Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan faced the most difficult times of any of the Central Asian countries, suffering a civil war, and depressingly low standards of living. The amount of good news (a new plan for development, landmine cleanup, drug enforcement) coming out of the country therefore comes as a breath of fresh air, given events transpiring in countries like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

With OSCE funding, Tajik authorities have begun systematically destroying weapons stockpiles left over from the civil war.

The OSCE has allocated 120,000 euro to the first phase, which entails teaching Tajik army engineers to destroy explosives and firearms safely at a training centre which opened on November 4. The ammunition destruction programme will continue until June 2006.

“The training and destruction are taking place at the same time. It’s a good system doesn’t take up a lot of working time,” said Lieutenant Firuz Saidbekov, an army engineer.

The Tajik defence ministry says that more than 30 tonnes of ammunition – artillery shells, mines and bombs – has been destroyed in the last six to eight weeks.

“Most of the shells are of Russian manufacture, but there are also quite a lot of Chinese shells. But sometimes you come across real oddities - shells, mortars and mines,” said Lieutenant Saidbekov.

Some of the munitions belong to the Tajik military and are beyond the expiry date for safe use. But the bulk of the weapons and ammunition being eliminated are material left over from the civil war, which has either been found in arms caches, handed over voluntarily, or confiscated from members of the public.

The only losers in this process are the Tajik farmers: ‘The only real hazard is the local farmers who put their animals out to pasture on the army range. “That complicates things,” admitted Saidbekov.’