Kremlin orders, Dushanbe salutes or How Chechens Disappeared from Tajikistan
Turko Dikayev, free-lance journalist, Tajikistan
special to Prague Watchdog
Chechens incline towards Tajiks…
It is hard to explain, but among all “Asians”, and hopefully the others will not feel offended, Chechens for some reason keep a different view of Tajiks. Similarly, when outside their country, Tajiks incline towards Chechens, considering them obliging and responsible.
This “closeness of souls” is even more surprising as even though Chechens are highly grateful to Kazakhs and Kirgizs for saving them from being wiped out in times of Stalin’s repression (deportation of Chechens to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), they are Tajiks with whom Chechens tend to keep closer friendship. A hypothetical reason for that might be as follows: rounded by Mongols, Tajiks are the only Europeans in Asia, while Chechens are in a similar position in the Caucasus with their original culture, language, and ideals which so far have been neither understood nor accepted.
Naturally, you would suppose that in hard times of the raging war the Chechen nation has been suffering from for eight years, it was Tajikistan where Chechen refugees have flown into. However, another phenomenon of the “Chechen – Tajik” closeness is that Tajikistan is virtually the only country in today’s world where refugees from Chechnya could not find shelter.
Moreover, those Chechens who lived and worked in Tajikistan earlier left the country. And these Chechens have done a lot for Tajikistan, both inside and outside the country. However, that is past.
…but almost all of them have left Tajikistan
There are practically no Chechens in Tajikistan today. That started when the Russian – Chechen war broke out in 1994, with the Kremlin ordering Dushanbe to cancel all air and on-the-road connections in the direction of the Caucasus, so that Chechen refugees had no possibility of seeking shelter in Tajikistan.
Being eager to follow the order of the “elder brother”, President of Tajikistan Emomali Rakhmonov did not waste time to think of the elementary question: Is an influx of Chechen refugees into his country possible if Chechens, with their “historical memory”, do not remember Tajikistan their “promised land”? In this respect, there are countries far “closer” to Tajikistan, for example Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany or even the Great Britain.
As regards Asian states, their memory would bring them to Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan where many of them have a number of relatives and close friends. However, orders should be followed rather than discussed, so Dushanbe humbly saluted. And Chechens in Tajikistan, Tajik citizens who had worked there for a long time, got in such severe registration and work conditions which forced them to leave the country.
Chechens are refused access to southern regions of Tajikistan, along the border with Afghanistan. They simply receive neither registration nor contemporary residential permit there. Obviously, this is again because of Russian propaganda that tens of thousands of Chechens fight (or “have fought”) on Taleban’s side in Afghanistan, and that “Tajik Chechens” might be the Taleban’s supporters who open the border for Chechen armed groups to flow into Tajikistan. Such warning messages have been regularly sent to the 149th Russian motorized regiment of the 201st motorized division located in Tajikistan.
By the way, orders to detain former President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Dzokhar Dudayev were spread in border regions of Tajikistan, warning that it is necessary to be extremely cautious while detaining general Dudayev because he has a black karate belt. And there is probably no need to repeat the numerous allegations of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) that Shamil Basayev and Khattab “went through” Tajikistan to Afghanistan.
All Chechens in Tajikistan are watched and chased
During the first and before the second Russian - Chechen war a few Chechen families moved to Khujand, northern Tajikistan, to save their children. That “friendly visit” ended very soon because after any criminal offence in the town the police detained at first Chechens, keeping them in at least round-the-clock custody.
Moreover, Chechens faced hostile treatment by local people. When prices of fuel and lubricants went up, because Uzbekistan refused transport of tank cars with petrol through its territory, a group of Chechens took the idea of helping their Tajik friends and “opened the way” for a colon of a few cars. The story ended in the Chechens’ house where local commanders made an ambush, which resulted in a killing of one man. A similar situation took place when Chechens tried to help their Tajik friends with processing Tajik oil by means of “Chechen technology”. Fortunately, there was no victim in that case.
So, in what conditions do the Chechens who remained in Tajikistan live? They can be sure that they are being traced everywhere. Besides, the vigilance of the police and security ministry rapidly intensifies when a senior official from Moscow is expected to come to Tajikistan. All of a sudden, one by one, various electricians, plumbers, gas workers, telephone servicemen and many others ring the bell at Chechen flats claiming they have nowhere to make an urgent phone call.
The latest, very interesting case took place in a four-story house with fifty-six flats and six entrances. It remains unclear why those who needed to call urgently chose a Chechen family’s flat in the middle of the building, neglecting the first and nearest entrance of the house, which would be more logical. Also, at 3 a. m., it would be nice to let the flat’s keepers wake, open the door and ask who has the heart to pay such an early visit.
Moreover, there is something strange about the night phone callers: one person is dialing aimlessly and another two are watching around the rooms and “taking pictures” by their practised eyes. Straight away you understand that the guys came "to make a phone call" by someone’s direct order to check the Chechen family’s unwelcomed guests, most probably their countrymen. And what can one think of their hasty departure when the information about a “group of obvious terrorists” has not been confirmed?
The originality of such visits resides in the fact that in the locations where they take place the above-mentioned household services are not available. Should you urgently need an electrician, plumber or anybody of the kind, you have no chance to find them.
If an act of terrorism occurs in Tajikistan, anywhere in a 200-kilometre distance around the place of the incident they might come to a Chechen family when the husband is not at home and question the wife about his whereabouts and about what else he is going to blast.
Moreover, they ask the family’s neighbours if the Chechen woman is quarrelsome or if she cavils at Russians. Never-ending questions on civil obedience of Chechen families that their neighbours have to answer raise various, though unintentional suspicions: If the police and security services are so interested in them, the family must be guilty of something, including explosions and other offences whose perpetrators have not been found yet in Tajikistan.
Sometimes things even turn to be humorous. After the release of the film “Purgatory” by A. Nevzorov, who himself claims that only a fool or man with an extraordinary fantasy would link the movie with the war in Chechnya, Chechens in Tajikistan faced real purgatories. All happened only because of the sequence in which somebody’s head is cut. People considered the scene off the limits of cruelty and accused a Chechen woman who was more than a thousand kilometres away from the place of thought-out events. It seems they believed that she used a witch’s broomstick to fly to the place, cut someone’s head and went back to see how her act struck her neighbours.
At the same time, however, nobody “noticed” that Russian tanks were mashing up Russian killed soldiers so that they would not have to be brought home, which would mean all the unwanted circumstances: registering the casualties, paying money to parents and relatives. It is far easier to consider the killed unaccounted-for. Such brutality was accepted, but cutting heads is not acceptable!
The words about cruelty did not completely accord with the terror of the civil war in Tajikistan when red with fury and hatred to one another, people stripped a living person’s skin off, disemboweled pregnant women and threw children in a hot pitch.
Chechen do not need passports...
What troubles Chechens have with passports! A husband gets his passport easily, but his wife has no right for the same. The explanation is simple: he lives in line with rules according to which all people are brothers, but she came in to join her husband when new regulations rejecting Chechens access to Tajikistan came into force. Tajikistan can neither deport the woman because international conventions prevent it, nor grant her a passport.
As a matter of fact, to understand such unintelligible actions is possible: the country must follow exactly and without questions the resolutions of the Kremlin. But to find a justification for that is impossible: isn’t there pride enough to stand up for the dignity of the Tajik nation, which has formally declared state independence?
A Tajik policeman at a checkpoint somewhere in mountains must come to an exhilaration when he stops a man resembling an Afghan who, after an identity check, turns to be Chechen, “more dangerous than a million Afghans”. At the moment, claims that the passport is not fake and has been issued legally do not any good. The policeman’s answer is always simple and the same: “You Chechens are such a sort that you promptly get a passport of any state.”
Tajik nation is hard to understand and predict
However, the Chechens who remained in Tajikistan should be treated with respect. On the eve of and during the civil war in Tajikistan the overwhelming majority of the population timidly left the country worrying for their lives. But only the Chechens remained, considering it shameful and dishonest to rush away when the situation became dangerous.
Chechens lived with Tajiks side by side in more-or-less peaceful period without starvation. They took all the pain and drudgery of the civil war: hunger, cold, an-eight-month blockade with a daily portion of 35 grams of badly baked bread. They could easily leave Tajikistan as there was no war in the Chechen Republic, and there were no troubles with getting flats and work.
Famous Sangak Safarov, head of the National Front, who “restored the constitutional order” in Tajikistan during the civil war, was right when he did not allow Chechens to take part in military actions on either side of the field. Safarov claimed that “the Tajik nation is neither completely understandable, nor predictable. After the war each side of the conflict, be it the winner or the loser would accuse Chechens for killing Tajiks.”
So what can a modest Chechen expect from today's Tajikistan? Until the country's leadership seems indifferent not only to those who came from Chechnya, but mainly to their own people, the question is hard to be answered positively.
Translated by Prague Watchdog.
By this article Prague Watchdog continues with the free series of articles on reactions of individual countries to the conflict in Chechnya. The following are the articles of the free series we published in the earlier stages of our project:
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