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Tajikistan is a world away from the political crisis in Ukraine. It is
far geographically, a small country wedged high in the Pamir Mountains,
sharing a long border with Afghanistan to the south. But Tajikistan seems
even farther from Ukraine than that. It is a country with a robust Persian
heritage and strong Muslim identity, where it is not uncommon to see men
and women dressed in traditional robes and head coverings even in the
more cosmopolitan cities. It is a land of grinding poverty, still recovering
from the civil war of the 1990s, where fifteen percent of all able-bodied
men are forced to find low-wage work abroad, mostly in Russia. Both Ukraine
and Tajikistan were “fraternal republics” in the old USSR,
and both were Tsarist holdings before that, but the similarities largely
end there. Ukraine is Europe, and her crisis is, in part, a question on
how much more European she is to become. Tajikistan is Central Asia.
And yet, Tajikistan is taking great interest in the events in Ukraine
this election year. The mass protests on the streets in Kiev and Donetsk,
the emergency sessions of Parliament, the scramble to compromise with
the opposition, the new laws and new election, all are being followed
closely. The Tajik press is filled with stories about the Ukrainian uprising.
Six pages of one 20-page weekly in December were dedicated to the events
in Kiev; Evening Dushanbe announced in front-page headlines “Revolutionary
Kiev: The Beginning of the End of Western Democracy!” The media
reports on the events in Ukraine with paranoid accusations of Western
interference, accusing George Soros, the United States, and the OSCE with
directly underwriting the pro-Western opposition.
Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” hits a raw nerve in the
new year. Along with most of its post-Soviet neighbors, Tajikistan is
entering its own electoral season, with parliamentary elections scheduled
for February 27. Presidential elections will follow in 2006. Previous
elections were tainted by government rigging. Voter apathy, and voter
ignorance, remains high. Tampering by the ruling party in the run-up to
the 2005 elections has already been documented. Opposition newspapers
have been shut, opposition candidates harassed, new laws adopted unfavorable
to opposition parties.
Assurances have been given, from President Emomali Rakhmonov on down,
that international standards will be maintained, but there is ample reason
for skepticism. In a country where the idea of voting is still new, where
the concept of democracy is not well understood, the government is doing
little to educate the public. The decision to schedule elections for the
very dead of winter in a mountainous country where many regions are cut
off for months at a time well illustrates the government’s commitment
to participatory democracy.
Among recent developments in Tajikistan’s approaching electoral
contest is a new Presidential decree mandating an increased “registration
fee” for parliamentary candidates. The fee of nearly $1000 is an
enormous sum for parliamentary aspirants in a poor country. The Tajik
Parliament is elected by a combination of party lists and single-mandate
districts, that is, unaffiliated candidacies. The new fee makes it much
more difficult for all but the richest single-mandate candidates to run,
and puts the pressure on smaller parties, who don’t have the funds
to register all of their nominees. Asia-Plus, one of the country’s
more liberal newspapers, commented on this law under the headline “The
New Parliament: Closed to the Poor”: “And how can a candidate
pay this, when the average national monthly salary is $10-$15? Even a
minister with an [official] monthly salary of $30 would need to save for
two years, with not a penny spent on his family!”
Tajikistan’s electoral shenanigans resemble Ukraine’s, as
do its shady politics. The legacy of Soviet-style control is still strong
in each country. Like Ukraine’s sitting president, Leonid Kuchma,
Tajik President Rakhmonov is an old-school strongman, able to manipulate
the system and stay on top despite a fairly robust opposition. Similarly
to Kuchma, Rakhmonov has used a variety of legal, semi-legal, and genuinely
suspect methods to get rid of his opponents. He has been slowly but steadily
removing rivals from top posts, especially over the past half-year, arresting
certain officials or former officials for various violations, and harassing
opposition newspapers and parties alike. The opposition weekly Ruzi Nav
was closed in August for alleged tax violations, a convenient charge for
silencing opponents.
The President has been removing political rivals from power over the
past few years, with two notable arrests in the latter half of 2004. In
August, General Gaffor Mirzoyev, or “Gaffor Sedoi” (“Gaffor
the Grey,” a Tolkienish nickname referring to his shock of gray
hair), a former Rakhmonov ally and Tajikistan’s drug czar, was arrested
and charged with nine crimes, including illegal weapons possession, tax
evasion, and murder. Then, in December, Mahmadruzi Iskandarov, leader
of the Democratic Party of Tajikistan, was detained in Moscow by Russian
police at the request of the Tajik government. The former opposition commander
from Gharm was charged, among other counts, with links to terrorists and
embezzlement of state funds.
No tears need to be shed for any of the dethroned. Iskandarov, Gaffor
Sedoi, and the many others eliminated from the political (and in some
cases, worldly) sphere are all ex-warlords from the civil war years. They
became coalition government bigwigs under the 1997 peace deal and have
profited enormously from their government positions. There is no doubt
that they used their appointments for personal enrichment, and that they
treated their base regions as personal fiefs. Still, there is no guarantee
that the people Rakhmonov have placed in their vacated positions will
prove any better, and, to his political advantage, they are personally
answerable to him, and without a political base from which to stir trouble.
This edit changes the meaning. Try this: There is no guarantee that the
people Rakhmonov replaced them with will prove any better but, to his
political advantage, they are personally answerable to him, without a
popular base that could challenge his authority.
The President’s moves against warlordism may be a blatant power
play to remove his rivals but they have not been unpopular with the Tajik
people. His moves are presented as an anti-corruption campaign, bringing
tighter oversight to government. An International Crisis Group report
in May quoted local residents from Kulob, speaking of warlord Gaffor Sedoi’s
arrest: “‘We were happy he went,’ claimed one local.
‘He’s done nothing for us.’”
At the same time, the warlords’ abuses of power are no more or
less murky than any other prominent politicians in Tajikistan, including
the President’s. Among other projects, he is currently building
a presidential palace for himself called the “Palace of the Nation.”
The palace is costing $14 million from the state budget, a sum arguably
better invested in the nation itself.
The idea of the nation – what it is and who controls it –
is at the heart of the problems in post-Soviet Tajikistan and Ukraine.
Ukraine is a nation of deeply divergent regional sentiments that at times
seem ready to pull it apart. The race between Viktors Yanukovych and Yushchenko
is, essentially, a rivalry between the Russified, Russophile East and
the Ukrainian nationalist, Europe-leaning West.
Regional factionalism also plagues the consolidation of the Tajik nation-state.
Fierce regional rivalries tore the country apart in the 1990s and continue
to lurk beneath the surface to this day. The differences between Kulob
and Pamir, Gharm and Khujand are much more pronounced than those between
Eastern and Western Ukraine. The Pamiris are a nation unto themselves,
speaking a distinct Persian language and adhering to Ismailism, a minority
sect within Shia Islam; the rest of the country is Sunni. Up north, Khujand
is the country’s intellectual and commercial powerhouse. All of
Soviet Tajikistan’s leaders, from 1941 to 1991, came from there,
and it is to there that many of the country’s elite fled during
the civil war. Khujand has a large Uzbek population, and many Tajiks consider
Khujandis closer to Uzbekistan than Tajikistan. The central regions of
the country, where Kulob and Gharm are located, are considered the Tajik
heartland.
The civil war exacerbated these differences, turned them savage, bloody.
Back then, the wrong kind of accent in the wrong place could mean a death
sentence. To this day, years after the war, Tajiks grow instinctively
nervous when traveling from one part of the country to another.
And they have good reason to. The country is stable but unsteady; memories
of the war are fresh. Grievances still exist, and the old militias still
have caches of arms squirreled away for a rainy day.
The Ukrainian crisis ultimately resonates in Tajikistan, not because
it can happen here, but because it already has. The Civil War began in
1992 after weeks of protests against disputed parliamentary elections.
The streets were packed with protestors, and then some sort of dam burst
and the country descended into chaos.
The civil war was not a struggle for secession but control. Different
factions struggled for dominance over the newly independent country but
seventy years of Soviet rule left them with no tools for political compromise.
The primary parties were the Russian-backed Popular Front of Tajikistan
(PFT), representing the old Soviet elite, and the United Tajik Opposition
(UTO), a coalition of Islamist and democratic groups, but these were really
just loose coalitions of regional interests. The PFT was primarily an
alliance between Kulobis and Khujandis, while the UTO represented Gharm
and Pamir.
The Kulob-Khujand alliance won the civil war, but it is the Kulobis who
won control of the country. President Rakhmonov, himself Kulobi, has flooded
the government’s ranks with his countrymen. The newfound dominance
of the Kulobi elite is manifest everywhere. On the streets of Dushanbe,
the ubiquitous traffic police will stop car after car for a shakedown,
except for those with Kulobi license plates.
The country was aflame for five years until geopolitics and the exhaustion
of constant war brought the rival parties together, finally signing a
peace settlement on 1997. The PFT, headed by President Rakhmonov, agreed
to a power-sharing agreement, allotting 30% of all government positions
to the opposition, and providing for fair representation in the parliament.
As quickly as it began, the war ended.
Walking down the streets of Dushanbe, one would not realize that, less
than a decade ago, rival armies were shooting at one another from the
surrounding hills. Rudaki Prospekt, the city’s main street, is a
tree-lined avenue with pretty, pastel buildings and a broad pedestrian
thoroughfare, and no one you meet seems at all capable of ever having
been affected by war. The people are hospitable, quick to friendship,
and generous with family and strangers alike.
Dushanbe is quiet for a capital city. The streets are all but empty of
people by ten at night, even on a Saturday night, and for those who do
go out there is not much to do. Business is growing but sluggish; investment
is poor. The city’s water supply took a beating during the war and
was never repaired; brown river water flows directly into people’s
homes. In winter the city suffers rolling blackouts, whole regions plunged
into darkness with no warning. And it is better in Dushanbe than anywhere
else.
To get a real feel of the country’s problems, you must leave the
capital and visit the small towns and villages where most of Tajikistan’s
6.5 million people live. The problems you will encounter are staggering.
Outside of Dushanbe you will find one of the world’s poorest countries.
You will find broken homes run by women, one out of every six Tajik men
having left to Russia for work. You will find a countryside where one
in a hundred children die by the age of five, from disease, from malnutrition,
from an absence of doctors -- the highest infant mortality in the former
Soviet Union. You will find whole regions living in the stone ages, under
rationed electricity, two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening,
where there is any electricity at all. You will find a growing drug problem,
as narcotics from Afghanistan flood through the porous borders on their
way to Europe. You will find an exponentially expanding population subsisting
on an agriculture limited to the ten percent of the land that is arable.
You will find a people wholly unprepared to vote in the elections, living
without access to news or information, living in ignorance of the candidates
or the issues, without the slightest idea of what an elected government
is. You will find in the countryside civil war veterans waiting with their
guns, whole hidden armies sitting in the dark and cold, waiting for redress
or another call to arms, whichever comes first.
Not all of this is the government’s fault. The country is starting
from less than zero, climbing out of the wreckage of war. It has taken
years for the country to stabilize enough to think about economic development.
Investment is still hard to come by; foreign investors don’t yet
feel confident in Tajikistan. There are too few guarantees and no visible
payoff. No wonder, then, that the country has moved firmly back into Russia’s
orbit.
Russia looms large over Tajikistan. The new Russia of Vladimir Putin
is flexing its muscles, pushing to win back its strategic influence as
the EU expands to the West, China wakens to the East, and America encroaches
on its old hunting grounds in the South. Putin has been wooing his former-Soviet
neighbors with a number of stick-and-carrot initiatives. Except for the
three Baltic states, Georgia, and now, possibly, Ukraine, his efforts
are for the most part working.
The Central Asian states have been quick to respond. They are eager for
protection from China, desperate for investment in their economies, and
for access to the outside world. Economically powerful Kazakhstan is the
closest and most important partner. Kyrgyzstan, small and poor like Tajikistan,
is eager for closer alignment. Even the pugnacious, isolationist Uzbekistan
has welcomed Russia as a “stabilizing force” in the region.
President Rakhmonov signed a number of important treaties with Putin
in October. Russia agreed to forgive Tajikistan's $300 million debt and
invest $2 billion in its economy over the next five years, in exchange
for a permanent Russian military base, the return to Russia of important
Soviet military facilities, and a controlling interest in Tajikistan’s
aluminum and hydropower industries. “They bought us out,”
is how many Tajiks refer to this deal, not always negatively. Tajiks are
not particularly anti-Russian. A great many look back on the Soviet years
with fondness; compared to today, Soviet Tajikistan was a paradise.
Russia’s shadow is heavier over Ukraine, where the stakes are higher.
Putin’s personal involvement in Viktor Yanukovych’s campaign
impinged on Ukraine’s national sovereignty, a blatant attempt to
influence the elections above and beyond the sinister “tampering”
the West is accused of. Ukrainians’ feelings for their larger neighbor
are more complex and painful than Tajikistan’s, and the ties between
those two nations run deeper and longer. It is not inconceivable, however,
that Russia will as freely intervene in the Tajik presidential elections
in 2006 to support its interests as it has in Ukraine, should Rakhmonov
find himself fighting in a tough race against a popular opponent.
The Tajiks look with unease at the “Orange Revolution” because
they can see in it a mirror of their own history. That Ukraine has thus
far avoided physical conflict is a testimony to the country’s maturity
after thirteen years of independence. For all of the Kuchma administration’s
corruption, the country has a fairly robust press, a lively opposition,
and enough of a growing business class that isn’t afraid to take
sides for or against a president. (And it is this homegrown elite, not
insidious Western powers, that have really fueled Yushchenko’s campaign).
There is no chance that Ukraine will descend into civil war over this
election. There is also very little chance that it will happen again in
Tajikistan.
President Rakhmonov is still portrayed as a symbol of stability, having
brought the civil war to an end in 1997 and making great strides to consolidate
the peace. His personal crusade against corrupt ex-warlords is marketed
as a deepening of the rule of law. The President has mostly managed to
keep regional rivalries under control and his recent deals with Russia
should bring a lift to the country’s mordant economy. The borders
are secure, the political system is corrupt but stable, and there is some
promise of better times. This is not much but it’s probably the
best anyone could do given the animal savagery that tore the country to
shreds in the 1990s. For most Tajiks the greatest benefit of his administration
– and this is no small thing – is the absence of conflict.
Officially, the Tajik government professes neutrality toward the events
in Kiev. Tajik officials and opposition groups agree that events such
as in Ukraine cannot happen here. The government promises to work with
the opposition and international observers to insure free and fair elections.
These pronouncements notwithstanding, the Tajik government sees a potential
threat in the example of Ukraine. Beginning with the anti-Milosevic uprising
in Yugoslavia in 2000, and followed by the “Rose Revolution”
in Georgia in 2003, the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” seems
like another falling domino in the post-Communist world. In each country,
popular uprisings shook the country in response to fraudulent elections.
Yugoslavia and Georgia provide even more haunting examples for the Rakhmonov
government; in both countries public disaffection came after years of
civil war followed by years of deepening poverty. Former allies grew into
alienated opponents. I mean here that the President’s allies became
as disenchanted with the as are his opponents. All it took was one stolen
election and a fed-up opposition to sweep the old guard out of power.
Which is why the Tajik government is taking few chances. One by one,
political opponents are being neutralized and the opposition excluded
from access to power. Using calls for national unity and fears of another
civil war, the administration is consolidating its hold on the country
while providing very little to improve the lives of the people. But it
cannot eliminate the opposition altogether, nor can it halt the grumblings
from below that still give its challengers their teeth. In a season of
political revolts, Tajikistan enters its election year haunted by the
specter of discontent.
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OTR Politics - February, 2005