Tajikistan: Dushanbe Wants Russia to Extradite Opposition Activist

As another winter of discontent looms in Tajikistan, President Imomali Rahmon's administration is feeling heat. In response, embattled Tajik officials are lashing out against perceived enemies.

Tajiks struggled to endure last winter's shortages of electricity and food. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The indicators for the coming winter are looking similarly ominous. For example, officials have already predicted that this year's grain harvest will fall by roughly 30 percent over the 2007 level, due to drought conditions and widespread pest infestations. A potential second consecutive winter of severe hardships could place Rahmon's regime on very thin ice.

Aware of its precarious position, the Rahmon administration is evidently trying to carry out preventive strikes against selected political opponents. One such figure is Dodojon Atovullo, the exiled editor of the opposition newspaper Charogi Rouz (Daylight). According to a recent article published by the Russian daily Vremya Novostei, the Tajik Interior Ministry's Organized Crime Control Unit has renewed an effort to prosecute the editor for anti-state activities. Authorities allege that the 53-year-old Atovullo, who works mainly in Moscow, is guilty of disseminating "insulting accusations against the President and members of the government" and is promoting "the violent overthrow of the constitutional order in Tajikistan."

Atovullo has lived in exile since 1992. The newspaper that he edits has appeared irregularly in recent years. But Atovullo's announcement that he was assuming the leadership of the Vatandor (Patriot) Party aroused the Rahmon administration's ire.

Tajik officials have long been interested in muzzling Atovullo, but Moscow had not been receptive to the idea of shipping him back to Dushanbe - at least until very recently. Conditions have changed dramatically in the weeks following Russia's incursion into Georgia, the Vremya Novostei article suggested. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Seeking as much diplomatic support as possible for its diplomatic positions in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Russia now seems much more interested in making sure Rahmon is happy.

Observers in Moscow have noted that, to date, the Tajik government has remained silent on Russia's decision to recognize the independence of the separatist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Dushanbe's reticence could be a ploy to extract maximum political and economic benefits from the Kremlin.

As reported by the Tajik news website Nansmit (www.nansmit.tj), Atovullo told Russian journalists that the initiation of the criminal case against him "became possible after the meeting between the Tajik President Imomali Rahmon and the head of the Kremlin administration Sergei Naryshkin" in mid September. While the two certainly could have touched upon the subject of nettlesome dissenters, the Rahmon-Naryshkin talks in Dushanbe on September 17 focused on the development of joint Tajik-Russian hydropower projects, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Russian media outlets say the Kremlin is giving serious consideration to granting Dushanbe's request to extradite Atovullo. If handed over to Tajik authorities, the opposition editor could face up to a 25-year jail term.

In 2001, Atovullo was detained in Moscow by Russian law enforcement officials, who were acting on a request by Dushanbe. A couple of days later, though, the editor was released and the Russian prosecutor-general's office refused to press the case. Later, the Tajik prosecutor general's office closed the case against Atovullo.

Last June, Atovullo caught the attention of Rahmon administration officials with a call for widespread civil disobedience in Tajikistan, with the aim of forcing incumbent authorities from power. Shortly thereafter, Tajik Prosecutor-General Bobojon Bobokhonov denounced Atovullo as "a criminal and information terrorist," adding that his office would again seek to prosecute the editor.

Atovullo has expressed fear that instead of facing extradition via normal legal channels, he could be "kidnapped," in other words possibly secreted back to Dushanbe by Tajik security officials, with the Kremlin's knowledge and acquiescence.

There would appear to be a precedent for such action - a 2005 incident involving Makhmadruzi Iskandarov, the leader of the Tajik opposition Democratic Party, who mysteriously disappeared in Moscow in April 2005 only to show up a few weeks later in Dushanbe in official custody. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].