Calm Exterior Masks Turmoil in Tajikistan

To the casual observer, Thursday was a business-as-usual day in the capital of the former Soviet Central Asian republic of Tajikistan, but beneath the calm exterior, the newly independent country was in the midst of a political crisis.

Armed rebels, who took over the president’s headquarters Monday, are apparently on the verge of accomplishing what a six-week protest earlier this year was not able to achieve--the ouster of the hard-line president of that impoverished, mountainous republic.

Leaders of the Tajik government and Parliament said in a statement read on Tajik radio Wednesday night that they considered President Rakhman Nabiyev already removed from power.

Nabiyev has not been seen in public since the presidential palace was seized. He is rumored to be hiding in the local military garrison.

“It is shameful that President Nabiyev intends to hold on to his totally paralyzed rule and is watching the bloodshed from a distance,” said the leaders’ statement, which was monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp.

An emergency session of the full Parliament was called for today to make Nabiyev’s dismissal official, but it may be delayed to give members time to travel to Dushanbe, the republic’s capital.

It appeared highly unlikely Thursday that Nabiyev could stage a comeback.

“It will not be possible (for Nabiyev to stay in power) because the whole government and Parliament have publicly refused to work with him,” said Oleg Panfilov, a reporter for the prestigious Moscow-based Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper and a spokesmen for Tajikistan’s democratic opposition. “Who will he be the leader of?”

The 100 to 150 rebels who seized the presidential building are a ragtag group of young people from Dushanbe and refugees from areas of Tajikistan hardest hit by a wave of violence that has swept the republic in the past several months. They were not acting at the behest of either Tajikistan’s democratic opposition or religious fundamentalists who are active in the mostly Muslim republic.