DUSHANBE, February 8, Asia-Plus  - There is no political motives in a February 2 incident in Gharm and it cannot pose threat to the country’s stability,” Davlat Usmon, former chief of staff of armed forces of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), said in an interview with Asia-Plus.   

According to him, the Gharm incident is not politically motivated, “it is just an internal feud between officers of the Ministry of Interior (MoI).”

We will recall that Colonel Oleg Zakharchenko, commander of the special police unit (OMON), was killed and four servicemen of the unit were injured in a shootout in Gharm, administrative center of the Rasht district on February 2, after the unit servicemen were fired upon by gunmen loyal to Mirzokhouja Ahmadov, chief of the Rasht regional directorate for combating organized crime.  

According to an official version of a MoI, police officers arrived in Gharm to arrange a meeting to sum up the results of work carried out by the regional body empowered to combat organized crime, while according to other sources, the police unit was seeking to arrest the head of this body, Mirzokhouja Ahmadov.  Ahmadov was one of filed commanders of the United Tajik Opposition during the country''s civil war in the mid-1990s but was later appointed to a senior police post as part of a broader attempt at reintegrating former opposition forces.