Soviet Union 48 Hours of Chaos

By DAVID AIKMAN DUSHANBE

How much more ethnic violence can the Soviet Union endure? A month after anti-Armenian pogroms in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku and a brutal clampdown by the Soviet army, Kremlin control seemed to hang by a thread last week in yet another Soviet republic. This time rioting and looting, followed by direct intervention by the Soviet army, took place in Dushanbe, capital of Tadzhikistan, a little-known republic (pop. 5.1 million) tucked into a mountainous fold of Central Asia between Afghanistan and China.

The Tadzhiks, who share cultural and ethnic origins with the Iranians, are staging what has the potential to become the Soviet Union's first indigenous Islamic revolution. At least 18 people were killed and hundreds injured, either by the gunfire of nervous troops or the attacks of roaming Tadzhiks. At week's end ethnic disturbances had erupted in the neighboring republic of Uzbekistan.

Though the city was swiftly closed to foreigners, TIME Washington correspondent David Aikman and photographer Alexandra Avakian of Woodfin Camp & Associates, on assignment for another story, happened to fly into Dushanbe on Monday. Until they returned to Moscow two days later, they were the only Western journalists to be eyewitnesses to the Tadzhik uprising.

It is on the short drive from the airport to the Tadzhikistan Hotel that we realize something ugly is happening. Do we know about the big demonstration, the Tadzhik driver asks? "The Tadzhiks have demanded that the 2,500 Armenians leave," he says, "and gave them 48 hours to get out." What Armenians? "The Armenians recently came here as refugees from Baku," he continues, as good- naturedly as though referring to the light snow that is falling. "The government gave them apartments that we have been waiting for for eight years or more. So the Tadzhiks attacked the central-committee building. There is a state of emergency in the city."

Half a block from the hotel, it is easy to see why. A news kiosk is burning and an armored personnel carrier blocks access to Lenin Prospect, Dushanbe's main artery. "You must not leave the hotel tonight," says the Tadzhik manager kindly but firmly. "There are many bad people around." Nonetheless, we head to Lenin Prospect to see what has happened.

By the dim streetlamps we see the damage: smashed storefront windows, the charred, upturned carcass of a municipal Volga sedan and, farther off, burned- out city buses. Alexandra takes a picture of a trashed photography store.

"Go away," says a young Tadzhik, appearing out of nowhere. "You are not allowed to photograph."

"Who says?" I ask.

"I do." He's not big, but he is as tense as a violin string, and he appears to have friends within whistling distance. He whistles. We walk back to the hotel.

At 10:02 p.m. automatic-rifle fire crackles a few hundred yards away. At 3:30 a.m. the quiet is broken as six heavy tanks storm past the hotel.

TUESDAY

10 a.m. A line of about 20 regular Soviet army troops in padded uniforms and helmets, carrying pale green metal shields and nightsticks, block off Lenin Prospect. Knots of Tadzhik men watch with surly stares, and the soldiers, mostly young Russian conscripts, fidget. Four APCs with idling motors guard the front of the pale brown stucco central-committee building. The day before, mobs smashed its windows and set it on fire. At one side of the debris- littered street, a soldier nonchalantly washes the bloodstains off his shield in a puddle left by melted snow.

We walk through the Soviet line toward the Tadzhiks, whose control of most of the city begins about 150 yds. away from the square. Tadzhiks quickly swarm around, suspicious and hostile. "We are American correspondents," I say, attempting to make it sound as though it's the most normal thing in the world for us to be there. I take out my notebook ostentatiously and begin to write. The complaints come thick and fast.

"They shouldn't kill us; we are not armed," says one.

"They killed three of us this morning."

"It's not about religion; it's about democracy."

"It's Russian imperialism."

A large young Tadzhik in a tan jacket links his arms with ours and shouts that he is taking us to see the innocent dead and wounded in the hospital. A car is commandeered, and we career down the boulevard to the hospital.

We are hustled from ward to ward to observe and photograph young men who have had bullets removed from their legs. One is conscious and in great pain; another is heavily anesthetized.

"Two died yesterday in this hospital," says a Tadzhik doctor, "and we took in 40 injured."

"That's not true. Many were killed yesterday!" shouts an angry youth.

"I am a physician," the doctor answers calmly, "and I am telling you what I know to be the case at this hospital."

Another car is commandeered to return us close to the hotel. Two Russian ; journalists whom we had met earlier did not fare as well: both were beaten, and had to run for their lives from a mob that stopped the car they were in.

It's midafternoon by now, and we want to find out what has happened back in the square. We discover an astonishing sight: the army lines have been pulled completely back. The square is packed with Tadzhiks listening to their leaders addressing them through a microphone from atop a Soviet army APC. From Tadzhiks in the street we learn that the rattled authorities have agreed to halt lethal confrontations with the angry crowds. "The people demand the resignation of the government!" shouts one speaker. Others call for an end to the sale of pork in public markets, the punishment of soldiers and militia responsible for shooting civilians, even the departure from Tadzhikistan of all who are not Tadzhiks.

At 4:55 p.m. a mullah takes the microphone and sings out the traditional Muslim call to prayer in Arabic. "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" the call begins. Mesmerized, the Tadzhiks as one man -- there is not a woman in sight among the 10,000 except Alexandra -- raise their hands in the traditional Muslim posture of worship. The Soviets stiffen. The officers disappear from the windows. Except for the wail of the mullah, a total hush has descended upon the gathering. After the prayer call, the mullah reads a sura from the Koran honoring the dead. Three minutes later, the prayer and reading are over, but there is an unmistakable new militancy in the air. "Makhkamov must go!" shouts yet another speaker, referring to Tadzhikistan's Communist Party chief, and the crowd roars its approval.

WEDNESDAY

9 a.m. Tanks have roared through the streets all night, and the army has pushed its perimeter half a block from our hotel. The Tadzhiks are really furious and glance with undisguised hostility at Alexandra and me; a Soviet photographer suggests we acquire official military passes from the Interior Ministry, two blocks away. At the ministry there are eight Soviet correspondents. "These economic demands are stupid," says a Komsomolskaya Pravda reporter. "How can the Tadzhiks demand economic independence when they import a billion more rubles each year than they export? The religion is just a pretext. The young people pay no attention to the mullahs."

At the Tadzhik Telegraph Agency, the official news source of the republic, the Russian deputy editor says only 39 Armenians actually arrived in Dushanbe after the January pogrom in Baku, and every one of them stayed with either friends or relatives. The rumor of the 2,500 was never even remotely true, he claims. Elsewhere we are told that Tadzhik militants methodically phoned threats to every single family in the phone listings whose name sounded Armenian. "They called my son," says a middle-age Russian woman whose husband, now dead, was Armenian, "and they said, 'You are Armenians; you had better leave within 48 hours. If you don't, we'll help you to leave.' But we have nowhere to go to. They are beasts."

We walk back toward Putovskova Square and talk with a middle-age peasant. "I have six children, and I support my two parents on 160 rubles a month," he tells me. "There just isn't enough work." He has a point. According to Soviet officials, Tadzhikistan's birthrate of 45 per 1,000 is by far the highest in the Soviet Union, even as the republic's economy is one of the poorest. Joblessness is openly admitted by Tadzhik officials; an estimated 70,000 to 200,000 are out of work.

We learn that there were spontaneous elections in the square the previous afternoon, but the new leaders, called People's Representatives, seem reluctant to identify themselves. They are unmistakably Islamic in orientation, we are told, and some of them want Islam to be declared the national religion of the republic. Some want open borders with Afghanistan. Others are even more radical, demanding total economic independence from the Soviet Union.

Around 3:45 p.m. a member of the 13-man People's Committee, Nazari Musazada, 42, emerges from the building to speak to the Tadzhik supporters. Later he tells me that his group presented officials with 17 demands, including a call for the resignation of the republic's leadership. He also says the Tadzhik people have been slaves of the Russian people for 72 years, and will remain slaves unless things change. Soon Nazari is joined by a group of negotiators from the People's Committee. Many have trim black beards, and all have an intense, humorless expression that speaks limitless intolerance. Where have I seen it before? Of course: in the photographs of faces of some of the militants of the Iranian revolution.

It is now 4:15 p.m. and time to return to the hotel. There we are met by the Intourist manager. "Your plane leaves at 6:30 p.m.," he says in a friendly manner. There is a message from Moscow: the Soviet Foreign Ministry is formally requesting -- but not actually ordering -- that we leave Dushanbe. %

By 5:30 p.m. we are on our way. "If stones hit the window," says the tough-looking Soviet N.C.O. who escorts us, "duck your head down." No stones hit the car, and none appear to have been thrown, but the airport, quite normal when we arrived on Monday night, is now an armed camp, guarded by APCs and crackling with the takeoff blast of Soviet transport planes.

While waiting for our plane, we meet a woman airport employee. She is pretty, wears makeup and has short hair, but she is angry and depressed. She won't go home, she explains, because the Tadzhik militants are directing their ferocity against their own women who are not sufficiently "Islamic." Those with hair cut short and without scarves, or, even worse, wearing stockings rather than the traditional Tadzhik pantaloons, have been beaten, molested and sometimes even stripped by the militant gangs. "Do you see any Western- dressed Tadzhik women?" she asks.

Another Tadzhik woman chimes in. She is a teacher desperate to leave for Moscow because of what she saw the previous night from her apartment. "We wore long, traditional Tadzhik clothes," she says, "so we could watch from our apartment balcony without exciting suspicion. There was a crowd of 200 to 300 men who stopped car after car and demanded money and jewelry. I saw them drag some Russians out and beat them to death. I saw with my own eyes a Russian woman who had been stripped and was being chased down the street. I don't know what happened to her. Some of the cars were burned with people still in them."

We can't confirm any of her story, and we must assume that many of the tales of militant ferocity are exaggerated. But enough of them are true to suggest that a new spirit of militant Islam -- Sunni in the Tadzhik case, as opposed to the Shi'ism of Iran -- has risen to the surface among the Soviet Union's 55 million Muslims. For Mikhail Gorbachev, whose problems already make him the Job of the communist world, that is truly disturbing news.