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Tajikistan
Government and Politics
In the first years of independence, politics in Tajikistan were
overshadowed by a long struggle for political power among cliques
that sought Soviet-style dominance of positions of power and privilege
and a collection of opposition forces seeking to establish a new
government whose form was defined only vaguely in public statements.
The result was a civil war that began in the second half of 1992.
A faction favoring a neo-Soviet system took control of the government
in December 1992 after winning the civil war with help from Russian
and Uzbekistani forces.
Transition to Post-Soviet Government
In the late 1980s, problems in the Soviet system had already
provoked open public dissatisfaction with the status quo in Tajikistan.
In February 1990, demonstrations against government housing policy
precipitated a violent clash in Dushanbe. Soviet army units sent
to quell the riots inflicted casualties on demonstrators and bystanders
alike. Using the riots as a pretext to repress political dissent,
the regime imposed a state of emergency that lasted long after
the riots had ended. In this period, criticism of the regime by
opposition political leaders was censored from state radio and
television broadcasts. The state brought criminal charges against
the leaders of the popular front organization Rastokhez (Rebirth)
for inciting the riots, although the Supreme Soviet later ruled
that Rastokhez was not implicated. Students were expelled from
institutions of higher education merely for attending nonviolent
political meetings. The events of 1990 made the opposition even
more critical of the communist old guard than it had been previously.
In the highly charged political atmosphere after the failure
of the August 1991 coup attempt in Moscow, Tajikistan's Supreme
Soviet voted for independence for the republic in September 1991.
That vote was not intended to signal a break with the Soviet Union,
however. It was rather a response to increasingly vociferous opposition
demands and to similar declarations by Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a development in
which Tajikistan played no role, the republic joined the CIS when
that loose federation of former Soviet republics was established
in December 1991.
The political opposition within Tajikistan was composed of a
diverse group of individuals and organizations. The three major
opposition parties were granted legal standing at various times
in 1991. The highest-ranking Islamic figure in the republic, the
chief qadi , Hajji Akbar Turajonzoda, sided openly with
the opposition coalition beginning in late 1991. The opposition's
ability to govern and the extent of its public support never were
tested because it gained only brief, token representation in a
1992 coalition government that did not exercise effective authority
over the entire country.
In the early independence period, the old guard sought to depict
itself as the duly elected government of Tajikistan now facing
a power grab by Islamic radicals who would bring to Tajikistan
fundamentalist repression similar to that occurring in Iran and
Afghanistan. Yet both claims were misleading. The elections for
the republic's Supreme Soviet and president had been neither free
nor truly representative of public opinion. The legislative election
was held in February 1990 under the tight constraints of the state
of emergency. In the presidential election of 1991, Nabiyev had
faced only one opponent, filmmaker and former communist Davlat
Khudonazarov, whose message had been stifled by communist control
of the news media and the workplace. Despite Nabiyev's advantageous
position, Khudonazarov received more than 30 percent of the vote.
In the first half of 1992, the opposition responded to increased
repression by organizing ever larger proreform demonstrations.
When Nabiyev assembled a national guard force, coalition supporters,
who were concentrated in the southern Qurghonteppa Province and
the eastern Pamir region, acquired arms and prepared for battle.
Meanwhile, opponents of reform brought their own supporters to
Dushanbe from nearby Kulob Province to stage counterdemonstrations
in April of that year. Tensions mounted, and small-scale clashes
occurred. In May 1992, after Nabiyev had broken off negotiations
with the oppositionist demonstrators and had gone into hiding,
the confrontation came to a head when opposition demonstrators
were fired upon and eight were killed. At that point, the commander
of the Russian garrison in Dushanbe brokered a compromise. The
main result of the agreement was the formation of a coalition
government in which one-third of the cabinet posts would go to
members of the opposition.
For most of the rest of 1992, opponents of reform worked hard
to overturn the coalition and block implementation of measures
such as formation of a new legislature in which the opposition
would have a voice. In the summer and fall of 1992, vicious battles
resulted in many casualties among civilians and combatants. Qurghonteppa
bore the brunt of attacks by antireformist irregular forces during
that period. In August 1992, demonstrators in Dushanbe seized
Nabiyev and forced him at gunpoint to resign. The speaker of the
Supreme Soviet, Akbarsho Iskandarov--a Pamiri closely associated
with Nabiyev--became acting president. Iskandarov advocated a
negotiated resolution of the conflict, but he had little influence
over either side.
The political and military battles for control continued through
the fall of 1992. In November the Iskandarov coalition government
resigned in the hope of reconciling the contending factions. Later
that month, the Supreme Soviet, still dominated by hard-liners,
met in emergency session in Khujand, an antireform stronghold,
to select a new government favorable to their views. When the
office of president was abolished, the speaker of parliament,
Imomali Rahmonov, became de facto head of government. A thirty-eight-year-old
former collective farm director, Rahmonov had little experience
in government. The office of prime minister went to Abdumalik
Abdullojanov, a veteran hard-line politician.
Once in possession of Dushanbe, the neo-Soviets stepped up repression.
Three leading opposition figures, including Turajonzoda and the
deputy prime minister in the coalition government, were charged
with treason and forced into exile, and two other prominent opposition
supporters were assassinated in December. There were mass arrests
on nebulous charges and summary executions of individuals captured
without formal arrest. Fighting on a smaller scale between the
forces of the old guard and the opposition continued elsewhere
in Tajikistan and across the border with Afghanistan into the
mid-1990s.
The conflict in Tajikistan often was portrayed in Western news
reports as occurring primarily among clans or regional cliques.
Many different lines of affiliation shaped the configuration of
forces in the conflict, however, and both sides were divided over
substantive political issues. The old guard had never reconciled
itself to the reforms of the Gorbachev era (1985-91) or to the
subsequent demise of the Soviet regime. Above all, the factions
in this camp wanted to ensure for themselves a monopoly of the
kinds of benefits enjoyed by the ruling elite under the Soviet
system. The opposition coalition factions were divided over what
form the new regime in Tajikistan ought to take: secular parliamentary
democracy, nationalist reformism, or Islamicization. Proponents
of the last option were themselves divided over the form and pace
of change.
In April 1994, peace talks arranged by the United Nations (UN)
began between the post-civil war government in Dushanbe and members
of the exiled opposition. Between that time and early 1996, six
major rounds of talks were held in several different cities. Several
smaller-scale meetings also occurred directly between representatives
of both sides or through Russian, UN, or other intermediaries.
Observers at the main rounds of talks included representatives
of Russia, other Central Asian states, Iran, Pakistan, the United
States, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE--
after 1994 the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
OSCE--see Glossary), and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
In the first two years, these negotiations produced few positive
results. The most significant result was a cease-fire agreement
that took effect in October 1994. The initial agreement, scheduled
to last only for a few weeks, was renewed repeatedly into 1996,
albeit with numerous violations by both sides. As a result of
the cease fire, the UN established an observer mission in Tajikistan,
which had a staff of forty-three in early 1996.
Data as of March 1996
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