TAJIKISTAN: AN EVALUATION OF TERRORISM AND COUNTER-TERRORISM POLICIES SINCE INDEPENDENCE

Abstract

Tajikistan, a country overloaded with the horriϐic memory of bloody civil war, an increasingly devastated economy, and the ineradicable misfortune of having long borders with Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, has been reigning consistently by the Emomali Rahmon’s regime for three decades with wide-scale surveillance and draconian acts. Taking advantage of the weak governance, poor military infrastructure and porous border, Islamic extremists and cross border terrorist groups have also been seen persistently deepening their inϐluence in the region either by perpetrating a series of terrorist activities in the terrain or joining Tajik national into their organizations. This paper presents a detailed analysis of how and to what extent terrorism has posed security threats to Tajikistan through examining the Global Terrorism Database and RAND database that includes the numbers and intensity of the terrorist incidents in the territory since independence. It systematically analyses the prominent terrorist groups and, more particularly, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), which has widened its network in the region. The paper also makes a sincere effort to evaluate the counter-terrorism acts adopted and implemented by Tajikistan. Moreover, the article also examines how the Tajik’s authority constructs state discourse on terrorism by delegitimising social acceptance of the terrorist on the one hand and projecting the state as the severe victim of terrorism on the other. Keywords: Terrorism, Tajikistan, Terrorist Attacks, Counter-terrorism Act, Taliban