DUSHANBE, September 21, 2015, Asia-Plus –
TASS
reports that Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Nikolay Bordyuzha said on September 18 that armed clashes between Tajikistan’s government forces and supporters of rebel General Abduhalim Nazarzoda were not an attempted coup and entailed no destabilization of the situation in that country.
“I wouldn’t dramatize the situation with that criminal gang that has recently been eliminated. Generally speaking I see what has happened. But I don’t think we can say those actions, including taken by General Nazarzoda, were an attempted coup or an attempt to destabilize the situation in Tajikistan. I don’t think it was a serious phenomenon that might entail any negative developments in Tajikistan. The situation there is rather stable,” he said in an interview with the
Rossiya-24
television channel.
He said “forces that cannot put up with their failure in that country” were still active in Tajikistan. “In the 1990s, the Tajik united opposition thought they were having Tajikistan on a string,” Bordyuzha said, adding that the terrorist group Islamic State was strong in Central Asia too.
We will recall that that former deputy defense minister Abduhalim Nazarzoda and a group of gunmen under his control launched a predawn attack on the main police station in the Vahdat Township, east of the Tajik capital on September 4, and clashed later that day with security forces at a Defense Ministry building not far from the Dushanbe International Airport. Nine police officers were killed and six others were wounded in those attacks.
Nazarzoda, his associate Colonel Junaidulloh Umarov, and several other gunmen then fled to the Romit Gorge, adjacent to Vahdat, where the government forces launched a security operation to hunt down them.
Hours after the September 4 attacks, President Emomali Rahmon dismissed Nazarzoda as deputy defense minister “for committing a crime.”
The Prosecutor-General”s Office said on September 8 that Abduhalim Nazarzoda has been officially charged with high treason, terrorism, sabotage, and creating an extremist group.
Nazarzoda and a group of his followers were surrounded by government security forces in the Gusgev area about 110 kilometers of Vahdat and were killed on September 16 after refusing to surrender.
Abduhalim Nazarzoda, 51, had served as deputy defense minister since January 2014. He joined the security forces in June 1997 when the government and the opposition signed a peace accord to end the five-year civil war.
