Another Fun War You May Have Missed

Considering all the wars of much higher profile currently underway around the world, a person may have missed the one steadily accelerating in Tajikistan.  Not until eight days ago when the NYT performed its self-assigned task as "the newspaper of record," have events in the faraway Central Asian state of Tajikistan made even the smallest of blips on the Western media (and probably, political) radar scopes.  The attention grabbing specific was one more exchange in the see-saw war between the central government and groups combining adherents of violent political Islam and nationalists who also are Muslims.

Tajikistan's southern border is with Afghanistan.  Its eastern border is with China.  To the west is Uzbekistan while the northern border is with Kyrgyzstan.  Several features unite Tajikistan with its coterminous states or regions.  They are all Muslim majority.  They are all possessed of internal instability including violent unrest and the presence of groups advocating violent political Islam.  With the exception of Afghanistan all are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO.)

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan went through five years of internal war.  The war for control of the state was ethnic (usually camouflaged as "regional") between Uzbeks, who had run the place during the seventy years of Soviet overlordship, and the native Tajiks.  The war ended in a peace of exhaustion which featured the appearance but not the reality of power sharing.  While roughly eighty percent of the population is Tajik, these did not exercise an equivalent amount of power.  Rather, it was the sixteen percent who were Uzbek who got the majority of the "say" as well as the benefits.

It is not surprising that many Tajiks did not find the settlement agreeable.  Retreating to the remote, mountain ringed and almost totally isolated Rasht valley, the die hards rested and regained strength.  They also gained both recruits from and combat experience in Afghanistan.  For years, until May 2009, the valley was a no-go area for the central government and its army.  During the years of immunity, the resting, regrouping insurgents also discovered a very prolific cash cow--establishing drug transportation routes.  While the dollar amount accruing to this ever more lucrative activity cannot be estimated with any pretense of precision, there is no doubt but much, perhaps most of the morphine base flowing from Afghanistan to customers in Russia and beyond came through the friendly Rastht valley.

The Dushanbe government was under Kremlin pressure to "do something" about the embarrassing flow of drugs.  To this end as well as with the expectation of speedily ending the pesky rebels, the army moved a regimental equivalent (say, 2000 men) into the valley in May 2009.  It may be that the Tajik government anticipated goodies from the US and its NATO partners for playing an indirect roll in reducing the narco-trafficking from Afghanistan.

In the event, the insurgents did not pack it when the army showed its flag a year and half ago.  What happened instead was a slow motion but still bloody exchange of raids and counter-raids, ambushes, snipers, vehicle bombings, and the usual accompaniment of atrocities, extra-judicial killings, and general human rights abuses.  But, being remote and in part protected by the media blackout capabilities of both Russia and China, the nasty little war went unnoticed.

Then, in a dramatic change, the government opted for its own version of a war winning "surge."  The surge resulted in a very dramatic culmination: On 19 September a platoon plus sized column of Tajik troops was ambushed in Komarob Gorge by forces headed by a veteran of the earlier civil war, Alovuddin Davlatov.  When the bang-bang stopped, twenty-eight Tajik troopers were dead.  At least twenty-five more were wounded.  The insurgents took no known losses.

The government has made retaliatory raids.  Small success has crowned the efforts.  Effective escalation is not a viable option--unless it was underwritten by an outside power.  And, this is unlikely as the only candidates, Russia and Uzbekistan, are preoccupied with internal problems such that neither would seek further complications either domestic or international.

The capacities of the Tajikistan government are limited by several very powerful constraints.  The first is economic.  Tajikistan is far and away the most impoverished of the states carved from the corpse of the Soviet Union.  It is not a gross exaggeration to say that hunger is already stalking the land.

A second potent limitation on the government's ability to act decisively is the widespread nature of anti-government sentiment.  The impoverished majority blame their situation on the government, its corruption, its inefficiency, its arrogant remoteness, and its minority nature.  This combination propelled the overthrow of a seemingly well-entrenched regime in Kyrgyzstan.  President Rahmon is not eager to share the same fate.

Yet another limitation arises from the low average age of the population.  The median age of men in the place is under twenty-two.  As history and contemporary events show clearly, it is young men who are most amenable to the appeals of true belief such as that offered by political Islam.  Men of this age cohort are also afflicted with the adolescent belief in immortality and invulnerability so are perfect candidates for the excitement, challenge, and specious sense of meaning provided by war.

The US has a presence in Tajikistan which is linked to the overall infrastructure supporting combat operations in Afghanistan.  So the current administration has some reason to worry about the direction of affairs in the country.  So far our response to the growing problem in Tajikistan is an offer to establish an anti-terrorist training center.  Beyond that there is probably a hope that no matter which way the governmental chips might fall whoever is in charge will still need the revenue provided by our base rights lease so we can afford a "what! Me, worry?" approach.  (This level of non-response response is also predicated upon the Kremlin's automatic opposition to any American move which might undercut the presumed Russian preeminence in Tajikistan.)

Russia has much more to fret about, but given the failure of the Kremlin and its handpicked agents to "clarify and put to order" the Muslim insurgency in the Northern Caucasus, it has little to offer.  Further, the relations between the Kremlin and Tajikistan are, to put it in polite terms, "strained."

Then there is China,  China has been having more than a few problems with its homegrown advocates of violent political Islam coupled with nationalism.  They have no reason to ignore a bunch of like minded Muslims next door in Tajikistan.  That, after all, is one of the, more accurately, the reason behind Beijing creating the SCO.  (Russia played a game of "me-too" in a defensive move protecting its privileged position in the Central Asian Republics and isn't thrilled about the SCO's existence.)

Beyond the SCO flexing its semi-mythical muscle, there is nothing real the Trolls of Beijing can do--except send money.  To date the Trolls have seen no need to do this perhaps as they see Rahmon's regime as a poor investment.

Winter's winds are starting to blow from the mountains surrounding the Rasht valley.  The government, having been soundly bested in its attempt to wind up the insurgency before the snow calls a time out, there is not much chance that anything spectacular will happen in the next few months.  Yet, as is the case in most "time-outs" in insurgent guerrilla war, the advantage goes automatically to the insurgents.  They have the greater opportunity to operate, recruit, gain resources.  The government will have the time to be weakened further by the slow but sure erosion of legitimacy and support which comes with pervasive poverty and loss of confidence in the future.

Don't despair, bucko, we will be hearing and seeing a lot more from the fun little war in a very faraway place by the time the next equinox rolls around.

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