THE BACKGROUND

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The Tajik conflict, though formally relegated to the margin of international relations and remaining, in general outline, a local conflict despite its obvious relevance to events in Afghanistan, has increasingly engaged the attention of specialists. This is attributable to purely political considerations (the importance which the conflict has for Russia and Russia's strong involvement in developments in Tajikistan), as well as to the nature of the conflict-generating factors in that country, which are not exceptional and are manifested on a larger or smaller scale in the other Central Asian countries. One can name several sets of conflict-generating factors which helped to trigger the conflict and have kept it alive for such a long time:

1. Contradictions between clans inside Tajikistan;
2. Inter-ethnic and quasi inter-ethnic tensions;
3. Ideological confrontation (the conservatives, including the adherents of communist ideology, versus the Democrats and the Islamists).

In actual fact, all these dimensions are present - but neither of them taken separately can help answer the question, why after the collapse of the USSR it was peaceful Tajikistan that had become the arena of the most ferocious civil war.

According to Olivier Roy, the well-known French researcher who had spent several years in Tajikistan as an OSCE representative, "Les facteurs qui ont provoque la guerre civile au Tadjikistan existent partout a des degres divers (islamisme, ethnicite, localisme), mais ils ont ete exesperes au Tadjikistan par la faiblesse de l'appareil d'Etat et de l'identite nationale. Ailleurs en Asie centrale, ils peuvent declencher des troubles locaux, mais ne risque pas d'aboutir a des conflicts generalises." (1)

The Tajik conflict presents a model of a complicated mix of traditional and modern triggers. It would be wrong to go along with certain researchers and to see the origin of the Tajik conflict first and foremost in terms of a rebellion of a traditional society provoked by "rash and destructive modernization" (2). There is no denying that Tajik society has remained traditional in its essence. It is equally undeniable that the modernization process in Tajikistan, just as in many Third World countries, had its own shortcomings, was agonizing in its own manner and, to a greater or lesser degree, forced the traditional social institutions to change or adapt themselves to new realities and to learn the art of functioning within their framework.

Yet it would not be fair to try and mechanically apply to Tajikistan the model of the rebellion of traditional Third World population groups that have succumbed to Islamist and fundamentalist propaganda. First, in Tajikistan modernization was not accompanied either by an exodus of the population from the countryside to the urban areas or by its pauperization. One simply cannot visualize Dushanbe in the Soviet period as a city swamped by crowds of destitute homeless people, who had been compelled to leave their rural homelands (as the case has been in India and Egypt). Second, modernization had not caused mass-scale marginalization or a dangerous destruction of familiar values accompanied by the invasion of alien culture (as was the case in Iran).

The Islamists found a favourable climate in the countryside, where self-identification according to religion was well-familiar and could be used as a mobilizing factor. More over, the discontent which the Islamists played up was strongly flavoured with interregional rivalries and distrust. In the southern areas of Tajikistan the people attributed the blame for the proliferating troubles and problems not to the administration, as it usually happens, but more specifically to its higher functionaries who were all natives of Leninabad Region. Representatives of Kurgan-Tyube (the Vakhsh Valley, which is the country's main farming area), the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (the Pamiri highlands) and Garm (the Pamiri foothills) found themselves upstaged on the political arena. Kurgan-Tyube, moreover, is inhabited by the natives of other parts of the Republic (Garm, Kulyab and the Pamirs), who were resettled in the course of the region's planned development in the 1920s; they still cling to their ancestral self-identification. It was Kurgan-Tyube that became the scene of the most ferocious fighting during the civil war. (In order to avoid a replay of the civil war experience, to terminate the independent status of Kurgan-Tyube Region and to make Kulyab safe, Kurgan-Tyube and Kulyab were subsequently joined in a single Khatlon Region.)

In Tajikistan the protest assumed its clearcut regional tenor precisely because the country has a fragmented society with a minimum of countrywide identification.

The Tajik nation came into being only under Soviet rule, when certain ethno-territorial entities were granted quasi sovereignty and the status of republics. Even though the Tajik Soviet Republic appeared on the map (which in its time was not an easy-going process), the Tajiks have remained a fragmented society held together by administrative mechanisms rather than by common cultural values and a common historicalbackground.

The Tajiks prefer to identify themselves according to the region, locality, village or city of their origin. They would rather say "I am a Kulyabi, or a Pianjikenti" then "I am a Tajik". The latter identification is used only for the outsiders; for the Tajik population it lacks informative substance, whereas local identification can say more about a person than any official biodata.

The difference between the Northerners and the Southerners, including the Pamiris, is particularly striking. Some observers tend to believe that they belong to different ethnic groupings on the strength of their appearance, cultural practices and traditions. There are some small ethnic groups, each speaking its own language. Regional differences are further strengthened by religious ones: the Pamiris belong to the Ismaili branch of Islam, whereas the majority of the people are Sunnites.

The setting up of the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan has not significantly contributed to the elimination of the fragmentation. The Southerners remained alienated from the Tajik's main cultural centres (Bokhara and Samarkand, which had been ceded to Uzbekistan) and from the North (Leninabad Region). This region, the Republic's main industrial and farming area, comprising about 40 per cent of its total population and bordering on Uzbekistan, developed a life style of its own. It became a source of the educated elite, providing the cadre of the communist 1 nomenklatura 0 and government officials.

In a fragmented society, stability can be preserved by means of a system of internal checks and counterweights, by the formation of coalitions that correspond to the existing balance of power. According to V.I.Bushkov and D.V.Mikulsky, two Russian specialists in ethnology, "In Tajikistan regionalism is also manifested in the fact that people originating from different localities (or even villages) have special social niches assigned to them.... Those from Leninabad have had a monopoly on party and government posts and often became managers of various enterprises, including those situated in the South. People from Karategin used to control the consumers' unions and the entire trading system. Until recently (the year 1991. - I.Z.) the rank-and file and sergeants of the internal security forces were recruited mostly from the Kulyabis. When M.Navjuvanov, a Pamiri, became Minister of the Interior, his compatriots began to drive the Kulyabis out of this sphere." (3)

A system of this kind cannot be stable, and it is constantly challenged on many counts, e. g. by the growing strength of some of the partners, by personal ambitions or attempts to redivide the spheres of influence. This kind of precarious and relative stability is fraught with conflict, even though it may remain in a latent stage for some time, without causing an all-out crisis of the existing system of relations.

In the case of Tajikistan, it was largely the Central Union authority that regulated inter-regional and inter-ethnic relations in the country. As a constituent part of a unified state ruled by a tough authoritarian regime, Tajikistan had to face the difficulties of developing as a dependency, but it was also able to draw on a powerful mechanism of support in order to maintain the existing inter-regional hierarchy (in this context it is irrelevant whether this was fair or unfair) and to enjoy certain social guarantees, economic aid, etc. The Union Centre had at its disposal powerful military levers which would guarantee a rapid restoration of order, should anyone try to destabilize the situation by aiming at a redivision of power; in general outline, its role was that of a restraining force.

It should be remembered that Tajikistan had always been one of the poorest Union Republics, with very low consumption standards, and its survival without large-scale funding from the outside had been widely considered a doubtful proposition.

Under the Soviet regime some efforts were made to improve the political balance among the regions, but the Leninabadis remained at the top. However strong the Southerners' dissatisfaction with the existing "division of labour", they would never have dared to challenge it under the communists.

When the Central authority could no longer have any impact on the situation in the Union republics, old hatreds and tensions came to the surface. In the absence of a mechanism to keep them in check, they could not but become a destructuring factor for the state itself. Encouragement from the outside also had a role to play in heightening the tensions.