DUSHANBE — At 8:00 AM this morning, I was just hopping into the shower — and regretting that I’d used my lazy morning to sleep in a bit because the water pressure was very, very bad. To the early bird goes the water pressure it seems. I slept in because we were moving offices — or, more correctly, the local office adminstrative staff were moving our offices around — and we’d agreed not to come in until after 9:00 to give them some unfettered and unsupervised time to get it done.
All of this a wonderful coincidence that conspired so I may be the only one on my street who didn’t hear the bomb.
I live on Redaki Street, at the corner of Bokthar, in Dushanbe. About 12 blocks from my apartment, further along Redaki, is the Kokhi Vakhdat, a large conference centre about 300 metres from the “Presidential Palace.” At about 8:00 AM this morning, a bomb exploded at a side entrance, killing one person who has been reported alternatively as either a street sweeper or security guard.
International media reports have varied in detail, but it seems Reuters has the most facts. Complicating the story is the fact that Kokhi Vakhdat means something like “Palace of Unity” and it’s across the street from the “President’s Palace” which, although it sounds otherwise, is not really where the president of Tajikistan sleeps. Thus, depending on whose news site you read, the bomb exploded “in the president’s palace” or in a “conference facility within the palace.”
The building which is basically a large conference centre, was to be the location for an EU conference today to discuss emergency management and disaster risk reduction. Tomorrow, a higher profile EU conference was to take place there, with some senior EU functionaries.
My colleagues and I checked out the site around noon — but it was pretty low key. The explosion appears to have done some superficial damage to the roadway but, then again, with the state of roads here, the damage may have been pre-existing. The area was secured by police, as seen in the Reuters photo, and appears to be a side entrance to the facility — possibly the entrance that motorcade VIP’s may want to use to enter the building.
Of course, the fact that this story was covered on BBC and Reuters gives cause for a difficult decision. Do I call home or not? Would it, or would it not, be covered in the media at home? If it did make the news at home, people may worry and since it’s very hard to call me and I only call home on the weekend, four days is a long time to wait. But, if it didn’t make the news at home, calling home about it to tell everyone “I’m safe” makes it seem a much bigger deal than it actually is. In the end, I sent an email.
The fact is, this type of explosion is extremely unusual in Dushanbe. Frankly, it happens more often in London than here. And nobody is (really) afraid to go to England. Are they?
What’s very interesting about this bomb, and the few others that have happened over the years (from what my colleagues have told me) is that, although the government is very quick to pin them on “Islamist terrorists”, no group ever claims credit. Although it would be hard for such a group to claim credit in a Tajik newspaper — they are not exactly icons to journalistic freedom — it would be dead easy to drop an email to BBC or Reuters.
Makes you wonder.
[…] An author from Coffee with Mark Towhey thinks that this kind of explosions happen more often in London than in Dushanbe: “The fact is that this type of explosion is extremely unusual for Dushanbe. Frankly, it happens more often in London than here. What’s very interesting about this bomb, and the few others that have happened over the years (from what my colleagues have told me) is that, although the government is very quick to pin them on “Islamist terrorists”, no group ever claims credit. Although it would be hard for such a group to claim credit in a Tajik newspaper — they are not exactly icons to journalistic freedom — it would be dead easy to drop an email to BBC or Reuters. Share This […]