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Tajikistan Says Militants Were Behind Attack on Troops

21 September 2010 03:59 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Tajikistan on Monday blamed Islamic militants, some with ties to Afghanistan and Pakistan, for an assault on a military convoy that killed at least 23 soldiers in the nation over the weekend, APA reports quoting â€œThe New York Timesâ€.
The Tajik government has long voiced concern about the rise of Islamic militancy in the impoverished, mostly Muslim, country, which shares a long border with Afghanistan. It warned Monday that a recent surge in violence could destabilize Tajikistan.
Critics, however, have accused Tajikistanâ€™s president, Emomali Rakhmon, of using the threat of Islamic extremism to crack down on dissent.
Although the extent of any involvement by Islamic militants in recent bloodshed is not clear, the increasing brazenness of the attacks has put the government on edge.
Details of the assault on the convoy, which occurred around midday on Sunday, have emerged slowly. Faridun Makhmadaliyev, a spokesman for the Tajik Defense Ministry, said by telephone on Monday that a column of military vehicles carrying about 80 soldiers was passing through the mountainous Rasht Valley, about 150 miles east of the capital, Dushanbe, when it was ambushed by gunmen in the heights above.
The column sustained heavy fire from machine guns and grenade launchers, he said. At least 23 servicemen were killed and several others were critically wounded, he said. Other reports said that as many as 40 soldiers may have been killed.
The militants, Mr. Makhmadaliyev said, were â€œusing the holy religion of Islam as a guise to turn Tajikistan into an arena of civil war.â€
He said that some of the gunmen were â€œmercenariesâ€ from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Chechnya. The attack, he said, was led by former field commanders from the United Tajik Opposition, a loose coalition of Muslim and nationalist groups that fought against Tajikistanâ€™s current authorities in a bloody civil war in the 1990s.
The assault came just weeks after a car packed with explosives rammed a police headquarters in northern Tajikistan, killing at least one person and wounding more than two dozen, in what apparently was a suicide attack. A few days later, a bomb exploded at a nightclub in Dushanbe, injuring seven people.
And last month, more than two dozen inmates with ties to Islamic militants escaped from a detention center in Dushanbe, killing a guard before attacking another prison and killing four other guards.
Tajik news media outlets suggested that the soldiers attacked on Sunday had been hunting for the escapees, who were said to be hiding in the region. Most of the inmates remained at large, though the police said earlier this month that they had captured the suspected organizer of the prison break, a man identified as Ibrokhim Nasriddinov, who reportedly was extradited to Tajikistan several years ago from the American prison at GuantÃ¡namo Bay, Cuba.
The Rasht Valley, where the attack on the soldiers occurred, was once a stronghold of antigovernment forces during the civil war and today is one of several mountainous enclaves where the central authorities have only limited control.
â€œThis is a mountainous region where anyone, including those the government names Islamic terrorists, can hide,â€ said Danil Kislov, the editor of Fergana.ru, a news site that covers the region. â€œFor the locals, these are likely normal Muslims, who, with weapons in their hands, are fighting for their rights.â€
The latest violence, Mr. Kislov said, could be in response to recent government attempts to exert authority over the region, though he said support for violent resistance to the authorities was probably limited.