Et Cetera

For the third time this year, the elected President of a former Soviet republic has been forced out of office by a popular uprising. Rebel militiamen in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, seized President Rakhmon Nabiyev as he drove to the airport and forced him at gunpoint to sign a formal resignation. Nabiyev, the longtime communist boss of Tajikistan, won almost 60% of the vote in a presidential election last November. Fighting broke out between Nabiyev's supporters and his rivals, a coalition of democratic and Islamic groups, and in recent weeks the clashes turned into civil war.