Abadan, before (left) and after (right) the explosion. Photos from Ferghana.ru (click on the picture to see more).

Editor’s note: Looking for the truth about Abadan, neweurasia’s Annasoltan interviews three individuals who claim to have insider knowledge of the armory and who assert that either professional laziness or arson intended to cover up illegal arms smuggling caused the explosion. Frighteningly, the claims also include the existence of a secret “huge bomb” in the village of Bekrewe.

The cause behind last month’s armory explosion in Abadan remains murky. The official version is that the fire which caused the blast occurred as a result of very hot weather.

Of course, that begs reason a bit. Was it any more hot this year than in previous years? If not, had the weapons somehow degraded so badly by now? If so, why would that have been allowed to happen?

I talked with a few experts about what they think could have happened. Here are their views:

A Turkmen expert who knows the specific situation in the facility told me the following on the condition of anonymity:

“Given the circumstances in there, it could have been possible. The controls in the weapons depot were let down.

“The controllers have always come just to pick up their pay, to sign the papers before they disappeared quickly. Typically for Turkmenistan, control was really a matter of formality, because in many cases the controllers are people with connections to higher-ups in the government and thus they are higher ‘ranked’ than their ostensible over seers [in the facility].

“Every year, before military preparations, problematic documents and proofs are systematically destroyed. There are also incidents in which food storage facilities are burnt down after large amounts of their content have been stolen.”

The expert also recalls incidents within key ministries of documents being destroyed by officials hoping to eliminate any evidence of wrongdoing that could later be used against them.

A former senior analyst has this to say, also on condition of anonymity:

“A lot of trained cadres have left the country. The current military personnel lacks profound knowledge, intelligence and necessary work ethics to maintain the proper conditions in the facility. So, it is no wonder that it came that way [i.e., that the explosion happened].

“In the village of Bekrewe, not far from Abadan, there is a large underground base where heavy weapons from the Soviet era are stored. Among them is a huge bomb that has remained from the Soviet war in Afghanistan. If that bomb explodes, it could create a huge crater within the range of the surrounding 50 kilometers, inflicting a damage much worse than the one that occurred in Abadan.”

The location of Bekrewe. Abadan (Büzmeýin) is 15-20 kilometers slightly to the southeast.

A Turkmen military official, also on condition of anonymity, claims that in fact the fire was actually an act of arson committed by certain military personnel. According to his version of events, they had been frequently stealing from the facility and selling the weapons. However, in the lead-up to to the 20th anniversary since the fall of the Soviet Union, military chiefs wanted to carry out an arms inventory; the fire was started to cover up their crimes. (When I asked about the stolen weapons’ buyers, the military official thinks that they could have come from Afghanistan, where an illegal arms market has long flourished and the demand for all sorts of weapons is high, be it for the Taliban’s war effort or locals’ self-defense.)

The military official’s claims could explain several things, for example, why several high-level military officials and state security officials were sacked by the president without any explanation, or why the government originally insisted that fireworks had been the source of the explosion (that is, if these were actually different than the ritual official sackings and standard responsibility-avoidance).