DUSHANBE, October 1, 2013, Asia-Plus – Specialists from the Ministry of Transport (MoT) should complete examination of the Danghara airport reconstruction project before the end of this year and submit their proposals to the government.

“If the project is comprehensively grounded, it will be included to the national investment project designed for 2014,” an official source at a MoT told Asia-Plus in an interview.

According to him, the general layout and contractor design for runway renovation have been developed in cooperation with specialists from Aeroproekt, one of major research institutes of Russia’s Civil Aviation.

It is to be noted that the construction of a new international airport in Danghara, 100 kilometers southeast of Dushanbe, has invited speculation that President Emomali Rahmon – a native of the area -- plans to relocate the seat of government there.

An article “Geographic Engineering Par for the Central Asian Course?” posted on EurasiaNet’s website on January 17, 2012 notes that “the speculation began in earnest back in July 2011, when Rahmon’s advisor, semi-official policy weathervane, and then-director of the state-run Center for Strategic Studies, Suhrob Sharipov, said, “It is necessary to say goodbye to the Soviet past in all things, including the capital, Dushanbe.”

Sharipov reportedly posited that Dushanbe is a “small town, not designed to handle the overloading it now experiences,” proposing three still smaller towns as possible replacements -- Danghara, Kulob, and Panjakent.

“Journalists and analysts uniformly dismissed the latter two, particularly Panjakent, which is often cut off from the rest of the country in winter.  But Danghara, interestingly, is Rahmon’s hometown,” the article says.

In recent years, the Tajik government has invested millions in Danghara’s infrastructure, improving the main west-east highway that runs through and linking it to the nearby railway that once bypassed it.