Civil War in Tajikistan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Civil War in Tajikistan | |||||||||
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| Image:Tajikfighter.jpg Fighting in Tajikistan | |||||||||
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| Combatants | |||||||||
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| Casualties | |||||||||
| Over 50,000 killed, 1.2 million displaced | |||||||||
| Conflicts in the former Soviet Union |
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| Nagorno-Karabakh – South Ossetia – Abkhazia – Georgia – North Ossetia – Transnistria – Tajikistan – 1st Chechnya – Dagestan – 2nd Chechnya |
The Civil War in Tajikistan was an armed conflict that took place in Tajikistan from May 1992 to June 1997. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of Tajik nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, and political struggles between the ruling elite and the opposition were all factors that played into the violent conflict.
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[edit] Background
Mountainous and isolated, Tajikistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1929. Before that it was an autonomous region within the Uzbek SSR and its indigenous peoples, the Iranian Tajiks, resisted social change that the Kremlin attempted to impose on them. Because of this, Tajikistan's political apparatus (which was initially comprised of mostly ethnic Tajiks) was purged under Joseph Stalin (this occurred twice; once in 1927-28 and again in 1930-31). <ref name="nationalties">Zev Katz, Rosemarie Rogers, and Frederic Harned. Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalties, p. 322. ISBN 0029170907</ref> After the establishment of Stalin's collectivization initiative in the republic (which too was bitterly resisted until 1934), the Soviet government did little to develop the newly-formed Tajik state and it remained relatively behind other Soviet Republics in terms of living conditions, education, and industry. After Stalin's purge of ethnic Tajiks from the state government, it was primarily governed by officials sent out from Moscow. <ref name="world-ref">M. Wesley Shoemaker. World Today Series: Russia And The Commonwealth Of Independent States, p. 215. ISBN 1887985786</ref> Soviet years also brought increased ethnic tensions given that roughly 40% of the state's population were non-Tajiks (the bulk of which were Uzbeks and Russians). <ref name="NewStates-NewPolitics">Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras. New States, New Politics: Building Post-Soviet Nations, p. 607-8. ISBN 0521577993</ref> This pattern changed under Mikhail Gorbachev with his reforms of glasnost and perestroika.<ref name="world-ref" />
Once ethnic Tajik CPSU members asserted themselves as the head of the Tajik SSR, they began to perceive Tajik nationalist sentiments to have a widespread following. This attitude was reflected in policy shifts in 1989 and mainifested itself in many forms. These included the establishment of a Tajik cultural foundation to preserve Tajik heritage, the changing of the name of Tajikistan's second largest city Leninabad back to Khujand, the local media printing editorials that expressed explicit nationalist concerns (most of which were authored by members of the future opposition), and the enactment of the 1989 language law which gave the Tajik language primacy over Russian.<ref name="NewStates-NewPolitics02">Bremmer and Taras. p. 606.</ref> The Tajik state government also tried to persuade Moscow to cede the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara to them as they were once key centers of the Samanid Empire, considered to be the beginning of the Tajik nation. <ref name="Planet">Bradley Mayhew, Paul Clammer, and Michael Kohn. Lonely Planet: Central Asia, p. 319. ISBN 1864502967</ref>
However, the Tajik ruling elite did not have a monopoly on Tajik nationalist expression. Public support among Tajiks in the republic's capital of Dushanbe, for example, for improving the status of the Tajik language began months before the passage of the 1989 language law. Growing Tajik nationalism in the late 1980s also took form in alternative Tajik nationalist political organizations, which operated openly and articulated nationalist concerns. Among other things, these groups also pushed for full economic and political sovereignty from the Soviet Union. <ref name="NewStates-NewPolitics02" /> It was, however, harder to articulate the attitudes of the rural Tajiks who the ruling elite and non-Tajiks in Dushanbe considered "backward," "primitive," and "lacking a full-fleged ideology but capable of xenophobia and Islamic fundamentalism." Even Tajik nationalist opposition groups considered rural Tajiks ignorant of their national heritage. Ironically, during the civil war, members of the Dushanbe ruling elite would soon begin to play an active role to ally themselves with local rural groups in hopes of achieving victory. <ref name="NewStates-NewPolitics03">Bremmer and Taras. p. 607.</ref>
[edit] The first year of fighting
Tensions began in the spring of 1992 after opposition members took to the streets in demonstrations against presidential elections the previous year. President Rakhmon Nabiyev and speaker of the Supreme Soviet Safarali Kenjayev orchestrated the dispersal of weapons to pro-government militias while the opposition turned to rebels in Afghanistan for military aid.
Fighting broke out in May of 1992 between old guard supporters of the government, backed by Moscow, and a loosely organized opposition composed of disenfranchised groups from the regions Garm and Gorno-Badakhshan, democratic liberal reformists, and Islamists. Nabiyev was ousted from the government after the opposition took control of Dushanbe in September 1992.
With the aid of the Russian military and Uzbekistan, pro-government forces routed the opposition in early and late 1992. In December 1992 a new government was formed under the leadership of Emomali Rahmonov, representing a shift in power from the old power based in Leninabad to the militias from Kulyab, from which Rahmanov came.<ref name=Hiro>Dilip Hiro. Between Marx and Muhammad, HarperCollins. (London, 1995).</ref><ref name=Rashid>Ahmed Rashid. The Resurgence of Central Asia. Oxford University Press. Karachi. 1994</ref>
The height of hostilities occurred between 1992 and 1993 and pitted Kulyabi militias against an array of groups, including militants from the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) and ethnic minority Pamiris from Gorno-Badakhshan. In large part due to the foreign support they received, the Kulyabi militias were able to soundly defeat opposition forces and went on what has been described by Human Rights Watch as an ethnic cleansing campaign against Pamiris and Garmis.<ref name=HWR>Human Rights Watch Press Backgrounder on Tajikistan. Human Rights Watch (2001). Retrieved on [[November 042006]].</ref> The campaign was concentrated in areas south of the capital and included the murder of prominent individuals, mass killings, the burning of villages, and the expulsion of the Pamiri and Garmi population into Afghanistan. The violence was particularly concentrated in Qurgonteppa, the powerbase of the IRP and home to many Garmis. Tens of thousands were killed or fled to Afghanistan. <ref name=osi>Tajikistan: Refugee Reintegration And Conflict Prevention. Open Society Institute (1998). Retrieved on [[November 022006]].</ref><ref name=hrw>Human Rights Watch World Report: Tajikistan. Human Rights Watch (1994). Retrieved on [[November 022006]].</ref><ref name=Hiro/><ref name=Rashid/>
[edit] Opposition reorganizes
In Afghanistan the opposition reorganized and rearmed with the aid of the Jamiat-i-Islami. The group’s leader Ahmad Shah Masoud became a benefactor of the Tajik opposition. Later in the war the opposition organized under an umbrella group called the United Tajik Opposition, or UTO. Elements of the UTO, especially in the Tavildara region, became aligned with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, while the leadership of the UTO was opposed to this alliance.<ref name=Rashid2>Ahmed Rashid. Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. Orient Longman. Hyderabad. 2002.</ref>
[edit] Continued stalemate and peace
Other combatants and armed bands that flourished in this civil chaos simply reflected the breakdown of central authority rather than loyalty to a political faction. In response to the violence the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan was deployed. Most fighting in the early part of the war occurred in the southern part of the country, but by 1996 the rebels were combating Russian troops in the capital city of Dushanbe. Islamic radicals from northern Afghanistan also began to fight Russian troops in the region. A UN-sponsored armistice finally ended the war in 1997. Peaceful elections were held in 1999.
[edit] War's toll
By the end of the war Tajikistan was in a state of complete devastation. The estimated dead numbered from 50,000 to as many as 100,000. Around 1.2 million people were refugees inside and outside of the country. Tajikistan's physical infrastructure, government services, and economy were in disarray and much of the population was surviving on subsistence hand outs from international aid organizations.
Numerous individuals of notability were assassinated and murdered during the war. Journalists were in particular targeted for killings, and dozens of Tajikistani journalists died and many more fled the country. Notable individuals killed include journalist and politician Otakhon Latifi; journalist and Jewish leader Meirkhaim Gavrielov; politician Safarali Kenjayev; and four members of the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan, including Yutaka Akino, a noted Japanese scholar of Central Asian history,
[edit] References
[edit] External Links
- Key texts and agreements in the Tajikistan peace process (in Russian & English)
