Tajikistan's Difficult Development Path
Tajikistan's Difficult Development Path
MARTHA BRILL OLCOTT
Copyright Date: 2012
Published by: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Pages: 455
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wpk8m
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Book Info
Tajikistan's Difficult Development Path
Book Description:

Tajikistan teeters on the brink of failure. This mountainous and landlocked country, the poorest in Central Asia, confronts the challenges of good governance and economic survival. These domestic struggles become even more problematic as international forces prepare to withdraw from neighboring Afghanistan, leaving Central Asian countries to ensure regional stability.

InTajikistan's Difficult Development Path, Martha Brill Olcott traces the political, economic, and social change following the country's independence and international efforts to avert state collapse. The Tajik government's commitment to reform has been inconsistent, and substantial foreign assistance provided since the end of the country's civil war has not led to the desired economic and political development.

Olcott concludes that the Tajik leadership faces a serious dilemma: fully embrace reform or continue moving toward state failure. Tajikistan's decision will have very real implications for this troubled region.

eISBN: 978-0-87003-303-2
Subjects: Political Science
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. FOREWORD
    FOREWORD (pp. vii-viii)
    Jessica T. Mathews

    Tajikistan’s post-Soviet transition has not been easy. Shortly after independence, this landlocked and mountainous country plunged into a civil war that magnified the economic and political difficulties of building a viable state from the fragments of a unitary Soviet economy. Ever since, Tajikistan has teetered on the brink of failure.

    The country’s struggles are brought into sharper relief as international forces prepare to withdraw from neighboring Afghanistan in 2014. Soon, the states of Central Asia will be faced with the burden of ensuring regional stability. Yet, Tajikistan has not yet proved it can overcome its challenges on the domestic front....

  4. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: A COUNTRY AT RISK
    CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: A COUNTRY AT RISK (pp. 1-10)

    Tajikistan, probably the most remote of all the former Soviet republics, has been a country at risk since achieving its independence twenty years ago. It is the poorest country in Central Asia, with an average per capita income of $780 in 2010, when it was ranked 183 of 213 countries by the World Bank.¹

    This mountainous and landlocked country has a population of approximately 7.7 million.² Tajikistan has over 700 miles of border with Afghanistan, much of which is fully porous along the Pyanj River; a border of similar size with even fewer natural geographic obstacles with Uzbekistan; and one...

  5. CHAPTER 2 POLITICS AND RELIGION
    CHAPTER 2 POLITICS AND RELIGION (pp. 11-52)

    Tajikistan’s political life is dominated by a strong presidential system. Although the civil war slowed the process of political consolidation, today the presidency in Tajikistan is a stronger office than that in Kazakhstan, and may even be stronger than the institution of the presidency in Uzbekistan. Moreover, unlike in Uzbekistan, where Islam Karimov is slowly vesting the Parliament and prime minister with some of the presidency’s powers, in Tajikistan the prime minister is a weak figure and parliamentary powers are being steadily curtailed.

    Emomali Rahmon—who dropped the Russified ending to his last name in 2007 as something of a...

  6. CHAPTER 3 DO TAJIK OFFICIALS HAVE THE WILL TO REFORM?
    CHAPTER 3 DO TAJIK OFFICIALS HAVE THE WILL TO REFORM? (pp. 53-84)

    Tajikistan certainly faces challenges in maximizing its economic potential, given that it is landlocked; that it shares a border with Afghanistan, which has been in turmoil for more than 30 years; is on bad terms with neighboring Uzbekistan; and has a mountainous and largely impenetrable border with China and a mountainous, though somewhat more penetrable, border with Kyrgyzstan.

    Although Tajikistan’s leaders proudly point to its hydroelectric potential and mineral wealth, it lacks the resource base of fossil-fuel-rich states like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and even Uzbekistan, and the development of those resources that the country does have is made more complicated by...

  7. CHAPTER 4 THE ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT
    CHAPTER 4 THE ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT (pp. 85-134)

    This and the following two chapters look into Tajikistan’s economic reforms in more depth. Once the poorest of the Soviet republics, Tajikistan is now the poorest of the Soviet successor states with a per capita gross domestic product of $780 in 2010, returning to pre–civil war levels at that time.¹ The country’s pattern of economic growth was disrupted by the global financial and economic crisis of 2008–2009, whose effects were compounded by a harsh winter. Although the country has experienced economic recovery since then, with an annual growth rate of 6.5 percent in 2010 and 6.0 percent in...

  8. CHAPTER 5 REFORMING AGRICULTURE
    CHAPTER 5 REFORMING AGRICULTURE (pp. 135-176)

    The challenge of agricultural reform remains one of the major tasks facing the Tajik government. Following the National Bank of Tajikistan scandal in 2007, significant steps were taken to reform this sector, giving individual farmers more freedom to choose what crops to grow and how to sell them. But when this occurred, it was already too late for fast reversals in this sector. Much of the choice lands were already in the hands of rich absentee landlords; small farmers had little capital or collateral to use to receive the loans on offer; a substantial proportion of the male workforce had...

  9. CHAPTER 6 TAJIKISTAN’S INDUSTRIAL SECTOR
    CHAPTER 6 TAJIKISTAN’S INDUSTRIAL SECTOR (pp. 177-216)

    As is true elsewhere in the economy, Tajikistan’s industrial sector has had to absorb two different and equally paralyzing blows, in addition to being subject to the varying pressures of being part of an increasingly globalized economy. The first blow came from the abrupt end of the Soviet system of interrepublic economic linkages, and the second from the conditions of the civil war. As a result, in 1996 Tajikistan’s industrial production was only 34.2 percent of what it had been in 1991, which was a period of poor economic performance in the Soviet context. By 2004, industrial production had risen...

  10. CHAPTER 7 TAJIKISTAN’S INFRASTRUCTURE AND ENERGY CRISIS
    CHAPTER 7 TAJIKISTAN’S INFRASTRUCTURE AND ENERGY CRISIS (pp. 217-260)

    Tajikistan’s infrastructure was badly damaged during the civil war, exacerbating the country’s transportation and communication challenges and handicapping its ability to trade internationally, as Sovietera links were developed to further interconnectivity among the various parts of the Soviet Union, with no eye to Tajikistan ever becoming an independent country. As figure 7.1 shows, highways were built to avoid mountain ranges, so that regions like Sughd (Khujand) were linked to the rest of the USSR, through Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan was connected to the Soviet rail system through Uzbekistan as well, with little connectivity across the republic, and mountainous regions like Jirgatal...

  11. CHAPTER 8 WOMEN, CHILDREN, FOOD, AND SOCIAL SAFETY
    CHAPTER 8 WOMEN, CHILDREN, FOOD, AND SOCIAL SAFETY (pp. 261-312)

    The Tajik government has found it increasingly more difficult to maintain Soviet-era social safety nets, such as free education, free health care, adequate pensions, and help for the country’s non-able bodied population. Tajikistan’s already-strained social services and support networks were stretched beyond capacity during the harsh winter of 2007–2008 and further put to the test by the global financial and economic crisis that followed shortly after, when the country’s industrial output dropped by 13 percent in the first half of 2009, largely due to the drop in the price of aluminum, one of its principal exports.

    The international community...

  12. CHAPTER 9 LOOKING AHEAD
    CHAPTER 9 LOOKING AHEAD (pp. 313-332)

    Twenty years after independence, Tajikistan is still a country that is very much at risk. It began this period with a devastating civil war, which dramatically exacerbated the economic challenges of having to build a nation-state from the fragments of the unitary Soviet economy that Tajikistan’s leaders had inherited. These challenges have only been partially resolved. Tajikistan has introduced a semiconvertible national currency, created a legislative foundation for small and medium-sized private enterprises, and introduced some agricultural reforms. Yet its economy remains dominated by large, state-owned enterprises that are only minimally transparent, and even more important, the economy cannot support...

  13. APPENDIX
    APPENDIX (pp. 333-354)
  14. NOTES
    NOTES (pp. 355-424)
  15. BIBLIOGRAPHY
    BIBLIOGRAPHY (pp. 425-438)
  16. INDEX
    INDEX (pp. 439-454)
  17. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR (pp. 455-455)
  18. CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
    CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE (pp. 456-456)
  19. [Map]
    [Map] (pp. 457-457)
  20. Back Matter
    Back Matter (pp. 458-458)