half an acre), where he grows potatoes and tomatoes. In the Soviet days, he spent 20 years as a brigadier in the local "Friendship" collective farm, and he later became mayor of Belgi. The villagers, however, call him the "Commander."
Ahmadov has had the nickname since the civil war that began in 1992 and raged for five years in Tajikistan. The most backward of all former Soviet republics was controlled at the time by former Communists and regional clans, until a democratic and largely Islamic opposition took shape against the president and former Communist Party chairman. He assembled a national guard of farmers and pardoned criminals, who proceeded to brutally settle accounts with the Muslims. At least 50,000 people were reportedly killed. Many Tajiks fled to Afghanistan, where they were radicalized.
Ahmadov, who was a member of the opposition, was in charge of the defense of Belgi at the time. When it appeared that they were about to lose the battle, he took 5,000 fighters into the mountains and became their commander. "We fought the regime for three years from there, while it pursued us with helicopters and tanks," he says.
In June 1997 the new president, Emomali Rakhmon, and the opposition Islamic Rebirth Party proclaimed a "national reconciliation." It gave the opposition a share of power in Tajikistan and incorporated the Islamic fighters into the police and army.
A Return from the Mountains
Ahmadov returned from the mountains and became commander of the police and head of Troop Division No. 3974 in Gharm. He was given the rank of colonel and later became the head of a department devoted to fighting organized crime. "But soon," he says, "Rakhmon had forced the former opposition members out of all offices. Today most of them are in exile, in prison or dead. Only three or four of my people still have a position in Dushanbe."
Anyone who listens to Ahmadov discuss the future of his country over tea and lamb in his small restaurant will probably come away feeling that it doesn't look good.
He talks about how President Rakhmon rewrote the constitution in Dushanbe to extend his rule until 2020, and how he placed his children in high-ranking political posts. He describes how Rakhmon made sure that the governing party won the election in late February but only conceded 8 percent of the vote to the Islamic Rebirth Party, even though it had received at least 30 percent. And he says that the Rasht Valley, the region around Gharm, has a population of 270,000 people but no longer has any working factories and only has power for several hours at a time.
He complains that those who manage to find work are paid the equivalent of only €65 ($92) a month, yet are forced to buy shares in the nearby Rogun hydroelectric power plant project. According to Ahmadov, students are not allowed to take their exams and people in the military are no longer promoted if they refuse to buy the shares. The cash-strapped government already keeps half of teachers' salaries.
Worst Blow to the Government Since the Civil War
The situation is exacerbated by hostility with the neighboring Turkish-speaking Uzbeks, says Ahmadov. Their ruler, Islam Karimov, has mined the border to Tajikistan, according to Ahmadov, because he feels threatened by the Persian-speaking Islamists and fears for his regime. There are also unresolved territorial disputes between the two countries -- there is a war over water, and Karimov has blocked railroad traffic and has not delivered any gas for weeks.
Ahmadov's accounts are largely correct. Even international observers consider Tajikistan to be a failed state in the midst of a national crisis. There is a growing mood of protest, which benefits the Islamic opposition. Some 364 new mosques have been opened since the beginning of the year, and in Dushanbe more and more women are seen wearing veils in public. In the country's north, three girls even threatened to commit suicide if they were not allowed to wear the hijab to school.
"The leadership promised the former opposition land and loans, but we got nothing," says Ahmadov. "Instead we are being watched around the clock. They apparently don't trust us at all anymore. Our fighters' old camps in the mountains are filling up again. It's very possible that the civil war will be reignited soon."
Is this just a neutralized regime critic flexing his muscles? When SPIEGEL spoke with Ahmadov in Dushanbe in late August, a spectacular incident had just occurred. Twenty-five regime critics who had just been sentenced had broken out of the state security agency's central prison and killed five guards in the process. On Sept. 3, two policemen were killed and 28 people were injured in Tajikistan's first suicide bombing. And on Sept. 19, 28 soldiers died when a military convoy was ambushed near Belgi.
It was the worst blow to the government in Dushanbe since the end of the civil war.
On Sept. 22, units loyal to the government went into position in front of Ahmadov's house in Gharm. They fired missiles at the farm, and then they stormed it.
That evening, the state-run television station reported that the intelligence service had found six Kalashnikovs, three grenade launchers and several thousand shells in the house. The station claimed that the "criminal Ahmadov" had been hiding the people who were behind the bloody attack on the military convoy.
What the station didn't report was that five of Ahmadov's men had been killed a short time earlier, apparently by pro-government troops.
The war Ahmadov had predicted came more quickly than expected. President Rakhmon sent his best units to the area, where they have been combing the mountains around Gharm since Sept. 22.
The campaign has already been underway for more than a month, but the military is not reporting any successes. The Islamists are using Afghan tactics to fight the military: with mines and surprise attacks. Some 34 Tajik soldiers died on Oct. 6 and 7 alone, including high-ranking fighters with an elite unit of the Ministry of State Security and the National Guard. There is a growing sense of consternation in Dushanbe, which has severed all communications with the eastern part of the country.
Farangis Najibullah, a radio reporter and expert on Central Asia, expresses what many are now thinking: That the Rasht Valley could become a "hotbed of Islamic resistance," which would destabilize the entire region.
Ahmadov, the restaurant owner, is probably somewhere in the mountains again.
======================================================================
Appeasing the Uzbek Dictator
Who's Afraid of the Ruler of the Silk Road?
10/29/2010
SPIEGEL ONLINE
By Erich Follath and Christian Neef
LINK
Uzbekistan is both a nation of terror led by brutal dictator Islam Karimov and a partner of the West that is an important staging ground for NATO's war in Afghanistan. Its story is best told through the eyes of two men -- the flamboyant former British ambassador and the current top German diplomat in the country.
Some cities are tedium set in stone, joyless places where people don't live but merely survive.
And then there are the cities whose names alone are the stuff of legend. They are places of stunning geography, impressive history and breathtaking architecture. Three of these cities are Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, located on the legendary Silk Road in Uzbekistan in Central Asia, lined up like a string of pearls, each rising up from the shimmering heat of the surrounding deserts like mirages. These are magical places.
Their turquoise domes, madrassas decorated with mosaics and ornate caravanserai roadside inns are not only evidence of the skill of those who built them, but also of the ambitions of the ethnic groups that proudly left their mark on the region in past centuries: Persians, Greeks, Mongols and Turks. In the 19th century, the British and the Russians competed over strategic bases and mineral resources in the region, in what was known as the "Great Game." After 1920, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin drew the arbitrary borders that would later outline the Central Asian nations. Today, the region's conflicts are crystallizing once again.
Uzbekistan is the most populous and probably most important of the new Central Asian countries that emerged from the former Soviet Union. Islam Karimov, the Communist Party's first secretary in Uzbekistan prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, easily transitioned into his new role as president, brutally eliminating all opposition and placing members of his family into positions of power. Today Karimov has his eye on billions in future business. Uzbekistan is the world's sixth-largest cotton producer and has massive reserves of natural gas as well as gold and uranium deposits. It is potentially a wealthy country.
A Supply Base for Afghan War
For the world's major powers, there is much more at stake. Military bases, for one thing. Uzbekistan borders on Afghanistan and serves as a supply base for the war against the Taliban. The Germans have their largest and most important supply base in the southern Uzbek city of Termez. They are also interested in building oil and gas pipelines from Uzbekistan that could help satisfy Western Europe's energy needs. Finally, drug prevention is an important issue for the major powers. Some of the world's most important heroin trafficking routes pass through the region and are controlled by Islamists, who threaten to deploy their fighters to commit acts of terror well beyond the borders of these countries.
This explains why we are now experiencing a revival of the Great Game. Only this time a few other powerful players have joined in: the United States, China, Iran, India and Germany.
Once again, they are competing for influence in the region. And, as in the past, foreign envoys play a central role. Just like in the old days, they have a presence on the ground and send reports back home.
A Briton from Norfolk, who is extroverted, narcissistic and combative, and a German from the town of Hüls in western Germany, who is introverted, reliable and accommodating, managed to land their dream jobs. They were named the ambassadors of their respective countries in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.
But how should they handle an authoritarian country that is so important for the West? Should they flatter the dictator to wrest concessions from him? That would be in the interests of European politicians and military officials -- and perhaps also in the interests of the Uzbek civil rights activists behind bars, who wouldn't stand a chance without a gentle, behind-the-scenes slap on the wrist. Or should they confront the dictator with his misdeeds, sharply criticize his human rights violations and expose the regime, and thus risk a breakdown in relations and the loss of all influence? And how much scope do the ambassadors, who are largely expected to follow their governments' instructions, actually have to make their own decisions on such matters?
With their different approaches and diametrically opposed characters, the only thing these two men have in common is their sincere commitment to a difficult host country. British Ambassador Craig Murray, 51, and German Ambassador Wolfgang Neuen, 63, are ambassadors of a somewhat different stripe. This is their story.
An Upstart and an Outsider
It is the summer of 2002, and the new British envoy has only been in Tashkent for a few weeks. He finally has time to catch his breath, after surviving the obligatory appointment at Buckingham Palace. Craig Murray has every reason to be proud. Following diplomat posts in Poland, Russia and Africa, he is now the youngest ambassador working for the British government. He is only 43, and already he is an ambassador in an important, embattled country.
Nevertheless, Murray still feels like an outsider in the club of private school and Oxford and Cambridge graduates in Whitehall. He doesn't get their jokes and he despises their arrogant demeanor. Murray, on the other hand, is from a working-class family and attended Dundee University, not one of Britain's more prestigious higher education institutions. He believes that everyone in Britain's class-conscious society can immediately recognize him as an upstart and an outsider. Perhaps this is the source of Murray's rebellious streak and his pronounced sense of justice. Fighting is his life's motto. And so is not taking no for an answer.
Uzbek's national holiday is an obligatory engagement for diplomats in the country. The protocol in Tashkent requires the ambassadors to arrive hours before the ceremony, forcing the diplomatic corps to endure the 40 degree Celsius (104 degree Fahrenheit) heat without complaint. But not Murray. He issues a written statement informing the Uzbek government that in the future he will not arrive until shortly before the ceremony. The defiant letter gets him the recognition of his fellow diplomats, who would never have dared to take such a step. But it alienates the Karimov administration.
Unlike his predecessors and most of his fellow diplomats, who tend to focus on the capital, Murray insists on traveling around the country, to beautiful places like Samarkand, for example. But Murray also travels to places where there are no paved roads or acceptable hotels, such as a remote corner of the Fergana Valley, an area strongly influenced by fundamentalists, and to what is left of the polluted Aral Sea, where residents live under wretched conditions.
Part 1: Who's Afraid of the Ruler of the Silk Road?
Part 2: A Grisly Document
Part 3: 'A Disgrace for the Entire Foreign Office'
Part 4: 'The World Here Doesn't Let You Go'
More on LINKS
Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.
'There Will Be Another War'
An Islamist Uprising in Tajikistan
11/05/2010
SPIEGEL ONLINE
LINK
International observers consider Tajikistan to be a failed state in the midst of a national crisis. A growing mood of protest there is benefitting the Islamic opposition. Hundreds of new mosques have opened since the beginning of the year, and more women are seen wearing veils on the streets of Dushanbe.
Kishlak Belgi is a place travelers should only attempt to reach with an off-road vehicle. The village is in the foothills of the Pamir Mountains, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of the capital Dushanbe, in a corridor between the Kyrgyz and Afghan borders.
There is a restaurant in Belgi -- little more than a snack bar -- in a picturesque location on a bridge of the Surchob River. The chef, Mirzokhuja Ahmadov, 51, has a white beard and many gold teeth in his mouth.
Ahmadov owns a house in the nearby county seat of Gharm. He has seven children, some livestock and a quarter of a hectare of land (about half an acre), where he grows potatoes and tomatoes. In the Soviet days, he spent 20 years as a brigadier in the local "Friendship" collective farm, and he later became mayor of Belgi. The villagers, however, call him the "Commander."
Ahmadov has had the nickname since the civil war that began in 1992 and raged for five years in Tajikistan. The most backward of all former Soviet republics was controlled at the time by former Communists and regional clans, until a democratic and largely Islamic opposition took shape against the president and former Communist Party chairman. He assembled a national guard of farmers and pardoned criminals, who proceeded to brutally settle accounts with the Muslims. At least 50,000 people were reportedly killed. Many Tajiks fled to Afghanistan, where they were radicalized.
Ahmadov, who was a member of the opposition, was in charge of the defense of Belgi at the time. When it appeared that they were about to lose the battle, he took 5,000 fighters into the mountains and became their commander. "We fought the regime for three years from there, while it pursued us with helicopters and tanks," he says.
In June 1997 the new president, Emomali Rakhmon, and the opposition Islamic Rebirth Party proclaimed a "national reconciliation." It gave the opposition a share of power in Tajikistan and incorporated the Islamic fighters into the police and army.
A Return from the Mountains
Ahmadov returned from the mountains and became commander of the police and head of Troop Division No. 3974 in Gharm. He was given the rank of colonel and later became the head of a department devoted to fighting organized crime. "But soon," he says, "Rakhmon had forced the former opposition members out of all offices. Today most of them are in exile, in prison or dead. Only three or four of my people still have a position in Dushanbe."
Anyone who listens to Ahmadov discuss the future of his country over tea and lamb in his small restaurant will probably come away feeling that it doesn't look good.
He talks about how President Rakhmon rewrote the constitution in Dushanbe to extend his rule until 2020, and how he placed his children in high-ranking political posts. He describes how Rakhmon made sure that the governing party won the election in late February but only conceded 8 percent of the vote to the Islamic Rebirth Party, even though it had received at least 30 percent. And he says that the Rasht Valley, the region around Gharm, has a population of 270,000 people but no longer has any working factories and only has power for several hours at a time.
He complains that those who manage to find work are paid the equivalent of only €65 ($92) a month, yet are forced to buy shares in the nearby Rogun hydroelectric power plant project. According to Ahmadov, students are not allowed to take their exams and people in the military are no longer promoted if they refuse to buy the shares. The cash-strapped government already keeps half of teachers' salaries.
Worst Blow to the Government Since the Civil War
The situation is exacerbated by hostility with the neighboring Turkish-speaking Uzbeks, says Ahmadov. Their ruler, Islam Karimov, has mined the border to Tajikistan, according to Ahmadov, because he feels threatened by the Persian-speaking Islamists and fears for his regime. There are also unresolved territorial disputes between the two countries -- there is a war over water, and Karimov has blocked railroad traffic and has not delivered any gas for weeks.
Ahmadov's accounts are largely correct. Even international observers consider Tajikistan to be a failed state in the midst of a national crisis. There is a growing mood of protest, which benefits the Islamic opposition. Some 364 new mosques have been opened since the beginning of the year, and in Dushanbe more and more women are seen wearing veils in public. In the country's north, three girls even threatened to commit suicide if they were not allowed to wear the hijab to school.
"The leadership promised the former opposition land and loans, but we got nothing," says Ahmadov. "Instead we are being watched around the clock. They apparently don't trust us at all anymore. Our fighters' old camps in the mountains are filling up again. It's very possible that the civil war will be reignited soon."
Is this just a neutralized regime critic flexing his muscles? When SPIEGEL spoke with Ahmadov in Dushanbe in late August, a spectacular incident had just occurred. Twenty-five regime critics who had just been sentenced had broken out of the state security agency's central prison and killed five guards in the process. On Sept. 3, two policemen were killed and 28 people were injured in Tajikistan's first suicide bombing. And on Sept. 19, 28 soldiers died when a military convoy was ambushed near Belgi.
It was the worst blow to the government in Dushanbe since the end of the civil war.
On Sept. 22, units loyal to the government went into position in front of Ahmadov's house in Gharm. They fired missiles at the farm, and then they stormed it.
That evening, the state-run television station reported that the intelligence service had found six Kalashnikovs, three grenade launchers and several thousand shells in the house. The station claimed that the "criminal Ahmadov" had been hiding the people who were behind the bloody attack on the military convoy.
What the station didn't report was that five of Ahmadov's men had been killed a short time earlier, apparently by pro-government troops.
The war Ahmadov had predicted came more quickly than expected. President Rakhmon sent his best units to the area, where they have been combing the mountains around Gharm since Sept. 22.
The campaign has already been underway for more than a month, but the military is not reporting any successes. The Islamists are using Afghan tactics to fight the military: with mines and surprise attacks. Some 34 Tajik soldiers died on Oct. 6 and 7 alone, including high-ranking fighters with an elite unit of the Ministry of State Security and the National Guard. There is a growing sense of consternation in Dushanbe, which has severed all communications with the eastern part of the country.
Farangis Najibullah, a radio reporter and expert on Central Asia, expresses what many are now thinking: That the Rasht Valley could become a "hotbed of Islamic resistance," which would destabilize the entire region.
Ahmadov, the restaurant owner, is probably somewhere in the mountains again.
======================================================================
Appeasing the Uzbek Dictator
Who's Afraid of the Ruler of the Silk Road?
10/29/2010
SPIEGEL ONLINE
By Erich Follath and Christian Neef
LINK
Uzbekistan is both a nation of terror led by brutal dictator Islam Karimov and a partner of the West that is an important staging ground for NATO's war in Afghanistan. Its story is best told through the eyes of two men -- the flamboyant former British ambassador and the current top German diplomat in the country.
Some cities are tedium set in stone, joyless places where people don't live but merely survive.
And then there are the cities whose names alone are the stuff of legend. They are places of stunning geography, impressive history and breathtaking architecture. Three of these cities are Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva, located on the legendary Silk Road in Uzbekistan in Central Asia, lined up like a string of pearls, each rising up from the shimmering heat of the surrounding deserts like mirages. These are magical places.
Their turquoise domes, madrassas decorated with mosaics and ornate caravanserai roadside inns are not only evidence of the skill of those who built them, but also of the ambitions of the ethnic groups that proudly left their mark on the region in past centuries: Persians, Greeks, Mongols and Turks. In the 19th century, the British and the Russians competed over strategic bases and mineral resources in the region, in what was known as the "Great Game." After 1920, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin drew the arbitrary borders that would later outline the Central Asian nations. Today, the region's conflicts are crystallizing once again.
Uzbekistan is the most populous and probably most important of the new Central Asian countries that emerged from the former Soviet Union. Islam Karimov, the Communist Party's first secretary in Uzbekistan prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, easily transitioned into his new role as president, brutally eliminating all opposition and placing members of his family into positions of power. Today Karimov has his eye on billions in future business. Uzbekistan is the world's sixth-largest cotton producer and has massive reserves of natural gas as well as gold and uranium deposits. It is potentially a wealthy country.
A Supply Base for Afghan War
For the world's major powers, there is much more at stake. Military bases, for one thing. Uzbekistan borders on Afghanistan and serves as a supply base for the war against the Taliban. The Germans have their largest and most important supply base in the southern Uzbek city of Termez. They are also interested in building oil and gas pipelines from Uzbekistan that could help satisfy Western Europe's energy needs. Finally, drug prevention is an important issue for the major powers. Some of the world's most important heroin trafficking routes pass through the region and are controlled by Islamists, who threaten to deploy their fighters to commit acts of terror well beyond the borders of these countries.
This explains why we are now experiencing a revival of the Great Game. Only this time a few other powerful players have joined in: the United States, China, Iran, India and Germany.
Once again, they are competing for influence in the region. And, as in the past, foreign envoys play a central role. Just like in the old days, they have a presence on the ground and send reports back home.
A Briton from Norfolk, who is extroverted, narcissistic and combative, and a German from the town of Hüls in western Germany, who is introverted, reliable and accommodating, managed to land their dream jobs. They were named the ambassadors of their respective countries in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.
But how should they handle an authoritarian country that is so important for the West? Should they flatter the dictator to wrest concessions from him? That would be in the interests of European politicians and military officials -- and perhaps also in the interests of the Uzbek civil rights activists behind bars, who wouldn't stand a chance without a gentle, behind-the-scenes slap on the wrist. Or should they confront the dictator with his misdeeds, sharply criticize his human rights violations and expose the regime, and thus risk a breakdown in relations and the loss of all influence? And how much scope do the ambassadors, who are largely expected to follow their governments' instructions, actually have to make their own decisions on such matters?
With their different approaches and diametrically opposed characters, the only thing these two men have in common is their sincere commitment to a difficult host country. British Ambassador Craig Murray, 51, and German Ambassador Wolfgang Neuen, 63, are ambassadors of a somewhat different stripe. This is their story.
An Upstart and an Outsider
It is the summer of 2002, and the new British envoy has only been in Tashkent for a few weeks. He finally has time to catch his breath, after surviving the obligatory appointment at Buckingham Palace. Craig Murray has every reason to be proud. Following diplomat posts in Poland, Russia and Africa, he is now the youngest ambassador working for the British government. He is only 43, and already he is an ambassador in an important, embattled country.
Nevertheless, Murray still feels like an outsider in the club of private school and Oxford and Cambridge graduates in Whitehall. He doesn't get their jokes and he despises their arrogant demeanor. Murray, on the other hand, is from a working-class family and attended Dundee University, not one of Britain's more prestigious higher education institutions. He believes that everyone in Britain's class-conscious society can immediately recognize him as an upstart and an outsider. Perhaps this is the source of Murray's rebellious streak and his pronounced sense of justice. Fighting is his life's motto. And so is not taking no for an answer.
Uzbek's national holiday is an obligatory engagement for diplomats in the country. The protocol in Tashkent requires the ambassadors to arrive hours before the ceremony, forcing the diplomatic corps to endure the 40 degree Celsius (104 degree Fahrenheit) heat without complaint. But not Murray. He issues a written statement informing the Uzbek government that in the future he will not arrive until shortly before the ceremony. The defiant letter gets him the recognition of his fellow diplomats, who would never have dared to take such a step. But it alienates the Karimov administration.
Unlike his predecessors and most of his fellow diplomats, who tend to focus on the capital, Murray insists on traveling around the country, to beautiful places like Samarkand, for example. But Murray also travels to places where there are no paved roads or acceptable hotels, such as a remote corner of the Fergana Valley, an area strongly influenced by fundamentalists, and to what is left of the polluted Aral Sea, where residents live under wretched conditions.
Part 1: Who's Afraid of the Ruler of the Silk Road?
Part 2: A Grisly Document
Part 3: 'A Disgrace for the Entire Foreign Office'
Part 4: 'The World Here Doesn't Let You Go'
More on LINKS
