There was an explosion near the Kokhi Vahdat, the Palace of Unity, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. It is the site where an international conference on natural disasters was to be hosted, and is being labeled a “terrorist act.” Police are identifying the man who apparently discovered the explosive and was killed as a 77-year old janitor by RFE/RL, a street sweeper by Ferghana.ru, and a security guard by RIA Novosti and Reuters.
Whatever his occupation, he is so far the only victim. Police are investigating.
Update: Ian translates Vadim’s quite-needed skepticism of the term “terrorism” to describe the explosion. Perhaps, as he says, this should spur more aid and cooperation? Nah—not with this administration.
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Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor.
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Yes, likely one more setup and little ‘let’s-scare-the-foreigners-so-that-we-can-sell-our-terrorism-problem’ performance.
Same with those who tried to put Saipov’s murder on the Hizb-ut-Tahrir recently.
A EU conference is a soft target, contrary to US facilities who are more heavily guarded. A friend who was on the site just after the supposed ‘terror attack’ saw neither a corpse nor blood of the floor. Besides, the explosion was supposed to be outside, while all the broken glass was laying outside.
))
Maybe they’ll even find a couple of suckers or bomzhi and make them ‘confess’ that they acted on the orders of the IMU or the IJU. It’s all as thin as hell really.