Tajikistan, Preparing for a Long Winter

Tajikistan faces a daunting litany of problems, including widespread poverty, drug trafficking, rising Islamic militancy and corruption. The 2010 Global Corruption Barometer, a recent report by Transparency International, ranked Tajikistan one of the world's worst in terms of corruption, placing it at 154th out of 178 surveyed.

In mid-December, Tajik leaders decided to create a new public body to combat corruption. According to the local press, high-ranking members of the opposition Islamic Renaissance Party and the Communist Party met to discuss the new organization, which will include NGO representatives, journalists, scholars and Islamic centers along with representatives of political parties and state agencies. The new organization is to carry on the work of an anti-corruption agency created in 2006, which proved ineffectual. The new agency's task will be formidable, as a US government cable leaked earlier in December by Wikileaks external page noted: "The greatest obstacle to improving the economy is resistance to reform. From the President down to the policeman on the street, government is characterized by cronyism and corruption."

Of great concern in Washington is Tajikistan's porous 810 mile-long border with Afghanistan, which separates one of the world's most unstable countries from one of the poorest.

Ground zero of the 'great game'

Washington has belatedly recognized Tajikistan's importance in its efforts to pacify Afghanistan. In 2009, the US Embassy in Dushanbe stated that the US had provided Tajikistan with $58.65 million in foreign aid, slated in 2010 to increase more than 11 percent, to $65.48 million.

Washington's twin concerns for Tajikistan are the drug trade and Islamic militancy, and there is little indication that either is being successfully contained. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) estimates than in 2010 Afghanistan produced about 3,600 tons of opium, much of which transits Tajikistan on its way to European and American markets. In 2009, Tajik security services seized a paltry 4.5 tons of drugs, with similar figures expected for 2010.

As for Tajikistan's Islamic militants, they are a legacy of the country's brutal civil war. Of all the former Soviet 'stans', Tajikistan suffered the most following the 1991 collapse of the USSR, as in 1992 Tajikistan descended into a brutal civil war dominated by diehard Communists and Islamic militants. When it ended five years later with a UN-brokered agreement, more than 50,000 Tajiks had been killed in a nation of only 7.5 million, and more than one-tenth of the population had fled the country.

In a symptom of Tajikistan's weak control, on 22 August 2010, 25 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) al-Qaida-linked militants escaped from a Dushanbe prison, killing six guards in a daring nighttime operation. Authorities concluded that the militants were headed toward the Rasht Valley region. The prison break was followed by an attack on a government truck convoy on 19 September carrying around 80 soldiers through the Pamir Mountains in the Kamarob gorge, 160 miles from Dushanbe. In the ensuing firefight, 26 Tajik soldiers died, according to a statement issued by the IMU. The country's mountainous terrain and proximity to Afghanistan make such future clashes more, not less, likely.

Weather woes

The winter of 2007-2008 was especially brutal in the high mountains of Central Asia. Tajikistan, heavily dependent on energy imports from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, saw its imports slashed because it needed energy for domestic consumption. Tajikistan's energy ministry complained that Uzbekistan cut natural gas supplies to Tajikistan over payment disputes and subsequently suspended electric power exports to Tajikistan in early February, which caused Turkmenistan to take up the slack by doubling its export of electricity to Tajikistan to seven million kilowatts. Later that month, however, Turkmenistan itself suffered from a severe cold front and reduced exports to its usual rate of 3.5 million kilowatts. Tajik Prime Minister Akil Akilov subsequently asked Kyrgyz Prime Minister Igor Chudinov to increase electrical supplies to Tajikistan, but suffering from the same cold front, Kyrgyzstan halted exports of electricity to Tajikistan completely.

Adding to the population's suffering, Tajik officials announced a 20 percent electricity price increase to permit the government to meet its fiscal obligations to the World Bank. In the midst of rolling blackouts in the capital, the mayor of Dushanbe has demanded utilities implement the schedule set by Akilov and make electricity available to the population from 5 am to 10 am and 5 pm to 10 pm. The UN estimated that electricity supplies would be at just 40 percent of capacity until the spring and that up to two million people, or one-third of the population, would need food assistance, and launched an immediate emergency appeal for $25 million from international donors to help alleviate the crisis.

Tajikistan's response was to fire up its Nurek hydroelectric facility on the Vakhsh River, which supplies 70 percent of Tajikistan's power. Nurek, begun in 1961 and completed 19 years later on a deep gorge on the Vakhsh River with nine turbines, produces three of the country's four gigawatt hydroelectric output. Nurek's reservoir covers 38 square miles and is more than 40 miles long, but the decision to increase electrical production left its Toktogul water reservoir down at critical levels until runoff from melting snow replenished Nurek's reservoirs in the spring. The running of the country's hydroelectric facilities infuriated Tajikistan's downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, all of which depend on regular spring and summer water discharge for their crops. The winter releases caused massive downstream flooding and heightened tensions with Tajikistan's downstream neighbors.

While the winter of 2008-2009 was milder, it remains to be seen what the region's weather patterns will be in the future. A brutal winter could well see a replay of the events of 2007-2008.

Water disputes

Water is the defining element in Tajikistan's relationships with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and tensions are rising, as the government of President Emomali Rakhmon seeks to build yet more massive hydroelectric facilities, seeing them both as a 'quality of life' issue for its citizens and a major potential source of desperately needed hard currency, as the country can export surplus electricity to its neighbors, including Afghanistan and, further afield, Pakistan.

Adroitly exploiting international rivalry, Tajikistan has made extensive international efforts to diversify its energy supplies. In December 2006, the Tajik government began construction of the 670 megawatt hydroelectric Sangtuda power station, a joint venture between the Tajik government and Russia's Unified Energy Systems Co. China in January 2007 signed an agreement to construct the Zeravshan (Yava) hydroelectric plant in northern Tajikistan, with an annual output of about 600 million kilowatts, and Iran has expressed interest in participating in the construction of the Shurob Hydroelectric Power Plant, as well as offering assistance in completing construction of the Sangtuda plant. Last but not least, the US is funding the $3.2 billion construction of the Dashtidjuma Hydroelectric Power Plant on the Pyandzh.

Uzbekistan, however, remains most concerned about Dushanbe's avowed intention to complete the vast 3,600-megawatt Soviet-era Vakhsh River Rogun hydroelectric cascade, begun in 1976, which Uzbek President Islom Karimov recently noted would take up to eight years to fill its reservoir, threatening the agriculture of downstream states. Tajikistan is seeking to complete its unfinished Rogun hydroelectric dam. In December 2009 the Tajik government issued Rogun stock and made it compulsory for citizens to purchase nearly $700 worth of shares, a sum exceeding most Tajiks' annual income, in order to collect $600 million for construction to continue. After IMF Tajikistan mission head Axel Schimmelpfennig stated that the mandatory forced donations would destabilize the Tajik economy and that returns would be "negligible," Tajik President Rakhmon suspended the campaign on 12 April as his administration negotiated with the IMF. But the tensions continue.

The Afghan factor

Tajikistan is also attempting to secure itself a piece of the lucrative pie supplying NATO and ISAF forces in Afghanistan. Since February 2009 a number of trains shunted along the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) have transited Tajikistan, but Rakmon's increasingly acrimonious stance towards Uzbekistan is now interrupting that rail link. In October the Tajik government formally asked the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to send a fact-finding mission to look into the railway dispute, with the Tajik Ambassador to the OSCE Nurmuhammad Shamsov alleging that 884 freight cars carrying food, medication, construction materials for Rogun, and fuel are currently held up on the Uzbek side of their border. Widening their bilateral spat, Tajikistan has rejected a new draft air-traffic agreement proposed by Uzbekistan.

What next?

While little is certain in Central Asia, it seems clear that the deep-seated reasons for tensions between Central Asian nations are unlikely to abate anytime soon. It is equally clear that Rakhmon is determined to play off one interested foreign power against another to sustain his hydroelectric development of the country, regardless of the consequences. Last but not least, the country's poverty, corruption, drug trade and proximity to Afghanistan preclude the country from achieving relative stability anytime soon, leaving the US, Russia, China, India, Iran and other interested parties wondering what policies might best help alleviate the country's problems, at least in the short term.

The ultimate wild card is what the weather has in mind for the Pamirs and Tien Shan mountains this winter. If the region suffers a prolonged period of cold, then it is safe to predict that the nation will become less, not more, stable, with all the social and political consequences for Central Asia that might ensue. As for Rakhmon's grandiose hydroelectric schemes, foreign governments and international fiscal lending institutions should press him toward building smaller, free-flowing facilities increasingly in vogue in more prosperous, environmentally sensitive countries. The only question is whether Rakhmon will listen, since, at the end of the day, the only new hydroelectric facilities will be constructed largely with foreign assistance. Up to now, there seem to be few reasons for optimism.