Clashes in Gorno-Badakhshan [2012]

In the summer of 2012, violence broke out in Tajikistan’s autonomous Gorno-Badakhshan province between the Tajik government and local opposition forces. Conflict started after the province’s regional security chief General Abdullo Nazarov was murdered, allegedly by associates of local warlord and former separatist leader Tolib Ayombekov [BBC, 2012]. As a result of the murder, Tajik police and government forces entered the province to reassert Tajik authority. They engaged in firefights with opposition forces that left at least twelve Tajik soldiers and 30 insurgents dead, although the Tajik government maintained there were no civilian casualties [Al Jeezera, 2012]. Internet and phone communications were cut in the province and citizens in the regional capital of Khorog were forced to stay in their homes to escape firefights that flowed into the streets. Unofficially, reports of over 100 military deaths and up to 100 civilian deaths resulting from the fighting circulated through the capital, Dushanbe [BBC, 2012]. The Tajik government’s attempts to reassert control over Gorno-Badakhshan are part of a continued effort to subdue separatist leanings in the region, which is one of the poorest parts of Tajikistan and contains large populations who supported Gorno-Badakhshan’s independence in the country’s civil war. As the Tajik government does not recognize Pamiris as distinct from the Tajik ethnicity, there has been no comment on whether Ayombekov and his associates are Pamiri or speak any of the Pamiri languages. However, Ayombekov’s role as a former leader of a predominantly Pamiri separatist group fighting against the Tajik government indicates an ethnic dimension was at play in the 2012 conflicts.