DUSHANBE, November 3, 2015, Asia-Plus – Tajik authorities have denied report by some Afghan media that Dushanbe has allegedly supplied the Taliban with weapons in exchange for gold and precious stones as absolutely “unfounded.”
“These allegations are absolutely absurd,” an official source in the Main Border Guard Directorate under the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) told Asia-Plus in an interview.
“Moreover, Kabul has also denied this report as baseless,” he added.
“Tajikistan has officially designated the Taliban movement as a terrorist organization and there are no any problems in cooperation between the power wielding structures of the two countries,” Faridoun Mahmadaliyev, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense (MoD), said, noting that the Defense Ministry of Afghanistan has also denied that report as unfounded.
Meanwhile, some Afghan media outlets last month quoted Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, as saying weapons have been supplied by Tajik Air Force helicopters.
Tajik helicopters were reportedly observed flying to Wakhan, Shighnan and Ishkashim districts in Afghan Badakhshan. They have reportedly landed in the Taliban-controlled areas. The helicopters have allegedly supplied weapons to the Taliban in exchange for gold and precious stones.
Besides, an article entitled “Taliban: Tajikistan Supplied Us Arms In Exchange For Hostages” that was posted on
Eurasianet.org’s
website on October 26 say that Tajikistan”s government provided the Taliban in Afghanistan with weapons in exchange for the release of four soldiers who had been captured by the Taliban on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, a Taliban official has said.
The four Tajikistani soldiers were captured last December after they got lost hunting for firewood, and were released in June with the help of Qatari mediation. The terms of the exchange weren”t announced at the time, but now an unnamed senior Taliban leader, in an interview with the American website
The Daily Beast
, reportedly said that it involved a shipment of weapons from Dushanbe.
The deal was done by the son of a Taliban leader and a scrap metal dealer in Dushanbe, the official said. “In exchange for the guards’ release, the Taliban wanted weapons,”
the Daily Beast
reported. “‘Dr. Tahir Shamalzai [the Taliban envoy] traveled from Kabul airport to Dushanbe, inspected the weapons, and crossed with the weapons from Tajikistan into Afghanistan,” a senior Taliban leader tells
The Daily Beast
.
The Daily Beast
frames the event as part of a larger Russian-Taliban cooperation, which seems improbable; the much simpler explanation is that Tajikistan had access to weapons that the Taliban wanted, and needed to get its soldiers back. The Taliban official made no mention of the Qatari role.
