Expert: Tajikistan should not be world powers' 'toy'
DUSHANBE. Jan 6 (Interfax) - Tajikistan should avoid being "an apple of discord" between world powers against the backdrop of a new Cold War between Russia and the West, head of the Strategic Research Center under the President of the Republic of Tajikistan Khudoberdy Kholiknazarov told reporters on Tuesday.
"Tajikistan should do the utmost for not being a toy in the hands of world powers," Kholiknazarov said at a press conference summarizing the 2014 results.
"The [world] powers are struggling to enhance their influence on Central Asia," he said.
The Strategic Research Center is a budget-funded entity which presents the official opinion of the Tajik administration.
"A Cold War between these countries is in progress and we should seek to prevent its development into a real armed conflict," said the Strategic Research Center director appointed by Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.
"Whenever destabilization trends occur in countries of the world, including those in our region, the Russians are usually blaming the West and the West is blaming the Russians," Kholiknazarov continued.
"Tajikistan has been through a civil war and we should not allow a recurrence of those events to be thrust upon us from the outside," the director said.
Over the recent years President Rahmon has been repeating the opinion that the 1992-1997 Civil War in Tajikistan was pushed on the republic from the outside. Neither he nor other officials say directly who, in their opinion, unleashed the war in Tajikistan which claimed tens of thousands of lives and did colossal damage to the economy.
Formally, the People's Front, which brought to power Rahmon in 1992, was fighting the United Tajik Opposition, which incorporated democratic forces and openly Islamist groups that were dreaming of Tajikistan's transformation into an Islamic state living by Sharia laws.