The Peace Plan
The Tajik peace accord brought to fruition more than three years of UN-sponsored negotiations, which quickened significantly from January to June 1997. The result was the “General Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and National Accord in Tajikistan,” signed by the Tajik president, Emomali Rakhmonov, and the UTO leader, Said Abdullo Nuri. Supplementing the accord was a series of protocols and documents addressing political issues, the functions of the interim Commission on National Reconciliation (CNR), military issues, refugee-related issues, and guarantees.According to the agreement, a contact group to monitor the implementation of the General Agreement was formed representing the states and regional organizations which guaranteed the accord. These are Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the OSCE.
Shortly after the signing in Moscow on June 27, 1997, a 26-member interim assembly—the CNR—was constituted, chaired by the United Tajik Opposition leader, Said Abdullo Nuri. Comprising equal numbers from the government and opposition sides, the CNR has the central role of implementing the complex steps outlined in the accord and protocols. These include legislative reform, parliamentary elections, demobilization and amnesty for ex-combatants, and a multimillion dollar reconstruction effort to resuscitate Tajikistan’s economic, health and education systems.
The international effort to support the peace accord is also ambitious. Shepherded by a UN special representative, it sweeps from large-scale projects on infrastructure repair, to small-scale farming projects and small businesses for people once employed by the obsolete state cotton farms and factories.
Although many activities under the accord have been delayed by security problems, significant progress has been made. Most dramatic has been the repatriation of the refugees remaining in Afghanistan who were linked to the UTO. In addition to the civilians who returned, several thousand UTO combatants returned and registered with the government, beginning the process of demobilization and eventual retraining or deployment.
At the same time, international officials in Tajikistan note that the government began a public information campaign about the accord, making many people even in the smallest villages aware of the guarantees of amnesty and reconciliation. Some positions in local government and on state farms have been handed to returnees from the opposition; but at higher governmental levels, few of the positions allocated to UTO representatives (30 percent) have been filled.
The Tajiks, with the help of international organizations and NGOs, have also drafted a detailed program plan for their immediate transition to long-term development. Elaborated in the document entitled “International Support to Peace and Reconciliation in Tajikistan,” the plan was presented to a special conference of international donors and humanitarian organizations in Vienna on November 24 and 25, 1997.
The four critical areas of activity are highlighted as follows:
Political Reconciliation and Democratization $3,305,000
Demobilization of ex-Combatants and
Reform of Power Structures $19,218,750
Repatriation and Reintegration of
Refugees and IDPs (internally displaced
persons) $10,925,000
Rehabilitation and Development $31,447,410Total $64,896,160
Several international officials attending the Vienna conference said that it was a “huge step toward reconciliation for Nuri and Rakhmonov to make a joint appeal the international community.” The donors, conceding the urgency of keeping the process on track, responded with a commitment of $56.6 million.
The plan is to establish a trust fund, administered by the UN Development Programme. But the donor community still has to work out safeguards against the risk of corruption, a common side-effect of infusing a weak postwar government with huge amounts of cash. Additionally, staff working in village development projects must limit the danger of their own physical harm and the risks of having their cash raided by local bandits.
But if there is one widely held view among international donors and aid organizations, it is that a key to the peace plan in Tajikistan is the guarantee of adequate representation of the contending regions and clans. But to make it work, the parties must cooperate and see their future together.
Obstacles to Implementation
One expert on Tajikistan’s human rights record argues that the peace accord itself is flawed. “You need to redo the peace accord, so that all the groups with vested interests are included in it. Thirty percent of the Tajik people—those living in the north—did not participate in the peace process.”
“Moreover,” says the expert, “the people in the region east of Dushanbe—a stronghold of the radical Islamic opposition—must be brought into the process. Those who have fought in the opposition are not likely to participate in ‘road repair’ programs,
until they can have faith that the new government will in fact represent them.”This is not to mention the 250 men of the United Tajik Opposition living in a hotel in the heart of Dushanbe, with authorization to protect their leader, Said Abdullo Nuri. The European Union has plans to extend credit to ex-fighters to buy an animal or start their own small business. But they will need to be taught certain skills and given business and legal advice as well.
Another cause for some concern is the fact that while thousands of other ex-fighters have registered with the authorities, they have not turned in their weapons. One western analyst says that many of these fighters do not yet believe in the government, which has stepped up an anti-Islamic campaign; the analyst estimates that as many as 10,000 arms may still be at large.
Finally, one sympathetic critic offers a list of conditions that must be addressed if the peace plan is ever to endure. “You need to reform the police system and the security system,” she argues. “You need a free press—the government closed down two papers in early November that were critical of government policies. You need programs to attract serious ‘brains’ back to the country.
The level of fear and corruption has to be handled before Tajikistan goes anywhere. If you talk about state-building, you must presume a certain degree of stability, and there is the terrible challenge—yet unresolved and unfaced—of disarming the civilian population.”
At the close of 1997, there was not a soul in Tajikistan, from legal scholars and local officials, to senior diplomats, who could plainly identify who controlled the republic. Indeed, any attempt to explore this mystery results in a lengthy and complex description of multiple and competing power centers. These explanations evoke something surreal and chillingly absurd.
“Right now the power bases are so scattered and so amorphous and daily changing,” says one relief worker, echoing the frustration of every person interviewed in Tajikistan. “One problem for us is not knowing day to day who’s aligned with whom. Yes, we knew about the huge rash of terror bombs in Dushanbe. But we don’t know who’s working with whom.”
Two issues over which the factions constantly realign is the profitable narco-traffic from Afghanistan and control of the little that is economically viable in Tajikistan—which amounts to cotton and aluminum production. Control of the few good roads in the country is another realm for competing interests, which block relief convoys at will. As an NGO worker recalls, “A group stopped us recently and said, ‘We’ll have some of this, and some of that.’ Vehicles have been shot at. The weak government can’t handle things.”
Perhaps it is misleading to label Tajikistan’s government “weak,” rather than “splintered.” The “power ministries”—defense, interior and ex-KGB—are run by men who won them as rewards for the fighting on the government side. Each has his private army, which destabilizes the regions to the east and the south.
This is frustrating to prosecutors such as Farroukh Nazimov, who spends his days in Khatlon district settling cases ranging from housing disputes to common crime. “There is no one who can guarantee anyone security in Tajikistan,” he says, “even though we have four institutions—-courts, Interior Ministry, Army and KGB— that are dealing with this issue.”
Nazimov is exasperated by the widely known fact that many people inherited their ministerial postings because of their loyalty rather than their governing skills. “There’s a commission that should review all of them. There are many people who want trained professionals to take posts. The government of Rakhmonov says yes, but it’s hard to push them out.”
Discussing just how to dismantle this system brings Nazimov to a point that one often heard during the debates about national identity following Tajikistan’s independence from the Soviet Union. “There was never a conception, a strategy for creating the ‘power’ organizations like the KGB, MVD, and military,” says Nazimov. “International organizations and western nations come with their concepts and try to plant them here. But this doesn’t work. We need to work out our own. We literally need a concept, a strategy for ruling ourselves.
“Unfortunately,” the prosecutor goes on, “It’s very complicated, and we don’t have enough theoretical background for this. We have to study the reasons for the war—all of the reasons—especially to prevent more war in our future.”
Notwithstanding Nazimov’s reference to the need for theory and analysis—and many would agree with him—Tajikistan
is spinning on less lofty disputes over who will control what portfolios. “These guys are cutting deals every day: who’s going to get this business, who’s going to get that project,” says a resident of Dushanbe. “This is a petty, petty struggle for power. It is
not ideological.”As the UTO vies with government factions for postings, both sides see themselves losing something, says another international observer. “It’s the wild east and the culture of the gun—primitive accumulation. We just hope it will pave the way to a more rational system.”
Those in the capital hear evidence of this showdown in the nightly skirmishes and periodic bomb blasts. But the view from the provinces seems tragically burlesque. Pensions are not paid. Teachers have no salaries. Policemen have no typewriters, no paper to type on, no guns, not even handcuffs. As one field worker says, “The police are certainly no match for the local armed gangs. They arrest someone and have to tie his hands with rope! It’s a joke.” Given the alarming frequency of reports about the growing narcotics traffic from Afghanistan, many people interviewed for this report question the extent to which the frontier could be better policed by the CIS border forces, commanded primarily by Russians.
Anyone in southern Tajikistan last August had an opportunity to witness a rampage of looting by government forces, reminiscent of Russian military campaigns through Chechen villages in 1995 and 1996. The occasion was the defeated insurrection by a former government commander. He had rejected the peace plan’s provision to integrate opposition fighters into the national army.
When government detachments drove the rebel and his fighters across the border into Uzbekistan, the government troops then turned on the ethnic Uzbeks in the local population, to punish them for presumably supporting this commander. Dozens of houses were looted, and as many as 300 cars and other vehicles were stolen and stripped for spare parts.“Mainly, it was the army who looted the houses,” says one witness who describes how they stripped homes of everything from electric heaters to light bulbs and plugs. “In the beginning it was aimed at local Uzbeks. But then, they reasoned, if they had a truck, why not fill it up with what’s in the house next door? It’s a lot of criminality, really. If you’re a 20-year-old boy with a gun, people are afraid of you.”
Up to 25 people were killed during the brief August clashes, compounding the woes of a population reeling from fear, poverty, and the resurgence of scourges such as typhoid, malaria, and rabies. “The people are in critical condition,” notes a western official who visited the region shortly afterwards, and found desperation among the local villagers. “They are even asking why the UN doesn’t send more peacekeeping forces. Why the Russians won’t stop the fighting.”
There are two main points of concern about security in the Tajik republic: The general lack of law and order, and politically motivated attacks. The latter took a dramatic turn in February 1997 when an opposition group took more than a dozen hostages, including staff of the UN and International Committee of the Red Cross. This prompted UN agencies to withdraw for two months, severely limiting the work of the international community.
But a second, fatal, hostage incident occurred only nine months later. The crisis highlighted a basic dilemma facing the international community concerning its commitment to support the long reconstruction process.
“We don’t know how long we can stay here as sitting ducks,” says one official, voicing the universal frustration toward the government’s failure to locate the captors swiftly and free the hostages. “The problem is that we have been working under this kind of insecure situation since the ‘event’ of February. And the insecure situation is still here. This is further proof. We are presuming that the more we work here, the more we can bring in stability, to improve things. But if we have to sit at home waiting, it’s not worth staying.”
The international community got little satisfaction from the government when it finally held a briefing, following its disastrous raid on the captors’ safehouse. During that operation, one of the French hostages was killed.
In a chilly auditorium hung with heavy red curtains, the Tajik security chief addressed a shocked and grieving audience, bundled up in overcoats. While a local Tajik interpreter translated into English, Minister Zukhurov described the operation his ministry’s troops launched the night before, to “liquidate” the group of captors. After failing to force the captors out of the basement with tear gas, followed by 10 tons of hydrant water, he said, the “KGB” had to toss hand grenades into the building.
The operation was deemed a success, and security chief Zukhurov assured the international community that they now had nothing to fear. He did, however, mention that while the gang’s ringleader was killed in the operation, two of his brothers managed to escape. He also added the disquieting comment, “I absolutely do not exclude the existence of purely criminal groups who act outside government or UTO. They have their own purposes and act on absolute, infinite lawlessness.”
International Backing
At the very moment that the two French aid workers were being held hostage, the joint Tajik leadership was appealing to the gathering of donors in Vienna for support during this delicate postconflict transition. The donors’ pledge of $56.6 million came in spite of the concerns that were heightened by the crisis.
One international analyst explains that there are a number of countries “willing to take the plunge” in Tajikistan, because it is the “linchpin to general security in the whole region—with the risk of instability spilling over into the neighboring states. Tajikistan is a country that’s willing to stabilize, and despite all the reasons to be skeptical, there’s a general feeling in the international community to support them.”
In the long term, however, the official believes that “there has to be a kind of ‘Tajik solution’ which foreigners won’t ever feel secure about. But there’s a critical mass now, after all these years of war and suffering, and people are afraid to lose what may come if there is lasting peace. We’re hoping that people will see that being orderly and sensible is rewarded, and more people will do it. It’s a kind of peace dividend.
“Then,” he continues, “if there are enough rubles for everyone—if pensions can be paid, medicines be at the clinics, if at the very basic level people see their lives getting better and start eating their share of the pie, then they’ll feel better.”
The same international official admits that right now, the Tajik “mafias” are only concerned about who will get rich. “But at least this is all taking place within some kind of framework—the peace agreement.” The danger of this premise is that nothing is constant in Tajikistan, not even the selection of people who will get rich. Without a strong effort to bring some law and order to the republic, the international community may find there is much to do, but little it can accomplish.
Geopolitical Interests
From the first year of Tajikistan’s unexpected independence, it has been clear that the republic would never know real stability without the commitment of its neighbors, notably Russia, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. Of these, Russia will always be
the most significant economic, political and military force in the region.Despite initial claims of neutrality, Russia has played a key political and military role in supporting the pro-Moscow government since the end of Soviet rule. And more significantly, it has maintained a physical presence of some 20,000 CIS troops, mostly Russian, who officially serve as the frontline defense of the former Soviet border with fundamentalist Afghanistan.
As the gatekeepers of the famously permeable 600-mile frontier, the Russian forces have been uniquely positioned to prevent the traffic of narcotics for transit into other former Soviet republics and Europe. This traffic, which continues apace, deepens the criminalization of Tajikistan and contributes to the eventual destabilization of the region.
Uzbekistan, the most populous nation in Central Asia, has long aspired to become the great power of the region. To this end, the government of Islam Karimov also provided critical support to Tajikistan’s embattled government until the Kulobi contingent took charge and marginalized the traditional power bloc from the north. Uzbekistan has since cooled diplomatic relations with Dushanbe and provided safe haven for prominent Tajik northerners who have boycotted the peace agreement.
Looking southward to the festering conflict in Afghanistan, the quest for stability there is of vital importance not only to Tajikistan, but to the world beyond it. The recent intensification of UN mediation efforts, with the appointment of the senior Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, may herald progress.
Last January, the former Afghan president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, proposed a UN-sponsored international conference to end the conflict in Afghanistan. On a visit to Dushanbe, Rabbani sought help in mediating that process from Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov and the chairman of the Commission on National Reconciliation, Said Abdullo Nuri.
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