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Iran Dismisses Claims That Tehran Fueled 1990s Tajikistan Civil War

By Mina Khorasani August 16, 2017

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The Tajik civil war began in May 1992 when Islamic-oriented  ethnic groups following radical Wahhabi ideology from the Garm and Gorno-Badakhshan regions of Tajikistan rose up against the government, which had been dominated by people from the Khujand and Kulyab regions

The Iranian embassy in Dushanbe has dismissed allegations raised in a newly released documentary aired by Tajikistan’s state television channel that Tehran played a negative role in Tajikistan’s civil war in the 1990s.

“There is no doubt that the producers of this film will never succeed in undermining the ancient and historical friendly ties between the Iranian and Tajik nations. The claims are raised by sentenced confessors and quoted from people who are no longer alive, and thus cannot be of any validity,” read a statement issued by Iran’s embassy in Dushanbe on Wednesday.

The 45-minute documentary, broadcast by Televizioni Tojikiston, the national broadcaster of Tajikistan, included views that put the blame on Iran for fomenting a civil war that rocked the Central Asian nation from 1992–1997. In the documentary, representatives from Tajikistan’s Interior Ministry made claims that Tehran provided financial assistance to the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) and trained its militants in Iran.

The Tajik civil war began in May 1992 when Islamic-oriented  ethnic groups following radical Wahhabi ideology from the Garm and Gorno-Badakhshan regions of Tajikistan rose up against the government, which had been dominated by people from the Khujand and Kulyab regions. The rebel groups were led by liberal democratic reformers and Islamists, who fought together and organized under the banner of the United Tajik Opposition, which has since been banned by President Emomali Rahmon. By June 1997 and according to varying estimates, anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 people had been killed.

A man who identified himself in the documentary as a former Islamic opposition fighter said that he traveled to Qom, Iran in 1995 and received militant training, along with 200 others. He claims to have returned to Tajikistan in 1997 with clear instructions to kill political and public figures, and confesses to a series of killings of politicians and prominent figures, including the assassination of former parliamentary chairman Safarali Kenjaev in 1999, as well as carrying out attacks on a Russian military base.

According to claims made in the film, the militants reportedly supported a former deputy defense minister, Abdulhalim Nazarzoda (also known as Khoji Halim Nazarzoda), one of the Islamic opposition party's commanders in the 1990s. Prior to being killed on September 16, 2015 during an anti-coup operation near Dushanbe, Nazarzoda was sacked for "committing a crime" and was later charged with treason, terrorism, sabotage, and creating an extremist group. Together with him, the IRPT was branded a terrorist organization by the Tajik Supreme Court and was accused of plotting attacks against the government.  

Political and diplomatic differences between Tehran and Dushanbe, while coming to the surface with the airing of the TV documentary, are nothing new, however.

In December 2015, Iran invited the leader of the recently banned IRPT, Muhiddin Kabiri – who had fled Tajikistan in March and was added to Interpol’s wanted list in 2016 – to attend an international conference on Islamic unity in Tehran. At the conference Kabiri was seated next to the head of Tajikistan's state-supported Islamic Council. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with Kabiri on the sidelines of the conference.

Following the event, Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying it was "greatly concerned” that the leader of an "extremist and terrorist” organization was invited to the conference. 

The year 2016 saw bilateral relations deteriorate even further. Tajikistan halted the import of Iranian food products, including poultry, cooking oil and tea, citing their "low quality” as a reason for the ban. Tajikistani authorities also suspended a local branch of the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee, a charity organization supported by the Iranian government. In July of that year, the transportation ministry publicly accused Tehran of violating the terms of a contract to build a key regional railway.

By June 2017, Iran reduced its official footprint in the country. A cultural office in the northern city of Khujand affiliated with the Iranian embassy, which provided library services and high-speed Internet for locals, shut its doors at the request of Tajikistani authorities.

Landlocked and sharing a border with Afghanistan, Tajikistan is something of a cultural outlier amongst the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Despite diplomatic differences, ethnic Tajiks are culturally and linguistically closer to Iranians (Persians) and Afghans than they are with Tajikistan’s Turkic neighbors Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Iran was one of the first countries to recognize an independent Tajikistan after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the first to set up an embassy in its capital city of Dushanbe.