Russia orders more troops into Tajikistan
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Your support makes all the difference.The Russian Defence Ministry yesterday ordered extra troops into Tajikistan to prevent rival factions in the Central Asian republic from raiding the arsenals of the former Soviet army and fuelling a conflict that is already taking scores of lives every day.
Officers from a Russian tank unit who were taken hostage by supporters and opponents of the ousted Tajik president, Rakhmon Nabiyev, over the weekend were freed yesterday, but the incident worried Moscow enough for it to decide to reinforce the 201st Motorised Rifle Division. The extra troops were instructed to 'resolutely rebuff attempts to seize arms, ammunition and military equipment as well as illegal actions of the warring sides against servicemen and their families', a ministry statement said.
Tajikistan, one of the poorest republics of the former Soviet Union, is rapidly sliding into a full-scale civil war, which threatens to spill over into the rest of Central Asia. Reports that were impossible to confirm from Moscow said hundreds of people had been killed and injured in the southern town of Kurgan-Tyube over the weekend.
On one side of the conflict are supporters of Mr Nabiyev, the veteran Communist leader who was forced from office earlier this month. On the other side are a mixed group of 'democrats' and Islamic fundamentalists with links to the mujahedin over the border in Afghanistan. Russian troops, the successors of the Soviet army, are trying to stay neutral although the new Islamic-democratic leaders in the capital, Dushanbe, suspect them of helping the Nabiyev loyalists.
Boris Yeltsin, of Russia, and Eduard Shevardnadze, of Georgia, met in Moscow yesterday concerning another of the former Soviet Union's ethnic conflicts - Abkhazia. Mr Shevardnadze was angry at the Russian parliament's resolution last week demanding the withdrawal of Georgian troops from the rebel Black Sea region. But the leaders agreed that Russia would strengthen its peace- keeping role in Abkhazia while Georgia would pull out heavy military equipment, according to a spokesman for the Russian side.
Meanwhile, two Russian soldiers were killed and a third was seriously wounded in a gun battle with security forces outside the Georgian capital Tbilisi, the republic's Interior Ministry said yesterday. The shootout, on Sunday night, began when a Russian army truck failed to stop at a Georgian checkpoint, the ministry said.
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