Tajik court frees pilots as Russian ties strained

A Russian pilot and his Estonian colleague were freed from prison by a court in Tajikstan on Tuesday, drawing a line under a smuggling case that soured relations between the Kremlin and a key Central Asian ally on the border with Afghanistan. The jailing of the pilots this month, shortly before Russia’s lease on a large military base in Tajikistan is up for renewal, angered Moscow and provoked a crackdown on Tajik labor migrants in Russia, where hundreds of thousands earn a living. Hundreds of Tajik migrant workers have been detained, some of them deported, and Russia’s public health chief threatened last week to temporarily bar all Tajik labor migrants from entering Russia, citing concerns they were spreading disease. An appeal court in Kurghon-Teppa, 80 km (50 miles) south of the capital Dushanbe, freed Russian Vladimir Sadovnichy and Estonian Alexei Rudenko in an amnesty announced immediately after it cut six years from an eight-and-a-half-year term. “The appeals commission ruled that the sentence of the lower court was excessively severe and deemed it possible to reduce the term of their imprisonment,” Judge Alisho Qurbonov said. The appeal overturns a Nov. 8 verdict to jail the pilots, who were charged with border violations and smuggling a faulty engine on board one of the Antonov An-72 jets that stopped to refuel in March on return from an aid mission in Afghanistan. Russia’s Foreign Ministry swiftly condemned the original sentences as “extremely severe and politically motivated” and President Dmitry Medvedev warned of an unspecified response. The dispute over the initial sentences put the spotlight on ethnic tensions within Russia, which have increased with the influx of labor migrants from Central Asia. Protesters picketed the Tajikistan embassy in Moscow not long after officials cited data showing Tajik citizens committed more crimes in Russia than any other foreign nationality. Ahead of a Dec. 4 election, Russia’s lower house of parliament gave preliminary approval on Tuesday to a law that would require labor migrants working in the service, trade and housing maintenance sectors to know the Russian language. Karomat Sharipov, head of the Moscow-based advocacy group Tajik Labour Migrants, said Russia had detained more than 1,500 Tajik citizens since Nov. 11 and deported about 500. Russia’s Federal Migration Service said it did not have specific figures. Foothold for Moscow Mostly Slavic, Orthodox Christian Russia and predominantly Muslim Tajikistan have little in common but their Soviet past. Yet 20 years after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the two states are intertwined in a relationship of mutual dependence. Home to more than 5,000 Russian troops at a Soviet-era military base, Tajikistan is a foothold for Moscow on the porous border with Afghanistan in a strategic region whose resources have drawn the attention of the United States, Europe and China. Russia wants to renew the lease on Base No. 201 for another 49 years when it expires in 2012. The base includes a satellite-tracking facility at a separate location in the Pamir mountains. Tajikistan is also a source of cheap labor for Russia, where migrants work on construction sites and in other menial jobs that help keep the country’s $1.5 trillion economy growing. These same migrants are an indispensable source of income for Tajikistan, the poorest of the 15 former Soviet republics. The cash that they transfer home accounts for nearly 40 percent of the country’s $6 billion economy. Analysts say authorities in Tajikistan, where a five-year civil war in the 1990s killed more than 100,000 people, are worried that an influx of returning, unemployed young men could spark unrest and become recruits for Islamist militant groups. Russia, wary of growing Chinese influence in Central Asia, is also concerned that any prolonged dispute with Tajikistan could push its one-time ally closer to Beijing or to Iran, with which Dushanbe shares cultural and linguistic ties. After Russia, China is Tajikistan’s biggest trade partner, with an 18 percent share of the country’s total trade turnover. Around 6,000 Chinese citizens live in Tajikistan, which owes Beijing about $700 million, or 36 percent of its national debt.