SUMMARY
The Forces of Mullo Abdullo was a loosely organized armed group, active in two episodes of the Tajik intrastate conflict over government (2000 and 2010). Mullo Abdullo (Abdullo Rakhimov) was an Islamist warlord from Rash (formerly Gharm), a district in the eastern part of the present-day District of Republican Subordination in Tajikistan; it is located in the part of the country populated by the Gharmi people. Rasht borders Kyrgyzstan to the north and Afghanistan to the south. Abdullo had previously been a warlord in UTO, which fought the Government of Tajikistan 1992-1997 (see Government of Tajikistan - UTO). However, Mullo Abdullo rejected the peace agreement signed between the UTO and the Government of Tajikistan in June 1997.
After UTO agreed to lay down arms in 1997, Mullo Abdullo based his group in the Darband region, where it operated without any significant interference from the government. Many of Mullo Abdullo’s fighters were killed in June 2000 in an offensive launched by the Government of Tajikistan, following allegations that Mullo Abdullo was involved in the murder of the regional administrative head in Gharm, Saimudin Davlatov. Mullo Abdullo himself fled to Afghanistan; some sources claim that he was in fact captured by the government, and then released for reasons unknown. Mullo Abdullo and his forces returned to Tajikistan in 2009; the estimations of the size of Mullo Abdullo’s forces ranged from dozens to 1000 in 2010. Following a military defeat in 2010, the Forces of Mullo Abdullo ceased to exist as an organized armed group.
Following his defeat and escape to Afghanistan in 2000, unconfirmed reports claim that Abdullo joined the prominent Afghan warlord Ahmad Shah Masoud, and was made a commander in UIFSA. According to other sources, he became affiliated with the Taleban, or even al-Qaida, and spent some time in Pakistan. His whereabouts following the fighting in 2000 are however largely unknown, and as mentioned above he may have been killed or captured in 2002, in either Afghanistan’s Taloqan or Kandahar province. This would disconfirm his participation in the 2010 violence. Furthermore, it has been suggested that if he were still alive in 2010, Mullo Abdullo’s age and poor health would have disqualified him from assuming military command. Tajik forces claimed to have killed Mullo Abdullo on 16 April 2011, during a military operation in the Nurobod district in the Rasht valley.
Darband, where Mullo Abdullo maintained his base of operations prior to 2000, neighbors the Tavildara region, where at the time the Uzbek Islamist group IMU maintained a base that was used to launch raids into Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. After 1997, it has been suggested that Abdullo developed strong ties to IMU, and to the Taleban in Afghanistan. Following attacks by [IMU] /#actor/359), Uzbek and Kyrgyz pressure was put on the Government of Tajikistan to crack down against the groups operating from the area in and around Tavildara.
The Government of Tajikistan blamed the 2010 attack on Mullo Abdullo and another local warlord, Ali Bedaki (Alovuddin Davlatov). However, the attackers were never fully identified, and it has been suggested that a third warlord, Mirzokhuja Ahmadov, may have been involved; he was also accused of sheltering Mullo Abdullo. Ahmadov later aided the government forces in hunting down Mullo Abdullo and Ali Bedaki (who was killed in January 2011) in return for an amnesty. The Government of Tajikistan was also convinced that IMU assisted Mullo Abdullo in carrying out this attack, allegations that has not been confirmed.
It should be noted that Mullo Abdullo’s affiliation with Islamic extremist organizations such as IMU, al-Qaida, and the Taleban are not uniformly accepted. Some sources suggest that his affiliation with al-Qaida and the global Jihad movement has been exaggerated, particularly by Tajik authorities to attract international attention to the situation in Tajikistan. In general, Mullo Abdullo’s whereabouts after the defeat in Darband in 2000 are shrouded in uncertainty.
