DUSHANBE, April 28, 2011, Asia-Plus — A Tajik-language website purportedly run by Islamic militants has vowed to carry out new attacks on government forces and called on the Tajik people to rebel against President Emomali Rahmon, Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service reports.
A previously unknown group called Mujahids from Tajikistan (Mujohidini Tojikiston) said in a statement posted on its website that, despite the death of Islamic militant leader Mullo Abdullo in Tajikistan earlier this month, they will continue attacks on government forces and state employees.
The statement says the group”s members come not just from Rasht and Badakhshan, the regions that backed the opposition during the 1992-97 civil war, but “from all corners of Tajikistan: from Khatlon, Sughd, Dushanbe, and Hissar.”
The group urges Tajiks to rise up and overthrow Rahmon in a manner similar to how the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia were ousted.
Saidumar Husayni, a member of the lower house of the Tajik parliament and deputy head of the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, said on Thursday he does not know of any Islamic group called Mujohidini Tojikiston.
But he recalled that during Tajikistan”s civil war, a group of militants from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan joined the Taliban and fought in Afghanistan against the forces of the Northern Alliance led by Ahmad Shah Masoud, who was an ethnic Tajik.
Husayni noted that these Uzbek militants called themselves Mujohidini Tojikiston to create the false impression that Tajiks were aligned against Masoud.
Tajik affairs analyst Qosimshoh Bekmuhammad said the group appears to have foreign roots and its wants to portray Tajikistan as an unstable country.
