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Tajikistan
Foreign Relations
Tajikistan had a ministry of foreign affairs for nearly forty
years before it became an independent state at the end of 1991.
As long as it was part of the Soviet Union, however, the republic
had no power to conduct its own diplomacy. The central objective
of newly independent Tajikistan's foreign policy was to maximize
its opportunities by developing relations with as many states
as possible. Particular diplomatic attention went to two groups
of countries: the other former Soviet republics and Tajikistan's
near neighbors, Iran and Afghanistan, which are inhabited by culturally
related peoples. At the same time, Tajikistan pursued contacts
with many other countries, including the United States, Turkey,
and Pakistan. In 1995 Tajikistan opened its first embassy outside
the former Soviet Union, in Turkey. The potential for political
support and economic aid is at least as important in shaping Tajikistan's
diplomacy as are ideological and cultural ties.
Former Soviet Republics
Like the other Central Asian republics, Tajikistan joined the
CIS, which was created in December 1991, three weeks before the
Soviet Union collapsed officially. Shortly before opposition demonstrators
forced President Rahmon Nabiyev to resign in August 1992, he asked
several presidents of former Soviet republics, including President
Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia, to help him stay in power. They refused
this request. In the fall of 1992, the increasingly embattled
coalition government that succeeded Nabiyev asked the other members
of the CIS to intervene to end the civil war. However, such assistance
was not provided.
Through the mid-1990s, Russia played a role in independent Tajikistan
by its military presence there, in the form of the 201st Motorized
Rifle Division and the Border Troops (see Russia's Role in the
Early 1990s, this ch.). Russian personnel in Dushanbe acted as
advisers to the post-civil war government. Russians also held
important positions in the Dushanbe government itself, most notably
the Ministry of Defense, which was led from 1992 to 1995 by Aleksandr
Shishlyannikov. Yuriy Ponosov, who had a generation of experience
as a CPSU official in Tajikistan before the breakup of the Soviet
Union, became Tajikistan's first deputy prime minister in March
1996.
The protection of the Russian minority in strife-ridden Tajikistan
is a stated foreign policy goal of the Russian government. Russia's
concern was eased somewhat by the conclusion of a dual-citizenship
agreement between the two countries in 1995. Russia also has justified
its active involvement in the affairs of Tajikistan by citing
the need to defend the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border--and thus,
the CIS--from penetration by Islamic extremism and drug trafficking.
Independent Tajikistan has troubled relations with two neighboring
former Soviet republics, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, a situation
that began long before independence. In the 1980s, a dispute over
two scarce resources in Central Asia, water and arable land, soured
relations between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In June 1989, the
situation burst into spontaneous, grassroots violence over competing
claims to a small parcel of land. That conflict led to mutual
recriminations that continued until a settlement was reached in
1993. Tensions were heightened in 1992 by Kyrgyzstan's fear that
the Tajikistani civil war would spill over the border, which had
never been defined by a bilateral treaty. Despite tense relations
between the two republics, Kyrgyzstan attempted to negotiate an
end to Tajikistan's civil war, and it sent medicine and other
aid to its beleaguered neighbor. After the civil war, Kyrgyzstan
sent a contingent of troops to Tajikistan as part of the joint
CIS peacekeeping mission (see The Armed Forces, this ch.).
Tajikistan's relations with Uzbekistan present a contradictory
picture. On the one hand, Tajik intellectuals, and at times the
Dushanbe government, have criticized Uzbekistan for discrimination
against its Tajik minority. In response, citing fears of Islamic
radicalism in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan closed its Tajik-language
schools in mid-1992. On the other hand, antireformists in both
republics have maintained good relations based on the interest
they shared in the defeat of reformers in Tajikistan in the early
1990s. Uzbekistan gave military support to the factions that won
Tajikistan's civil war and closed its border with Tajikistan in
the fall of 1992 to prevent opposition refugees from the civil
war from fleeing to Uzbekistan.
After the civil war, Uzbekistan's attitude toward Tajikistan
became increasingly ambivalent. One aspect of Uzbekistan's policy
continued its earlier effort to prevent the opposition from taking
power in Tajikistan; a 1993 cooperation treaty between the two
countries, stipulating a role for Uzbekistan's air force in the
defense of Tajikistan--which has no air force of its own--manifested
that concern. However, the government in Tashkent was increasingly
displeased that the dominant factions among the victors in Tajikistan's
civil war were much less amenable to Uzbekistan's leadership than
were the factions that had controlled Tajikistani politics before
the war. By 1995 the Uzbekistani government was urging the government
in Dushanbe to be more conciliatory toward the opposition in postwar
peace talks.
The leaders of Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
and Uzbekistan repeatedly extolled the value of regional economic
and environmental cooperation in the early 1990s. In reality,
however, only limited progress was made toward such cooperation.
Oil and natural gas producers Kazakstan and Turkmenistan interrupted
fuel deliveries to Tajikistan, in the hopes of improving the terms
of the sales agreements that had prevailed under the Soviet system.
With consumer goods generally in short supply, Tajikistan has
taken measures to prevent citizens of the neighboring republics
from purchasing such items from Tajikistani stockpiles. Tajikistan
also is wary of regional water use plans that might increase the
share of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in water emanating from Tajikistan.
Iran
When Tajikistan declared independence, Iran was one of the first
countries to extend diplomatic recognition, and the first to establish
an embassy in Dushanbe. In 1992 Iran provided training for a group
of Tajik diplomats from Tajikistan. After 1991 bilateral contacts
in the mass media and in sports increased significantly, and Iran
funded construction of several new mosques in Tajikistan. Some
of Tajikistan's most important contacts with Iran in the early
1990s were cultural. For example, Tajikistan held an Iranian film
festival, an exhibition of Iranian art, and two exhibits of Iranian
publications. Dushanbe was the site of international conferences
on Persian culture and the Tajik language. In the early 1990s,
Iranian books and magazines became increasingly available in Tajikistan,
and Dushanbe television carried programs from Iran. The main obstacle
to such cultural contact is the fact that only a very small portion
of the Tajikistani population can read the Arabic alphabet (see
Ethnic Groups and Forces of Nationalism, this ch.).
Despite the obvious ideological differences between the Islamic
revolutionary regime in Iran and the secular communist regime
in newly independent Tajikistan, Nabiyev actively cultivated relations
with Iran. When Nabiyev's position was threatened in 1992, his
speeches repeatedly stressed both the cultural and the religious
ties between the two countries. He subsequently made a direct
request for aid from Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
(see Transition to Post-Soviet Government, this ch.).
The leading figures of the Islamic revival movement in Tajikistan
say emphatically that whatever eventual form of Islamic state
they advocate for Tajikistan, Iran is not the model to be followed.
Part of the reason for this position is that Iran is predominantly
Shia Muslim while Tajikistan is mainly Sunni, a distinction with
important implications for the organization of the religious leadership
and its relationship with the state. An equally important reason
is that the social structures of Tajikistan and Iran are considered
too different for Iran's linkage of religious and political powers
to be adopted in Tajikistan.
In the fall of 1992, Iran repeatedly offered to help mediate
Tajikistan's civil war in cooperation with other Central Asian
states. Although such offers produced no negotiations, Iran did
send food and set up camps for refugees from Tajikistan. After
the civil war, relations between Iran and the new government in
Dushanbe included efforts to develop a modus vivendi as well as
periodic recriminations. Iran worked with Russia in attempting
to negotiate a peace agreement between the Dushanbe government
and the opposition. In July 1995, Tajikistan opened an embassy
in Tehran, one of its few outside the former Soviet Union.
Afghanistan
Tajikistan's relations with Afghanistan, the country with which
it shares its long southern border, have been affected not only
by the cultural and ethnic links between inhabitants of the countries
but also by the way the Soviet regime tried to use those links
to ensure the survival of a communist government in Kabul after
1979. The Soviets put Tajiks from Tajikistan in positions of power
in the Soviet-backed Afghan government and sent propaganda publications
from Tajikistan to Afghanistan. Afghans were brought to Tajikistan
for education and communist indoctrination, and Tajiks served
in the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan. In 1991 the
political climate in Tajikistan allowed some citizens to criticize
the war openly, although there was no reliable gauge of how widely
this antiwar opinion was shared.
Into the early 1990s, the communist government in Dushanbe and
the then-communist government in Kabul favored the development
of economic relations and exchanges in the fields of education
and publishing. During the civil war, the antireformist side alleged
that its opponents relied heavily on the subversive actions of
Afghan mujahidin . Most neutral observers dismissed the
large-scale role of Afghans as a propaganda ploy.
Rugged terrain and poor border enforcement make the Tajikistan-
Afghanistan border very permeable. Beginning in 1992, border crossings--for
private smuggling, to escape the Tajikistani civil war, or to
obtain weapons for one side or the other in that war--became increasingly
numerous. By early 1993, the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees estimated that 50,000 to 70,000 refugees had gone
from southern Tajikistan to northern Afghanistan. By 1994 many
of them had returned home, although the exact number is not available.
Relations between Tajikistan's post-civil war government and
Afghanistan often were troubled through the first half of the
1990s. Tajikistan accused Afghanistan of complicity in cross-border
attacks by exiled opposition members based in northern Afghanistan.
In turn, Afghanistan accused Russian forces on the Tajikistan
side of the border of killing Afghan civilians in reprisal attacks.
The situation changed in late 1995 and early 1996, when Russia
began to support President Burhanuddin Rabbani's faction in the
ongoing Afghan civil war. Rabbani then tried to improve relations
with the Dushanbe government and to mediate a settlement between
it and the opposition.
The United States
Although the United States was the second country to open an
embassy in Dushanbe, that outpost was evacuated in October 1992,
at the height of the civil war, and was not reopened until March
1993. Beginning in 1992, antireformists and the opposition both
sought support from the United States. Thus, a trip by Secretary
of State James Baker to Tajikistan in February 1992 antagonized
members of the opposition, who saw the visit as granting tacit
approval to Nabiyev's political repression. Relations with the
opposition were improved somewhat a few months later, when a human
rights delegation from the United States Congress met with several
opposition leaders.
During the civil war, the United States provided emergency food
supplies and medicines to Tajikistan, and independent Tajikistan
continued the cooperative program on earthquake forecasting techniques
that had begun with the United States during the Soviet era. By
the mid-1990s, United States policy toward Tajikistan centered
on support for peace negotiations and on encouraging Tajikistan
to develop closer relations with the IMF and other financial organizations
that could help in the rebuilding process.
China
The main source of tension between China and Tajikistan is China's
claim on part of Tajikistan's far eastern Gorno-Badakhshan region.
Between 1992 and 1995, sixteen rounds of negotiations between
China and a commission representing Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakstan,
and Kyrgyzstan failed to produce a border agreement. An interim
agreement, scheduled for signing in April 1996, stipulated that
no attacks would be launched across the border in either direction
and that both sides would provide ample notice of military exercises
in the area. Despite their border dispute, China and the post-civil
war government of Tajikistan share a hostility toward reformist
political movements, especially those that could be stigmatized
as Islamic fundamentalist. By the mid-1990s, this common ground
had become the basis for a working relationship between the two
governments.
International Organizations
Tajikistan joined the UN in 1992. In the fall of that year,
the Tajikistani coalition government requested UN aid in ending
the civil war and supporting political democratization, but only
a UN mission and a call for an end to hostilities resulted. Tajikistan
joined the CSCE in February 1992. In 1993 and 1994, membership
was obtained in the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (IBRD), the World Bank (see Glossary), the IMF, and
the Economic Cooperation Organization (see Glossary).
Data as of March 1996
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