Four serious incidents have occurred in the Tajik border troops over the past thirty-five days but the border service keeps silence. The Main Border Guard Directorate at the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) neither confirmed nor denied reports about these incidents.
So, one by one.
Two persons were killed and two others were seriously injured on December 1 as a vehicle belonging to the Tajik Border Troops crashed into a fixed-route tax (minivan) in Khorog, the capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO). Among those killed was a pregnant woman, therefore, one could say that the accident left three dead.
Two border officers detained over that fatal traffic accident remain under the custody. Criminal proceedings have been instituted against them under the provisions of Article 212 (3) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code – violation of traffic rules entailing negligent death of two or more persons,
The Main Border Guard Directorate has not officially commented on this incident. Meanwhile, the incident has stirred social networks. Many people wrote on Facebook in early December that the border guards were in a state of drunkenness and they fled the accident scene.
The second tragic incident took place in one of frontier posts of the Khorog border unit on December 7. A conscript shot to death a 22-year-old officer firing at him from his service Kalashnikov assault.
The Main Border Guard Directorate press center refrained from giving further details of the incident.
Another incident took place in Shamsiddin-Shohin district of Khatlon province on January 1. A group of armed Afghan drug dealers illegally crossed the border river and kidnapped a 42-year-old shepherd Tourakhon Nourmatov, taking from his village of Sari Chashma.
Afghan drug dealers are taking desperate measure to recover debts. A number of Tajiks had been kidnapped by Afghan drug dealers in the previous years and held hostage until their families paid ransom money to clear debts.
On January 4, Major Sukhanvar Olimov was mortally wounded in an armed skirmish between Tajik border guards and a group of armed Afghan drug traffickers that took place in Shamsiddin-Shohin district. Major Olimov died on the road to a hospital
The Main Border Guard Directorate has left all these incidents without comments.
