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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 DUSHANBE 000801 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FROM AMBASSADOR HOAGLAND 
NEW DELHI, KATHMANDU, ALMATY PLEASE PASS TO BOUCHER PARTY 
STATE FOR SCA/FO, SCA/CEN, EUR/RUS, DRL, INL 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  4/29/2016 
TAGS: PREL PGOV MARR SNAR KDEM KPAO RS TI
SUBJECT: TAJIKISTAN SCENE-SETTER FOR ASSISTANT SECRETARY BOUCHER AND 
NSC SENIOR DIRECTOR MILLARD 
 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: Richard E. Hoagland, Ambassador, EXEC, Embassy 
Dushanbe. 
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 
 
 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Richard and Elisabeth, we are very grateful you are 
visiting Tajikistan.  As you have quickly learned, Central Asia 
is not the easiest place for the United States to do business, 
especially since Russia has declared these countries its sphere 
of influence and is taking all sorts of measures, both overt and 
covert, to enforce this view.  Of the five states in the region, 
Tajikistan has emerged from the chaos of its civil war in the 
1990s and is now one of the two most stable of the five.  We 
firmly believe your visit will advance U.S. goals and 
objectives.  This scene-setter is geared to your full schedule 
we have proposed for May 8. 
 
¶2.  (U) This is not necessarily a traditional scene-setter.  We 
know you read our reporting.  Your staffs have fully briefed you 
for this visit.  What we want to do is give you insight and 
background for the key meetings and events, so that you can make 
the very best use of them to advance the President's and 
Secretary's foreign policy for this region. 
 
SIPDIS 
 
PRESIDENT RAHMONOV 
 
¶3.  (C) Your most important meeting for the bilateral 
relationship will be with President Rahmonov.  You should know 
up-front it is likely to be long because he likes to expound at 
length when he gets wound up - sometimes at considerable length! 
 This is not just the Soviet/Asian custom.  It's how he really 
is.  He generally starts reading his prepared talking points, 
and may appear disinterested.  But he quickly gets bored and 
then, pushing his briefing book aside, speaks from the heart. 
Though he may sound a bit vehement when he gets on a roll, he is 
always worth listening to, because he wears his heart on his 
sleeve, and frequently speaks surprisingly frankly.  He may 
archly refute what you have to say that he doesn't like to hear, 
for example on elections, should you bring that up.  But, to 
give him credit, you can be sure he will take your message on 
board, and, likely as not, will implement at least a portion of 
what you suggest. 
 
¶4.  (C) He is likely to want to focus on the importance of 
Afghanistan to regional stability - he has been a stalwart 
supporter of President Karzai and his government - and he will 
certainly bring up hydropower and other regional infrastructure 
issues.  The proposed Dasti Zhum dam and hydroelectric station 
on the river between Tajikistan and Afghanistan is one of his 
favorites.  He will have just returned from a state visit to 
Kazakhstan, and you may want to probe him on that.  As a grace 
note, you might want to salute his "open-door" foreign policy, 
and what we believe are his sincere attempts, sometimes against 
Russian odds, to protect Tajikistan's sovereignty and 
independence.  Although he really doesn't understand us, he is 
not at anti-American. 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Rahmonov will have a number of advisers with him at 
the table - at a minimum Foreign Minister Nazarov and Foreign 
Policy Adviser Rahmatulloyev.  But they will not speak unless he 
consults with them on some obscure detail or another.  This will 
most definitely be a one-man show on their side. 
 
DUSHANBE 00000801  002.2 OF 004 
 
 
 
¶6.  (SBU) Your probable separate meeting with Foreign Minister 
Nazarov, before seeing the President, will essentially be a 
courtesy call.  You will want to summarize your key messages, so 
that Nazarov can then quickly brief Rahmonov, but you may want 
to use this meeting to touch briefly on any second-tier issues 
you might have. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) After your meeting with Rahmonov, Tajik and Russian 
journalists, along with other international stringers, will be 
staked out.  There is simply no way around this.  It is standard 
practice here, and a must-do.  Our superb public affairs FSN 
will manage the journalists (with my guidance), and you can call 
a halt whenever you like.  At a minimum, I'd suggest three or 
four fairly quick Qs and As.  This will be the key opportunity 
for you to communicate major messages, and will get broader 
coverage than any other press conference we could set up.  You 
also need to know that the President's press service will have 
prepared, in advance of your meeting, their press release that 
gives their spin.  It will not be dishonest, but it will not 
fully reflect the reality of your meeting.  That's OK - we can 
live with that, as we have frequently done in the past.  It is 
not ill-intentioned.  It's likely just a hold-over from "central 
planning." 
 
BORDER SECURITY AND COUNTER-NARCOTICS ASSISTANCE 
 
¶8.  (C) Our various military-to-military relationships 
implemented by our Department of Defense colleagues have been 
tended assiduously, and are growing in gratifying and sometimes 
surprisingly positive ways.  But now is not the time to trumpet 
those tender, new relationships.  The unasked and unanswered 
question about an American military facility in Tajikistan hangs 
over any high-level meeting.  We would rather focus on our 
increasingly well-established border protection and 
counter-narcotics efforts.  Whether or not you actually observe 
a controlled drug-burn (which would also be a media op, although 
we understand you may not have time for this), your (we hope) 
joint meeting with Drug Control Agency (DCA) Chairman General 
Rustam Nazarov and Tajik Border Guard (TBG) Chairman General 
Saidamur Zuhurov, will be a very important part of your visit, 
because it will send the message throughout the region that we 
are deadly serious in supporting Tajikistan on these issues. 
Both generals, in our view, are true Tajik patriots, as clean 
and honest as they come here, and enormously dedicated and 
health-wreckingly hard working.  A bit of honest hyperbole 
praising them would not be inappropriate. 
 
¶9.  (SBU) The U.S. government has long supported the DCA, for 
the most part quietly through UNODC, and the relationship 
continues to expand in more direct and special ways.  The DCA is 
widely considered to nearly meet international standards. 
Tajikistan interdicts more narcotics than the other Central 
Asian republics together.   Our assistance relationship with the 
TBG is barely 18 months old, but it is, so far, a true success 
story.  President Rahmonov has quite regularly embarrassed 
General Zuhurov in cabinet meetings by pointing him out as the 
model for working with the United States, and by haranguing the 
other ministers "to get with the program." 
 
¶10.  (C) Both these relationships - border control and 
counter-narcotics - are the foundation for a stronger and more 
productive relationship in all other areas of our bilateral 
 
DUSHANBE 00000801  003.2 OF 004 
 
 
relationship.  Because we have proven we are reliable partners 
in these areas, President Rahmonov is, we feel, a bit more 
willing to trust us on the enormously more difficult issues like 
political reform.  Although never yet in public, President 
Rahmonov and his inner circle have increasingly praised the 
United States for it's "objective understanding" of the complex 
reality in Tajikistan and how to do business here.  They are 
quietly grateful for Washington's increasing attention. 
 
¶11.  (C) An interesting footnote:  before 9/11, General Zuhurov, 
when he was first Minister of Security and then Deputy Prime 
Minister for Security Affairs, was the Tajik point-man for 
funneling U.S. assistance to the Northern Alliance in 
Afghanistan.  He still keeps a photo of Ahmad Shah Masood on the 
bookshelves in his private office. 
 
U.S. ASSISTANCE FOR ELECTIONS 
 
¶12.  (C) We intend to put together for you an event at the 
International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) that would 
include political party representatives, respectable and 
progressive Tajik journalists, members of civil society 
promoting fair elections, and, we hope, some Tajik government 
officials.  This would not be a head-bangingly boring 
talking-heads event.  We will prevent that.  You would control 
it.  You know from Embassy Dushanbe's reporting that IFES has a 
remarkable initiative underway, supported by DRL, with 
progressive Tajik government officials, including some very 
highly placed, who are committed to improving the conduct of the 
November presidential election.  USAID has also funded $280,000 
for election support by National Democratic Institute. 
Nevertheless, despite their commitment, they are a bit leery 
that they can ever do enough to satisfy the international (i.e., 
Western) community. 
 
¶13.  (SBU) Your message, we suggest, should be that building 
democracy is a long and incremental process.  We can and will be 
patient, but we likewise expect incremental progress.  There is 
always something to criticize in the conduct of elections - 
after all, the OSCE did not give the U.S. 2004 Presidential 
Election an absolutely clean bill of health!  We would never 
recommend you pull any punches, but this will be an opportunity 
for a forward-looking, upbeat message about the presidential 
election. 
 
STUDENTS AND EDUCATION 
 
¶14.  (U) We sincerely applaud your commitment to education as a 
fundamental for building a brighter future.  Our intention, if 
there is time, is for you to have a brief round-table with 
English-speaking students, probably at the American Corner. 
 
¶15.  (SBU) We caution you may hear some negative platitudes 
about U.S. foreign policy.  This is not necessarily because 
various entities have gotten to the students and planted 
questions.  It's not because they are knee-jerk anti-American. 
It really is because the information space in Tajikistan is 
almost totally dominated by Russia - and I know you are well 
aware of the multiple twisted versions of reality Russia has 
been promulgating.  If this event occurs, we see it as an 
opportunity, not as a confrontational challenge.  It is vitally 
important to know that Tajiks are very open to new ideas, and 
eagerly accept divergent views. 
 
DUSHANBE 00000801  004 OF 004 
 
 
 
THE 800-POUND BEAR 
 
¶16.  (C) While Iran and China are active in Tajikistan, Russia 
is the 800-pound bear.  We know you are fully apprised of the 
increasingly negative, domineering role the Kremlin is 
attempting to impose on Central Asia, and not the least in 
Tajikistan.  Maybe especially in Tajikistan.  President Putin 
threw down the gauntlet during his state visit to Dushanbe in 
October 2004 and all but declared, through economic 
accommodations and probably pie-in-the-sky promises of 
multi-billion-dollar investment in infrastructure, that 
Tajikistan is Russia's, and that the "little Tajik brother" 
needs to get with the program.  Much of this new "druzhba 
narodov" (Soviet-style "friendship of the peoples"), is supposed 
to be implemented through controversial RusAl oligarch Oleg 
Deripaska. 
 
¶17.  (C) Even though Tajikistan was always the most remote and 
poorest of the Republics of the Soviet Union, Russia's 201st 
Motorized Rifle Division, now the 201st Russian Military Base, 
has been here since 1945.  The 201st totally mobilized to 
Afghanistan during the 1980s Soviet-Afghan War.  It is now 
rather a shadow of its former self, but it still projects itself 
as a formidable player and nearly sole guarantor of stability 
and security in Tajikistan.  A lot of this is hortatory.  Russia 
does not measure up to its rhetoric.  When the Russian Border 
Force withdrew from the Tajik-Afghan border in 2005, it 
proclaimed it was leaving everything intact and passing the full 
infrastructure on to the Tajiks.  In fact, the departing 
Russians stole what they could, including the urinals and 
kitchen sinks, and destroyed much of the rest. 
 
¶18.  (C) We know for a fact that Rahmonov is increasingly 
exasperated with the Russians.  However, if he is feeling 
relatively discreet, you will not hear this directly from him. 
Although many Tajik officials are pro-Russia and nostalgic for 
the Soviet past, Rahmonov also has increasingly included in his 
circle more modern, internationally savvy, sometimes purely 
technocratic progressives.  He orchestrates the chaos as if he 
were directing Stockhausen rather than the niceties of 
neo-classical Stravinskiy. 
 
¶19.  (C) In the end, this is why, despite all the headline bad 
news, we still continue to believe Rahmonov, at heart, is a 
reformer, even if this is slow in practice.  That is why your 
visit is truly important.  It is a signal opportunity not to rag 
on him, but to encourage him further in the right direction.  We 
trust your light touch with tough messages. 
 
¶20.  (U) We very much look forward to your visit to advance U.S. 
foreign policy in Tajikistan, and, thus, in Greater Central 
Asia. 
 
¶21.  (U) Minimize considered. 
HOAGLAND