RFE/RL: Tajikistan's Civil War — a nightmare the government won't let its people forget

The report, published by RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog on 23 June 2017 ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 27 June Tajik peace accord, recounts the scale and character of the 1992-1997 Tajik civil war. According to the report, the war began with rival demonstrations in Dushanbe in spring 1992 and pitted the government, led by former state-farm boss Emomali Rahmon, against the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), a coalition of democratic, Islamic and local ethnic groups. The report states that fighting was concentrated in villages and towns such as Komsomolabad, Garm and Tavil-Dara east of Dushanbe, with hundreds of fighters killed in brief engagements and between 10 and 20 percent of the population displaced at any given time. The report notes that Uzbekistan closed its border to Tajik refugees and that tens of thousands fled into Afghanistan. According to the report, pro-government forces were backed by Russia’s 201st Division and Russian border guards, and later by a CIS peacekeeping force including Uzbek, Kazakh and Kyrgyz units. The report describes paramilitary warlord behaviour, including by Colonel Mahmud Khudaiberdiev, and the targeted killings of non-combatants such as Chief Mufti Fatkhullo Sharifzoda and his family (January 1996), Dushanbe medical school rector Yusuf Ishaki (May 1996) and more than 40 journalists. According to the report, food shortages, typhoid outbreaks, riots in Ura-Tyube and Khorog and the near-collapse of the medical system added to the humanitarian toll, and the government continues to invoke the war ahead of elections to discourage dissent.