BACKGROUND: China and Tajikistan established diplomatic relations a year after Tajikistan’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, the two countries have strengthened bilateral cooperation in economy, security, anti-narcotic efforts and environmental protection, rendering support to each other in international affairs. Both Chinese and Tajik government have often claimed that the border between China and Tajikistan will become a site of peace and friendship between the two geographical neighbors, political allies and economic partners. According to official statistics from China, the trade volume between Tajikistan and China in 2002 increased to US$12.39 million, up 15.2% compared to the previous year. A connection to China has been the hope and expectation for a prosperous development for Tajikistan, notably for the people of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, for close to a decade. Unlike the rest of Tajikistan, Badakhshan remains in geographical isolation from the capital, Dushanbe, almost throughout the year due to the snowfalls, landslides and river flows. Although this autonomous region benefited from advanced social services, education and health system in the Soviet period, it also to a large extent (over 85%) remained dependent on subsidized supplies from outside the region. These subsidies then disappeared overnight when the Soviet state collapsed. In the early years of Tajikistan’s independence and with the outbreak of civil war, the region for a year remained in economic isolation, with its population significantly increased from 200,000 to more than 250,000 by displaced persons from the civil war. Since then, various international organizations such as the UN, the Red Cross and the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) have provided humanitarian relief to a population threatened by hunger and unemployment, and vulnerable to the breakdown in supplies from its precarious link to Dushanbe. The once-famous ‘Highway of Life’, the Pamir Highway, was the main route through which humanitarian aid flowed from the Osh region of Kyrgyzstan into Badakhshan. Tajikistan’s government also made an effort to open a new road between Badakhshan and central Tajikistan. However, humanitarian aid initially did not aim to replace the heavy subsidies provided by the Soviets, and gradually the Pamir Highway have lost its importance of being a central road. Having realized the region’s dependence, organizations such as the AKDN initiated new projects to promote agricultural productivity by encouraging private farming, providing credit, seeds and technical assistance, and the construction of irrigation channels in districts with available arable land. Yet despite all these internal developments, the region’s transition from a state-organized society into a market-oriented one has been developing slowly. Badakhshan’s future development depends to a great extent on the connection to broader Central Asian food, fabrics, labor market and industry.

IMPLICATIONS: This dependence is more acute in the case of the Murgab district of Badakhshan, lying at an altitude of more than 3,500 meters in the border area between China and Tajikistan. The population of this district is mainly Kyrgyz, with a small percentage of Tajiks concentrated in the centre of the district, the town of Murgab. Unlike the other districts in Badakhshan, Murgab is not suitable for agricultural development and almost nothing is grown there. Animal husbandry is the main way of surviving for its population. Although international NGOs, especially the AKDN, have implemented projects in the district to improve livestock quality, yields of meat and dairy produce, the quality of life in Murgab has sharply fallen. Due to its location in the middle of the Pamir Highway from Osh (Kyrgyzstan) to Khorog (Tajikistan), the town of Murgab served as a trade point. It was also one of the biggest garrison towns for the Russian 201st Motorized Infantry Division, in which a great percentage of the district’s population was employed. But a year ago, the Russian troops left the district, leaving the task of guarding the 500 km border with China to Tajik troops. Traffic and trade on the new road will be the only alternative for Murgab’s development, if it succeeds in becoming a trade centre on the road to China. The opening of a border crossing is unlikely to being immediate benefits, of course. Initially, a host of problems such as rigid custom laws and procedures, taxation systems, widespread corruption, and the absence of a proper banking system will form obstacles to trade and development. The question of the safety of investors will affect success of trade along this new part of the Silk Road. Other troubling factors may include organized crime. Human trafficking from Tajikistan to neighboring countries and the Middle East and South Asia, as well as drug trafficking from Afghanistan through Tajikistan into other Central Asian republics, Russia, and China could prove troubling factors for travel through this road. However, exchange of information, and experience at the border, is likely to lead the two countries to launch joint programs tackling human traffic as well as eradicating drug production and trade. China and Tajikistan have made it a priority to fight any form of religious extremism and separatism within the frame of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Regular traffic along this road will reinforce their joint struggle against the activities of radical religious group such as Hizb-ut Tahrir from Central Asia into China by improving socio-economic conditions across the region. By and large, problems such as widespread unemployment, a culture of dependency, corruption, organized crime, opium trade and production in the Central Asian mountain societies are the result of the colonial border delimitation and years of stagnation. Border openings like Kulma-Karosy (China) should be seen not as a part of the problem, given that the drug trade makes its way easily even without border crossings. Instead, this type of border openings are a way out of the problems of blocked societies.

CONCLUSIONS: The opening of the border crossing between China and Tajikistan can be seen as a sign of successful bilateral relations between two countries, strengthening their economical and political cooperation allowing for the rapidly growing Chinese economy to attract resources from Tajikistan, and Chinese goods to flow into Central Asian markets. The new road will provide an all year link for mountain communities to the broader lowland developed regions in Central Asian countries and China. More broadly, the event symbolizes the reconstruction of trade links that were blocked by the Soviet experience, and whose absence greatly contributed to the problems of the mountainous regions of Central Asia.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Sultonbek Aksakalov conducts research at the Project on Narcotics, Organized Crime and Security at the Silk Road Studies Program, Uppsala University.