Day: October 22, 2022

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President Emomali Rahmon Exchanges Messages of Congratulations with President Shavkat Mirziyoyev on the 30th Anniversary of the Establishment of Tajikistan-Uzbekistan Diplomatic Relations

Today, the Founder of Peace and National Unity, Leader of the Nation, President of the Republic of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon and President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev, exchanged congratulatory messages on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

President Emomali Rahmon’s message reads, in part:

«Dear Shavkat Miromonovich,

The 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Tajikistan and the Republic of Uzbekistan provides me with a pleasant opportunity to send you our warm congratulations and best wishes on the occasion of this important date in the recent history of relations between our countries.

It is gratifying to note that during this period, Tajik-Uzbek relations of friendship, good neighborliness, and cooperation are consistently developing in all areas of mutual interests, and have today reached a high level of strategic partnership and alliance.

We are confident that the multifaceted Tajik-Uzbek cooperation, which is based on the unshakable principles of good neighborliness, mutual respect, trust and mutual assistance, will continue to develop, enriched with new creative examples for the benefit of our fraternal peoples.

I wish you, dear Shavkat Miromonovich, good health, well-being and new successes, and peace, tranquility, sustainable progress, and prosperity to the friendly people of Uzbekistan.”

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s message reads, in part:

“Dear Emomali Sharipovich!

Dear brother!

I am very pleased to sincerely congratulate You, Your Excellency, and the fraternal people of Tajikistan on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

I would like to emphasize that the chronicle of our 30-year cooperation was full of important and bright events, close friendly ties in all areas have consistently strengthened, and a legal base and effective institutional mechanisms for our multifaceted relations have been created.

We are especially pleased that the large-scale cooperation established between our countries is developing at a high pace based on the principles of mutual trust, high respect, good neighborliness and strategic partnership.

Most importantly, this year, when this significant date is widely celebrated, we made a historic decision to raise our relations to a higher level — to the level of an alliance, and together we are taking firm and practical steps to achieve these lofty goals.

The established active dialogue at the highest and high levels in the spirit of openness and constructivism, as well as the existing mechanisms for regulating our interstate and intergovernmental relations, serve as a solid foundation for strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation in all areas.

I am convinced that we will continue to strengthen our relations of mutually beneficial cooperation in the spirit of strategic partnership and alliance, and together will confidently move towards new goals on the path of common development of our peoples with a common history and culture.

Once again, I congratulate you on this significant date in the annals of our relations and wish you, Your Excellency, and members of your family good health, happiness, great success in your responsible state activities, and peace and continuous development to the fraternal people of Tajikistan.”

 

Source: National information agency of Tajikistan

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Tajik-Uzbek Border Demarcation Commission Meets in Uzbekistan

A meeting of working groups of the joint Tajik-Uzbek commission for demarcation of the border took place in the Uzbek city of Namangan.

According to Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry, the parties discussed demarcation work and prepared proposals on the project demarcation line of the Tajik-Uzbek border.

The meeting was held in an atmosphere of friendship and mutual understanding.

Following the results of the event, a corresponding protocol was signed. The next meeting will take place in Tajikistan.

 

Source: National information agency of Tajikistan

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Tajikistan and Russia Intend to Strengthen Transport and Logistics Sector

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan Sharaf Sheralizoda received the Executive Secretary of the International Center for Transport Diplomacy Igor Runov who visited Tajikistan to participate in the launching ceremony of the pilot project «Global Transit Document.»

According to Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry, during the meeting, the broad issues of regional cooperation of Tajikistan in the field of transportation and logistics were discussed.

Sheralizoda expressed his satisfaction with the start of the implementation of the project, which will give a serious impetus to the growth of multimodal transportation on the highways of Tajikistan, and emphasized the need to expand beneficial cooperation between countries and relevant international organizations in this direction.

 

Source: National information agency of Tajikistan

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Tajikistan and Italy to Boost Economic Relationship

On October 20, 2022, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Tajikistan Sharaf Sheralizoda met with the Ambassador of Italy to Tajikistan Agostino Pinna and the Special Ambassador for Asia Romeo Orlandi.

According to Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry, during the meeting, the parties discussed the current state and prospects for the development of mutually beneficial cooperation in the political, trade, economic, and humanitarian spheres.

They also touched upon the interaction of both countries within the framework of international and regional organizations.

The focus was on trade relations, investment opportunities, and strengthening ties between educational and cultural institutions of Tajikistan and Italy.

 

Source: National information agency of Tajikistan

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Germany’s New Program to Take in At-Risk Afghans Challenging

WASHINGTON — Germany’s announcement that it will take in 1,000 at-risk Afghans with their families from Afghanistan will be challenging, an Afghan lawyer says, because it is becoming increasingly difficult for Afghans to leave Afghanistan.

In a joint statement, the German Foreign and Interior ministries announced the new humanitarian admission program on Monday.

“The plan is to approve around 1,000 Afghans at particular risk, along with their family members from Afghanistan for admittance every month,” said the statement.

“It is going to be very challenging,” said Abdul Subhan Misbah, former deputy head of Afghanistan’s Lawyers Union who has been involved in the efforts to evacuate judges and prosecutors from Afghanistan, adding that “it is not clear who would be included, and it won’t be easy to take people out of Afghanistan that is ruled by the Taliban.”

The German government said that the new program would evacuate at-risk women’s and human rights activists, former government officials, and civil society members. The program also includes those persecuted in Afghanistan because of their gender, sexual orientation, and/or religion.

Misbah said that many employees of the former government and members of civil society want to leave their country.

“Most of the people want to leave,” he said. “What are the criteria based on which people will be admitted? How are they going to help those at risk to get out of Afghanistan? These questions have to be answered.”

Besides the problems they face to get passports and visas, he said, Afghans must travel to a third country because there are no direct flights from Afghanistan to Germany.

“It should be something that the German government has to negotiate with neighboring countries to facilitate the process,” Misbah said.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, Christopher Burger, told VOA that his government is working with the neighboring countries to help with the process.

“We will continue to work through all channels available to us in order to assure safe passage to the people that we want to bring to safety,” he said.

Germany has admitted 26,000 Afghans since Kabul fell and the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.

Burger said to implement the new program, German authorities would work with organizations already on the ground and involved in helping at-risk individuals leave the country, but the German government would make the final decision on who is the “most vulnerable and most in need of admission to Germany.”

Local contractors

Burger said the program will continue until October 2025 and does not include 12,000 former German contractors who are “officially granted admission” to Germany but are still in Afghanistan.

“Simply, we are not able to bring people outside the country. They do not have a passport,” Burger said. “We are working with the neighboring countries on achieving that.”

He added that a “larger group” of Afghans had “some sort of association” with German organizations in Afghanistan and “are still in the proceedings to be recognized as former German contracts.”

Axel Steier, the founder of the German-based civil society organization Mission Lifeline, told VOA that his organization runs several safe houses for those who worked with the German government.

He added that these local contractors fear for their lives.

Steier said that “the Taliban want to kill them, and [we are] keeping them into safe houses and waiting for a decision from the German government to take them in.”

Difficult to leave

The German government said that Afghans who have left Afghanistan would not be considered under the new humanitarian admission program.

“So, this is a big issue,” said Steier, adding that many at-risk Afghans left Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power. Most of the individuals are staying in Pakistan, Iran or Tajikistan and are unable to return to Afghanistan.

He added that it is difficult for people to get passports and visas to leave the country.

“And for both, you need a lot of money. Because you can get a passport only if you pay $1,200 to $1,500,” he said. “Also, it is very difficult to get [a] visa for Iran. At the moment, it costs $500.”

“For people who are poor … [and have no] money for stuff like a passport or visa, it is almost impossible to come [to Germany],” Steier said.

 

Source: Voice of America

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Taliban Claim to Have Killed 9 ISIS-K Fighters

ISLAMABAD — The Taliban said Saturday their special forces had killed nine Islamic State operatives and captured two others in overnight raids in the capital, Kabul, and elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman for the Taliban government, said that intelligence information had led security forces to an “important hideout of Daesh” in Kabul late Friday. He used a local name for the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, known as Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K.

Mujahid said the ensuing gunbattles killed six militants and one Taliban security force member. The raid came shortly after security forces had captured two key ISIS-K members in a separate operation in another part of Kabul, he noted without elaborating.

Separately, the Taliban-led Afghan Interior Ministry said Saturday that “on the basis of solid intelligence” government forces late last night assaulted an ISIS-K hideout in northeastern Takhar province, which borders Tajikistan. The raid in the Dasht Qala district killed three Daesh members, including an “important” commander, the statement said.

Mujahid claimed that all the six Daesh men killed in Kabul were linked to recent suicide bombings in the city, one on an educational center and the other on a mosque.

“They had plotted attacks on Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan Mosque, the Kaaj tuition center and other civilian targets,” Mujahid said.

The blast at the female section of the packed tuition center on September 30 killed 53 people, mostly girls and young women, and injured 110 people. It came just days after a bomb exploded at the main mosque in the heavily guarded Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, which houses key government offices and foreign diplomatic missions.

No group to date has claimed responsibility for either attack.

The Taliban seized power more than a year ago when all American and allied troops left Afghanistan after 20 years of involvement in the war. The Islamist rulers maintain they have since brought peace to much of the country and claim their operations against ISIS-K have largely degraded its ability to pose a serious security challenge.

But ISIS-K, which launched its extremist activities in early 2015, has intensified attacks in the country, mostly targeting members of the minority Shiite Muslim Hazara community, raising questions about Taliban claims.

US concerns

U.S. officials see ISIS-K as a growing threat in the crisis-ridden South Asian nation.

Thomas West, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, told VOA that in his meeting with the Taliban earlier this month in Doha, Qatar, the two sides discussed the emerging threat of Daesh.

“We discussed the Taliban’s efforts to fight Daesh. Daesh is a common enemy of the United States and all Afghans. The horrific attacks against Hazaras must stop,” West told VOA.

“The Taliban have made clear that this is their fight and effort, and they will fulfil their commitments outlined in the Doha agreement to ensure that terrorists do not threaten the United States or her allies,” the U.S. envoy said.

He referred to the February 2020 deal Washington signed with the then-insurgent Taliban, paving the way for all U.S.-led international forces to withdraw from Afghanistan in return of the Taliban’s counterterrorism assurances.

West described as “extremely concerning” the attacks by terrorists, ISIS-K in particular, launched from Afghan soil over the past year against neighboring Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Washington has a “definite interest in ensuring that those types of attacks are contained,” the U.S. envoy emphasized.

 

Source: Voice of America

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New Face of Russian War Has Reputation as ‘General Armageddon’

The general carrying out President Vladimir Putin’s new military strategy in Ukraine has a reputation for brutality — for bombing civilians in Russia’s campaign in Syria. He also played a role in the deaths of three protesters in Moscow during the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 that hastened the demise of the Soviet Union.

Bald and fierce-looking, Gen. Sergei Surovikin was put in charge of Russian forces in Ukraine Oct. 8 after what has so far been a faltering invasion that has seen a number of chaotic retreats and other setbacks over the nearly eight months of war.

Putin put the 56-year-old career military man in command following an apparent truck bombing of the strategic bridge to the Crimean Peninsula that embarrassed the Kremlin and created logistical problems for the Russian forces.

Russia responded with a barrage of strikes across Ukraine, which Putin said were aimed at knocking down energy infrastructure and Ukrainian military command centers. Such attacks have continued daily, pummeling power plants and other facilities with cruise missiles and waves of Iranian-made drones.

Surovikin also retains his job of air force chief, a position that could help coordinate the airstrikes with other operations.

During the most recent bombardments, some Russian war bloggers carried a statement attributed to Surovikin that signaled his intention to pursue the attacks with unrelenting vigor to pound the Kyiv government into submission.

“I don’t want to sacrifice Russian soldiers’ lives in a guerrilla war against hordes of fanatics armed by NATO,” the bloggers quoted his statement as saying. “We have enough technical means to force Ukraine to surrender.”

While the veracity of the statement couldn’t be confirmed, it appears to reflect the same heavy-handed approach that Surovikin took in Syria where he oversaw the destruction of entire cities to flush out rebel resistance without paying much attention to the civilian population. That indiscriminate bombing drew condemnation from international human rights groups, and some media reports have dubbed him “General Armageddon.”

Putin awarded Surovikin the Hero of Russia medal, the country’s highest award, in 2017 and promoted him to full general.

Kremlin hawks lauded Surovikin’s appointment in Ukraine. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire businessman dubbed “Putin’s chef” who owns a prominent military contractor that plays a key role in the fighting in Ukraine, praised him as “the best commander in the Russian army.”

But even as hardliners expected Surovikin to ramp up strikes on Ukraine, his first public statements after his appointment sounded more like a recognition of the Russian military’s vulnerabilities than blustery threats.

In remarks on Russian state television, Surovikin acknowledged that Russian forces in southern Ukraine were in a “quite difficult position” in the face of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

In carefully scripted comments that Surovikin appeared to read from a teleprompter, he said that further action in the region will depend on the evolving combat situation. Observers interpreted his statement as an attempt to prepare the public for a possible Russian pullback from the strategic southern city of Kherson in southern Ukraine.

Surovikin began his military career with the Soviet army in 1980s and, as a young lieutenant, was named an infantry platoon commander. When he later rose to air force chief, it drew a mixed reaction in the ranks because it marked the first time when the job was given to an infantry officer.

He found himself in the center of a political storm in 1991.

When members of the Communist Party’s old guard staged a hardline coup in August of that year, briefly ousting Gorbachev and sending troops into Moscow to impose a state of emergency, Surovikin commanded one of the mechanized infantry battalions that rolled into the capital.

Popular resistance mounted quickly, and in the final hours of the three-day coup, protesters blocked an armored convoy led by Surovikin and tried to set some of the vehicles ablaze. In a chaotic melee, two protesters were shot and a third was crushed to death by an armored vehicle.

The coup collapsed later that day, and Surovikin was quickly arrested. He spent seven months behind bars pending an inquiry but was eventually acquitted and even promoted to major as investigators concluded that he was only fulfilling his duties.

Another rocky moment in his career came in 1995, when Surovikin was convicted of illegal possession and trafficking of firearms while studying at a military academy. He was sentenced to a year in prison, but the conviction was reversed quickly.

He rose steadily through the ranks, commanding units deployed to the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan, leading troops sent to Chechnya and serving at other posts across Russia.

He was appointed commander of Russian forces in Syria in 2017 and served a second stint there in 2019 as Moscow sought to prop up President Bashar Assad’s regime and help it regain ground amid a devastating civil war.

In a 2020 report, Human Rights Watch named Surovikin, along with Putin, Assad and other figures as bearing command responsibility for violations during the 2019-20 Syrian offensive in Idlib province.

He apparently has a temper that has not endeared him to subordinates, according to Russian media. One officer under Surovikin complained to prosecutors that the general had beaten him after becoming angry over how he voted in parliamentary elections; another subordinate reportedly shot himself. Investigators found no wrongdoing in either case.

His track record in Syria could have been a factor behind his appointment in Ukraine, as Putin has moved to raise the stakes and reverse a series of humiliating defeats.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has repeatedly called for ramping up strikes in Ukraine, praised Surovikin as “a real general and a warrior, well-experienced, farsighted and forceful who places patriotism, honor and dignity above all.”

“The united group of forces is now in safe hands,” the Kremlin-backed Kadyrov said, voicing confidence that he will “improve the situation.”

 

Source: Voice of America