BACKGROUND: After the changes in Kyrgyzstan, at least a will to create modern democratic institutions can be observed. On the other hand, officials in Uzbekistan categorically assess that only the radical Islamic or semi-criminal forces can come to power if the existing Uzbek regime would collapse. Uzbekistan’s government has its reasons and rationale for this conclusion, but the suppression of the opposition and limiting the space for the expression of the will of the people could lead to dangerous consequences. Uzbekistan’ case is connected with Tajikistan because of the key role of religion in politics in both countries. After long and complex negotiations between the United Tajik Opposition and the Tajik Government from 1994 to 1997, a peace agreement was signed in 1997. This deal ended the 1992-1997 civil war, and initiated a political culture of dialogue as well as political legitimacy for the two sides. These negotiations transformed the Islamic Party Renaissance of Tajikistan from its radical and militant direction towards a moderate and peaceful agenda. However this does not mean Tajikistan does not have a problem. From 1998 onwards, strong competition has developed between the Government and the opposition. In spite of including 30% of opposition representatives into the power structures of the Government, several leading figures have now, at the eve of the 206 presidential elections, been excluded from government structures. The leader of the Democracy party Mahmadruzi Iskandarov is in jail, and some of the key opposition newspapers like ‘Nerui Suhan’ have been closed. Yet the political process continues, and the main players from the opposition are Abdullo Nuri, Chairman of the Islamic Renaissance Party, Muhammadsharif Himmatzoda and Muhiddin Kabiri, its vice chairmen, who continue to play an active role in the political life of Tajikistan. Two main projects – the national and the religious – compete against each other in present-day Tajikistan. Where the Islamic Renaissance party tries to join the national and the religious, the Government seeks to separate them. As the Government declared 2006 the year of Arian Civilization in the year of presidential election, representatives of political Islam are concerned wit this project. They point out that the State tries to create the same situation on the eve of presidential election in 2006 as what happened in 1998-1999, where it was constructed an alternative religious-political project on the basis of Zoroastrian heritage. It is no secret that Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmonov considers Zoroaster as a Tajik from Bactria and connects Zoroastrianism directly with Tajik national identity. One of the Aryan symbols was institutionalized in the national flag of Tajikistan, depicting seven stars above the crown of Ismail Samani, the founder of the Samanid Dynasty who is revered as the father of the Tajik nation. Interestingly, the same Zoroastrian symbol was used also from 1989 to 1991 by the National pan-Iranian cultural and political movement ‘Rastokhez’, which erected a monument of the epic Persian poet Firdausi in the center of Dushanbe after destroying a Lenin statue. After coming to power, Rakhmonov replaced the Firdausi monument with a giant statue of Ismail Samani. The founders of the Aryan project are representatives of the South, and basically Tajiks with a secular and ethno-national orientation. This project aspires to replace the stern dualism between atheism and Islamism and create a space for coexistence of different approaches within a joint Tajik identity; and moreover, to create an ethno-national nucleus that could be the basis for Tajikistan’s political unity.

IMPLICATIONS: Tajikistan has since its foundation lacked a state ideology and has been hesitant to develop one. At present Tajikistan officially bases its statehood on general democratic principles and stresses that no one ideology can be recognized as the State ideology. However, representatives of Political Islam (IPRT) and the Communist Party insist that the state identify with their respective ideology. They argue that any state must have an ideology. The IPRT is working for basic principles of political Islam to be adopted into the cultural and political context of Tajikistan. Interestingly, the political Islam project, just like the official Aryan project, focuses on the ninth and tenth centuries, the period of Ismail Samani and the time of the appearance of the first Tajik State. Political Islam tries to connect Tajik identity with Islam through the Samani period, while the government uses the same period to build an ethno-national identity. Hence the Government refuses to adopt an official ideology, thereby having more space for political maneuver. One of main goals of the Aryan project is to prevent the possibility of the Islamization or Turkification of Tajik society. At the same time, there is a danger that if the Aryan project is radicalized, it could lead not to unity within Tajik society but to fragmentation. In particular, this risk is greatest in the northern region of Tajikistan, which is heavily Uzbek-populated and considered by the Tajik nationalist elites as the region of the country where the process of Turkification has progressed furthest and poses a threat to the state. Of course, Tajikistan’s Aryan project has nothing in common with Nazi German Aryan ideology. However it could be a base for the appearance of radical political groups that could provoke the process of disintegration of society in Tajikistan. In that case, Political Islam could prove to be a force capable of containing the radicalization of the Aryan project. On the other hand, if the constructors of the Aryan project are able to avoid ethno-nationalist radicalization and can show the influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the form of strengthening coexistence, this could help avoiding increasing tension on the ethno-national and religious basis. At the same time, the Government would be well-advised to recall the experience of Iran, where as a result of a radical implementation of a similar Zoroastrian- and Aryan-based project by the monarchy, an Islamic revolution took place in 1979.

CONCLUSIONS: Tajikistan has a paradoxical political situation where the restraining factors preventing the monopolization of power are not political institutions but a competition between different cultural and political projects and their charismatic leaders that create a propitious political balance in society. However, this situation is unlikely to continue indefinitely, and if these cultural resources will not be institutionalize in modern institutional forms, this could lead to the renewed destabilization of Tajikistan.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Dr. Shozimov Pulat is a senior researcher with the Tajik Academy of Sciences and a Fulbright Scholar at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University in Washington, DC.