Tat

Uzbekistan has thwarted the Tajik government’s nefarious plot to murder Uzbek citizens.

A pro-government Uzbek media outlet reports today that law-enforcement agencies in that country’s southern Surkhandarya region recently arrested a man whom they claim Tajik authorities had smuggled across the border with a view to performing terrorist attacks in the country.

The website in question is Press-uz.info, which UzReport assures us is actually an independent news agency devoted to circulating “correct information” about Uzbekistan.

The AFP has another, slightly better description of the case.

The site quoted police describing Jurayev as “a big fish” who had been sent to Uzbekistan after receiving military training, money, arms and promises for freedom from high level Tajik police officials.

In February a “Tajik interior ministry official… gave Jurayev a pistol with a silencer, 800 dollars for expenses and sent this newly made James Bond to Uzbekistan,” according to the report.

He had two tasks: to organize attacks within Tajikistan and “to liquidate certain people in Uzbekistan,” www.press-uz.info said.

The story is available in Russian, while the English site has other stories of border incursions by Uzbekistan’s neighbors.

No matter what you might be thinking, there’s probably no way whatsoever Juraev is just some guy and that this is all just tit-for-tat related to Tajikistan’s conviction of an Uzbek citizen for espionage or Tajikistan’s accusation that Uzbekistan is sheltering anti-government forces that have committed terrorist attacks in Tajikistan. Nope, no possible way this is related to any of that…