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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Tajikistan
Index
In the first years of independence, politics in Tajikistan were
overshadowed by a long struggle for political power among cliques that
sought Soviet-style dominance of positions of power and privilege and a
collection of opposition forces seeking to establish a new government
whose form was defined only vaguely in public statements. The result was a
civil war that began in the second half of 1992. A faction favoring a
neo-Soviet system took control of the government in December 1992 after
winning the civil war with help from Russian and Uzbekistani forces.
Transition to Post-Soviet Government
In the late 1980s, problems in the Soviet system had already provoked
open public dissatisfaction with the status quo in Tajikistan. In February
1990, demonstrations against government housing policy precipitated a
violent clash in Dushanbe. Soviet army units sent to quell the riots
inflicted casualties on demonstrators and bystanders alike. Using the
riots as a pretext to repress political dissent, the regime imposed a
state of emergency that lasted long after the riots had ended. In this
period, criticism of the regime by opposition political leaders was
censored from state radio and television broadcasts. The state brought
criminal charges against the leaders of the popular front organization
Rastokhez (Rebirth) for inciting the riots, although the Supreme Soviet
later ruled that Rastokhez was not implicated. Students were expelled from
institutions of higher education merely for attending nonviolent political
meetings. The events of 1990 made the opposition even more critical of the
communist old guard than it had been previously.
In the highly charged political atmosphere after the failure of the
August 1991 coup attempt in Moscow, Tajikistan's Supreme Soviet voted for
independence for the republic in September 1991. That vote was not
intended to signal a break with the Soviet Union, however. It was rather a
response to increasingly vociferous opposition demands and to similar
declarations by Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Following the dissolution of
the Soviet Union, a development in which Tajikistan played no role, the
republic joined the CIS when that loose federation of former Soviet
republics was established in December 1991.
The political opposition within Tajikistan was composed of a diverse
group of individuals and organizations. The three major opposition parties
were granted legal standing at various times in 1991. The highest-ranking
Islamic figure in the republic, the chief qadi , Hajji Akbar
Turajonzoda, sided openly with the opposition coalition beginning in late
1991. The opposition's ability to govern and the extent of its public
support never were tested because it gained only brief, token
representation in a 1992 coalition government that did not exercise
effective authority over the entire country.
In the early independence period, the old guard sought to depict itself
as the duly elected government of Tajikistan now facing a power grab by
Islamic radicals who would bring to Tajikistan fundamentalist repression
similar to that occurring in Iran and Afghanistan. Yet both claims were
misleading. The elections for the republic's Supreme Soviet and president
had been neither free nor truly representative of public opinion. The
legislative election was held in February 1990 under the tight constraints
of the state of emergency. In the presidential election of 1991, Nabiyev
had faced only one opponent, filmmaker and former communist Davlat
Khudonazarov, whose message had been stifled by communist control of the
news media and the workplace. Despite Nabiyev's advantageous position,
Khudonazarov received more than 30 percent of the vote.
In the first half of 1992, the opposition responded to increased
repression by organizing ever larger proreform demonstrations. When
Nabiyev assembled a national guard force, coalition supporters, who were
concentrated in the southern Qurghonteppa Province and the eastern Pamir
region, acquired arms and prepared for battle. Meanwhile, opponents of
reform brought their own supporters to Dushanbe from nearby Kulob Province
to stage counterdemonstrations in April of that year. Tensions mounted,
and small-scale clashes occurred. In May 1992, after Nabiyev had broken
off negotiations with the oppositionist demonstrators and had gone into
hiding, the confrontation came to a head when opposition demonstrators
were fired upon and eight were killed. At that point, the commander of the
Russian garrison in Dushanbe brokered a compromise. The main result of the
agreement was the formation of a coalition government in which one-third
of the cabinet posts would go to members of the opposition.
For most of the rest of 1992, opponents of reform worked hard to
overturn the coalition and block implementation of measures such as
formation of a new legislature in which the opposition would have a voice.
In the summer and fall of 1992, vicious battles resulted in many
casualties among civilians and combatants. Qurghonteppa bore the brunt of
attacks by antireformist irregular forces during that period. In August
1992, demonstrators in Dushanbe seized Nabiyev and forced him at gunpoint
to resign. The speaker of the Supreme Soviet, Akbarsho Iskandarov--a
Pamiri closely associated with Nabiyev--became acting president.
Iskandarov advocated a negotiated resolution of the conflict, but he had
little influence over either side.
The political and military battles for control continued through the
fall of 1992. In November the Iskandarov coalition government resigned in
the hope of reconciling the contending factions. Later that month, the
Supreme Soviet, still dominated by hard-liners, met in emergency session
in Khujand, an antireform stronghold, to select a new government favorable
to their views. When the office of president was abolished, the speaker of
parliament, Imomali Rahmonov, became de facto head of government. A
thirty-eight-year-old former collective farm director, Rahmonov had little
experience in government. The office of prime minister went to Abdumalik
Abdullojanov, a veteran hard-line politician.
Once in possession of Dushanbe, the neo-Soviets stepped up repression.
Three leading opposition figures, including Turajonzoda and the deputy
prime minister in the coalition government, were charged with treason and
forced into exile, and two other prominent opposition supporters were
assassinated in December. There were mass arrests on nebulous charges and
summary executions of individuals captured without formal arrest. Fighting
on a smaller scale between the forces of the old guard and the opposition
continued elsewhere in Tajikistan and across the border with Afghanistan
into the mid-1990s.
The conflict in Tajikistan often was portrayed in Western news reports
as occurring primarily among clans or regional cliques. Many different
lines of affiliation shaped the configuration of forces in the conflict,
however, and both sides were divided over substantive political issues.
The old guard had never reconciled itself to the reforms of the Gorbachev
era (1985-91) or to the subsequent demise of the Soviet regime. Above all,
the factions in this camp wanted to ensure for themselves a monopoly of
the kinds of benefits enjoyed by the ruling elite under the Soviet system.
The opposition coalition factions were divided over what form the new
regime in Tajikistan ought to take: secular parliamentary democracy,
nationalist reformism, or Islamicization. Proponents of the last option
were themselves divided over the form and pace of change.
In April 1994, peace talks arranged by the United Nations (UN) began
between the post-civil war government in Dushanbe and members of the
exiled opposition. Between that time and early 1996, six major rounds of
talks were held in several different cities. Several smaller-scale
meetings also occurred directly between representatives of both sides or
through Russian, UN, or other intermediaries. Observers at the main rounds
of talks included representatives of Russia, other Central Asian states,
Iran, Pakistan, the United States, the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE-- after 1994 the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, OSCE--see Glossary), and the Organization of the
Islamic Conference. In the first two years, these negotiations produced
few positive results. The most significant result was a cease-fire
agreement that took effect in October 1994. The initial agreement,
scheduled to last only for a few weeks, was renewed repeatedly into 1996,
albeit with numerous violations by both sides. As a result of the cease
fire, the UN established an observer mission in Tajikistan, which had a
staff of forty-three in early 1996.
Data as of March 1996
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