In the middle of last May, when half the world was listening to the news of the final surrender of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, 4,000 kilometers away, in another former Soviet republic, Tajikistan, President Emomali Rahmon's troops killed dozens of people ( 30, 60... Or 16, as the official version says?) for cutting a road. This was followed by an intense crackdown that has claimed new victims this week. The European Parliament echoed these events last Wednesday, with a resolution urging the Commission to take an interest in the country and the Tajik Government to respect human rights.
It happened in Upper Badakhshan, in the Pamir mountain range, once a great stage for Soviet mountaineering. Bordering the conflictive Chinese region of Xinjiang and – like the rest of the country – with Afghanistan, if in other times it was a chapter in the Great Game of Central Asia during the British Empire, today it is no less so. The countries of the region oscillate between Russian influence and the thrust of the new Chinese silk route, and are also witnessing renewed interest from the United States.
The road closed on May 17 is the only one that leads to the Upper Badakhshan Autonomous Province and its capital, Jorog. The other means of communication is the plane, but not always. On the other hand, the route that leads to neighboring Kyrgyzstan remains closed due to old tensions. This physical isolation goes hand in hand with cultural and political isolation. The Pamir highlanders are ethnically different from the Tajiks, they are not Sunni Muslims but Ismaeli Shiites – the sect of the Aga Khan –, they are used to grouping around their “informal authorities” and to an economy of survival in which smuggling has always weighed (and also drug trafficking). The crises with the government of Emomail Rahmon, which has been in power for 30 years, have been cyclical since the civil war (1992-1997) after the collapse of the USSR.
The reason for blocking the road was to prevent the arrival of a military convoy to Jorog to quell protests over the death, the day before, of a 29-year-old man by the police. In November 2021, Gulbiddin Ziyobekov, 28, died in similar circumstances for assaulting a prosecutor. In the demonstrations that followed, two more were killed. In order to calm things down, the Government accepted the presence of the active Pamiri civil society in the investigation of the events. However, 13 of the members of the so-called Commission 44 were arrested, the last of them the young poet Muyassari Kuhistoni, sentenced to 11 years for "treason against the State".
The 44 Commission was a trap, in the opinion of an activist contacted by La Vanguardia in a European country and whose family is being harassed by what he calls the Tajik “KGB”. The arrests reach activists, journalists or those suspected of helping "terrorists". And to his relatives. Rahmon's hand reaches as far as the pamirs in Russia, where they can be delivered by Moscow.
But the biggest blow has been the death, on May 22, of Mahmadbokir Mahmadbokirov, the most conspicuous pamir leader and former border guard officer. Thousands of people attended his funeral. Rahmon “needed to neutralize Mahmadbokir and those who are with him”, says the activist.
According to various observers, behind this would be the interest in reassuring China and its investments in the country, and in particular in the Pamir, where it already has a police post on the Afghan border. "We have a lot of questions about it," says the activist. The first: why have 1,500 square kilometers of the Pamirs been sold to China without us? In this territory there are many minerals, lithium, gold...”. Everything "is secret", but everyone knows that Rahmon's family is the one who profits from the business.
On June 28, Vladimir Putin visited Rahmon in Dushanbe, before heading to the Caspian summit in Ashgabat (Turkmenistan). It was the first trip of the Russian president since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. The effects of the war hit the Tajik economy, as well as that of neighboring countries. Rahmon cannot be happy with Russia, which is the main supplier of food, nor can Putin be happy with Rahmon, who a few days earlier received General Michael Kurilla, head of the US Central Command. Kurilla toured the countries of the region informally, between banquets with folk dances and, according to The Washington Post, with no intention of disturbing Russia. For Washington, it is about keeping the Afghan border under surveillance, which is in everyone's interest. But, also, to be more present in Central Asia, for what could happen... The Great Game continues.
