The fault lines of violent conflict in Tajikistan

Abstract

This thesis examines the outbreak, spread, and eventual subsidence of violence in Tajikistan during the first phase of the Tajik Civil War (1992-1997). The violent conflict in southern Tajikistan lasted roughly from spring 1992 until the war's official end in June 1997 with the signing of a broad peace agreement and power-sharing arrangement. As noted above, I will concentrate my analysis on the first phase of conflict that finished at the end of 1992. During this early period the vast majority of fatalities occurred - including both civilians and armed combatants. The myriad social and political divisions of this era necessitate an in-depth historical and social analysis of ethnicity, religion, social organisation, migration, state-building, politics and economics in Tajikistan (especially during the Soviet era). All of these factors - to varying degrees - affected the loyalties and actions of individuals and groups during the pre-war era though the outbreak of conflict. The 'security dilemma' and 'credible commitment problem' will be demonstrated to be effective tools for analysing the logic behind the outbreak and continuation of conflict in Tajikistan. The analysis of the distinct regional and, in some cases ethnic, characteristics of the opposing armed groups will show how the 'mobilising structures' were limited, or even captured, by the pre-existing networks and politically and economically relevant regional and ethnic identities in Tajikistan. The process whereby national-level political competition was intimately attached to local conflicts - resulting in the rapid spread of violence in rural areas - will be clearly illustrated using the concept of 'alliance', a process whereby seemingly unrelated local agendas quickly attach to broader cleavages at the national level. And finally, explaining why indiscriminate violence was used against civilian populations and why it was eventually abandoned as a tactic, an adaption of the theory of 'indiscriminate violence' will be used as an analytical tool. The resulting analysis, combined with a complete narrative of 1992, fills a gap in the literature on the Tajik Civil War as other accounts focus primarily on the variables that resulted in the outbreak of conflict or on the peace process and post-conflict era. -- provided by Candidate.