A brief history of the repression of the Pamiri indigenous minority in Tajikistan

Originally published on December 2022 by William Roberts

Recent atrocities against the civilian population of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (Province) of Tajikistan are slowly coming to the attention of  the international press. The present article attempts to place these atrocities in a historical context and to define outcomes and options for the international community.

Highlanders of the Pamirs in the Early 20th Century

The Pamiri people and their languages are descended from the Eastern Iranian ethnic group that occupied a large part Central Asia and what is now Siberia until the Mongol invasions in the 12th century CE. After the Arab conquests in Central Asia in the seventh and eighth centuries, the Sunni branch of Islam became progressively the dominant faith of the region.

From the eleventh century, missionaries of the Ismaili faith, a branch of Shia Islam, progressively converted the local population, undoubtedly aided by the remoteness and inaccessibility of the Pamir region that remained only loosely under the control of the Sunni Emirates of Bukhara and of Afghanistan. Today, the vast majority of Pamiris are Ismailis and worship the Aga Khan as their Imam. They are recognised as a distinct ethnic and religious minority in Tajikistan.

Prior to the Russian occupation of the Pamirs at the end of the 19th century, certain fairly well defined regions of the Pamirs (Shughnan, Darwaz, Wakhan) were ruled by local potentates, whose allegiance to external authority fluctuated and could be multiple. Recognised as part of ‘Soghdiana’, ‘Turan’, ‘Transoxiana’ or ‘Turkestan’, the Pamirs were claimed at various times from the 19th century onwards and with varying degrees of confidence and military coercion by Russia, China, the Emirs of Afghanistan and Bukhara and the Khan of Kokand (Ferghana valley). In 1868, Kokand became by treaty a Russian vassal state and, in February 1876, the Khanate was annexed by Russia; as of that date Russia claimed at least de facto control of the Pamirs.

In 1895, with the establishment of a permanent Russian garrison in Khorog, the Pamir region came de jure under Russian sovereignty. In 1924 it became briefly part of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and then, as the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, became part of the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Uzbek SSR. Present-day Tajikistan became a separate Soviet Socialist Republic on 5 December 1929.

The Russian occupation and later incorporation of the Pamir region into the Soviet Union brought many advantages to the local population and the Pamiri people did not participate in the anti-Soviet movements that flourished in various parts of Central Asia from 1916 to 1926.

In addition to protecting the population from the depredations of the Afghans and Bukharans, as well as of their own local potentates, all of whom engaged in slave trading, the newly arrived Russians began road building, encouraged the use of horses and gradually spread a minimum of education and basic health care. A road between Osh in Kyrgyzstan and Murghab was opened in 1897 and the connection to the regional capital Khorog was completed a few years later. In 1913, a hydropower station was opened in Khorog. The Russians introduced the first potatoes, cabbages, new seed varieties for cereals and some improvements in livestock.

Sharing frontiers with China and Afghanistan, GBAO was of major strategic importance to the Soviet Union and, until its collapse, the population continued to enjoy material advantages that were intended to facilitate and encourage permanent settlements in these frontier regions. There was, however, little investment in productive infrastructure: the Soviet regime preferred to create a dependency based on massive subsidies of food and energy.

Under the enlightened Soviet social and educational policies, that stretched to the far corners of the USSR, the Pamiris acquired one of the highest levels of educational achievement not only in Tajikistan but also in the Soviet Union as a whole. In 1926 an official report by the Soviet Sredazburo (Central Asia Bureau) estimated village literacy in Tajikistan at 1.1% for males and 0.2% for females; by 1984, the official estimate for the whole of GBAO was more than 99%.

The break-up of the Soviet Union led to the creation of a broad-based Democratic party, as well as a Pamiri political party, and hopes for political pluralism. In 1991, in the first open Presidential election held in the former Soviet Union, a Pamiri candidate gained some 35% of the vote. Encouraged by Gorbachev's liberalising policies, the Pamiri people hoped for a democratisation of Tajik politics; a loose coalition of the Islamic Renaissance Party and the Democratic party of Tajikistan agitated for political reform, challenging the post-Soviet transfer of power to former communist elites.

These hopes were shattered by the Tajik civil war.

In the spring of 1992, public demonstrations against irregularities in the 1991 presidential election took place in Dushanbe and armed conflict broke out in the streets. The opposition forces briefly held Dushanbe, but the fighting spread across the country and opposition leaders and civilians of Pamiri origin, particularly journalists, were massacred. There were reports of buses being stopped and if anyone spoke with a Pamiri accent, they were shot on the spot. Others fled to Afghanistan, from where many Pamiris returned to GBAO. In 1993, the local parliament even proclaimed the "Autonomous Republic of Gorno-Badakhshan" and requested support from the Chernomyrdin government in Russia.

Emomali Rahmonov (presently Rahmon, abandoning the Russian designation) became de facto head of state, and was confirmed as President in November 1994. His government has continued to consider the Pamiris as enemies of the State and a threat to his regime - and, today, as "terrorists".

Russian forces, who had helped in the defeat of the opposition forces, remained in Tajikistan and, in GBAO, controlled the border with Afghanistan. This frontier post, with its freezing winter temperatures and remoteness, was one of hardship, for which Russia tended to deploy low-level and undisciplined recruits, who regarded the local population with contempt and regularly harassed them.

A number of suspicious deaths of local leaders were blamed on the Russian border guards. In December 1994, the commander of the "Self-defence Forces of the Pamirs", Abdulamon Ayumbekov (‘Alyosha the Hunchback’), was killed by a remotely-detonated mine; subsequently, two other commanders, Majnun Pallaev and Hoji Abdurashid, died from poison after meetings with the Russian border guards. These assassinations were certainly undertaken with the approval or connivance of the Tajik government.

In 1995, the Aga Khan visited GBAO with the President of Tajikistan and met with the leaders of the "Self-Defence Forces". He requested that they lay down their arms and avoid conflict with the legitimate government of the country. A direct telephone communication was established with the Russian border guards and an uneasy truce began. In the meantime, the Aga Khan Development Network AKDN had begun a major humanitarian programme in GBAO and was initiating longer-term development projects throughout Tajikistan.

Nevertheless, violent incidents against the local population continued to occur. In November 1996, for example, armed public demonstrations were held in Khorog to protest the deaths of four citizens in Russian custody, that were only dispersed through mediation by representatives of the AKDN. Again, a letter was sent to Chernomyrdin, requesting better control of the border forces and a civilian Russian government presence in GBAO.

The local military leaders were regularly accused of (and denied) involvement in the trade of drugs and precious stones. For the local people, however, this did not diminish respect for them: they were considered as heroes for their action to protect the inhabitants of GBAO from government forces during the civil war and from the subsequent harassment by the Russian border guards. In 2005, Tajik forces took over control of the frontier from the Russian border guards and, until 2012, continued to harass the local population with relatively minor provocations.

On 24 July 2012, however, Tajik security and military forces started an operation involving some 3,000 personnel with automatic weapons, mortars, armed vehicles and helicopters in the densely populated areas of Khorog, with no prior notice to or evacuation of the population. Snipers on the mountain slopes above the town shot at civilians. Phone and internet connections were cut off. The operation was supposedly to capture four local leaders (see above) who were accused of the murder of a Tajik military officer. The size of the operation and attacks on civilians, however, made it clear that the object of the operation was to terrorize the population and stamp out all resistance to the central government. Intervention by the Aga Khan and his representatives calmed the situation.

Military activity on a smaller scale against the civilian population was repeated in 2014, 2018 and 2019. In 2022, however, a second major crackdown was launched in GBAO. Complaints about the unexplained death and mutilation of a citizen in November 2021 escalated and led to major public demonstrations in May 2022. In June, full-scale brutal military repression measures were undertaken against the civilian population.

The government attempted to justify its actions by claiming the existence of an anti-government conspiracy and, in May, arrested many prominent Pamiri journalists, civil society leaders, human rights activists and others, and, with Russian support, abducted some from Moscow to stand trial on trumped-up charges, even if they were actually Russian citizens. Another local leader was assassinated. By June, any outspoken person in GBAO feared arrest; by August all civil society leaders were being methodically targeted.

Punitive sentences were handed down to Ulfat Mamadshoeva, a Pamiri and one of the most prominent journalists and human rights activists in the country, to her brother, Khursand Mamadshoev, and to her former husband, Kholbash Kholbashev. The activities of the AKDN have been severely curtailed by the government and may even be halted altogether.

Today, there is hardly a family in GBAO that has not been affected by the death or imprisonment of a relative at the hands of the central government at some time since the civil war.

Conclusions

The President of Tajikistan is determined to suppress by the use of extreme force all dissent against his regime. He is also prepared to accept some financial losses by cutting links to the AKDN.

With hindsight, the predominance of AKDN in GBAO was bound to lead to friction with a power-obsessed and paranoid President. It was, indeed, a change of paradigm: everywhere else in its operations AKDN had worked with benevolent governments.

It might also have been wiser for AKDN to work more actively for the integration in its own institutions of the informal local leaders and former commanders, rather than principally with a Dushanbe-based élite, most of whom were and are considered by Pamiris in GBAO as being too close to the Rahmon régime.

Preoccupied obsessively with Ukraine, Western media have virtually ignored current events in GBAO and Tajikistan. Western governments and agencies have been passive or turned a blind eye; some have continued to promote financing, investment and other support in Tajikistan and have maintained cordial diplomatic relations with the country. For once, the United Nations has been frank and pro-active.

Those interested in the welfare of Pamiris must continue to put pressure on their governments and international agencies to stop co-operation with Tajikistan, and must lobby with the press and human rights organisations to seek release of political prisoners.

Rahmon is preparing his son as a dynastic successor on his death. It would be a pity to wait until then to see whether there is a possibility of any real change in the treatment of Pamiris.

Article Originally Published by William Roberts in 2022 after the November 2021 and May 2022 persecutions against Pamiris in Tajikistan. Article was also published at Pamir Inside in Russian.