Persian Empire
From about 500 BC, most of Central Asia was under Persian
control or influence. Bactria (today thought to be Balkh in
Northern Afghanistan) on the banks of the Oxus (now known as
the Amu Darya) was the center of Persian civilization in Eastern
Iran. The Persians displaced the Scythian and Cimmerian nomadic
tribes in the region. Afrosiab (now Samarcand) was the centre
of the region known as Sogdiana that covered what is today Southern
Uzbekistan and much of Tajikistan. The cities of Samarcand and
Boukhara, although today in the territory of Uzbekistan, are
centres of Tajik/Persian culture.
Alexander the Great
Alexander of Macedonia defeated the armies of the
Persian Emperor Darius II between 336-323 BC and brought about
the fall of the Achaemenid Empire. Alexander subjugated Sogdiana
but, in order to promote the pacification of the conquered
peoples, married Roxane, daughter of a local chieftain. When
Alexander died in 323 BC, the Macedonian Empire broke up.
After a long period during which Bactria was ruled by Graeco-Macedonian
satraps and subjected to frequent invasions by nomadic Turkic
hordes, the area fell under the control of the Yuchi from
what is now the Gansu region in Western China (Kushan Empire)
from the second century BC to the third century AD.
The Persian Sasanids (224-642 AD) destroyed the Kushan Empire
and the region reverted to Persian control.
White Huns
In AD 400 a new wave of Central Asian nomads under
the Hephthalites took control of the region. According to
Procopius' History of the Wars, written in the mid 6th century,
the Hephthalites or “White Huns”, “are of the stock of the
Huns in fact as well as in name: however they do not mingle
with any of the Huns known to us. They are the only ones among
the Huns who have white bodies....” If Procopius’ description
is correct (and this is disputed by the accounts of other
travelers), the relatively large number of inhabitants of
Gorno-Badakhshan with blond hair and blue eyes may be related
to this ethnic ancestry, although other theories link these
features with Macedonian, Russian and even nomadic Saxon ethnic
stock.
The Hephthalites were defeated in AD 565 by a coalition of
Sasanids and Western Turks. The Sasanids took Bactria and
the Western Turks ruled over Sogdiana.
Arab invasions
Soon after the death of the prophet Mohammed, Central
Asia was invaded successively by the Arabs of the Umayyad
and Abbasid dynasties. The Arab conquests saw a flowering
of Islamic thought, philosophy and mysticism and stemmed Chinese
expansion in Central Asia. However, Persian influence remained
strong in the region, and new Islamic Persian dynasties sprang
up, of which the most important was that of the Samanid’s
(875 to 999). The Samanid’s period, through the scientific
work of al-Khwarazmi, Ibn-i Sina (Avicenna), al-Biruni and
al-Razi (Razes) and the poetry of Firdowsi and Rudaky, made
a major contribution to the development of Persian language
and culture in the region.
The defeat of the Samanid’s by the Turkish Ghaznavid dynasty
in 999 marked the beginning of the decline in Persian influence
in Central Asia. From the end of the first century AD, there
had been sporadic westward movements of nomadic Turkic peoples
from the area of what is now Mongolia: the massive military
invasions under the leadership of Genghis Khan (Temujin -
1167?-1227) and Tamerlane (Timur-Lang - 1336?-1405) ended
Persian dominance in the region. Largely due to the protection
provided by the mountainous terrain, the peoples of what is
now Tajikistan were better able to preserve their society
and Persian culture. While the languages of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan all have Turkic roots, Tajikistan
is the only former Soviet Republic with an Iranian language;
music, dance and poetry in the Persian tradition play a major
role in Tajik society.
The ”Great Game”
Until the Soviet period, the region was part of the
Emirate of Boukhara.
In the latter part of the 19th century, because of its geographical
location at the confines of the Russian Empire and contiguous
to China and British India, the territory of Tajikistan –
especially the Pamir region of Gorno-Badakhshan – had considerable
strategic importance. The “Great Game”, between Russian and
British adventurers, soldiers and diplomats – staking the
limits of the respective Empires – was largely played out
in the mountains of the Pamir and the Hindu Kush. Subsequently,
at the time of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan
(1979-1989), the Pamir region again assumed strategic importance
for the Soviet Union as one of the main supply routes for
the logistic support of Soviet military operations in Afghanistan.
Soviet Union
After the 1917 Bolshevik coup d’etat, communist power
in Central Asia was challenged by the remnants of the White
Army and a strong resistance movement organised by indigenous
tribes (the so-called “Basmachi” revolt); moreover, the embryonic
Soviet state was faced with vigorous opposition (including
more or less covert support to the Basmachis) from Britain,
with imperial interests to defend in the region. These concerns
led to the determined military subjugation and forced sovietisation
of the native peoples of “Turkestan” in the 1920s. Under Stalin,
the region – in particular the Fergana Valley, the most fertile
area in Central Asia – was divided in 1924 between separate
Soviet Republics in such a way as to maintain a mix of ethnic
groups, the tensions between which could be exploited to justify
the necessity of the strong centralising influence of the
Soviet system. Tajikistan, initially an autonomous republic
within Uzbekistan, became a federated Soviet Socialist Republic
in 1929.
The sovietisation of Central Asia, while imposing a degree
of communist orthodoxy, did not lead to the total destruction
of local culture and religion: the region was far from the
centre, it comprised a large number of backward rural communities
where traditions remained strong and, in addition, the government
in Moscow found it politically advantageous to pay a certain
amount of lip service to the concept of the “multicultural
identity” of the Soviet Union.
Soviet rule brought economic and social benefits for the
Republics of Central Asia. Universal education and health
services achieved a level of literacy and public health far
superior to that achieved in the former British Empire just
across the Wakhan Corridor to the South. Subsidies from Moscow
maintained a standard of living and social services that bore
little relationship to the actual economic development of
the region.
Independence and civil war
Tajikistan was the poorest of the Soviet Republics.
When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Tajikistan became
an independent state but was immediately faced with the economic
problems associated with the breakdown of the centrally planned
Soviet economy: withdrawal of subsidies, disruption of former
guaranteed markets, exchange instability etc. Today Tajikistan
ranks as one of the poorest countries of the world.
In 1992 civil war broke out. Its causes are complex and relate
to some extent to the previously mentioned ethnic (and regional)
tensions that were the legacy of the boundaries attributed
to the new Soviet Republics in 1924, but also to premature
attempts – imitating the policies implemented under Gorbachev
in Russia, with his tacit if not active support – to liberalise
the Tajik political system. At the end of the Soviet period,
power in Tajikistan was tightly guarded by representatives
of the Leninabad district in the North. Gorbachev’s perestroika
and glasnost led to demands in Tajikistan that other regions
of the country should also participate on equal terms in the
political process and that the communist party should abandon
its monopoly of political power in favour of a multiparty
system.
The Tajik civil war was about pluralism and not – as a reading
of the contemporary Western press might have led Western readers
to conclude – a conflict between neo-communists and Islamic
fundamentalists. The eyes of Western journalists were turned
towards other man-made tragedies closer to home in Bosnia
and Somalia: Tajikistan was described in simplistic cliches
for readers already saturated with disasters. Moreover, then
as today, the cliche of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism
served the interests of those major powers that wished to
maintain or extend their influence in Central Asia.
1991 Presidential elections
In 1991, Tajikistan was the first ex-Soviet Republic to hold
free elections: not totally free, of course, and probably
subject to some manipulation, but, in comparison with experience
under the Soviet regime, nevertheless free.
The “Democrats” had formed an alliance against the ruling
Communists with the “Islamic Renaissance Party”, a moderate
Islamic organisation that did not at the time agitate for
Sharia law or the introduction of “Islamic values” in society.
The opposition presidential candidate – a popular film-maker
with origins in the Pamir region of Gorno-Badakhshan – was
beaten by the communist candidate, but his score of some 30%
of votes put pressure on the government to open the country
to a multi-party system.
Refusal of power-sharing
Despite the moderating influence of Gorbachev, the Tajik regime
was not ready to face up to the profound changes implicit
in the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and refused power-sharing.
This inflexibility led to civil war and the subsequent radicalisation
of the Islamic Renaissance Party, many of whose followers
found refuge in Afghanistan where they were influenced by
the much more extreme religious doctrine of the mujaheddin.
With support from the southern region of Kulyab (and probably
of the Russian military forces stationed in Tajikistan), the
leaders of the former government faction defeated the opposition
coalition forces recruited essentially from fighters of Pamiri
(Gorno-Badakhshan) or Garmi (Karategin/Rasht) origin. Large
numbers of people from these mountainous regions had been
relocated in the 1950s to the cotton-growing areas of the
south-west (Kurgan-Tyube). In Dushanbe, the capital, many
of the intellectual elite were of Pamiri origin; exactions
against these ethnic groups in the aftermath of the civil
war forced large numbers to return to their traditional homeland.
Many fighters fled to Afghanistan and subsequently returned
with fundamentalist ideas gained there in the refugee camps,
mainly to the Karategin valley but also to a few predominantly
Sunni areas in the North of Gorno-Badakhshan.
Humanitarian crisis
The civil war compounded the economic disruption caused by
the break-up of the Soviet system and the people of Gorno-Badakhshan
and the Karategin/Rasht valley found themselves virtually
isolated. This national crisis was largely ignored by the
international community: few had even heard of Tajikistan,
let alone where it was located, and considered that it was
a problem in Russia’s backyard of little relevance to the
West. Those few serious newspapers that reported a little
of what was going on too easily adopted the cliche of a conflict
between former hard-line communists and Islamic fundamentalists.
Peace Agreement
The civil war continued at relatively low intensity – mainly
through sporadic cross-border incursions from Afghanistan
– until June 1997, when a peace agreement was signed between
the government of Tajikistan and the United Tajik Opposition.
This agreement opened the way for an interim “power-sharing”
government and Presidential and Parliamentary elections; it
provided also for the integration of opposition forces into
the regular armed forces of Tajikistan. In November, President
Emomali Rakhmonov was re-elected for a seven-year term, and,
in March 2000, elections were held for the upper and lower
houses of parliament, in which the former opposition parties
did not make a strong showing (around 10% of votes).
Although the speed in reaching agreement was undoubtedly
influenced by the unstable situation in Afghanistan, the peace
accord was nevertheless a remarkable achievement; its subsequent
relatively problem-free implementation is even more remarkable.
After a civil war characterised in its opening stages by extreme
brutality (cf the Amnesty International report Tadzhikistan
– Hidden terror: political killings, ‘disappearances’ and
torture since December 1992, May 1993) the integration of
former fighters in the national armed forces and in civil
life has been exceptionally smooth: the process can indeed
be held up as a model for other inter-community or ethnic
conflicts in countries with considerably higher economic and
social resources than Tajikistan. Despite occasional “incidents”,
the peace process has so far been remarkably successful and
the former opposition seems to have accepted its poor electoral
showing without protest. Tajikistan today offers one of the
few examples in the modern world of the full integration of
opposition fighters into regular armed forces.
Tank in riverbed near Kalaihussain – the furthest point in
Gorno-Badakhshan reached by government troops during the civil
war: a symbol of futility
Nevertheless, much of the world press continues to be obsessed
with fears of Islamic fundamentalism in the whole of Central
Asia without distinguishing between the very different situations
of each Republic. While the economic situation in Tajikistan
remains probably more precarious than in any other former
Soviet Republic, the exceptionally high level of literacy
and secular education achieved under the Soviet Union and
the political maturity shown by leaders of both government
and opposition give ground for some optimism that Tajikistan
may ultimately prove more stable than its neighbours. If,
on the other hand, the international community withdraws from
engagement in the development of the country and its institutions
from fear of Islamic fundamentalism, this fear may become
a self-fulfilling prophecy.
HISTORY OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN
In his book Marco Polo (Faber 1959) Maurice Collis writes
of Marco Polo’s visit to Badakhshan, where he recuperated
from an illness: “Balkh, besides being a symbol of the extreme
limit of Greek civilization, was a place beyond which there
came a geographical change. The tangled mass of mountains,
called the Roof of the World and which includes the Pamirs
and the Hindukush, towered up to the east of it, and to cross
them was a greater undertaking than anything the travellers
had faced as yet. But among the mountains they found a tableland
called Badakhshan which was a delightful place. ‘It’s a hard
day’s work to get to the top,’ writes Polo, ‘and there you
find a wide plain covered with grass and trees.’ Through this
parkland flowed streams of sparkling water full of trout.
The air was so pure that the plateau was regarded as a sanatorium
by those living in the valleys, and a visit there cured you
of a fever. ‘I have proved this by experience,’ Polo continues,
‘for when in those parts I had been ill for about year, but
on visiting the plateau, as I was advised to do, I recovered
at once.”
The Pamir region (Gorno-Badakhshan) was incorporated into
the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) in 1925. Prior to
this it had been de jure under the Emirate of Boukhara but
– since the end of the 19th century - de facto under direct
Russian rule.
“Politically, the Pamir peoples have always been heterogenous.
Formerly the Yazgulami, for example, were connected with Darvaz
through Vandzh, belonging, as did the latter, to the state
of Darvaz. The speakers of the Shughni-Roshani languages constituted
the states of Shughnan and Roshan. In the 18th century Roshan
became a vassal to the Shughnan, both contending against their
closer neighbours, Badakhshan and Darvaz and alternately falling
under the supremacy of one or the other. Bartang, at the time,
was part of the state of Roshan. Shughnan and Vakhan were
constantly at war with each other over Ishkashim where ruby
deposits are to be found. From the late 16th century the small
Pamir states were occasionally vassal-states to Bukhara. In
the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century the nomadic
Kirgiz tribes caused the Pamir peoples hardship, cutting them
off from the cultural and trade centres in the Kashgar and
Fergana valleys. In the second half of the 18th century Afghanistan's
interest in the Pamir began to grow. In 1883 the Emir of Afghanistan,
supported by the British, seized Vakhan, Shughnan and Roshan.
By the second half of the 19th century Russia had seized most
of Central Asia, including the East Pamir. In 1868 Russia
established a protectorate over the Bukhara Khanate. In 1895
Russia and Britain came to an agreement over the border in
the Pamir, according to which the left banks of the Roshan,
the Shughnan and the Vakhan went to Afghanistan. The right
banks were ceded nominally to the vassal of Russia, the Emir
of Bukhara. The border divided the ethnic territories between
two countries. In 1905, real power went to the commander of
the local Russian military force. Soviet power was wholly
established by the end of 1921. In 1925 a Pamir District was
established in Badakhshan, an area that had been left to the
U.S.S.R. Later in the same year this area was renamed the
Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region and placed under the jurisdiction
of the Tadzhik SSR, with Khorog as the administrative centre.”
(From http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/pamir_peoples.shtml
)
Within the Tajik SSR, Gorno-Badakhshan became an autonomous
Oblast (province). At the height of the civil war in 1993,
the Gorno-Badakhshan parliament decided to declare the Oblast
an independent Republic and seek re-incorporation in Russia.
Visiting card from 1993 of the Chairman of the Council of
People’s Deputies of “the Autonomous Republic of Badakhshan”
Contrary to misleading press reports that continue to today,
Gorno-Badakhshan was not at any time since 1992 a home or
hotbed of hardline Islamic opposition. Some parts of Gorno-Badakhshan
were indeed occupied by armed opposition groups until the
Peace Agreement was signed (Sagridasht and the Vanch and Yazgulom
Valleys) but did not serve as a base for launching attacks
either on government troops or Russian border guards: most
such attacks came from across the frontier in Afghanistan.
Many Pamiris fought in the civil war alongside the followers
of the Islamic Renaissance Party and created their own militia.
In 1995, however, the leaders of the Pamiri militia gave a
solemn undertaking to His Highness the Aga Khan, spiritual
leader of a large number of Pamiris, that they would never
initiate hostilities against the State or the Russian forces.
Despite much provocation – including the poisoning of their
leader, Majnoon Palaev, in June 1996 – this undertaking was
respected.
The website of the Aga Khan Development Network www.akdn.org
gives examples of development activities that have contributed
to stability in the Pamir region and helped to prevent a slide
into “warlordism” and drug dependence. Under these programmes
many former fighters have been successfully re-integrated
into civil society as farmers or small businessmen – AKDN
can claim with some justification that Pamiri society has
witnessed the conversion of “kalashnikovs into ploughshares”.
See section on Archaeology. In addition to web searches on
historical references in this summary, the following books
are useful: History of Civilizations of Central Asia, UNESCO,
Paris 1996; The Resurgence of Central Asia, Ahmed Rashid,
Zed Books, London 1994; Samanid Renaissance and Establishment
of Tajik Identity, Iraj Bashri, 1997, www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Samanid/Samanid.html;
The Great Game, Peter Hopkirk, London 1990; Tajikistan: Disintegration
or Reconciliation? Shirin Akiner, London 2001; Rand Corporation,
US and Russian Policymaking with Respect to the Use of Force,
California 1996 – Chapter 3 Tajikistan by Arkady Dubnov www.rand.org/publications/CF/CF129/CF-129.chapter3.html
; Aid to Tajikistan, Ernest Greene, Central Asia Monitor 4/1993.
|