In its drive to consolidate power, the regime has triggered violence in the past. It may do so again with its most recent power grab. Indeed, the clash last year with ex-deputy defence minister Nazarzoda in the Rumit Gorge shows that the risk of violence is real. There are competing interpretations of the Nazarzoda incident but the most plausible suggests it occurred when the regime moved to eliminate an ex-opposition figure from the government. According to reports by Western analysts, the deputy defence minister was sought by the authorities who wanted to curtail the influence of ex-UTO figures in the government.‍[42] Rather than accept arrest, Nazarzoda decided to go out with a bang.

Nevertheless, the growing problems in Tajikistan must be kept in context. The Rahmon regime remains in the driving seat, buoyed by international support and political patronage, among other things. Meanwhile, the opposition has been decimated following decades of repression and poses little threat, as was discussed earlier in this report. Nazarzoda’s last stand was a bold but badly prepared affair. The disbanding of the IRP went off bloodlessly without a hitch, suggesting a government in control and an opposition in disarray.

Moreover, narco-gangs may, counter-intuitively, support regime stability. Drug trafficking networks are locally embedded organisations with strategic interests. Usually, they emerge in isolated and peripheral regions where state power is weak. Well resourced with drug money, they are well placed to strike deals with the central government, acting as its extended arm in areas outside of its direct control.‍[43] It is perhaps no surprise that Tajikistan has very low levels of drug-related violence (barring occasional clashes on the border) or that The Economist, among other commentators, considered the drug trade a force for stability in Tajikistan.‍[44]

The Taleban have moved uncomfortably close to the Tajik border but there is little evidence that they are harbouring expansionist aims. On 18 July, the Taleban issued a statement denying any aspiration “to interfere in the internal affairs of others.”‍[45] A number of clashes along the Afghan–Tajik border have been blamed on Islamist fighters. But, like other incidents in the past, they may have more to do with narcotics smuggling or cash-strapped fighters who try to kidnap people for monetary gain than with an ambition to create instability in Tajikistan. There has certainly been little independent information to corroborate official claims, while the violence has been effectively contained by Tajik security forces. Meanwhile, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which did seek the overthrow of Central Asia’s secular regimes in the past, has been reduced, by ISAF bombings and counter-insurgency warfare, to a ghost of its former self.

Even if Afghan Islamists did push into Tajikistan, it seems unlikely that they would receive a warm welcome. The Tajik government has pointed to rising religious observance in Tajikistan as evidence that the Tajik population may be more receptive to militant ideology. However, as John Heathershaw and David Montgomery argued in a Chatham House report in November 2014, such reasoning rests on a conflation of terms of Islamisation, radicalisation and violent extremism.‍[46] Although it is true that there has been an ongoing religious revival in Tajikistan since the end of the Stalinist era, that revival has been shaped by inherited Soviet notions of secularism, which maintain a sharp boundary between public politics and private religious practice. Incidents of violent extremism have remained few and far between since the Soviet collapse and need not be linked to the broader religious revival. In fact, the Taleban conquest of Kabul in 1996 provided a major impetus to the 1997 peace agreement in Tajikistan, while the Islamic Renaissance Party has recently maintained a clear secular profile, particularly under the chairmanship of the Russified intellectual Muhiddin Kabiri.

The recruitment of Tajiks to Daesh should also be kept in context. Tajikistan analyst Edward Lemon, a prolific writer about secular and religious politics in Tajikistan, notes that Tajik recruitment numbers remain comparatively low.‍[47] Around 500 fighters, according to the Tajik interior ministry – one of the more liberal estimates – is considerably less as a proportion of the total Tajik Muslim population than the proportion of French or British Muslims who have enlisted in the terror organisation.‍[48] Moreover, despite the bravado of some Tajik fighters who have claimed they are ready to wage Jihad in Central Asia, the Daesh leadership is unlikely to release its Tajik recruits at a time when it is facing sustained pressure as part of a Western-backed military campaign.