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Tajikistan
Transportation and Telecommunications
Topographical barriers between northern and southern Tajikistan
have prevented the effective transportation and communication
linkage of the two regions (see Topography and Drainage, this
ch.). The most important form of transportation has been the railroad;
highways are few and of low quality (see fig. 10). Radio and television
systems are limited and government controlled.
Railroads
The north and the south are served by railway networks that
link them to neighboring regions of Uzbekistan rather than to
each other. Rail traffic between the two regions of Tajikistan
must follow a 1,340-kilometer route through Uzbekistan. As is
the case with other parts of the economic infrastructure in Central
Asia, railway routes reflect the needs of the larger economic
system of which Tajikistan was a part until 1991. The railway
system in the north was established when that area was part of
the Russian Empire's Guberniya of Turkestan. In that era, the
railroad from Tashkent, the capital of Turkestan, extended into
the agricultural and industrial centers in the Fergana Valley,
which includes the far northern part of today's Tajikistan. The
railroads in the south were built in the Soviet era, in part to
facilitate the shipment of cotton grown in the southernmost parts
of Central Asia, not just in Tajikistan, to other parts of the
Soviet Union.
In the early 1990s, substandard equipment was the most serious
problem of the Tajikistani railroad system. Levels of freight
haulage and passenger service declined steadily as railroad cars
sat idle, waiting for spare parts and repairs. By 1994 delivery
of goods to the more remote regions of the country had become
a hazardous and unpredictable operation.
Data as of March 1996
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