BACKGROUND: Consolidation of power has become popular in Central Asia in the beginning of the new century, as all incumbents presidents after the collapse of the USSR finished their terms. President Rakhmonov is not the inventor but rather a follower of the rule of extension of terms. Tajikistan’s head of state, however, has one considerable advantage over his fellow Central Asian Presidents – the support of the general population as an advocate of peace in the country. Though the western media and supporters of democratic governance widely claimed or perhaps hoped that the arrests of the purportedly “popular” former warlords and field commanders would cause uprisings among their supporters, in reality nothing of the sort happened. In fact, ordinary people generally have a rather negative attitude towards former field commanders. These very commanders were not initially chosen; but declared themselves leaders, because of connections either with martial arts or with previous links to the military or police. Furthermore, after the end of the war, the commanders, both opposition and pro-government, tried to grab what they could for their personal gain, building fancy houses, driving foreign cars, and owning restaurants, casinos, and discos. The civilians and combatants that supported and fought for the interests of these commanders are left basically with nothing. Actually, the warlords were a larger threat than the government to the security and self-esteem of the general population. A member of Tavildara jamoat noted in an interview: “The commanders were really very despotic and cruel. They could come at any time to any house and demand anything that household had, be it chicken, sheep, cows or flour. The hard thing was that the people could not complain to anyone and therefore had to obey the commanders” Thus, by removing his potential opponents for the next elections, Rakhmonov was actually once again credited for building a safer country and enforcing the rule of law – a claim that actually did have some elements of truth to it.

IMPLICATIONS: The consequence of Rakhmonov’s politics of strangling the opposition is reminiscent of the course of events in Kazakhstan. When no well-known alternative is available, people logically support the status quo. This is especially true in Tajikistan, where the generation that went through the worst experiences of the civil war is still the most decisive constituency in the country. One of the very few persons from the opposition that could have competed with Rakhmonov in the elections was Mahmadruzi Iskandarov, a moderate field commander who was in exile in Russia for a few years, and then arrested in Moscow and sentenced in Dushanbe to 23 years in jail for terrorism and embezzlement in 2005. Today, only one person is probably left who could realistically contest Rakhmonov’s claim to power: the mayor of Dushanbe, Mahmadsaid Ubaidulloev. He is very powerful, with strong interests in business as well as in what is called “street life”. Rakhmonov periodically makes attempts to discredit Ubaidulloev, and one such effort was when in the annual concluding meeting, the president on live television asked Ubaidulloev to stand up and report on the leakage of money that was allocated for solving the notorious drinking water problem in Dushanbe. However, since Ubaidulloev is the speaker of Tajikistan’s Parliament, it is unlikely that he will run for the presidency later this year. Politics from the elections onward has the potential to move in various directions; there is the risk of harder authoritarian on the one hand, but also of a more enlightened and moderate government. This depends on which example of the other Central Asian countries, if any, the president will choose – a softer regime like that in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan or a more authoritarian one like in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan? Political analysts have so far had a hard time grouping Tajikistan with the Central Asian states because undeniably, the honeymoon period after the end of the civil war is still continuing. Many Tajiks indeed hope for the next decade to be a period of economic development in the country, and if the head of state together with those in the power structures want to move the country forward, the present situation is the most promising that it has ever been. The most powerful field commanders that carried out alternative politics have been pacified, the regionalism that caused hatred and ignorance at the very start of independence is becoming less of a problem as a shuffle in the law enforcement agencies has been undertaken and as roads linking the country’s various regions are being built. Finally, with the building of a National Army, the country is becoming truly sovereign. Courageous leaders are the ones to make the most of these positive trends.

CONCLUSIONS: It is clear that Rakhmonov’s reign is likely to continue, given that most of the potential or realistic political opponents have been eliminated or pacified. The tactic of suppressing former field commanders and warlords both from the former opposition block and from the pro-government forces was a strategy that maintained the balance of forces n the country, while actually finding wide support among ordinary citizens. For these reasons, the current president of Tajikistan is not perceived as the enemy number one among the population, as was the case for Askar Akaev in Kyrgyzstan and seems to be the case among large tract of the Uzbek population for Islam Karimov. Rakhmonov is still perceived as a leader who strives for the security of the population and deserves credit for the current peace that has lasted in the country since 1997. Coming to the elections, Rakhmonov has two key advantages. The first is certainly the absence of popular opponents, while the second is analogous to the advantage that George W. Bush had when running for the second term: the fear of the population, which in the case of the Unites States was terrorism and in the case of Tajikistan is war caused by a renewed armed struggle for power. Therefore, any assumptions about a possible ‘velvet’ revolution in Tajikistan do not deserve to be taken seriously.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Bakhtiyor Naimov is a postgraduate student in Post-Soviet Studies at the University of Oxford, St. Anthony’s College.