Tajikistan's battle against beards to 'fight radicalisation'

By Anora SarkorovaBBC Russian Service, Tajikistan

• 21 January 2016
 
• From the sectionAsia

Image captionPolice in Khatlon say they have shaved the beards of nearly 13,000 men (file photo)

"They called me a Salafist, a radical, a public enemy. And then two of them held my arms while another one shaved half of my beard."

Djovid Akramov says he was stopped by Tajik police outside his house, along with his seven-year-old son, last month - and taken to the police station in Dushanbe where he was forcibly shaved.

He became one of hundreds of thousands of men in Tajikistan arrested in recent years for wearing a beard.

Shaving beards is part of a government campaign targeting trends that are deemed "alien and inconsistent with Tajik culture".

Earlier this week, police in Tajikistan's Khatlon region said that they had shaved the beards of nearly 13,000 men as part of an "anti-radicalisation campaign".

The BBC spoke to nine other men who described similar experiences - being detained in the street and forcibly taken to the police department or a barber shop, where they were shaved.

The government campaign is explained by the need to fight radicalisation, amid fears that Central Asia might follow the path of countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria towards extremism.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionWomen have been told to wear traditional Tajik colours - not black

Estimates suggest that between 1,500 and 4,000 Central Asians could have joined different Islamist militant groups in Syria, as of June 2015.

The move against beards is seen as part of a broader government campaign against the adoption of Islamic cultural practices in Tajik society, and to preserve secular traditions.

According to official data, 99% of the Tajik population are Muslim. However, atheism was officially encouraged during 70 years of Soviet rule.

'Don't wear black'

The campaign against Islamic practices also affects women. There is an official ban on wearing hijabs in schools and universities - but in practice it is enforced in all state institutions.

Police say that over the past year, they have closed about 160 shops where hijabs were being sold, and convinced 1,773 women to stop wearing hijabs.

Image captionShaving beards is part of a government campaign against "alien culture"

President Emomali Rakhmon has also warned Tajiks: "Don't worship alien values, don't follow alien culture. Wear clothes of traditional colours and cut, not black."

"Even in mourning, Tajik women [should] wear white, not black," he said.

And the authorities have previously called on parents to give their children traditional Tajik names, rather than Arabic or foreign-sounding names.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionColourful headscarves are popular in Tajikistan

It is not clear whether these policies will have an impact on preventing radicalism.

Djovid Akramov says he will not forget the humiliation he felt while being forcefully shaved at the police station.

"The worst is the impunity of the policemen, who were enjoying the opportunity to bully people," he says.

It is this kind of conduct that can prompt people to become radicalised, he says.

What IS the Wakhan Corridor?

If you look at a map of Afghanistan you will see a 'finger' sticking out of the northeast part of the country.  Odd?  I think so.  From my knowledge of maps, I know that when you see a strange border shape there is normally a long story attached to it.  That is true in the history of the Wakhan.

I could summarize the history of the Wakhan, but I prefer to use a synopsis written by Greg Mortenson, as well as some quotes from Wikipedia:

"...The Corridor was historically used as a trading route between Badakhshan and Yarkand.^[7] It appears that Marco Polo came this way.^[8] The Portuguese Jesuit priest Bento de Goes crossed from the Wakhan to China between 1602 and 1606. In May 1906 Sir Aurel Stein explored the Wakhan, and reported that at that time 100 pony loads of goods crossed annually to China.^[9]  (wikipedia)

"For centuries it [had] been a natural conduit between Central Asia and China, and one of the most forbidding sections of the Silk Road, the 4,000-mile trade route linking Europe to the Far East.
The borders of the Wakhan were set in an 1895 treaty between Russia and Britain, which had been wrestling over the control of Central Asia for nearly a century....Eventually Britain and Russia agreed to use the entire country as a buffer zone, with the Wakhan extension ensuring that the borders of the Russian empire would never touch the borders of the British Raj.
Only a handful of Westerners are known to have traveled through the Wakhan Corridor since Marco Polo did it, in 1271. There had been sporadic European expeditions throughout the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In 1949, when Mao Zedong completed the Communist takeover of China, the [eastern] borders were permanently closed, sealing off the 2,000-year-old caravan route and turning the corridor into a cul-de-sac. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, they occupied the Wakhan and plowed a tank track halfway into the corridor. Today, the Wakhan has reverted to what it’s been for much of its history: a primitive pastoral hinterland, home to about 7,000 Wakhi and Kirghiz people, scattered throughout some 40 small villages and camps." (Greg Mortenson)

"There is no modern road through the Corridor. There is a rough road from Ishkashim to Sarhad-e Broghil^[11] built in the 1960s,^[12] but only paths beyond. It is some 100 km from the road end to the Chinese border at Wakhjir Pass, and further to the far end of the Little Pamir." (wikipedia)

WHO LIVES THERE?The Wakhi people live in the wide valley of the Wakhan Corridor itself, in Afghanistan and across the borders in Tajikistan and Pakistan. The Wakhis are Shia Ismaili Muslims, whose spiritual leader is the Aga Khan.
In the Pamir mountain valleys at the far east and northeast of the panhandle live the Kyrgyz, who are among the last of the Central Asian peoples who still follow a nomadic lifestyle. The Kyrgyz are Sunni Muslims. They once roamed more widely but the arrival of Communist governments in the Soviet Union and China confined them to an increasingly restricted area as border controls were tightened. Those who remain in the Afghan Pamir still follow their traditional pastoral lifestyle, especially in the two main valleys -- the Great Pamir and the Little Pamir. (A 'pamir' is a wide green valley, good for grazing animals.)  (www.wakhan.org)

Wakhi People

A Kyrgyz Nomad

My next post will go into more detail about the Wakhi & Kyrgyz people in the Wakhan corridor today.