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Asia and Oceania
Tajikistan |
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Country information
HISTORY
Recent History
Tajikistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in September 1991. Conflict was avoided in the immediate struggle for power, but tensions quickly escalated, and by the end of 1992, civil war had broken out.
The civil war in 1992-1997 between the government of President Rahmon and the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) left around 50,000 dead, over 10% of the population (of then approximately 5.7m) displaced and caused $7 billion in damages. UN-mediated talks led to a cease-fire in October 1994, and on 27 June 1997 both sides signed the General Agreement on Peace and National Accord in Moscow. The accord created a National Commission for Reconciliation (CNR) to bring together government and UTO figures. As a result, the Islamic Revival Party received a number of ministerial positions. A Russian-led and dominated peacekeeping force was stationed inside Tajikistan.
A United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT - established by UNSCR 968 of 16 December 1994) assisted with implementing the cease-fire agreement. Its mandate expired in May 2000. A United Nations Peace-building Support Office (UNTOP) which succeeded it finally closed in July 2007, a decade after the signing of the peace agreement.
The implementation of the peace accord was, for a time, threatened by warlords fighting to keep control of parts of the country. In November 1998 troops loyal to the renegade commander, Mahmud Khudoberdiyev (an ethnic Uzbek), mounted an armed incursion into northern Tajikistan. They were repelled after some fighting, but this was a worrying sign of the disenfranchisement felt by the northerners (principally Uzbeks). In 1999 and 2000, armed Islamic rebels opposed to the Government of Uzbekistan used Tajikistan to mount armed incursions into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. There were several political murders in 2001, but since 2002 levels of violence have decreased substantially. Despite the fact that the IRP and other UTO forces retain very few positions in government, the political and security situation is now stable.
Longer Historical Perspective
Much, if not all, of what is today Tajikistan was part of ancient Persia's Achaemenid Empire (sixth to fourth centuries BC), which was subdued by Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC. The northern part of what is now Tajikistan was part of Soghdiana, a distinct region that intermittently existed as a combination of separate oasis states and sometimes was subject to other states. As intermediaries on the Silk Route between China and markets to the west and south, the Soghdians imported religions such as Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Manichaeism.
Islamic Arabs began the conquest of the region in earnest in the early eighth century. Conversion to Islam occurred by means of incentives, gradual acceptance, and force of arms. Islam spread most rapidly in cities and along the main river valleys. By the ninth century, it was the prevalent religion in the entire region.
In the development of a modern Tajik national identity, the most important state in Central Asia after the Islamic conquest was the Persian-speaking Samanid principality (875-999), which came to rule most of what is now Tajikistan, as well as territory to the south and west. During their reign, the Samanids supported the revival of the written Persian language.
Beginning in the ninth century, Turkish penetration of the Persian cultural sphere increased in Central Asia. The influx of even greater numbers of Turkic peoples began in the eleventh century. The Turkic peoples who moved into southern Central Asia, including what later became Tajikistan, were influenced to varying degrees by Persian culture. During subsequent centuries, the lands that eventually became Tajikistan were part of Turkic or Mongol states. The Persian language remained in use in government, scholarship, and literature. Among the dynasties that ruled all or part of the future Tajikistan between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries were the Seljuk Turks and the Mongols. In the early sixteenth century, Uzbeks conquered Tajikistan but the Uzbek state began to break apart soon after the conquest. By the early nineteenth century, the lands of the future Tajikistan were divided among three states: the Uzbek-ruled Bukhara Khanate, the Kokand Khanate, centred on the Fergana Valley, and the kingdom of Afghanistan. These three principalities subsequently fought each other for control of key areas of the new territory.
Tajikistan was created in 1924 as an autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) within the Uzbekistan SSR. The new autonomous republic included what had been eastern Bukhara and had a population of about 740,000, out of a total population of nearly 5 million in Uzbekistan as a whole. Its capital was established in Dushanbe, a mere village of 3,000 in 1920. In 1929 Tajikistan was detached from Uzbekistan and given full status as a Soviet socialist republic. The territory that is now northern Tajikistan (Soghd) was added to the new republic. In many respects, Tajikistan was one of the least developed of the Soviet Republics, and has suffered particularly severely from the collapse of the previously unified Soviet economy.
