Tajikistan: A potential hotspot for Islamic radicalism?

For a long time, and this is the first time that I’m actually sharing this, I was fascinated by the petit mountainous county of Tajikitstan, situated on the crossroad between Central Asia and the war torn apart Afghanistan, known all too well at an international level for the Islamic insurgency that has haunted for a long time the society there. Tajikistan is an interesting case, for a number of various reasons, one of them is the ethnic profile of this nation, its history, and quite important, its proximities. The Tajiks a dot of color in a homogeneously Turcik Central Asia, their roots being Persian, thus being creating a strong bound with neighboring Iran and Afghanistan. The Soviets played a decisive role in sculpting this nation’s borders and identity, sadly, but quite predictable in the same time, after the passing away of the Red Giant this nation was left outside, in a world plagued with instability and adversities.

Quite unique, from a cultural perspective, Tajikistan is no different in its evolution from the rest of the nations that used to form the Soviet family. The nation has faced struggles and unrest do to a very blurred sense of self-image and “where is my place in this world”. As I stated above, Tajikistan is not a singular case, similar patterns can be noticed in other nations of Central Asia. Before being incorporated in to the Czarist Empire, the territory of modern Tajikistan was part of a number of regional caliphates. The territory’s incorporation in to the Russian Empire did not make much of a difference at first, no major social changes occurred during this time. All of this had changed dramatically after the birth of the USSR, even though maintaining is status of borderland, the Tajikistan, along with all of Central Asia, became the subjects of a massive social project that aimed at opening up the eyes socially conservative locals to the benefits of communism. More than anything, the Soviets managed to remodel the Tajik society through dissolving one of its core elements: Islam. The ban on religious practices was general for all of the soviet republics, but apart from this, every republic experienced it in different manner.

Scrolling the historical timeline a bit, we come face to face with the XIX century Tajikistan, a nation deeply divided between ethno-cultural and economic lines. One of the biggest dangers that this nation is facing is the rise of Islamic insurgency, which can destabilize the nation so badly that it can ignite a civil war. The rise of such a movement is linked to several factors, in Tajikistan’s case has to do with a cultural void that people have the need to fill, this void being produced by the years of Soviet intervention. Another crucial factor is the nation’s isolation and troubled proximities; the isolation makes the country highly unattractive for foreign investors and also facilitates the crystallization a weak ability to create strong international cooperation ties outside of its proximities. The geographic isolation is topped by a badly developed infrastructure, and a legislation not too welcoming to foreign investment initiatives. The poorly developed infrastructure is even a greater disadvantage for a mountainous nation as Tajikistan, this greatly limiting the mobility of the population within the country which can lead in time to a disproportionate development of the territory.

Going back to the influence of religion, the Islamic tradition that the Tajiks had traditionally practiced did not have a history of extremism, even though favoring a traditionalistic social structure. Tajikistan is targeted by Afghani Islamist groups as a good breeding ground of militants for the law of Allah. The southern border that is shared with Afghanistan poses many security issues for the country, the common religious faith that the two nations share is in this scenario, making Tajikistan a possible candidate for becoming a hotspot for Islamic fundamentalism.

In order to neutralize this, the current political power banned citizens under 18 years of age to attend mosque, also banning any form of religious schools and a strict separation between state and Islam. The tracing of this thick border between state and religion was highly applauded in the West, this policy being successfully implemented with the Soviet model serving as a handy guide for such practices.

As a conclusion we can state that Tajikistan has the challenge of creating stabile and secular society which will be not plagued by the events that are frequently happening in neighboring Afghanistan. The crystallization of a secular Tajik national identity will increase the likelihood of socio-economic development in the future, thus limiting the effects of its geographic isolation.