In Tajikistan, the Moscow attack recalls the jihadist risk

(Dushanbe) The alleged involvement of four Tajiks in the Crocus City Hall massacre near Moscow has cast a new spotlight on the jihadist threat coming from Central Asia, a region bordering Afghanistan that regularly supplies men for the Islamic State (IS) group.

Despite a relative stabilization of this risk, the five former Soviet republics in the region, led by Tajikistan, have a heavy history in this area, with the departure of thousands of their citizens to Syria and Iraq in the 2010s.

Bruised by a civil war between 1992 and 1997 with the involvement of Islamist fighters, Tajikistan, which has made the fight against terrorism a priority, remains prey to regular cross-border skirmishes coming from Afghanistan and involving jihadist groups.

This poor and mountainous country of 9.7 million inhabitants has also suffered various attacks claimed by ISIS.

A threat further revived by the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021.

Since then, Tajikistan has been the main adversary of the Kabul regime in Central Asia, because it is worried about a possible spread of its ideology, while several million ethnic Tajiks live in Afghanistan.

Dushanbe has regularly highlighted the upsurge in activity of jihadist groups along its 1,375 kilometer border shared with Afghanistan, organizing anti-terrorism exercises with the Russian and Chinese armies.

And last year, Tajik authorities announced that they had killed five members of the jihadist group Jamaat Ansarullah on the Afghan border.

“Great tragedy”

The attack in Moscow, which left at least 139 dead, claimed by the Islamic State group in Khorasan (IS-K), the Afghan branch of IS, shook Tajik society.

“It’s a great tragedy for our country,” Daniel Roustamov, an artist met in Dushanbe, told AFP, who fears that “a few criminals will harm the entire Tajik people.”

He also fears that “Tajiks will be pursued in Russia”, where millions of them work to feed their families back home, against a backdrop of an increase in anti-migrant rhetoric.

As for Bakhtior Akhmedov, a 32-year-old businessman, he insists to AFP that a “terrorist has no nation or religion”. “The entire Tajik people are in mourning,” he emphasizes.

A formula echoing the official message from President Emomali Rakhmon, relayed since Sunday by the media in this country where information is closely controlled.

The leader, in power since 1992 and whose portraits several meters high stand across Tajikistan, assured Tajiks of the support of the “brotherly Russian people”, insisting that a “terrorist had no nationality”.

This mantra is repeated by the regime when Tajiks are involved in attacks, like the one in Iran in early January which left more than 90 dead and which was also claimed by EI-K.

A subsidiary described as “the greatest terrorist threat in Afghanistan and Central Asia”, according to a June 2023 report from the United Nations, which puts the number at 4,000 to 6,000 jihadists, including families.

Vulnerable migrants

So, in Tajikistan, the regime took radical measures to counter religious fundamentalism, such as the fight against the wearing of the hijab for women.

According to President Rakhmon, 2,300 Tajiks have joined the Islamic State group since 2015, the most notable case being the defection to ISIS of the former commander of the Tajik police special forces, given for dead in 2017.

“Over the past three years, 24 of our citizens have committed terrorist acts in 10 countries. The number of young people who have joined terrorist organizations, including ISIS, has increased,” Mr. Rakhmon lamented at the beginning of March.

He pointed out the “extremist propaganda” striking “when these young people are abroad to work”, while around a million Tajiks go to Russia each year, a number that is increasing.

Migrants whose precarious situation is also used by the Russian army, with testimonies of Central Asian citizens recruited to fight against Ukraine now being numerous.