Turning the Page

A new study of Tajikistan's peace process shows how participation of Islamic forces in the government is crucial for long-lasting stability. by Vicken Cheterian 22 November 2001 Politics of Compromise: The Tajikistan Peace Process. Accord, Issue 10 edited by Kamoludin Abdullaev and Catherine Barnes; London: Conciliation Resources, 2001; 100 pp.

In the week following the suicide attacks in New York and Washington, 200 Western journalists arrived in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. Since 1997, Dushanbe has served as the diplomatic capital of the anti-Taliban Afghan Northern Alliance, with the airport of Kuliob as its major airbase and logistics center. In its attempt to fight the Taliban from the air and through a coalition of Afghan forces, the attention of Washington and therefore the Western media naturally fell on this formerly obscure Soviet republic in a lost corner of Asia.

But those who fly all the way to the Pamirs mountains should not ignore the fate of Tajikistan. The country's recent political upheavals are underreported and hardly understood: How does one explain that in a matter of few months, the country could fall apart and thousands of people be massacred? In six months of violent clashes that started in May 1992, estimates put the number of casualties between 50,000 and 160,000.

It was incredible, especially considering that open political activities, propaganda, and the creation of paramilitary forces were all completely forbidden prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. How was it possible to foment and direct such violent hatred in such a short time?

But Tajikistan is even more fascinating thanks to another achievement: the signing of a peace treaty between the two major warring factions only five years after the start of the civil war. In the context of post-Soviet political culture, where the art of negotiation and compromise is often in short supply, it was an impressive achievement. In an attempt to track that peace process, the latest issue of Accord, an international review of peace initiatives, features 13 articles by Tajik and international experts, maps, a chronology, and sharp photography from the lens of Gennady Ratushenko.

To understand how the war began, it is vital to look at the context. In 1991 the Soviet Union, a highly centralized state, collapsed, leaving behind a vacuum that has yet to be filled. The 15 Soviet republics were recognized by the international community as independent states. The conflict within Tajikistan was just part of a series of conflicts reaching from Nagorno-Karabakh to Abkhazia, Transdniestra, and finally Chechnya. Those who inherited the USSR were confronted by two possibilities: Either the old nomenklatura had to preserve power by changing its discourse from a Soviet to a nationalist one, or various political movements had to fight for power. In Central Asia, Tajikistan was one of the few states where genuine political debate, new political parties, and an independent media outside the control of the nomenklatura were being created. The sudden collapse of the USSR, however, did not allow these institutuions enough time to develop, and the struggle for power turned into a national catastrophe.

Many experts at the time thought Central Asia--its borders artificially drawn under Stalin, its ethnic groups dispersed among various states--would enter a period of deep instability. For instance, the two historic Tajik centers, Samarkand and Bukhara, lie outside the borders of Tajikistan, in Uzbekistan. In addition, under the Soviets, the hierarchical party structure was superimposed over clan and regionalist social networks, which in the political arena led to a division of power between regionalist elites. For decades Tajikistan was ruled by the northern Leninabadi clan. It was this system that was being challanged by the new elites at the moment of independence. During the war, Shirin Akiner and Catherine Barnes write, the Leninabadi elite "joined in a new alliance with people from the Kulob region." As the war progressed, they add, the balance shifted to the Kulobis.

Members of the opposition had varying ideologies: the Islamic Renaissance Party and the Democratic Party of Tajikistan were its main components. This Islamic-Democratic alliance was in fact the expression of another regional struggle for power: that of the Gharm and Pamir regions.

Negotiations between representatives of warring sides started as early as March 1993. "By the end of 2000, after 29 meetings, the dialogue continues," write Randa Slim and Harold Saunders, who trace the mechanisms and draw upon the lessons of the internal Tajik negotiations. Were those negotiations the key to the peace agreement? Hard to tell: The regional geopolitical shifts that accompanied the rise of the Taliban probably accelerated outside pressure over the various Tajik factions. "Russian and Iranian geopolitical interests converged in promoting an end to the civil war," writes Iskandar Asadullaev.

The Tajik peace formula was based on power sharing between the Kulobi-dominated government and the opposition: 70 percent of posts go to the former government and 30 percent to the former opposition. This agreement succeeded in bringing an end to the fighting and the opposition returned to the capital from Afganistan and the Tajik mountains. Yet the new arrangement is far from perfect: A deep divide exists between "the economic power of the northern region ... and the inadequate representation of the region's elites in decision-making," writes Rashid Abdullo.

The war in Tajikistan is yet another reminder of what can happen when power is concentrated in the hands of a minority unwilling to share with other interest groups. Tajikistan should learn from its own history and bring the Leninabadi region back into the national reconciliation process. The participation of Islamic forces in the government is important in Central Asia at a time when a war is being fought in the name of, and against, radical Islam. Bringing radical forces to responsible positions will lessen their militancy, while a policy based on exclusively repressive methods, as in neighboring Uzbekistan, could write new dark pages in Central Asian history.