On July 11, 2009, Lieutenant General Mirzo Ziyoev, formerly a prominent rebel turned government minister was killed. A joint statement by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and the National Security Committee (GKNB) released the next day suggested that militants led by Shaykh Nemat Azizov, “an active member of the international terrorist group Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)”, killed Ziyoev. According to the statement, Ziyoev joined Azizov’s band comprised of former opposition fighters and foreign drug traffickers in late June 2009. The group planned to take control of the Tavildara District in eastern Tajikistan, an opposition stronghold during the civil war. When Tajik security forces captured Ziyoev on July 11, he agreed to show where the militants hid their arms caches and to try to negotiate their surrender. Later that day, Ziyoev was killed and members of Azizov’s band allegedly wounded several security officers.

Ziyoev (also known as Mirzo Jaga) was the military commander of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) forces during the civil war in 1992-97. As part of the post-war power-sharing arrangement, Ziyoev was made Minister of Emergencies. Although Ziyoev had been dismissed from the cabinet in 2006, he remained one of the most influential figures in Tajikistan. Following the death of Islamic Revival Party (IRPT) chairman Said Abdullo Nuri in 2006, Ziyoev was seen as the only person who could unite the Tajik Islamic opposition and count on support from Islamic forces abroad in challenging the regime of President Emomali Rahmon.

The official version of the prominent ex-minister’s death contains several major flaws. First, there is no evidence that insurgents killed the general. Speaking to journalists on 22 June, Tajik Minister of Internal Affairs Abdurahim Kakharov said an expert examination carried out on the scene of the murder revealed that Azizov’s fighters killed Ziyoev. Meanwhile, a western expert working with Tajik law-enforcement agencies, who asked not to be named, suggested that police units in Tavildara did not have the technical capacity to carry out such an examination. Besides, there was not enough time for any meaningful effort to investigate the murder as Ziyoev was buried early the next morning.

Secondly, there are major reasons to question the official timing of Mirzo Ziyoev’s death. Tajik security forces reported that he had been captured on July 11 and killed later that day. However, according to the regional news website www.centrasia.ru, which was first to bring the news of the murder, Ziyoev was killed in the night between July 10 and 11.

There are also other reasons to question the official account of Ziyoev’s death. People who knew the former rebel suggest he was committed to preserving stability in the country. Ziyoev himself in an interview to the Asia Plus newspaper on May 27, 2009, pledged to help maintain security in eastern Tajikistan amongst speculations of Islamic militants infiltrating into the country from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The general secrecy that surrounds the large-scale military operation carried out by Tajik security forces in eastern Tajikistan only adds to the mistrust of the official version of Ziyoev’s death. In May, the Tajik government deployed sizeable police and military units to the Rasht Valley reportedly as part of an annual counter-narcotics operation. However, the extent and location of the operation, as well as unexplained casualties among the Tajik military, led many observers to believe that it was something other than an effort to tackle narcotics trafficking. Tajik and Russian media cited unnamed sources in Tajik security agencies suggesting that the military and police were hunting civil-war era warlord Mullo Abdullo, who had returned to Tajikistan with a large group of Islamic militants after spending the last nine years with Taliban allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Although the Tajik authorities first denied the reports of the infiltration of Islamic militants into the country, they arrested several former associates of Mullo Abdullo and later announced that he had proclaimed a jihad against the government. This had led some observers to suggest that Ziyoev might have been killed by Tajik security forces, which feared that the influential former rebel could serve as a unifying figure for resurgent Islamic insurgency in the country.

Ziyoev’s murder came less than a month after another high-profile death, that of Lieutenant General Mahmadnazar Salikhov, a powerful ex-Minister of Internal Affairs. Tajik security services maintain that Salikhov committed suicide when the General Prosecutor’s Office issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of “abuse of office.” However, the ex-minister’s relatives as well as Tajik opposition activists abroad insist that Salikhov, who had once belonged to President Emomali Rakhmon’s inner circle, was murdered after criticizing the President. It will now be difficult for the Tajik authorities to argue that the deaths of two influential ex-ministers were something other than an effort to eliminate potential opponents of the regime.