Story of Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov

 On April 23, 2015, Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov, head of Tajikistan’s Interior Ministry’s elite special forces unit (a counter-terrorism unit), failed to show up for a meeting with the interior minister.

No one had seen him for three days. His phone was switched off. His wife was contacted. She claimed that, for some time, Khalimov had been living with his second wife. When his second wife was contacted, she said that Khalimov had told her he was going off on a mission for a few days. She told the officials that was all she knew.

The news quickly spread. The head of the special forces, a high-ranking officer, a man close to President Emomali Rahmon’s family, had disappeared. Rumours abounded. Had Khalimov joined the political opposition and taken refuge in the mountains? Had he fallen out with Rahmon’s son and been eliminated. Yes, that’s possible in Tajikistan, a family autocracy that is highly repressive.

Independent journalists began to investigate. Abdusalim Khalimov, the father of Gulmurod, living in their village in the Varzob district, said he had no idea where his son was, saying, “It’s been a month. I don’t know what happened. A soldier came and asked me questions. I don’t know anything about it.” Weeks went by without any news. Finally, the news broke.

On May 28, Central Asia TV network revealed that Khalimov had been found. He was in Syria, with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The channel ran a video clip by Khalimov. The message was recorded in Russian and addressed all Muslims in Russia and the former Soviet republics. “Brothers are waiting to enter Tajikistan and Russia and establish shariah,” the message said.

Later reports indicated that Khalimov had fled with 10 others to Turkey via Russia and then entered Syria from Turkey. Tajik authorities refused to comment on Khalimov’s desertion. Arkady Dubnov, a Russian expert on Central Asia with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Khalimov’s video was authentic.

On September 8, 2017, a little over two years after Khalimov joined ISIS, Russian channels reported that he had been killed in an airstrike near Deir ez Zour. By then, Khalimov had risen rapidly through the ISIS ranks and had become the group’s minister for war. As a former officer, he had been trained both by Russia’s elite Spetsnaz and, later, by the American military contractor company, the infamous Blackwater.

Khalimov’s death has never been confirmed by Tajikistan. The country’s most wanted list still contains Khalimov’s name and photograph. During his absence from Tajikistan, two of his brothers, a nephew and a neighbour were killed by Tajik security forces, some 30 kilometres from the Tajik-Afghan border. The security forces claimed that they were part of an ISIS cell and were planning to cross over into Afghanistan. Khalimov’s elder son from his first wife was also arrested on terrorism charges and later killed during a prison riot. He was 20.

How is ISIS relevant anymore, especially after being evicted from the territories it once controlled in Syria and Iraq? This question can be answered depending on what lens one is using and what is considered as constituting an ISIS threat.

The core group’s military capability to capture territory has been badly dented in Syria and Iraq, at much human and material cost. It is unlikely that the group will regain a territorial foothold anywhere anytime soon. That’s good news.

The bad news is that, having lost its self-styled caliphate in Syria and Iraq, it has splintered into various franchises, its activities have been driven underground and it now relies on classic terrorist attacks to remain relevant in a competitive jihadi ecosystem. Those tactics and the so-called Islamic State’s (IS) continued quest to find ungoverned spaces within weak states mean, however, that the group and its ideology remain a threat.