To hit enlistment quotas, Tajik military recruitment officers begin resorting to desperate measures. Shanghaiing, intimidation, and blackmail are just some of the means used by military recruitment officers in Tajikistan.  But that is just for starters.  Eurasianet reports that to pressure communities into giving up their sons, military recruitment officers will disconnect the electricity, detain relatives, and shutter mosques.

The hunting season for men of draft age, which applies to people between 17 and 27, happens twice yearly.  

Senior school students in Dushanbe even carry their birth certificates and paperwork from their schools during the conscription campaigns to prove to prowling recruiters that they are still studying.

Eurasianet reports that not long after dawn on the first day of this year’s spring conscription campaign, on April 1, the mayor of Khorog, the capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, or GBAO, posted a statement online to say his city had already achieved 104 percent of the quota.  Eighteen people even returned to Tajikistan from Russia so they could serve, he claimed.

According to Eurasianet, Anora Sarkorova, a journalist based in Europe but originally from the GBAO, wrote on her popular Telegram channel that she had learned of young people being scooped up directly from schools and that parents of eligible men were threatened with reprisals unless they got their children to return from Russia.  In other episodes from Khorog reported by Sarkorova, young people were reportedly expelled from university so that they could be enlisted.

A resident of Panjakent, a town in the Tajik northern province of Sughd, told Eurasianet of how several people there had been arrested by the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) as a way to pressure them into getting their sons to return from Russia.

Male students in universities were reportedly allowed to take their exams early so that they would be freed up from their studies and thereby rendered eligible.

A resident of Kolkhozobod, a town in Khatlon province, around 130 kilometers south of Dushanbe, told Eurasianet that their neighborhood went without electricity for three days until they could agree among themselves on whose sons would enlist.  After three days, the residents reportedly came to an agreement: some got their sons to return from Russia, others snitched on the ones who had hidden.

Dilrabo Samadova, head of the Office of Civil Liberties, a group that campaigns for the rights of military personnel, told Eurasianet that the lot of conscripts has improved somewhat in the past 15 years or so. She conceded, however, that mandatory military service remains as unpopular as ever.

According to her, young people do not strive to fulfil their constitutional duty because of hazing.  Military personnel are reportedly subjected to bullying, including physical abuse, for up to six months.

The two-month-long effort seeking to enlist young men aged 18-27 for the two-year compulsory military service takes place in Tajikistan twice a year, in the spring and in the autumn.

Young Tajiks can avoid or postpone military service if they are ill, studying at university, an only son, or if they have two children.

Recall, amendments have been made to the country’s law on military service this year.  The amendments came into effect on February 4, 2021 and young men in Tajikistan who wish to forgo the military service may now do so by paying a fee to the government.  A one-month basic reserve service will be organized for those who did not perform conscript service for a fee.  At the end of basic reserve service they will receive military cards.

Besides, under the law on the universal military duty in new edition, graduates of universities having military department will also be drafted into the army for one year.

Only people who have done military service will be permitted to obtain employment with the government or join the army in a professional capacity.

Exact numbers on how many young men are conscripted are not made public.  According to some sources within the Ministry of Defense, every year, some 15,000-16,000 young Tajik men are drafted into the country’s armed forces.  

Tajikistan’s armed forces consist of Ground Forces, Mobile Forces (paratroopers of the armed forces of Tajikistan), Air Force and Air Defense Force.