A market in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, that once sold many Saudi Arabian garments is now banned and sells mostly national clothing. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
PEOPLE in Tajikistan had been expecting a government crackdown after Tajik men were arrested and charged with a extremist attack on a Moscow concert hall in March.
But it still seemed excessive to Nilufar, a 27-year-old education professional, when she saw local authorities with scissors outside a restaurant in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital, trimming beards that were deemed too long.
Excessive, but not so surprising.
In the span of a month, Nilufar herself had been stopped three times by authorities for wearing a hijab in public.
“Nowadays, as soon as you go outside, you can actually feel how the raids have intensified,” Nilufar said in a recent interview in Dushanbe, providing only her first name because of fear of retribution.
With a population of 10 million, the vast majority of whom are Muslim, Tajikistan has many challenges that counter-extremism experts say make it an incubator for extremism: poverty, poor education, high unemployment and grievances against an autocratic government that severely restricts the practice of religion.
In the face of these challenges, critics say, Tajikistan has continued to restrict how Islam can be taught and practised and increasingly implemented superficial policies regulating head scarves and beard lengths.
The country came under global scrutiny after four Tajik men were charged as the assailants in the worst extremist attack in Russia in two decades, which killed 145 people and injured more than 500 at the Moscow concert hall.
Other Tajiks were later arrested in connection with the attack.
American officials have said that Islamic State Khorasan province, a branch of the Islamic State group known as ISIS-K, was responsible for the attack, and radicalised Tajiks have in recent months caught the attention of governments and counter-extremism experts around the world.
Tajik adherents of the IS group have also been involved in extremist attacks in Iran and Turkiye, as well as thwarted plots in Germany, Austria and elsewhere.
Last month two Tajiks helped stage a mutiny at a Russian prison, state news agency TASS reported, adding that they claimed to have been radicalised.
The attacks have tarnished the country’s image abroad, especially in Russia, where about a million Tajiks – 10% of Tajikistan’s population – toil in low-skilled jobs to send money home.
The government’s response, overseen by President Emomali Rahmon, an authoritarian leader who has been in power for more than three decades, has been to crack down.
“In Tajikistan, authorities are getting frustrated by the international stigma they’re receiving and the blame they’re getting for all these attacks,” said Lucas Webber, co-founder of Militant Wire, whose research focuses on the IS group.
“So they’re just doubling down, being heavy-handed.”
Tajiks have long been accustomed to restrictions that would surprise many Westerners, with legislation governing conduct at weddings, birthdays and even funerals (“extravagant emotions” are banned at memorials).
Hijabs have been banned in schools since 2007 and public institutions since 2009.
But in June, parliament passed a law banning “clothes alien to Tajik culture,” a term the government often uses for clothing it considers Islamic. Hijabs are a target.
The law imposes fines of between 7,000 and 15,000 somoni, or about RM2,700 and RM5,880, in a country where the average monthly salary is just above US$200 (RM844).
The rationale appears to be that stamping out public signs of religious conservativism – and potentially reduce extremism.
But Webber said the government’s reaction only added fuel to the fire.
“The assailants who planned the Moscow attack could not have asked for better responses from the Tajik government,” he said.
“Because they want to stoke tensions, they want backlash.”
Several Tajik government bodies responsible for implementing the laws declined to meet with The New York Times in Dushanbe or respond to emailed requests to comment.
Tajikistan is a mountainous country in Central Asia bordered by Afghanistan, China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
It is heavily reliant on Russia economically and its leaders maintain a very close relationship.
Outside the restaurant, several women who were with the men trimming beards approached Nilufar and a friend.
The women said they were from the Committee on Women and Family Affairs, a government body that advises on and implements state policy.
They asked the two women to remove their head scarves.
Nilufar tried to explain that she did not normally wear a head covering, but was mourning her mother’s death.
“The women told me, ‘All this is being done for a reason’,” Nilufar said.
Many Tajiks had been involved in extremist attacks, they told her, adding that fundamentalists from Afghanistan had come to the country.
“They sport long beards and their wives wear head coverings,” she said the women told her, and it had become difficult for authorities to catch them, “because we also dress like them, and it’s hard to tell the difference.”
This kind of policing has been a focus of ISIS-K propaganda published in Tajik, among other languages, said Riccardo Valle, research director of The Khorasan Diary, a research and media platform about the extremist group.
The propaganda also makes much of crackdowns on Tajiks in Russia, where authorities have conducted raids on migrant dormitories that house Central Asian guest workers, and have requested documents from people in public places, effectively racially profiling them.
Experts said the strategy of strictly monitoring physical appearance is not an effective way to combat extremism, because it breeds resentment.
It is also ineffective, they said, because radicalised extremists might try to remain inconspicuous by avoiding outward signs of religiosity.
In the aftermath of the concert hall attack, Tajik authorities have increased security cooperation with Moscow.
Rahmon has also increased ties with Beijing, though China has denied media reports that it is building a base in northwestern Tajikistan.
The United States and Tajikistan signed an agreement in May to use software that will notify US authorities in real time if travellers who are considered suspicious enter Tajikistan.
But the state needs to be doing more, said Larisa Aleksandrova, a Dushanbe-based expert on human rights.
Instead of tackling substantive problems like corruption, poverty, and social inequality, she said, the state is focusing on “where to put a comma in a sentence, what to name a particular ministry or what clothes, for example, women or men should wear.”
“It distracts us by talking about problems which, in my opinion, are not so relevant,” she said. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
