President Emomali Rakhmon has eased his offensive in the Gorno-Badakhshan region after clashes there have left many dead. Official estimates put the death toll at 42: 12 soldiers and 30 militants. Eyewitness accounts suggest that the real figure is much higher and since the reason given for the pause was so that the dead and wounded could be attended to, this evaluation seems more likely.
The clashes started when government forces poured into the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province in search of opposition strongman Tolib Ayombekov and three of his supporters who have been accused of the murder of senior security chief, General Abdullo Nazarov. Mr Ayombekov denies the charges and is refusing to give himself up.
Most concerning of all, however, is the prospect of the this restless area falling under the influence of a fundamentalist Afghanistan once the US and its allies start to withdraw in 2014. At the start of the civil war in 1992, after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Gorno-Badakhshan immediately declared itself independent, although it did not stay so for long. The war ended in 1997 and cost the lives of approximately 60,000 people. The power sharing agreements that followed have since been eroded by President Rakhmon. It is not surprising therefore that he would seek any pretext to subdue the province while he still can. A better plan would have been to modernise and liberalise his country to such an extent as to make any prospect of repression repugnant to his people. As it is stands, even if the Taliban took over, some people would not even notice the difference.
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