FIGHTING IN TAJIKISTAN.

At least two officers were killed, two seriously wounded, and one missing when a resistance detachment attacked a Tajikistan Interior Ministry post in Garm region. According to the ministry’s account, the 30-strong detachment was armed with grenade launchers and machine guns and destroyed the police post. In Dushanbe, Col. General Valery Bobryshev, commander of nominally CIS peacekeeping troops in Tajikistan, blamed the postponement of the fifth round of inter-Tajik negotiations on "unacceptable" statements by the opposition which "effectively disavow everything the Tajik government has done in the years since the war". Bobryshev also criticized Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan for contributing merely token numbers of soldiers to the "CIS peacekeeping" force. In the most egregious case he cited, Kazakhstan has contributed just two officers, both attached to the lone Kyrgyz battalion which was supposed to have been a regiment. (10)

Bobryshev’s intrusion into political issues and his censure of the resistance on ideological grounds are characteristic of this officer. Frustration with unwilling Central Asian auxiliaries reached a new pitch in these remarks.

1. Interfax, October 14

2. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 12

3. Interfax, October 13

4. Segodnya and Interfax, October 13

5. BNS, October 13, 14

6. Interfax-Ukraine, October 14

7. Interfax-Ukraine, October 13 and 14

8. Petroleum Information Agency, October 13 and 14

9. Noyan-Tapan, October 13

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