TAJIKISTAN

[Guest]

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[Natasha]

The Republic of Tajikistan (Tajik: ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон) is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. Most of Tajikistan's population belongs to the Tajik ethnic group, who share culture and history with the Persian peoples and Uzbek people and speak the Tajik language. Once the location of the Samanid Empire, Tajikistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union in the 20th century, known as the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic.

After independence, Tajikistan suffered from a devastating civil war which lasted from 1992 to 1997. Since the end of the war, newly-established political stability and foreign aid have allowed the country's economy to grow. Its natural resources such as cotton and aluminium have contributed greatly to this steady improvement, although observers have characterized the country as having few natural resources besides hydroelectric power and its strategic location.

Tajikistan's main ethnic group are the Tajiks, with minorities such as the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, and a small Russian minority. Due to the fact that not everyone in Tajikistan is an ethnic Tajik, the non-Tajik citizens of the country are referred to as Tajikistani. The official nationality of any person from Tajikistan is a Tajikistani, while the ethnic Tajik majority simply calls themselves Tajik.

Contemporary Tajiks are mostly Indo-European Iranian people. In particular, they are descended from ancient Eastern Iranian peoples of Central Asia such as the Soghdians and the Bactrians as well as Western Iranian Persians and along with a small degree of mixture from non-Indo-European peoples.

Until the 20th century, people in the region used two types of distinction to identify themselves: way of life - either nomadic or sedentary - and place of residence. Although to some degree intermixed, the nomads are considered to be Turko-Mongol in origin and the sedentary people of Iranian descent, the Tajiks. The distinction became less evident with gradual sedentarization of former Asian Turko-Mongol tribes and gradual intermixing of Asian and Iranian Tajiks who borrowed from both languages. With the formation of five Central Asian republics under the USSR, many Tajiks were forced to sign themselves as Uzbek to avoid persecution in current Uzbekistan. Thus almost 10 million Tajiks were forcefully Uzbekisized when Turkization promoted by Pan-Turkists failed. The majority of Tajiks remained outside of their historic lands; that is, almost 10 million in Uzbkeistan , 7 million in Afghanistan , 2 million in Iran, and 1 million in Russia.

Historically, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were also home to Bukharan Jews tracing their ancestry to Israelites taken captive by the Babylonians in the 7th century BC, only several hundred remain today.

Ethinic Groups: Tajik 79.9%, Uzbek 15.3%, Russian 1.1 (declining because of emigration), Kyrgyz 1.1% , other (including Bukharan Jews and Volga Germans) 2.6%

Religions: Sunni Islam 85%, Shi'a Islam 15%[1], Other (including Orthodox Christian, Jewish)

Languages: Persian (Tajiki dialect) (official), Russian widely used in government and business, Shugni (spoken in area near Khorog)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajikistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Tajikistan

[Jill]

         For those of our Kiva Friends and Guests who are embarrassingly geography-and-history-challenged as I’m sorry to say that I am, I just came across this short but helpful explanatory introduction to “The Stans,” including our currently highlighted partner country, Tajikistan.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2002/02/01/html/ft_20020201.6.html?fs=www3.nationalgeographic.com&fs=plasma.nationalgeographic.com
NOTE: This link contains other links you can explore to learn more about Tajikistan and its culture.

“From Kazakhs in the north to Pashtun in Pakistan, over 100 ethnic groups call these storied lands home.

They are a diverse lot, these seven Stans. Only Kazakhstan, one of the five Stans born ten years ago in the breakup of the Soviet Union, seems likely to enjoy a prosperous future, thanks to enormous oil reserves. Someday Turkmenistan may also be rich—it has abundant natural gas—but for now it stagnates in one-man rule. Pakistan must be reckoned the most formidable Stan, possessing a large army and nuclear weapons to boot. It is also volatile and violent. Two of the ex-Soviet states, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, seem likely to become welfare nations, depending on the largesse of international lenders. After 23 years of conflict Afghanistan is the neediest of all, a gutted shell of a state with millions of land mines embedded in its earth.

The Stans’ common denominator is the harshness of their shared landscape, sweeps of desert and near desert riven by soaring mountain chains: the Hindu Kush, the Pamirs, the Safed Koh. Mountains mean life. Snowmelt feeds the rivers that support cities and farms; in Pakistan the Indus nourishes one of the most intensely irrigated regions on Earth. Engineers in the Soviet Stans harnessed the Amu Darya and Syr Darya to grow cotton on huge farms. The new nations still grapple with the aftereffects, land poisoned by agricultural chemicals and transformed into barren salt marshes.

In ancient times, the British historian Arnold Toynbee has written, Afghanistan was a “round-about,” a traffic circle, with routes converging “from all quarters of the compass and from which routes radiate out to all quarters of the compass again.” Those routes—silk roads and spice roads arcing across mountain passes, leaping from spring to well to river valley—knitted Afghanistan and the other Stans into a single skein. Mighty conquerors strode these routes: Cyrus and Darius of Persia, Alexander, Attila, Mahmud, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Babur. The number of dynasties domestic and foreign grew to more than a score. From India in the third century B.C. came Buddhism with Asoka, a bloody conqueror who became an evangelist of peace, renouncing the killing of any living thing. Buddhism endured for hundreds of years, time enough and more for artisans to carve soaring Buddhas in the rock of Bamian—statues gone forever, the last two destroyed by Taliban dynamite in March of last year.”

Pic #1: Cover Picture of the National Geographic Magazine article on “The 7 Stans”

Pic #2:  A girl harvests cotton in a field near Dosti, Tajikistan, November 3, 2006. [© AP Images]

Pic #3: A miner rests during lunch at Tajikistan’s ruby mines near the Chinese border. (Photo: © Richard W. Hughes/RWH Publishing)

Pic #4:  Harnessing the energy of water is a priority in Tajikistan, which has more water resources per capita than all but two other nations. Photograph by Kalandarov   
Nozim/ITAR-TASS/CORBIS

       I’m supposed to be “on break,” doing other things, so I’m not really here, but since I’ve been trying to get more of you to post to these threads and to a whole bunch of others to help build up the Forum as a fact-and-fun-filled and engaging, inviting resource for anybody who visits here, I thought I needed to put my time and computer where my “mouth” was before I truly went off to get the other (Life) things done that I need to get done.

     Thanks, Natasha, for stepping up on this, and you, too, Peter.

[Natasha]

Lokai

The Lokai horse was bred by the tribe Lokai in the central and southwestern Tajikistan, mainly in the Tajikistan and Kunguz mountains and in the valleys of their rivers. The terrain is rocky, everywhere is the lack of fresh/sweet water, and even the rivers have for most part salty water. Horses get fresh water from very few wells with fresh water. The mountainsides are covered with mountain flora.

The Lokai horse is a crossbreed of the Mongolian horse with the more refined Turkmen horse, Yomut, Achaltekin, Karabair and Arabian; the Mongolian elements are dominant in him. It is considered to be a very small but hardy breed. The Lokai horses are of various colors, grays, chestnuts and chestnut bays. Have roomy gates, going well in the gallop, but have short trot. They are late “bloomers” maturing in their fifth year.

The Lokai horse is bred for versatile uses as a riding horse, as a packhorse (soumar), even as light draft horse.


By the way, I am sparing this forum of a photo of Tajiks playing polo with a headless goat carcass but if anyone is interested they can find it here:  http://horsecare.stablemade.com/_articles/lokai.htm

[Wood Fairy Glenda]

All this is fascinating, friends - Thanks     and yes, Natasha, I had to check out the headless goat!

[Dottie b]

I think the headless goat is courtesy of Natasha. . . .

[Natasha]

Surudi Milli-National Anthem of Tajikistan  
(with some really cool photos: 2.04 minutes)

[Natasha]

Scenes of Tajikistan
(with a really upbeat soundtrack: 4.46 minutes)

[Odette]

from the NYTimes:

ALMATY, Kazakhstan, March 27 — Amid a series of idiosyncratic decrees aimed at removing traces of Soviet influence, the president of Tajikistan announced Tuesday that he had dropped the Slavic “ov” from the end of his surname and that, henceforth, the same must be done for all babies born to Tajik parents.

Most Tajiks added a Slavic ending to their surnames when the country came under Soviet rule early in the last century.

[Odette]

Another interesting article from the NYTimes in Nov. 2006:

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan, Nov. 7 — Gulya Ismoilova cannot say exactly when men in Tajikistan broke with a century of tradition and began taking second and even third wives, but she remembers precisely when her husband announced he had married again.

A lack of men in Dushanbe and all of Tajikistan has led to polygamy.
“Two years ago he took a woman to his brother’s house,” said Ms. Ismoilova, her hand trembling as she lifted a cigarette to her lips. “That’s when my life ended, when I became a first wife.”

Ms. Ismoilova said she could not have imagined her present circumstances when she married 11 years ago.

Polygamy existed in this overwhelmingly Muslim and rural country in the 70 years when the Soviet Union enforced a fiercely secular governing ideology that continues to be the law of the land. But it was very rare, and occurred in secret arrangements by people living shadowy lives.

But then came the breakup of the Soviet Union and Tajikistan’s civil war, which claimed as many as 100,000 lives in the 1990s, an overwhelming majority of the victims men.

Since then, as many as a million Tajik men have migrated to Russia to work, according to Tajik and Russian government statistics, leaving behind a stark imbalance of men and women in this nation of 6.5 million people.

Seizing on this disparity, men have begun to practice polygamy openly, citing Islamic law and the desire among women for partners to justify the illegal practice. Tajiks say polygamous marriages can now be found in nearly every apartment block in Dushanbe, and few Tajik families seem to be without a recent example.

“These girls require a husband or their families are shamed,” said Ali Fidhoum, 37, an engineer here. “Our religion allows it as long as I have a job and I treat both my wives equally. My second wife’s family is thankful for me, and they should be.”

But not all wives are as grateful as Mr. Fidhoum supposes. Ms. Ismoilova said her husband’s second household had left her humiliated and impoverished, and undermined her authority over her children.

“He tries to get our kids to move to his new wife’s apartment because she can’t have babies,” Ms. Ismoilova said. “These are my children he wants to take away from me. And I can do nothing. First my husband said I can’t work. Now he won’t let me leave the house without his permission.” She spoke slowly, her face distorted with anger.

Ms. Ismoilova said she once sought help from a women’s legal advocacy group but it offered no practical solution. Nor is her family a way out: her only relative in Dushanbe is her elderly mother, who subsists on a small pension. “I am a slave,” she said. “And now this society accepts it.”

Even those men who disapprove of polygamy say they understand why it has re-emerged. “I wouldn’t consider it,” said Zafer Mahmoudov, 24, a professional. “But for many men here, they are in arranged marriages with girls coming from villages. They have nothing to say to them. These girls do not know how to behave in the city. So they don’t tell their wives, but they go and marry a second one. They just do it and eventually everybody knows.”

The revival in Tajikistan of polygamy — which has been outlawed by the government but is supported by many imams — underscores a surprisingly swift return to traditional cultural and religious practices in all the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

“We are in a country where 95 percent of the population is very religious,” said Said Shmadov, the adviser for religious affairs to President Emomali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan. “So I think we need to have an Islamic society that is not an Islamic state, where religious organizations do not interfere with the politics of the state, where the government has the trust of the mosque but where our rich secular history is observed.”

Ibodat Yatimova, 25, was 14 when her parents placed her in an arranged marriage. Her husband divorced her after five years, forcing her and her two children to move to her parents’ home. To ease the financial burden on her parents, Ms. Yatimova accepted the proposal last year of a 45-year-old laborer who worked in the office where Ms. Yatimova is a secretary.

But there was a catch. “I didn’t know he already had a wife,” Ms. Yatimova said.

She said she was resigned to the arrangement, at least for now.

“It’s important that I show my parents that I have a husband,” she said. “He pays the rent for my apartment. My children show him respect but he doesn’t help them. He has his own children. We don’t really matter to him. When he buys me an apartment, I will leave him. Let him go to his first wife.”

Miriam Cooke, a professor of Arab culture at Duke University, said polygamy was an emerging trend across the Islamic world, including Indonesia, “where there is a huge controversy about the perceived growing trend in polygamous marriages.” But she warns against treating it as a black-and-white issue.

“It is complicated,” Ms. Cooke said. “There are some women who consider themselves to be feminists who think it’s perfectly acceptable to be a second or third wife and to be a professional woman, a good Muslim and to have all her rights. But I would say that I would agree with the majority of Islamic feminists who consider this to be a setback.”

For educated professional women in Dushanbe, polygamy is often a source of dismay and embarrassment.

“This is a matter of women being educated and being financially independent,” said Rokhshona Nazhmidinova, 26, an outreach coordinator at a nonprofit organization here. “It’s a sign that society is heading down. Just look at the countries that allow multiple wives. I wouldn’t want to live in them.”

[Natasha]

Animals in Tajikistan

Tajikistan have 84 species of mammal; 365 species of birds; 49 species of reptiles; 7-8 thousand species of insects.

In low lands the hot deserts: grey monitor lizard, cobra, an arrow-snake,  beauty bustard,  spotty cat, leopard and fox.

Tugai forest: Tugai deer,  cane cat,  jackal, Vipera lebetina,  golden pheasant, swans and striped hyena.

The low mountain zone (500-1000 m): steppe turtle, steppe agama, porcupine, hare (tolai), gopher and fox.

The middle mountain zone (1000-2500 m): bear, fox, wolf, snow leopard, Siberian ibex,  mouflon and Capra falconeri.
 
Alpine zone: Himalaya Tetraogallos, snow griffon-vulture, Siberian ibex and snow leopard.

High-mountainous of the Pamirs differs greatly from the fauna of all mountain ranges of Central Asia:  Tibetan Tetraogallos, Tibetan Syrrhaptes, Himalayan Mergus, Indian goose, red duck, brown-headed seagull,  caress, ermine, Mustela altaica,  fox,  lynx, wolf, bear, snow leopard, Siberian ibex and Marko Polo sheep.
 
Not surprising then, traditional sports such as Horse racing and games played on horseback, such as Buzkachi, have been played in Tajikistan for centuries. Falconry is also a traditional sport.