Far East: Where Will Tajikistan, Troubled By Legacies Of Its Civil War, Head In The Future?

A generation of Tajiks has come of age hearing only secondhand accounts of the civil war. In contrast, those who lived through it remember the conflict vividly, their memories still sharp. For many, the fear of returning to such chaos is so strong that they would endure almost anything from their government if it meant preventing Tajikistan from ever falling into civil war again.

“The war in my country has remained forgotten against the backdrop of the other conflicts which accompanied the Soviet collapse. But we, the Tajiks, remember it perfectly, and we see its consequences in the dictatorial regime of President Emomali Rahmon, who has ruled the country since 1994,” writes Bakhtiyor Sobiri, a journalist from Tajikistan. Recently, the UN Human Rights Council criticized Tajikistan's government in a report for not implementing its recommendation to establish a "truth-seeking state policy" regarding atrocities committed during the country's 1992-1997 civil war.“No steps have seemingly been taken by the Tajikistani government either to grant measures of reparation for the harm suffered by victims of gross human rights violations,” the report reads. What was the consequence of the civil war in Tajikistan, and how has its legacies shaped the Central Asian nation’s landscape today?

The Tajik civil war, sparked by a series of demonstrations in Dushanbe in spring 1992 against the newly formed government of President Rahmon Nabiyev, went on for five years, killing tens, if not hundreds, of thousands and displacing somewhere between 10 to 20 percent of the country’s population. The rebel, a coalition of liberal democratic reformers and Islamists—later organized under the banner of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO)—went against the Russia-supported government of President Rahmon Nabiyev. Until a peace accord was signed in 1997 five years later, the people had suffered from the conditions accompanying the conflicts. There were food shortages, government troops opening fire on civilians, and horrible typhoid outbreaks. The majority of Tajikistan's people remember this and much more. 

The conflict drained the nation and its scars are still visible 20 years later in many forms. The post-war peace agreement promised power-sharing between the government and the opposition, but over the subsequent years, Rahmon’s regime consolidated control, gradually sidelining opposition factions, religious groups, and potential opponents. The leading UTO opposition force during the civil war, now the Islamic Renaissance Party, was designated a “terrorist organization” and has been officially banned since 2015 from all forms of activities, with its leaders imprisoned or forced into exile. This not only violated the terms of the 1997 peace agreement, but further tightened the country’s political space. NGOs have been limited from operating in the country, and independent media has been battered and is now barely surviving. Corruption is rampant, with Rahmon’s now-adult children increasingly taking prominent state posts. Over the past decades, civil society and democratic institutions have gained little growth in the country, where internal security and stability were valued over political freedoms and rights of citizens.

In addition, Tajikistan’s economy was severely impacted by the civil war, which destroyed much of its infrastructure and disrupted economic growth. Cross-regional inequality remains high between groups from the north (Leninabad) and the south (Kulob), with the latter maintaining economic dominance thanks to its ties with Rahmon’s rise to power. Today, the country remains one of the poorest in Central Asia, heavily reliant on remittances from migrant workers in Russia—the same people who were unable to find a job in their home country. 

In today’s Tajikistan, young men and women often feel frustrated due to a sense of exclusion from decision-making, the high unemployment rate, and a tendency among older generations to blame problems on the yound. This sense of injustice and exclusion, according to Muhammadnasim, a 20-year-old student and youth activist in Vahdat, Tajikistan, had resulted in higher vulnerability to recruitment into violent groups, an increase in crime in the area, and also higher rates of gender-based violence.

And if anyone starts questioning all that has happened, the government makes sure to remind them by frequently referring to the horrors of the civil war, especially prior to elections, and asking if the people want the government they have now or want to risk returning to civil war.