DUSHANBE, May 27, 2011, Asia-Plus – Report released by some media outlets that I have allegedly be offered and have accepted, employment in the Interior Ministry directorate in the Rasht Valley does not correspondent to the facts, former Tajik United Opposition (UTO) field commander Mirzokhouja Ahmadov told Asia-Plus by phone today.
According to him, nobody has offered him employment in the Interior Ministry’s directorate in the Rasht Valley. “Besides, no one journalist has asked whether I want to work with police, whether my age allows me to work with police,” Ahmadov noted.
He supposes that may be the fact that a number of his men have applied for employment in the Interior Ministry’s directorate in the Rasht Valley has become reason for appearance of that unreliable information.
On the social and political situation in the Rasht Valley, Ahmadov noted that the situation in the area was stable and “people are engaged in daily routine and I am engaged in farming.”
Mirzokhouja Ahmadov and his fighters are natives of the Rasht Valley. Ahmadov was one of field commanders of the former UTO during the civil war in the mid-1990s but was later appointed to a senior police post as part of a broader attempt at reintegrating former opposition militant leader. He served as the chief of the regional department empowered to combat organized crime in Rasht Valley until he was forced into early retirement in 2008.
On September 19, 2010, at least 28 government servicemen were killed in an ambush in Rasht”s Kamarob Gorge that the government blamed on Abdullo Rahimov (Mullo Abdullo) and Aloviddin Davlatov (Ali Bedaki). Mirzokhouja Ahmadov and his followers laid down their weapons and joined the government forces in a military operation against Abdullo Rahimov and Aloviddin Davlatov, who were killed earlier this year.