INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP
Tajikistan: On the Road to Failure
Dushanbe/Brussels, 12 February 2009: Far from being a bulwark against the spread of violence from Afghanistan, Tajikistan is looking increasingly like its southern neighbour – a weak state that is suffering from a failure of leadership.
Tajikistan: On the Road to Failure,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, says that without sweeping reforms to address food security, energy infrastructure and corruption, President Rakhmon’s regime is in danger of collapse.
“Tajikistan’s leaders clearly feel that any reform will destroy their grip on power”, says Paul Quinn-Judge, Crisis Group’s Central Asia Project Director. “Significant improvement is highly unlikely under President Rakhmon”.
Until recently, half of Tajikistan’s workforce has been working abroad. Migrant labour has served not only as an easy way out for the country’s largely do-nothing leadership. It has also created a political safety valve providing jobs for the young, more energetic members of the population who might otherwise have taken their protests to the street. Now work in Russia, Kazakhstan and elsewhere is drying up with the deepening of the world economic crisis. The migrants are coming home.
The country’s Soviet-era infrastructure is crumbling due to neglect, and its leadership appears to have no idea how to confront a series of major economic and social crises. For the second winter in a row the country is largely without electricity.
The international community’s ability to effect change, however, is limited by its lack of unity and an absence of interest or even awareness of Tajikistan’s problems in international capitals. Yet unity in their approach to this small country could produce big dividends and avoid even bigger problems.
Despite the fragility of both regime and its infrastructure, the new U.S. administration clearly views Tajikistan as possible major participant in its plans to create a new supply line for coalition troops in Afghanistan. But Western security priorities in the region will not be reliably served by an incompetent, venal state near collapse.
“Rakhmon is not performing the role Western countries hoped he would fulfil – the creation of a modern, functioning state that could be a firewall against the spread of extremism from Afghanistan and other parts of South Asia”, warns Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director. “With crude but effective processes of co-option or punishment, he has emptied the political space, in the clear aim of leaving neither domestic nor international critics with a viable alternative”.
*Read the full Crisis Group report on our website: http://www.crisisgroup.org
