IS Suicide Bombers, Tajikistan’s Deadly Export

State suppression of unofficial Islam, the humiliation of having to work as migrant laborers abroad, and a former special-forces commander flipping to the Islamic State group: these are the main factors behind why Tajikistan finds itself the world’s leading exporter of suicide bombers to Islamic State (IS) battlefields.

Experts singled out these factors when assessing how the impoverished Central Asian state came out on top in a recent report listing the origins of suicide bombers sent to Iraq and Syria, on whose territory IS’s diminishing so-called caliphate stands.

The report by The Hague-based International Center for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) claimed that 27 Tajiks had carried out suicide operations in Iraq and Syria from December 2015 to November 2016, the highest among all foreign individuals whose country of origin had been identified.

The report — War by Suicide: A Statistical Analysis of the Islamic State’s Martyrdom Industry — has put the spotlight on Tajikistan’s struggle against extremism and why Tajiks would be so significantly represented among IS suicide bombers.

As if to underscore the findings, the IS’s Aamaq news agency has claimed that two Tajiks were among those responsible for the suicide bombing and gun attack on a military hospital in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on March 8 that killed at least 49 people. The claim from the extremist group, which has made inroads in Afghanistan since 2015, has not been verified by either Tajik or Afghan authorities.