Citizens of Tajikistan will be required to report the purpose of their trips abroad
Tajikistan’s security forces have opted for increased surveillance of individual citizens travelling beyond the country’s borders.
The former attributed this measure to prevention of the latter joining the so-called “Islamic State”. One cannot, however, rule out the chance that the actual implementation of the measure might run counter to the individual right to depart freely.
“On to the slaughterhouse” with the whole family
Both the issue of Tajik citizens getting recruited by the terrorist organization known as the “Islamic State” and the need to detect the organization’s followers and propagandists alike were on top of the agenda during a meeting of the Coordination council of the country’s law enforcement bodies which had taken place two weeks ago at the office of the Attorney General of the Republic of Tajikistan.
The chief output of the meeting was a set of measures tackling the issue of citizens travelling abroad.
From now onwards, individuals leaving the country without an official invitation, without a determined work position, and so on and so forth, will be questioned by law enforcement officials so as to clarify the purpose of their trip.
Particular attention with be given to those leaving the country with their entire families, with women and children. Such people will have to corroborate the purpose of their departure beyond Tajikistan’s borders.
Those travelling abroad will be questioned, in much detail, about the motivation behind the impending departure. By doing so, the security services intend to prevent Tajikistanis from joining terrorist groups, ISIS included. The ones baring the responsibility of such questioning of suspicious individuals will be local law enforcement officials and representatives of the traditional
jamoat
sub-districts.
As Muhammadrizo Khalifazoda, spokesman of the Attorney General of the Republic of Tajikistan, disclosed to ASIA-Plus, just last year, 34 individuals suspected of attempting to leave the country to join a terrorist organization had been detained at Dushanbe International Airport.
In addition, as many as 110 Tajik citizens had been repatriated from other countries, namely Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and the Baltic States on the same grounds.
According to the spokesman, causing even the slightest of suspicion at the county’s international airports or border crossings shall lead to thorough questioning regarding the purpose of the concerned individual’s departure.
“Those that deserve the most attention are young people and women with children, who seem to carry little or no money on them” affirms the representative of the Attorney General office. “For instance, a Tajik female citizen, who had never left Tajikistan before, but who, for some reason, brought her three children, the youngest of whom was just three months-old, with her, had been detained upon entry into Turkey. She headed off to Turkey without any money. As it turned out, she intended to reach Syria, where her foreign fighter-husband had been active. Both her and her children have been subsequently repatriated.”
Khalifazoda put forward the notion that, given the fact that leaders of traditional
jamoat
and
mahalla
administrative community groupings know each and every one of their members personally, the former should show active concern for those who intend to leave the country and their motivations in particular.
“If they notice that a person in a difficult financial situation suddenly makes the decision to head off abroad, it is their social obligation to inquire whether somebody awaits them there and why has the decision been made to begin with” added the representative of the Attorney General office.
Lacking linkable traits
The President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon urged, during an expanded Government session that took place on January 21
st
, for more attention to be paid to the issue of members of Tajikistani youth joining terrorist groups. The President mentioned that, according to available information, more than 1,000 citizens have joined the terrorist grouping known as the “Islamic State” and have taken part in combat operations in Syria and Iraq.
He also asserted that 146 families and 21 university students from Tajikistan resettled to Syria and Iraq.
For instance, just among the family members of 60-year-old Qabodiyon District resident S. Shirbekov, 8 people, concretely his three sons, four grandsons and one sister-in-law, left for Syria.
The Republic’s authorities are taking measures to prevent its citizens from joining the so-called “Islamic State”. However, these measures are not always successful.
Recent experience shows the trend of members of various socioeconomic groups from within Tajik society leaving for Syria. This includes those who had themselves fought Islamist insurgents in Tajikistan in the recent past. The latter case further complicates the security services’ effort to “single out” such individuals.
In September 2015, for instance, information surfaced suggesting 45-year-old Davlat Cholov, the brother of the late “National Front” field commander Qurbon Cholov, had joined the ranks of ISIS.
In February 2014, Davlat Cholov had been detained at Dushanbe Airport while attempting to leave for Turkey. He was subsequently charged with recruiting Tajik youth into the terrorist organization known as the “Islamic State”. In December of the same year, Cholov was charged with a fine and had been subsequently set free. None of this discouraged him to leave the country a couple of months later and to reach his ultimate destination of Syria after a stopover in Russia. It was reported, in the month of January 2016, that he had been killed while fighting Bashar al-Assad’s army.
At the end of last April, Gulmurod Halimov the commander of the OMON Special Forces of Tajikistan’s Ministry of Interior had gone missing. One month later, he uploaded a video on social media where he confirmed rumors of him having joined fellow ISIS combatants.
Despite all of this, members of the security and military services failed to prevent one of last month’s most talked about incidents. Humairo Mirova, “second wife” of OMON commander Gulmurod Halimov, successfully left for Syria with her four children to join her mate. It is supposed that the departure of the young woman and her children, including one of infant age, took place near the end of February.
Humairo Mirova used to work as the head of the press center of Tajikistan’s customs service and it is suggested she held the rank of captain. She had been on maternity leave since the beginning of last year. The question how could all the aforementioned individuals manage to remain under the radar of the security services and leave the country fairly easily remains unanswered. At the same time, individuals who hardly pose any security risk whatsoever still get obliged to disembark an already boarded plane. 95-year-old Tillo Kabirov, the father of Muhiddin Kabiri, the leader of the in Tajikistan recently outlawed Islamic Renaissance Party, was been escorted from the plane bound for Istanbul at Dushanbe Airport on the morning of January 4
th
.
Experts say: One cannot rule out unfounded obstructions of individual departures and occurrences of bribe extortions.
Members of the Tajik expert community cast doubt on the effectiveness of the mentioned initiative. They likewise identify the risk that such measures could be used against “bothersome” individuals.
Legal expert Shokirjon HAKIMOV expressed his view on this government initiative:
– As is widely known, Tajikistan has international commitments to live up to. This is the case of upholding the right of its citizens to travel freely, both inside and beyond the country, save, off course, for special cases foreseen by Tajikistan’s criminal law and in accordance with the pretrial constraint measures.
The expert adds that Tajik authorities do not have the right to arbitrarily prevent Tajik citizens, including in well-intended cases, from leaving the country in cases where such a departure is well founded. By the latter, one could include invitations of a foreign government, organization or family, as well as cases like, but not limited to, tourism and business trips.
As the interviewed experts affirm, the discussed procedure already has foreign counterparts.
More concretely, as political scientist Parviz Mullojanov assessed, Russian security services already are in a state of heightened alert and pay special attention to citizens leaving the country, particularly those belonging to “risk groups” susceptible to terrorist recruitment.
– Concurrently, – Mullojanov adds, – it remains unclear how exactly and according to which criteria would such “risk groups” be defined – based on clothing, general appearance or documents held? Thousands of our citizens leave Tajikistan’s territory each and every day. In order to well filter-out the cases that deserve particular attention, one would need cutting-edge technical equipment and a large body of specially-trained border guards and customs officers. It could prove to be very challenging with the currently limited resources. A tangible chance thus exists of unsubstantiated obstructions of citizen departures, their detention, cases of bribe extortion and so on and so forth.
The expert affirms that the task can prove to be particularly difficult as two thirds of Tajiks that travel to the Middle East to join ISIS do so from Russia, the country where they usually got recruited in the first place.
– Because of this, prevention should become the number-one instrument, meaning the timely detection of individuals considering joining ISIS, – claims P. Mullojanov. – The information readily available to customs officers and border guards should be a register of concrete citizens who belong to the susceptible “risk groups”. Border control officers should base their decision on such a register, rather than on their own fresh assessment or by imitating police work, the quality of the latter two strategies is unlikely to be assured as resources, both financial and organizational, remain scarce. Finally, the main challenge would be to strengthen oversight in regards to the very process of detecting suspicion-raising individuals. This way, ordinary citizens and their rights can remain unscathed under all circumstances.
