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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Tajikistan
Index
Topographical barriers between northern and southern Tajikistan have
prevented the effective transportation and communication linkage of the
two regions (see Topography and Drainage, this ch.). The most important
form of transportation has been the railroad; highways are few and of low
quality (see fig. 10). Radio and television systems are limited and
government controlled.
Railroads
The north and the south are served by railway networks that link them
to neighboring regions of Uzbekistan rather than to each other. Rail
traffic between the two regions of Tajikistan must follow a
1,340-kilometer route through Uzbekistan. As is the case with other parts
of the economic infrastructure in Central Asia, railway routes reflect the
needs of the larger economic system of which Tajikistan was a part until
1991. The railway system in the north was established when that area was
part of the Russian Empire's Guberniya of Turkestan. In that era, the
railroad from Tashkent, the capital of Turkestan, extended into the
agricultural and industrial centers in the Fergana Valley, which includes
the far northern part of today's Tajikistan. The railroads in the south
were built in the Soviet era, in part to facilitate the shipment of cotton
grown in the southernmost parts of Central Asia, not just in Tajikistan,
to other parts of the Soviet Union.
In the early 1990s, substandard equipment was the most serious problem
of the Tajikistani railroad system. Levels of freight haulage and
passenger service declined steadily as railroad cars sat idle, waiting for
spare parts and repairs. By 1994 delivery of goods to the more remote
regions of the country had become a hazardous and unpredictable operation.
Data as of March 1996
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