The Law of the Pamirs

In the rugged east of Tajikistan, secular law is once again the rule, but Shariah is voluntarily practiced in some Sunni communities. A partner post from Forum 18 News Service. by Igor Rotar 19 November 2003 Parts of the mountainous east of Tajikistan that were governed by compulsory Shariah law imposed during the civil war of the mid-1990s have now returned to secular law.

During a week-long visit in early November 2003 to the Karategin valley and the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in the Pamir mountains, Forum 18 News Service found that believers who wished to follow Shariah law did so by their own choice. The days when fighters forced local people to pray in mosques have gone.

During Tajikistan's bitter civil war, which raged from 1992 to 1996, it was immigrants from this region who supported the Tajik opposition, one branch of which was made up of supporters of the Islamic Renewal Party (IRP), whose aim is the protection of Muslims' rights.

The region can be divided into two ethno-cultural regions. The Karategin valley and the adjoining western Pamir (Kalaikhumb and Vanch districts) are inhabited by Tajiks who are Sunni Muslims, and whose language is connected to the Western Iranian group. The other parts of Gorno-Badakhshan are inhabited by Pamir nationalities (Yazgulyam, Shungats, Rushants, and Vakhants), who speak languages belonging to the Eastern Iranian language group.

Unlike Sunni Tajiks, the Pamir nationalities (excluding the Yazgulyam people) practice Ismailism--a movement, drawn from the Shia branch of Islam, which is strongly influenced by Hinduism and neo-Platonism. Unlike other Muslims, Ismailis pray just three times a day, not five times. Many do not observe the fast of Ramadan. Although Ismailis do not encourage the consumption of alcohol, the ban against it is not so strictly enforced as it is among Sunni Muslims and traditional Shia Muslims.

BACK TO SECULARISM

Forum 18 found that today the population of the Karategin valley, as well as that in Vanch and Kalaikhumb districts in the Gorno-Badakhshan region, is (in general) governed by secular law. For example, criminals are sentenced under Tajik law. Even during the month of Ramadan, which this year began on 27 October, alcohol is sold openly in the shops.

However, this situation is relatively new to this region. When in 1996 opposition fighters (mujahedin) managed to seize this part of Tajikistan, they tried to govern the population in line with Shariah law, with all decisions of the mujahedin taken at meetings in the mosque.

Moreover, the interpretation of Shariah law by the Tajik mujahedin was the same as that of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. Local residents told Forum 18 that the mujahedin forced them to pray at the mosque five times a day, under threat of punishment. When out in public, women were forced to wear scarves covering the whole face except the eyes. The sale of alcohol was strictly forbidden, while in the Karategin valley cigarettes were banned as well. The mujahedin banned music at weddings, except for religious music played on traditional instruments. They also banned women from leaving their home village, except when accompanied by their husband or other close male relative.

However, after the peace agreement reached between the opposition and the Tajik government in 1997, the Shariah laws introduced by the mujahedin were gradually replaced by secular laws. "Although personally I believe that Muslims should live in accordance with Shariah law, we have to take into account the fact that Tajikistan is a secular state," said Mukim Mukhambatov, a former opposition field commander and currently commander of the Vanch border control, to Forum 18 on 6 November in Vanch. He said the move away from Shariah laws took place gradually, and was completed around 2001.

Although today secular law is applied in the mountainous regions of Tajikistan, the local population continues to follow Shariah law. For example, virtually all the local people observe the Ramadan fast. A canteen waitress in Vanch complained to Forum 18 that although the district authorities made her work in the daytime, there were no customers at all during the month of Ramadan. In every village there are several mosques (most of them not registered at the government's committee for religious affairs in Dushanbe) where the local children learn Arabic and are taught the Koran.

THE UZBEK FACTOR

Until 2000, fighters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) lived in the Karategin valley and in the Vanch district of Gorno-Badakhshan. Fighters from Uzbekistan fought side by side with the Tajik opposition back in 1992. In 1996 one of the leaders of the IMU, Juma Namangani, became first deputy to the most influential field commander of Karategin, Mirzo Zieyev (now Tajikistan's Special Situations Minister).

After the terror bombings in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, in February 1999, the frightened Uzbek authorities began indiscriminately to arrest religious dissenters--though many of them had no links whatsoever with the armed underground movement. Thus, emigration from Uzbekistan to Tajikistan became a mass movement, with whole families fleeing. Gradually a network of close-knit Uzbek families appeared in Karategin. Official circles in Dushanbe even discussed seriously allocating part of the Karategin valley to Uzbek fighters to live in, where a "free Islamic Uzbekistan-in-exile" would be established.

It is worth noting that Namangani married a woman from the village of Jamaak in Vanch district. Military camps also existed alongside civilian Uzbek settlements in Karategin. Some were set up, for example, on the outskirts of Khait village and at the former seismic station near the village of Tajikabad, as well as in the village of Mianada, 70 kilometers east of the district center, Tavildar.

Local people still remember the IMU fighters with great affection, telling Forum 18 that unlike the local fighters, the Uzbeks never robbed or looted, and got on very well with the local people. "During the battles in 1996 we seized several soldiers from the government forces, and our fighters started mocking them. But Juma Namangani told them not to do that, and explained that under Islamic law you had to treat prisoners humanely," said Yurali Muroliev, the former deputy field commander of Yazgulyam Gorge and now deputy chairman of the IRP's Gorno-Badakhshan branch. In May 2000, under pressure from Tashkent, the IMU military camp was closed down and the majority at least of the IMU fighters crossed to Afghanistan.

During the week-long visit to the region, Forum 18 discovered no IMU fighters still present, and all those interviewed declared that no Uzbeks remained in Tajikistan's mountain regions.

THE AGA'S PEOPLE

The situation in the Ismaili region of Gorno-Badakhshan is fundamentally different from that in Karategin valley or the Vanch and Kalaikhumb districts of the region. Unlike the "Sunni" districts of Gorno-Badakhshan, the Pamirs have supported not the IRP, but the democratic section of the Tajik opposition. The Pamirs are much less devout than the Sunni Tajiks and, although up to 1997 this region was also controlled by the opposition, the Pamirs did not try to regulate their lives along Shariah law, unlike the neighboring districts.

Today, there is not one Ismaili mosque on the territory of Gorno-Badakhshan--the Pamirs regard them as unnecessary. "As far as building Ismaili prayer houses goes, there is simply no need for them," Aligbek Melisbekov, a worker at the Aga Khan Fund, told Forum 18 on 2 November in Khorog, Gorno-Badakhshan's capital. "We can pray perfectly well at home."

Yet the religious factor does, nevertheless, affect the life of Ismaili Pamirs, even if only obliquely. The Ismaili spiritual leader, the Aga Khan IV, gives practical aid to the Pamirs--until 2000, parts of Gorno-Badakhshan essentially lived on this humanitarian aid. Since then, deliveries of food to the region have ceased, but the Aga Khan is still putting significant resources into the development of a social infrastructure in the autonomous region, and also into the local education system.

"Thanks to the Aga Khan's money, hospitals, bridges, and schools are being built," Melisbekov said. "But they are now being built by Pamirs themselves, who are in this way earning money to support themselves. The Aga Khan attaches great importance to raising the level of education of Pamirs." He said specialists regularly come from abroad to train teachers and businessmen, while a Pamir university will shortly open in Khorog.