Mass Jailbreak Causes Ripples in Tajikistan
Escaped prisoners were convicted Islamic radicals, so question now is whether they regroup or simply melt away.
Mass Jailbreak Causes Ripples in Tajikistan
Escaped prisoners were convicted Islamic radicals, so question now is whether they regroup or simply melt away.
More than a week after 25 prisoners including alleged Islamists escaped from a high-security facility in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, questions are being asked about the implications for political stability as well as why the jailbreak was allowed to happen
Inmates being held at the detention centre of the State Committee for National Security, GKNB, in the city centre attacked and overpowered guards late on August 22, killing one of them.
Having obtained a set of keys, they freed other prisoners, seized weapons, changed into military uniforms that they found, and headed for the main gates, killing four more guards whom they encountered.
They made their escape in vehicles waiting for them outside the prison.
The manhunt continues, with police on high alert and armed officers patrolling airports, railway stations and road checkpoints.
Difficult questions are now being asked about procedures at a supposedly top-security prison, for example why so many weapons and uniforms were stored there. Some analysts also argue that the escape could not have been executed unless law-enforcement officials were bribed to look the other way.
A statement by the GKNB spoke of “lack of responsibility and negligence” on the part of prison staff.
The head of the GKGB, Khairiddin Abdurahimov, and three of his deputies have since stepped down.
The escape is being viewed as an especially serious lapse in security because of the nature of the prisoners involved. These were no ordinary criminals, and their escape has political dimensions as well as embarrassing the security services.
Most of the 25 who got away were part of a group of 46 individuals sentenced two days earlier to between ten and 30 years for terrorism, drug trafficking, and seeking the violent overthrow of the government.
The case dates back to July 2009, when government forces mounted a drive to crush armed groups operating illegally in the higher reaches of the Tavildara valley in eastern Tajikistan.
This remote region was a stronghold of the guerrillas of the United Tajik Opposition, UTO, during the 1992-97 civil war. At that time the insurgents’ commander-in-chief in the area was Mirzo Ziyo, but as part of a 1997 peace deal he was awarded a post in government.
Ziyo reappeared at the centre of events last year. The government said that he had associated himself with a group of Islamic radicals who were running drugs to fund terrorism, but that he had then agreed to cooperate with police as a mediator. He was killed under unclear circumstances during the security operation, and alleged members of the group were rounded up and put on trial.
The police say the masterminds behind the escape included the leader of the Tavildara group, Hikmatullo Azizov, who is accused of membership of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an outlawed group which launched raids in Central Asia in 1999 and 2000, and which in more recent years has been allied with the Taleban and al-Qaeda based in northwest Pakistan.
Only two fugitives have been tracked down and rearrested so far, and neither has anything to do with the Tavildara group.
One is Abdurasul Mirzoev, the brother of the former head of Tajikistan’s Presidential Guard, Ghaffor Mirzoev, who is also in prison. The other is Ibrohim Nasriddinov, who was serving a 23-year jail sentence for murder and weapons offences, imposed by a Tajik court in 2007 following his return from the United States detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
It is unclear whether the Tavildara group will simply disappear from view or will attempt to create trouble for the authorities.
Political analyst Ahmadshoh Komilzoda says the escapees could rapidly become a threat if they are not recaptured.
“Experience from recent years shows that such groups can very quickly find funding abroad, and that other forces can come to join them,” he said, in remarks to the Russian news agency Regnum.
Saimuddin Dustov, chief editor of the Nigoh newspaper, says the group’s members are potentially dangerous, but are not a position to challenge the government.
“None of them presents a major political danger to the authorities. There are no big political players among them, none with leadership potential, resources and so on,” Dustov told IWPR.
However, he added,“They are a danger to the law-enforcement agencies. It can be assumed that if they’re unable to find a corridor through which to get out of the country, there will be casualties among the police.”
Dustov and other analysts see the Tavildara case as a sign that more than a decade after the end of civil conflict, government control remains tenuous in the remoter areas that were once opposition strongholds.
“We’re talking about relative control of the Rasht valley and Badakhshan,” he said. “There are seven former field commanders who live in this area and are in control, three in the Rasht area [including Tavildara]… and four in Badakhshan. The authorities engage with these individuals through negotiators who conclude deals with them…. All of them are capable of making trouble for the authorities.”
Last year’s operation in Tavildara, and the recent escapes, may have upset this delicate set of relationships.
Hikmatullo Saifullozoda, spokesman for the Islamic Rebirth Party – formerly the main force in the UTO but since 1997 a legal opposition party – insists that most former opposition commanders are not troublemakers.
“Those who are described as ex-opposition and who come from this [eastern] region have never wanted trouble in their home areas,” he said. “Those among them who were unhappy with the authorities for one reason or another merely wanted to be left alone.”
Leading political analyst Parviz Mullojonov says the government response to the escape must be nuanced so that it balances the need to deploy enough security forces to maintain order, against actions that are perceived locally as excessive and could therefore provoke trouble.
“Everything now depends on the authorities’ flexibility and skill at both national and local level,” he said. “In general, the population and the former UTO combatants just want to be left alone. Memories of the civil war are too fresh in the Rasht valley.”
Lola Olimova is IWPR’s editor in Tajikistan.
This article was produced jointly under two IWPR projects: Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education Through the Media, funded by the European Commission; and the Human Rights Reporting, Confidence Building and Conflict Information Programme, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway.
The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of IWPR and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of either the European Union or the Foreign Ministry of Norway.
