Precarious progress for US ally Tajikistan

The Muslim state could be thrown back into disarray if problems in next-door Afghanistan spill over.

from the March 21, 2007 edition

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Following the USSR's collapse in 1992, Tajikistan plunged into civil war between rival clans. Islamist rebels, trained and armed by Tajik warlords in Afghanistan, were defeated only with massive Russian assistance to government forces. A UN-sponsored deal ended the war a decade ago, but stability only began to return to wide swaths of the countryside after the Taliban were driven out of neighboring Afghanistan five years ago.

The worst scenario, many experts here say, is that the US-led stabilization mission in neighboring Afghanistan might fail. Tajikistan sided with the West in the post-9/11 Afghan war, and was a major staging ground for international aid to the Tajik-dominated Afghan Northern Alliance, which played a key role in overthrowing the extreme Islamist Taliban. Today, NATO troops man the posts on the other side of the Pyandzh River and – except for what experts say is an alarming growth in drug smuggling – the border is quiet.

"If Afghanistan were to descend into lawlessness again, it would create a very threatening situation for all of Central Asia, but especially here and [in next-door] Uzbekistan," says Mr. Mullojanov. "We have our own Islamist opposition, and once again we might see them setting up strongholds in northern Afghanistan and infiltrating here, as happened before."

Once fortified by Soviet-installed electric fences and minefields, Tajikistan's 745-mile border with Afghanistan is relatively porous. The chronic power shortages render the electrified fences defunct in some places, and the minefields are being dug up with help from international organizations.

"If someone wanted to cross the border, it was always possible," says Benazar Nizoyev, a farmer who works within sight of Leningradsky Post. He tells of how he fled to Afghanistan at the height of Tajikistan's civil war, floating across the Pyandzh at night on a raft made of old tires. In nearby Kumsangir district, local official Surat Safarov says that everyone is betting heavily on Western success in Afghanistan. "If things go well, that will mean trade and connections to Iran, Pakistan, and the West for us. If there is no stability in Afghanistan, things will be very, very bad for us," he says.

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RICH CLABAUGH – STAFF