Hello all; first of all, I am sorry for my hiatus from posts (paucity of posting) for such a long time, but also, I am happy to say that I have found a new home on the web, and I will be once again posting much more frequently!
From now on, I will be posting about Tajikistan at
http://studentdigitalus.org/TajikistanFocus/
I hope you will head over and check us out.
Tajikistan in 2012: A Year in Review
The past year was an eventful one in Tajikistan on the economic, political and military fronts, with both domestic and regional ramifications. Importantly for Tajikistan’s economy, in May 2012, construction on the controversial hydroelectric Rogun Dam on the Vaksh River—a tributary of the Amu Darya river—was suspended following an order from the World Bank. The suspension reportedly put 5,000 people out of work and will remain in effect until the ecological impact study of the dam is completed. It is expected that the Word Bank’s feasibility study will be published this summer. Rogun is commonly seen to be at the heart of the hostility between Tajikistan and downstream Uzbekistan, which fears that the dam would severely damage Uzbekistani farmers’ ability to irrigate their cotton crops and would accelerate the ecological disaster in the Aral Sea. Uzbekistan has retaliated by periodically not allowing Tajikistan-bound rail and truck cargo to cross its borders and cutting off the flow of natural gas, exacerbating Tajikistan’s perennial energy shortages (Ozodi, January 1).
The year 2012 did however bring some good news for Tajikistan’s hopes of energy security with the news of the discovery of potentially huge hydrocarbon reserves in the Bokhtar region. The find was announced earlier this summer by the Canadian firm Tethys Petroleum and was deemed credible enough to attract investment from both the French energy giant Total and China’s National Oil and Gas Exploration and Development Corporation (CNODC) (Asia Plus, December 24, 2012). While further exploration needs to be done, the potential reserves of oil and gas are estimated to be more than enough to make Tajikistan a net exporter of hydrocarbons. Such a development would free Dushanbe from its energy reliance on Russia and Uzbekistan and no doubt influence its foreign policy calculations.
In December, Tajikistan joined the World Trade Organization, which local economists hope will lower domestic customs tariffs, curb the power of monopolies in certain sectors such as aviation, lower prices on domestic goods, and encourage foreign investment (BBC Tajik, December 11, 2012). On the other hand, some critics have raised concerns over the potential negative short-term effects on the competitiveness of Tajikistan’s two chief exports, aluminum and cotton. The country’s cotton industry is not only an important economic force but, given the continued existence in Tajikistan of Soviet-style collective farms (kolkhozy), an important socio-political institution as well.
On the political front, the big story looming in 2013 is the presidential election slated for November. The election will mark the first in Tajikistan since 2006 when Emomalii Rahmon secured his third term in office. That vote was boycotted by several opposition parties including the largest, the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP). However, this time the opposition parties are expected to participate and possibly put forth a coalition candidate. Nonetheless, 2012 was a rough year for the opposition as both religious and political figures such as Muhiddin Kabiri (the head of the IRP) and Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda (prominent cleric and former deputy prime minister) were legally harassed, imprisoned (such as Umarali Quvatov, businessman and head of the exiled opposition group “Group 24”), and even killed (notably, Sabzali Mamadrizoev, head of the IRP in the remote Gorno-Badakhshan region). Since the last presidential vote in 2006, Rahmon has seen neighboring states and allies embroiled in contested elections and subsequent hostility (witness Iran’s 2009 presidential election, the 2010 coup in Kyrgyzstan as well as the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011-2012). Despite assurances from some quarters that the country’s civil war has bred a war-weary and politically disinterested population, the regime will likely increase the pressure on the opposition and consolidate its power during the run-up to the elections in anticipation of potential unrest. President Rahmon may attempt to secure his rule by exaggerating the threat of Islamic extremism and proffering himself as a bulwark against regional instability in the context of a post-2014 Afghanistan. However the unrest this summer in Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan that killed dozens was a sobering reminder of at least three things: 1) not all Tajikistanis are war weary, 2) not all threats to the regime are inspired by Islam, and 3) the regime underestimates the domestic and international backlash against such heavy-handed tactics.
via UNHCR | Refworld | Tajikistan in 2012: A Year in Review.
An agreement on financing ‘Professional literacy programs for poverty reduction’ was signed in Dushanbe between the Republic of Tajikistan and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), AsiaPlus news agency reported on Saturday.
The total project cost is $ 11 million on a credit basis. The project will be implemented until 2016.
According to the Secretariat of the Tajik Finance Ministry, the agreement was signed by the Minister of Finance Safarali Najmiddinov and Vice – President of the IDB, Ahmet Tiktik.
The ‘Professional literacy programs for poverty reduction” are aimed to decrease poverty rates, especially in rural areas; training of young people and women by enhancing relevant professional literacy, practical skills and productivity.
via IDB to contribute $ 11 million to Tajikistan to reduce poverty – Trend.Az.
Not long ago Tajik police were forcing men to shave their beards, convinced a terrorist lurked behind every whisker. Now the health minister has recommended salons stop trimming Tajikistan’s chins lest dirty razors spread HIV.Nusratullo Salimov said barbers are not doing enough to disinfect their shaving equipment, RIA Novosti quoted him as saying on January 10. The health minister emphasized, however, that the majority of Tajikistan’s new HIV infections are transmitted via dirty needles and unprotected sex. He gave no statistics for new infections from tainted razors.Facial hair is a popular topic of official chatter in Tajikistan. In late 2010, a number of bewhiskered men told local media outlets they were being harassed by police. Some reported being stopped and forced to shave. At the time, an Interior Ministry spokesman confirmed police were detaining “suspicious” men sporting long beards as part of their search for members of banned Islamic sects. Muslim men, moderate and radical alike, often wear beards out of reverence for the Prophet Muhammad.More recently, in November, a new injunction sponsored by the State Committee on Religious Affairs reportedly prohibited men from wearing beards longer than their fists, though some officials later denied the existence of any rules. (Ironically, across the border in Afghanistan, the Taliban were once said to forbid men from wearing beards shorter than fist-length.)The beard vs razor debate will likely overshadow a more pressing issue. HIV is spreading rapidly along the heroin trafficking routes that transit Tajikistan. And in Russia, where a million-odd Tajiks work as temporary laborers – and often engage in risky sex before returning home to their wives – the UN says there are 200 new HIV infections every day. Salimov said the number of new cases in Tajikistan shot up by 17 percent in 2012.
Tajikistan blocked access to more than 100 websites on Tuesday, in what a government source said was a dress rehearsal for a crackdown on online dissent before next year’s election when President Imomali Rakhmon will again run for office.
Rakhmon, a 60-year-old former head of a Soviet cotton farm, has ruled the impoverished Central Asian nation of 7.5 million for 20 years. He has overseen constitutional amendments that allow him to seek a new seven-year term in November 2013.
The Internet remains the main platform where Tajiks can air grievances and criticize government policies at a time when the circulation of local newspapers is tiny and television is tightly controlled by the state.
Tajikistan’s state communications service blocked 131 local and foreign Internet sites “for technical and maintenance works”.
“Most probably, these works will be over in a week,” Tatyana Kholmurodova, deputy head of the service, told Reuters. She declined to give the reason for the work, which cover even some sites with servers located abroad.
The blocked resources included Russia’s popular social networking sites http://www.my.mail.ru and VKontakte (www.vk.com), as well as Tajik news site TJKnews.com and several local blogs.
“The government has ordered the communications service to test their ability to block dozens of sites at once, should such a need arise,” a senior government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
“It is all about November 2013,” he said, in a clear reference to the presidential election.
Other blocked websites included a Ukrainian soccer site, a Tajik rap music site, several local video-sharing sites and a pornography site.
via Tajikistan blocks scores of websites as election looms – Terra USA.
Tajikistan has ordered local Internet providers to block Twitter, one of more than 100 sites including popular Russian-language social networks starting next week, an industry representative told AFP Saturday.
“The (government) communications service has sent Internet companies a huge list of 131 sites that must be blocked in the country from Monday,” said Asomiddin Atoyev, the head of the Tajik association of Internet providers.
“The list includes social networking sites that are actively used by Tajik Internet users including government officials,” Atoyev said.
Among the blocked sites are Vkontakte, or In Touch, and Odnoklassniki, or Classmates, the most popular social networking sites in Russia with many users in the ex-Soviet Union, and Mail.ru, an email service.
By Associated Press, Published: April 19
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — A court in Tajikistan has convicted 34 people on charges of involvement in a terrorist group and handed them long prison terms.
A court in the northern city of Khujand on Thursday sentenced the convicts accused of belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to prison terms ranging between eight and 28 years. Other charges included murder and attempting to violently overthrow the government.
Authorities in Tajikistan, an impoverished nation that shares a long and poorly secured border with Afghanistan, saw a spike in militant activity in 2010 that led to the death of dozens of troops.
Officials in the authoritarian former Soviet nation insist radical Islamism is a genuine threat to stability, but some observers say the clampdowns on devotees of conservative Islam is an attempt to smash dissent.
For almost a month, an armed conflict has been raging in the mountains of the Kamarob gorge between the forces of the Government of Tajikistan and local ‘mujohids’. This is the most serious political violence in Tajikistan for ten years. Here, in the first of a two-part article, Sophie Roche and John Heathershaw draw on ethnographic research and contacts with residents of the region to explain the legacy of the civil war and the social and political contexts of this largely unreported conflict.
via Conflict in Tajikistan – not really about radical Islam | openDemocracy.
A government campaign against Islamic education and political movements in Tajikistan, prompted by an armed conflict with ’mujaheds’ in the Rasht valley, risks creating the very militancy it aims to prevent, write Sophie Roche and John Heathershaw.
On 4 January 2011, official and local sources confirmed that Government forces had killed Alovuddin Davlatov (aka Ali Bedak), the commander accused of having launched the attack, and the remnants of his groups. This news apparently brings to an end the military conflict between the Government and the self-styled ‘Mujaheds’ led by Davlatov and other former civil war commanders. However, the conflict itself, which has led to around 100 deaths, has had far wider repercussions that go beyond the terrible violence of Rasht.
via A recipe for radicalisation: the campaign against Islam in Tajikistan | openDemocracy.
Nothing highlights the Tajik government’s efforts to forge a distinct national identity better than the country’s annual Novruz festivities. This year, officials emphasized Tajikistan’s Persian roots during the week-long celebration. Carefully stage-managed public events steered clear of religion and politics.
Banned for much of the Soviet period, the festival of Novruz – also, Nowruz, Nawruz and a few other alternatives – derives its name from the Persian for “New Day” and marks the arrival of spring. The holiday, centering on the vernal equinox, is celebrated in much of greater Central Asia, as well as parts of the Caucasus and by Turkey’s Kurdish minority, and is believed to have originated as the Zoroastrian New Year in ancient Persia. In 2009, it was added to UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
In Tajikistan, the holiday has become part of the country’s quest for a new, post-Soviet national identity. As in many former Soviet republics, that quest has involved turning to the distant, sometimes mythologized past. For Tajikistan, where the primary language is closely related to modern Farsi and the Dari spoken in Afghanistan, tapping into the lore of ancient Persia is a logical way to distinguish Tajiks from the Slavs and Turkic peoples of formerly Soviet Central Asia.
“Blessed Novruz is the greatest and most beautiful festival for the Aryan people,” read banners quoting President Imomali Rahmon, displayed around the capital, Dushanbe. The ancient Aryans are believed to be forebears of today’s Persian-speaking peoples: “Iran” is a Persian word for “land of the Aryans,” and the ancient Greeks called the greater region including Afghanistan and present-day Tajikistan “Ariana.”
via Tajikistan Highlights Persian Roots with Novruz Celebration | EurasiaNet.org.
Tajikistan has been added to a US government list of the world’s 16 worst abusers of religious freedom.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), funded by Congress, has censured Tajikistan for “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief,” naming the country one of it’s “countries of particular concern.” In a report released March 20, USCIRF says Dushanbe “suppresses and punishes all religious activity independent of state control, and imprisons individuals on unproven criminal allegations linked to religious activity or affiliation.”
Elsewhere in Central Asia, USCIRF has long classified Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan as “countries of particular concern” (CPC). The commission says it is closely monitoring Kazakhstan. Turkey also joined the CPC list this year.
The annual report offers recommendations to Congress, the secretary of state, and the president. The State Department issues its own yearly report on religious freedom, which takes into consideration the commission’s recommendations, but usually includes a shorter list of countries of particular concern and recommendations for sanctions. In the case of gas-rich Turkmenistan, though it has been on the commission’s CPC list since 2000, the State Department does not include it on its own list. The State Department has designated Uzbekistan, an essential ally in the Afghanistan war, as a CPC since 2006, but since 2009 has waved any punitive action.
This year, the commission graduated Tajikistan from its “watch list” partially because Dushanbe introduced harsh new legislation broadly affecting the country’s faithful, especially the Muslim majority. One new law “even limits parents’ choice of their children’s names.”
via Tajikistan Joins “World’s Worst Religious Freedom Violators”—US Report | EurasiaNet.org.
TEHRAN (FNA)- The United Nations Organization held a ceremony at its Headquarters in New York to mark the International Day of Nowrouz.
The ceremony was attended by representatives from 11 Persian-language speaking countries, ambassadors along with diplomats from other member states.
Representatives from Iran, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan in speeches delivered to the ceremony highlighted the longstanding event of Nowrouz.
Nowrouz, which coincides with the first day of spring on the solar calendar, is mostly celebrated in Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan.
The International Day of Nowrouz was registered on the UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on February 23, 2010.
For Iranians, Nowrouz is a celebration of renewal and change, a time to visit relatives and friends, and pay respect to senior family members.
Iranians welcome the New Year by wearing new clothes and setting the Haft Seen, a table containing seven items starting with the letter ‘S’; Sabzeh (freshly grown greens), Samanu (sweet wheat paste), Senjed (jujube), Seeb (apple), Seer (garlic), Serkeh (vinegar) and Somaq (sumac).
Snow might not be ideal weather for a festival that marks the coming of Spring. But the annual feast of Nowruz is a big deal in Tajikistan.
Hence preparations, amid the white stuff, for a party complete with international guests. Nowruz is celebrated in countries from Asia to the Middle East.
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai are among those attending.
And judging by those who talked to our correspondent in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, there is no shortage of holiday spirit.
“I wish a happy Nowruz, health and prosperity to all Iranians and Persian speakers,” said one young woman.
“On behalf of all Tajik people, I wish happiness, health and joy to all who celebrate Nowruz,” a man added.
“I am Tajik from Dushanbe. I wish you a lifetime of happiness,“a woman told our reporter.
via Tajikistan hosts international Nowruz celebrations | euronews, world news.
Dushanbe, February 24, Interfax – A Tajik court has convicted seven people supporting the extremist ideas of the Tablighi Jamaat Islamic movement of openly calling for a violent subversion of the country’s legitimate authorities, the Tajik Supreme Court said in a press release.
The trial was held in the Sogda region, 100 kilometers north of the Dushanbe capital.
“The court found the defendants, seven citizens of Tajikistan, guilty of publicly calling for a violent subversion of the Tajikistan Republic’s constitutional system – Article 307.1 – and gave them prison sentences,” the court said.
Two of them were sentenced to five years in prison each, and the remaining five received three-year prison terms each.
It was the first trial over Tablighi Jamaat followers in Tajikistan in the past two years, following the conviction of 56 supporters of this movement in March 2010. Twenty-three Tajik citizens were given sentences ranging from three to six years in prison, and 33 other people were ordered to pay fines from $8,000 to $16,000.
Tablighi Jamaat, which does not have official registration, is widely popular in South Asian countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. However, the authorities of these countries regard this religious movement as dangerous.
via Interfax-Religion.
neweurasia.net » Masterpieces. Banned. Hidden.; Art documentary comes to Tajikistan.
In their invitation to the Tajik screening event, Silk Road Media explaines the documentary to be:
“…about a museum in the parched hinterland of Central Asia that contained the world’s largest collection of Russian avant-garde art during the time of the Soviet Union.”
Silk Road Media continues:
“The idea of the film is to show the story of how a person’s life turned out to be the preservation of a whole epoch of art, which would otherwise have been lost for evermore because of Soviet repression.”
Karakalpak Museum of Arts: Home of the Savitsky Collection explains the “Forbidden” nature of the museum’s art:
“…the Museum’s collection of Russian avant garde is the only one that was initially condemned officially by the Soviet Union and, at the same time, financed partly by it, albeit unwittingly. Evidently, Nukus’ status as a ‘closed’ city and, especially, Savitsky’s good relations with the Karakalpak regional authorities enabled this to happen.”
This December 2011 Tajik screening of “The Desert of Forbidden Art” is not the first time for the documentary to be seen in the region. On November 18th, 2011 the film came to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s University of Central Asia (138 Toktogul Street). The university shares a synopsis of the film:
“The incredible story of how a treasure trove of banned Soviet art worth millions of dollars is stashed in a far-off desert in Uzbekistan that develops into a larger exploration of how art survives in times of oppression…”
In August 2010, EurasiaNet.org reported on the documentary hitting the silver screen – making mention of how Savitsky challenged authority and refused to let censored art lay in shadows, hidden from the world:
“Thanks to Nukus’ remoteness from Moscow politics and local officials’ ignorance of art, Savitsky collected some 40,000 paintings by Soviet artists banned for ideological reasons, artists who refused to paint propaganda in a social realist style.”
The authoritarian government here could not be more worried. Spooked by the specter of Islamic radicalism and the challenges posed by increasingly influential religious leaders, the Tajik authorities have been working fervently to curb religious expression.
Bearded men have been detained at random, and women barred from religious services. This year, the government demanded that students studying religion at universities in places like Egypt, Syria and Iran return home. The police have shuttered private mosques and Islamic Web sites, and government censors now monitor Friday sermons, stepping in when muftis stray from the government line.
Last month, lawmakers took what many here said was a drastic step further: they passed a law that would, among other things, bar children younger than 18 from attending religious services at mosques.
Focusing on Tajikistan 