TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/022690/0226009.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 12.2 KB | 256 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 20

SOVIET UNION

48 Hours of Chaos


Visiting Tadzhikistan, a TIME correspondent witnesses
Gorbachev's worst fear: an Islam-tinged revolution

By DAVID AIKMAN/DUSHANBE


    How much more ethnic violence can the Soviet Union endure?
A month after anti-Armenian pogroms in the Azerbaijan capital
of Baku and a brutal clampdown by the Soviet army, Kremlin
control seemed to hang by a thread last week in yet another
Soviet republic. This time rioting and looting, followed by
direct intervention by the Soviet army, took place in Dushanbe,
capital of Tadzhikistan, a little-known republic (pop. 5.1
million) tucked into a mountainous fold of Central Asia between
Afghanistan and China.

    The Tadzhiks, who share cultural and ethnic origins with the
Iranians, are staging what has the potential to become the
Soviet Union's first indigenous Islamic revolution. At least 18
people were killed and hundreds injured, either by the gunfire
of nervous troops or the attacks of roaming Tadzhiks. At week's
end ethnic disturbances had erupted in the neighboring republic
of Uzbekistan.

    Though the city was swiftly closed to foreigners, TIME
Washington correspondent David Aikman and photographer Alexandra
Avakian of Woodfin Camp & Associates, on assignment for another
story, happened to fly into Dushanbe on Monday. Until they
returned to Moscow two days later, they were the only Western
journalists to be eyewitnesses to the Tadzhik uprising.

    MONDAY

    It is on the short drive from the airport to the
Tadzhikistan Hotel that we realize something ugly is happening.
Do we know about the big demonstration, the Tadzhik driver asks?
"The Tadzhiks have demanded that the 2,500 Armenians leave," he
says, "and gave them 48 hours to get out." What Armenians? "The
Armenians recently came here as refugees from Baku," he
continues, as good-naturedly as though referring to the light
snow that is falling. "The government gave them apartments that
we have been waiting for for eight years or more. So the
Tadzhiks attacked the central-committee building. There is a
state of emergency in the city."

    Half a block from the hotel, it is easy to see why. A news
kiosk is burning and an armored personnel carrier blocks access
to Lenin Prospect, Dushanbe's main artery. "You must not leave
the hotel tonight," says the Tadzhik manager kindly but firmly.
"There are many bad people around." Nonetheless, we head to
Lenin Prospect to see what has happened.

    By the dim streetlamps we see the damage: smashed storefront
windows, the charred, upturned carcass of a municipal Volga
sedan and, farther off, burned-out city buses. Alexandra takes
a picture of a trashed photography store.

    "Go away," says a young Tadzhik, appearing out of nowhere.
"You are not allowed to photograph."

    "Who says?" I ask.

    "I do." He's not big, but he is as tense as a violin string,
and he appears to have friends within whistling distance. He
whistles. We walk back to the hotel.

    At 10:02 p.m. automatic-rifle fire crackles a few hundred
yards away. At 3:30 a.m. the quiet is broken as six heavy tanks
storm past the hotel.

    TUESDAY

    10 a.m. A line of about 20 regular Soviet army troops in
padded uniforms and helmets, carrying pale green metal shields
and nightsticks, block off Lenin Prospect. Knots of Tadzhik men
watch with surly stares, and the soldiers, mostly young Russian
conscripts, fidget. Four APCs with idling motors guard the front
of the pale brown stucco central-committee building. The day
before, mobs smashed its windows and set it on fire. At one side
of the debris-littered street, a soldier nonchalantly washes the
bloodstains off his shield in a puddle left by melted snow.

    We walk through the Soviet line toward the Tadzhiks, whose
control of most of the city begins about 150 yds. away from the
square. Tadzhiks quickly swarm around, suspicious and hostile.
"We are American correspondents," I say, attempting to make it
sound as though it's the most normal thing in the world for us
to be there. I take out my notebook ostentatiously and begin to
write. The complaints come thick and fast.

    "They shouldn't kill us; we are not armed," says one.

    "They killed three of us this morning."

    "It's not about religion; it's about democracy."

    "It's Russian imperialism."

    A large young Tadzhik in a tan jacket links his arms with
ours and shouts that he is taking us to see the innocent dead
and wounded in the hospital. A car is commandeered, and we
career down the boulevard to the hospital.

    We are hustled from ward to ward to observe and photograph
young men who have had bullets removed from their legs. One is
conscious and in great pain; another is heavily anesthetized.

    "Two died yesterday in this hospital," says a Tadzhik
doctor, "and we took in 40 injured."

    "That's not true. Many were killed yesterday!" shouts an
angry youth.

    "I am a physician," the doctor answers calmly, "and I am
telling you what I know to be the case at this hospital."

    Another car is commandeered to return us close to the hotel.
Two Russian journalists whom we had met earlier did not fare as
well: both were beaten, and had to run for their lives from a
mob that stopped the car they were in.

    It's midafternoon by now, and we want to find out what has
happened back in the square. We discover an astonishing sight:
the army lines have been pulled completely back. The square is
packed with Tadzhiks listening to their leaders addressing them
through a microphone from atop a Soviet army APC. From Tadzhiks
in the street we learn that the rattled authorities have agreed
to halt lethal confrontations with the angry crowds. "The people
demand the resignation of the government!" shouts one speaker.
Others call for an end to the sale of pork in public markets,
the punishment of soldiers and militia responsible for shooting
civilians, even the departure from Tadzhikistan of all who are
not Tadzhiks.

    At 4:55 p.m. a mullah takes the microphone and sings out the
traditional Muslim call to prayer in Arabic. "Allahu akbar!
Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" the call begins. Mesmerized, the
Tadzhiks as one man -- there is not a woman in sight among the
10,000 except Alexandra -- raise their hands in the traditional
Muslim posture of worship. The Soviets stiffen. The officers
disappear from the windows. Except for the wail of the mullah,
a total hush has descended upon the gathering. After the prayer
call, the mullah reads a sura from the Koran honoring the dead.
Three minutes later, the prayer and reading are over, but there
is an unmistakable new militancy in the air. "Makhkamov must
go!" shouts yet another speaker, referring to Tadzhikistan's
Communist Party chief, and the crowd roars its approval.

    WEDNESDAY

    9 a.m. Tanks have roared through the streets all night, and
the army has pushed its perimeter half a block from our hotel.
The Tadzhiks are really furious and glance with undisguised
hostility at Alexandra and me; a Soviet photographer suggests
we acquire official military passes from the Interior Ministry,
two blocks away. At the ministry there are eight Soviet
correspondents. "These economic demands are stupid," says a
Komsomolskaya Pravda reporter. "How can the Tadzhiks demand
economic independence when they import a billion more rubles
each year than they export? The religion is just a pretext. The
young people pay no attention to the mullahs."

    At the Tadzhik Telegraph Agency, the official news source
of the republic, the Russian deputy editor says only 39
Armenians actually arrived in Dushanbe after the January pogrom
in Baku, and every one of them stayed with either friends or
relatives. The rumor of the 2,500 was never even remotely true,
he claims. Elsewhere we are told that Tadzhik militants
methodically phoned threats to every single family in the phone
listings whose name sounded Armenian. "They called my son," says
a middle-age Russian woman whose husband, now dead, was
Armenian, "and they said, `You are Armenians; you had better
leave within 48 hours. If you don't, we'll help you to leave.'
But we have nowhere to go to. They are beasts."

    We walk back toward Putovskova Square and talk with a
middle-age peasant. "I have six children, and I support my two
parents on 160 rubles a month," he tells me. "There just isn't
enough work." He has a point. According to Soviet officials,
Tadzhikistan's birthrate of 45 per 1,000 is by far the highest
in the Soviet Union, even as the republic's economy is one of
the poorest. Joblessness is openly admitted by Tadzhik
officials; an estimated 70,000 to 200,000 are out of work.

    We learn that there were spontaneous elections in the square
the previous afternoon, but the new leaders, called People's
Representatives, seem reluctant to identify themselves. They are
unmistakably Islamic in orientation, we are told, and some of
them want Islam to be declared the national religion of the
republic. Some want open borders with Afghanistan. Others are
even more radical, demanding total economic independence from
the Soviet Union.

    Around 3:45 p.m. a member of the 13-man People's Committee,
Nazari Musazada, 42, emerges from the building to speak to the
Tadzhik supporters. Later he tells me that his group presented
officials with 17 demands, including a call for the resignation
of the republic's leadership. He also says the Tadzhik people
have been slaves of the Russian people for 72 years, and will
remain slaves unless things change. Soon Nazari is joined by a
group of negotiators from the People's Committee. Many have trim
black beards, and all have an intense, humorless expression that
speaks limitless intolerance. Where have I seen it before? Of
course: in the photographs of faces of some of the militants of
the Iranian revolution.

    It is now 4:15 p.m. and time to return to the hotel. There
we are met by the Intourist manager. "Your plane leaves at 6:30
p.m.," he says in a friendly manner. There is a message from
Moscow: the Soviet Foreign Ministry is formally requesting --
but not actually ordering -- that we leave Dushanbe.

    By 5:30 p.m. we are on our way. "If stones hit the window,"
says the tough-looking Soviet N.C.O. who escorts us, "duck your
head down." No stones hit the car, and none appear to have been
thrown, but the airport, quite normal when we arrived on Monday
night, is now an armed camp, guarded by APCs and crackling with
the takeoff blast of Soviet transport planes.

    While waiting for our plane, we meet a woman airport
employee. She is pretty, wears makeup and has short hair, but
she is angry and depressed. She won't go home, she explains,
because the Tadzhik militants are directing their ferocity
against their own women who are not sufficiently "Islamic."
Those with hair cut short and without scarves, or, even worse,
wearing stockings rather than the traditional Tadzhik
pantaloons, have been beaten, molested and sometimes even
stripped by the militant gangs. "Do you see any Western-dressed
Tadzhik women?" she asks.

    Another Tadzhik woman chimes in. She is a teacher desperate
to leave for Moscow because of what she saw the previous night
from her apartment. "We wore long, traditional Tadzhik clothes,"
she says, "so we could watch from our apartment balcony without
exciting suspicion. There was a crowd of 200 to 300 men who
stopped car after car and demanded money and jewelry. I saw them
drag some Russians out and beat them to death. I saw with my own
eyes a Russian woman who had been stripped and was being chased
down the street. I don't know what happened to her. Some of the
cars were burned with people still in them."

    We can't confirm any of her story, and we must assume that
many of the tales of militant ferocity are exaggerated. But
enough of them are true to suggest that a new spirit of militant
Islam -- Sunni in the Tadzhik case, as opposed to the Shi`ism
of Iran -- has risen to the surface among the Soviet Union's 55
million Muslims. For Mikhail Gorbachev, whose problems already
make him the Job of the communist world, that is truly
disturbing news.