Post Conflict Tajikistan

Post-Soviet, post-conflict Tajikistan is an under-studied and poorly understood case in conflict studies literature. Since 2000, this Central Asian state has seen major political violence end, countrywide order emerge and the peace agreement between the parties of the 1990s civil war hold. Superficially, Tajikistan appears to be a case of successful international intervention for liberal peacebuilding, yet the Tajik peace is characterised by authoritarian governance. Via discourse analysis and extensive fieldwork, including participant-observation with international organizations, the author examines how peacebuilding is understood and practised. The book challenges received wisdom that peacebuilding is a process of democratisation or institutionalisation, showing how interventions have inadvertently served to facilitate an increasingly authoritarian peace and fostered popular accommodation and avoidance strategies. Chapters investigate assistance to political parties and elections, the security sector and community development, and illustrate how transformative aims are thwarted whilst ‘success’ is simulated for an audience of international donors. At the same time the book charts the emergence of a legitimate order with properties of authority, sovereignty and livelihoods. Providing a challenge to the theoretical literature on peacebuilding and concentrating on an under-studied Central Asian state, this book will be of interest to academics working on Peace Studies, International Relations and Central Asian Studies.

In May 1992 political and social tensions in the former Soviet Republic of Tajikistan escalated to a devastating civil war, which killed approximately 40,000-100,000 people and displaced more than one million. The enormous challenge of the Soviet Union’s disintegration compounded by inner-elite conflicts, ideological disputes and state failure triggered a downward spiral to one of the worst violent conflicts in the post-Soviet space. This book explains the causes of the Civil War in Tajikistan with a historical narrative recognizing long term structural causes of the conflict originating in the Soviet transformation of Central Asia since the 1920s as well as short-term causes triggered by Perestroika or Glasnost and the rapid dismantling of the Soviet Union. For the first time, a major publication on the Tajik Civil War addresses the many contested events, their sequences and how individuals and groups shaped the dynamics of events or responded to them. The book scrutinizes the role of regionalism, political Islam, masculinities and violent non-state actors in the momentous years between Perestroika and independence drawing on rich autobiographical accounts written by key actors of the unfolding conflict. Paired with complementary sources such as the media coverage and interviews, these autobiographies provide insights how Tajik politicians, field commanders and intellectuals perceived and rationalized the outbreak of the Civil War within the complex context of post-Soviet decolonization, Islamic revival and nationalist renaissance.

This book is a historical study of the Tajiks in Central Asia from the ancient times to the post-Soviet period. For millennia, these descendants of the original Aryan settlers were part of many different empires set up by Greek, Arab, Turkic and Russian invaders, as well as their own, most notably during the Middle Ages. The emergence of the modern state of Tajikistan began after 1917 under Soviet rule, and culminated in the promulgation of independence from the moribund USSR in 1991. In the subsequent civil war that raged between 1992 and 1997, Tajikistan came close to becoming a failed state. The legacy of that internal conflict remains critical to understanding politics in Tajikistan a generation later. Exploring the patterns of ethnic identity and the exigencies of state formation, the book argues that despite a strong sense of belonging underpinned by shared history, mythology and cultural traits, the Tajiks have not succeeded in forming a consolidated nation. The politics of the Russian colonial administration, the national-territorial delimitation under Stalin, and the Soviet strategy of socio-economic modernisation contributed to the preservation and reification of sub-ethnic cleavages and regional identities. The book demonstrates the impact of region-based elite clans on Tajikistan’s political trajectory in the twilight years of the Soviet era, and identifies objective and subjective factors that led to the civil war. It concludes with a survey of the process of national reconciliation after 1997, and the formal and informal political actors, including Islamist groups, who compete for influence in Tajik society. “Tajikistan: A Political and Social History is the best source of information on this important country in the English language. Drs Nourzhanov and Bleuer present a comprehensive yet detailed account of the past and prospects of this emerging nation, and have filled one of the major gaps in Central Asian scholarship. This book must be read by those who wish to grasp the vagaries of Central Asia’s evolving political and cultural landscapes.” Reuel Hanks, Professor of Geography, Oklahoma State University, and Editor of the Journal of Central Asian Studies. “If Tajikistan is known outside its region, it is often for the civil war that gravely damaged it. This volume authoritatively provides the longer perspective to the unsettling events of the 1990s and skilfully explains them in terms of history, social structure, and sub-state identities. In addition to highlighting a wealth of local factors, it is insightful on the ways in which antagonists can be transformed into broader ethnic and regional blocs. Kirill Nourzhanov and Christian Bleuer are erudite guides to an understudied part of Central Asia, while astutely instructing us about larger patterns of state-society relations and their impact on the logic of conflict.” James Piscatori, Professor of International Relations, Durham University.

This book presents a conceptual and empirical analysis of the UN-led multiparty mediation in the Tajikistan conflict. Multiparty mediation has been a significant research topic of international conflict management since the 1990s, but in-depth case studies on the peacemaking dynamics of violent conflicts are rare, particularly in regard to third-party roles. This volume addresses that gap in the literature by examining the multiparty mediation of the Tajikistan conflict, a largely forgotten but notably successful case of UN-orchestrated peacemaking in the post-Cold War era. It argues that several interrelated factors contributed to the "success" of the Tajik multiparty mediation: Russia, Iran, and other major interveners shared a common interest, and reached a broad consensus on the terms of settlement; the UN was widely accepted as a lead coordinator by other mediators, and succeeded in constructively engaging with them; as a consequence, there arose positive interconnections between different third-party roles. The book presents an analytical framework for understanding the complex interplay of these factors, not only to evaluate the Tajik case but also to help clarify policy implications for multiparty mediation in other cases of violent conflict, particularly civil wars. This book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, civil wars, international mediation, the UN, Central Asian politics, and International Relations.

The book provides a critical analysis of why peace has been consolidated in Tajikistan, and what role international peacebuilding has had in this. It will be of interest to academics working on Peace Studies, International Relations and Central Asian Studies.

Claims to land and territory are often a cause of conflict, and land issues present some of the most contentious problems for post-conflict peacebuilding. Among the land-related problems that emerge during and after conflict are the exploitation of land-based resources in the absence of authority, the disintegration of property rights and institutions, the territorial effect of battlefield gains and losses, and population displacement. In the wake of violent conflict, reconstitution of a viable land-rights system is crucial: an effective post-conflict land policy can foster economic recovery, help restore the rule of law, and strengthen political stability. But the reestablishment of land ownership, land use, and access rights for individuals and communities is often complicated and problematic, and poor land policies can lead to renewed tensions. In twenty-one chapters by twenty-five authors, this book considers experiences with, and approaches to, post-conflict land issues in seventeen countries and in varied social and geographic settings. Highlighting key concepts that are important for understanding how to address land rights in the wake of armed conflict, the book provides a theoretical and practical framework for policy makers, researchers, practitioners, and students. Land and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding is part of a global initiative to identify and analyze lessons in post-conflict peacebuilding and natural resource management. The project has generated six edited books of case studies and analyses, with contributions from practitioners, policy makers, and researchers. Other books in the series address high-value resources, water, livelihoods, assessing and restoring resources, and governance.

Tajikistan is one of the lesser-known and least-researched former Soviet Central Asian republics. The birth of the new state in 1991 was followed closely by a civil war which killed more than 50,000 people and displaced many tens of thousands more. While a peace agreement was signed in 1997, significant political violence continued until 2001 and intermittent outbreaks still occur today. Many claim it remains a very weak state and perhaps in danger of state failure or a return to civil war. However, the revival of Tajikistan should not simply be seen in terms of its post-conflict stabilization. Since its creation as a republic of the Soviet Union in 1920s, Tajikistan has been transformed from being a shell for socialist engineering to become a national society under a modern state. Despite a multitude of economic, social and political shocks, the Republic of Tajikistan endures. This book places the transformation of Tajikistan in its Soviet and Post-Soviet historical settings and local and global contexts. It explores the sources of a state with Soviet roots but which has been radically transformed by independence and its exposure to global politics and economics. The authors address the sources of statehood in history, Islam and secularism, gender relations, the economy, international politics and security affairs. This book is a new edition of a special issue of Central Asian Survey, ‘Tajikistan: the sources of statehood’, including two additional papers and a revised introduction.

In Tajikistan, the Soviets used inherent Tajik ideological, regional, and ethnic conflicts to move their affairs forward. In 1992, after enduring Soviet imposition for seventy years, the Tajiks reversed the process and toppled the Soviet power structure in Tajikistan. The volume traces the development of the conflict using primary Tajik sources.