Tajikistan context

Overview

Formerly a Soviet Republic of Central Asia located at the crossroads of Persian, Arab, and Turkish-Mongolian civilizations, Tajikistan offers fascinating cultural diversity. The population of Tajikistan is largely composed of Tajiks, but also of Uzbeks (who live mainly in the plains and urban areas) and Kyrgyz (who live in mountainous areas).  The predominantly Sunni Muslim population (85%) mainly speaks Tajik, an Iranian language similar to Farsi (spoken in Iran) and Dari (spoken in Afghanistan), but also Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Yaghnobi, or the Pamiri languages for eponymous populations.  Many people also speak Russian, which is both the vernacular language during the USSR regime and the “working” language spoken by temporary labor migrants in Russia. English is increasingly spoken. Under the USSR, 95% of Tajiks were literate. Despite the disorganization of the education system after independence (1992) and the civil war of the 1990s (1992-1997), the school enrolment rate has returned to significant levels.

Holidays

The population celebrates the main Muslim holidays (Ramadan, Eid ul-Adha, known locally as “Kurban Bayram”), as well as national holidays (flag festival, Independence Day on September 11), Zoroastrian heritage festivals (Persian New Year, known locally as Navruz, on March 21 and 22, celebrated throughout Central Asia), and Soviet-era holidays (Soldier’s Day on 23 February, International Women’s Day on March 8, Victory Day on May 9).

Sources of income and family organization

A small and mostly rural country (75% of the population lives in the countryside), Tajikistan has not undergone massive rural exodus like its neighbors. Households live in semi-autarky, growing seasonal vegetables and fresh fruit in their private gardens, stored in jars or dried for winter, and relying on the milk and meat of their few head of livestock (cow, sheep, goat). Each household makes their weekly bread in a an oven made of clay (or nowadays sometimes made of cement) called “tandour”.

For three-quarters of Tajik households, most of the money needed to subsist comes from men working abroad, particularly in Russia. Migration is thus the financial lifeline of Tajikistan; migrant remittances account for nearly 50% of the country’s GDP, where an average wage of US $ 150 per month does not cover the costs of daily living or investment for the future.

Geography

The country is divided into four main regions: the Sughd region, north of Dushanbe, which combines the mountain range of Fans and Yaghnob as well as the Khujand Plain, which joins the Ferghana Valley; the Rasht region in the north-east, through which Surhob, a wide river surrounded by high peaks, passes; to the south of Dushanbe, the Khatlon region, the cotton plain used for intensive agriculture during the Soviet era, where temperatures are the highest in the country in summer. In the south-west, the Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO), also called the Pamirs, or “roof of the world”, is a remote territory whose access has been facilitated in recent years thanks to work done on  the M41 Highway that connects Tajikistan with China.

Pamir itself is far from being a coherent geographical unit: West Pamir is composed of alpine valleys, inhabited by peoples who each developed their own languages (the most common being Shughni, Bartangi and Wakhi – the names of the valleys in which they are practiced). Toward the east, the valleys rise and join to form a high plateau at an average altitude of 4000 meters where many lakes are found – the legacy of a prehistoric sea. There resides formerly nomadic Kyrgyz agro-pastoralists who now co-inhabit the area with Pamiris.

The main cities of the country, Dushanbe, Khujand, Kulob and Khorog host the main universities and are important places of commerce. Dushanbe, originally a village where the Monday (“dushanbe” in Tajik) market once took place, was designated as the capital by the Soviets, while Khujand was a major stopover of the Silk Road and, as such, boasts vast cultural wealth. The historic capitals of elite Persian culture in the region, Samarkand and Bukhara, are located on the other side of the Uzbek border, a legacy of the 1920s territorial carvings of the Soviet administration.

Resources

The fall of the USSR was a game-changer for Tajikistan, which, until 1991, largely depended on resources and subsidies sent from Moscow. In particular, the break-up of the Soviet bloc reshuffled the map of distribution of energy resources.

The main resources exploited in Tajikistan are water and aluminum. The country, for which 50% of the energy is sourced from hydropower (from the Nurek dam located east of the capital), is gradually rebuilding its energy independence, but many villages remain without electricity in winter and outages are common in urban areas. One of the major current issues is the construction of the Rogun dam, which would be among the highest in the world. A Soviet-era project interrupted in the 1970s, the dam has once again received investments from foreign capital (mainly from Russia). Located on the Vakhsh River, which becomes Amo Daria in Uzbekistan, it is the subject of numerous regional disputes. As a result, Uzbekistan has cut its gas and coal exports to Tajikistan, thereby depriving cities and rural areas of the means for heating during the winter. To cope with the energy shortage, rural inhabitants have resorted to burning wood, leading to mass deforestation, which has aggravated the instability of young mountain ranges and subjected them to severe erosion.

Aluminum is currently mined in one of the largest plants in Central Asia, located west of the capital, and is exported throughout the region.

History

Since the 1950s, the Tajik landscape has been significantly altered, largely through Soviet modernization infrastructure, construction, and transportation projects, but also from the collectivization of agriculture that displaced tens of thousands of Tajiks from the mountains to the cotton plains (Ferghana and Kulob) that had been previously populated mainly by Uzbeks. The capital, Dushanbe, was built up from a hamlet and its history is marked by Soviet ambitions. But as Tajikistan’s showcase city, Dushanbe is the subject of a policy of “restoration” (demolition, in reality) by which the current regime is carefully erasing all traces of Soviet history in favor of high rises that seem to be inspired by the architecture of the Gulf countries.

The changing place of women in Tajik society

In the sedentary and agropastoral context of Tajikistan, the division of roles between men and women  traditionally breaks down as outdoor tasks performed by men and tasks performed in domestic spaces by women (a division which was once particularly stark in the city). Although the Soviets had launched a “women’s liberation” campaign, it is actually the current difficult economic conditions that are accelerating the transformation of women’s access to public spaces, paid work, the role of head of household, etc. In this context, many development projects now include a “gender” component in their aid programs, but which tend to lead women towards occupations considered to be specific to women: seamstress, medical aid, nurse, hairdresser, gardener.

Faced with this observation that women’s education is often restricted to so-called “feminine” domains, Women Rockin’ Pamirs objectives are clear: to propose alternatives to Pamiri women who are interested in training in mountain professions, which involve learning new practices and group responsibilities (including leadership roles in mixed-gender groups), capitalizing on growing touristic interest in the region.

Women Rockin’ Pamirs works with local populations to contribute to the development of Tajikistan, a land of rich history that is home to many unexplored peaks and hearts of unspoiled wilderness.