Economic Regionalism In Tajikistan

Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh

The Royal Institution of International Affairs

March 1996

Introduction

As a member of the Soviet family, the Soviet Socialist Republic of Tajikistan depended on subsidies from the centre (Moscow) for up to 80 per cent of its economy. Although it was a source of raw materials such as cotton, aluminium and uranium, the production of these resources depended heavily on the supply of fertilizers, fuel and spare parts provided by other republics, mainly Russia. If Tajikistan ran the highest trade deficit in the USSR, it also enjoyed credit allocation on a regular level. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the interruption of input into the country, competition over shrinking resources led to political, ethnic and religious fragmentation that culminated in a civil war at the end of 1992 with up to 40,000 casualties, the exodus of 50,000 refugees and the internal displacement of up to 500,000 people. Three years later, the republic has undergone presidential elections, the ratification of a new constitution, the return of thousands of refugees, five rounds of UN-sponsored negotiations for a political resolution of the conflict between the government of Tajikistan and the opposition in exile, and the introduction of a national currency, the Tajik rouble. The socio-economic situation, however, remains in such a critical state as not to preclude the possibility of another internal break-up along regional lines.

According to figures released by the Government Centre for Statistics of the Republic of Tajikistan for the first nine months of 1995 (January-September), lack of food, resources, specialists, loss in value of the national currency and the liberation of prices have led to an economic decline compared to the same period in 1994. ₁ There was less agricultural production, less investment and less food. Between January and September 1995 production in general decreased by 14 per cent; production of food fell by 22 per cent; non-food production fell by 42 per cent; and light industry output fell by 52 per cent. The report gives the example that only 40 refrigerators were produced in this nine-month period in Tajikistan, as opposed to 3,150 during the same time in 1994. The minimum wage in August was 779 roubles, but real wages, taking into account the high level of inflation, were 36.8 per cent lower than in December 1994. Prior to 1995 the economy of Tajikistan had been in continuous decline since 1988. The World Bank estimates that the real Net Material Product (NMP) dropped by 12.5 per cent in 1991, by 33.7 per cent in 1992 and by 28 per cent in 1993, with the negative trend continuing in 1994 and 1995. The World Bank also estimates that the level of real NMP in 1993 was 60 per cent less than in 1988. ₂

Monetary and economic reform

The Tajik rouble, which was valued at 100 Russian roubles at its introduction in May 1995, was supposed to speed up the privatization process, the liberation of prices and the liquidation of the budget deficit, and to help foreign trade activity. Without backing from the IMF or sufficient gold reserves within the country, however, the national currency was soon on its way to devaluation. Three months after its introduction, the dollar rose against the Tajik rouble by 16 per cent, and a dollar which had cost 50 Tajik roubles in May cost as much as 290 by December. The introduction of the national currency, although it meant that wages were paid for the first time in almost a year, was not a success with traders and people with savings accounts. As had happened when the Soviet rouble was transformed into the Russian one in 1993, depositors lost most of their savings.

The exchange rate of one Tajik rouble for 100 Russian ones in May did not apply to the savings deposited in Tajik banks, which set their rate at 1:2,400. As a result, people lost their confidence in the banking system. The little money they had, they circulated in kind or in foreign currency. Increasingly, the 'New Tajiks', businessmen making enormous profits from selling cotton and other resources privately, started to keep bank accounts in Switzerland.

If the Tajik rouble is to be considered a national currency, it must circulate on the national level without controls. In practice, Russian roubles continue as the preferred currency in circulation in bazaars outside Dushanbe, especially in the northern province of Leninobod, and in western Khatlon where private traders import goods from Russia, Uzbekistan, Iran, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. In cities and towns close to the border of Uzbekistan, not only the traders in the bazaar but even the canny policemen demanding penalties from speeding motorists ask to be paid in the Uzbek som. In Dushanbe, newspapers advertise the price of houses and goods either in dollars or in Russian roubles. Constant rumours that the Russian rouble will soon replace the discredited Tajik one do little to help people's confidence in their national currency.

For the rouble to have any value, the government must liberate prices, begin large-scale privatization and free foreign and domestic trade. Yet, for prices to be freed, people have to be paid normal wages. For the wages to be paid, factories have to be functioning. For factories to provide, they need spare parts, fuel and raw materials. For the government to produce these necessities, foreign currency is needed. And to obtain the latter, the government must either produce enough goods to sell abroad, or show enough initiatives for the international community to give it loans and grants. At present these conditions are not being met.

The international community would like to see political and economic changes in Tajikistan, a viable banking system, taxation reforms and a legal status for privatization. In the summer of 1995, the World Bank did the preparatory work to give a credit for $35 million for rehabilitation to the government of Tajikistan, a loan that would be used for trade, industry, agriculture, fiscal policy and the development of the private sector. But the World Bank offered the loan on condition that the government adhered to the policy changes advocated by the IMF, among which privatization was one of the foremost priorities. The World Bank estimates that by August 1995 only 1,200 enterprises out of a total of 18,000 were privatized, that the State Property Committee was not authorized to privatize and that there was no ministry directly responsible for the development of the private sector.

Despite two attempts in August and December, the government still has not been able to free the price of flour, wheat, bread and bread products. Yet even with continued regulation by the government, the price of bread increased six times in two months. Tajikistan is the only country in the CIS at present which has a Ministry of Grain responsible for the partial regulation of the price of bread. By the estimates of the minister, the country has to import 600,000 tons of wheat each year, yet it lacks resources to sell or exchange for wheat. Occasionally, when there is a serious shortage of bread, private businessmen provide flour for buyers nationally and regionally, bypassing formal structures such as the Ministry of Grain and making good profits in the process. One sack (50 kilos) of flour which in late September 1995 was supposed to cost 750 roubles according to government prices, cost not less than 4,000 roubles in unregulated private sales.

The price of all food products rose 4.1 times between January and September 1995. According to the government report cited above, animal oil, meat, potatoes and vegetables, and cheese rose 10-11 times; vegetable oil, macaroni, sugar products and salt rose 4-4.5 times. The price of non-food goods had risen by 93.4 per cent in September. An informal market survey conducted for UNHCR in the summer of 1995 showed that the prices of goods, both food and non-food, were less if paid in Russian roubles, and that in general prices were lower in the capital than in other provinces, especially Leninobod and Badakhshan; in the latter province, this was due to poor access to markets via mountainous roads. Throughout the country, according to international NGOs (such as German Agro Action and Save the Children US), which carry out regular surveys of the bazaars in Tajikistan, the wages, even if paid in full, do not cover the average family consumption basket which includes meat, bread, eggs, milk, onions, carrots, potatoes and green tea.

Main economic trends

The post-Soviet economy of Tajikistan is characterized by a breakdown of responsibilities, decentralization at all levels, and increased individual activity for subsistence, all in an atmosphere where the formal wheels of market economy, including privatization and reforms, are not turning as desired by the IMF and the World Bank. National industries do not function well enough for the state to pay workers adequately. The sovkhozes (state farms) and kolkhozes (collective farms) suffer from a lack of fuel, equipment, spare parts and resources. Individuals are left to find ways to increase their subsistence agriculture and to barter for consumer goods using creative markets. Yet the geographical isolation of the different regions, fuel and transportation problems, and political insecurity have hampered efforts to improve communications between the regions and the centre. Trade outside the republic on an individual, small-scale level, however, has increased in spite, or perhaps because, of these difficulties.

Three main trends characterize the economy of Tajikistan today:

1. the breakdown of central control;
2. the search for new, alternative markets;
3. economic regionalism.

In short, the indicators of social and economic development of Tajikistan in 1995 point to a total decline of the economy and a worsening of living standards for the population. Real output has been in decline since 1988, and economic activity has fallen in virtually all spheres with serious social consequences.

1. Breakdown of central control

   The current economic stagnation has both internal and external causes. Sociopolitical difficulties since perestroika, culminating in the 1992-3 civil war, led to the exodus of thousands of specialists and of capital, causing the breakdown of industries. According to figures released by the Minister of Economy and Finance, by mid-1993 the civil war had cost the already drained economy of Tajikistan 200 billion Russian roubles. The majority of skilled specialists left the country; major industrial factories, especially the aluminium plant in Regar (now Tursunzade) , did not function at full capacity; and fuel problems continued to hamper the collection of cotton harvests. Following the war, the government used most if not all of its state resources for the restoration of the economy, including advancing emergency measures such as a state monopoly over cotton and aluminium exports and state control of other resources.

   The measures that the government adopted were a major departure from the initial plan of former Prime Minister Abdulmalik Abdullojonov for economic recovery in Tajikistan in the autumn of 1992, which sought to introduce a 'softer transition model to market economy' on the models of China, Singapore and Turkey and to draft laws on the privatization of large enterprises. He had talked of attracting scientists from other countries and universities to draw up an anti-crisis economic programme, of developing private entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized businesses. But immediately following the war, economic reforms slowed and gave way to a centralized planning method. The production of aluminium and cotton, which constituted the bulk of the republic's foreign currency income and were considered 'strategic benefits', dwindled.

   At the same time, the break-up of the Soviet Union disrupted the economic relations between the republics, on which Tajikistan depended heavily. Import/ export rules still have not been clearly defined for the trade between these countries and systems of payment have not been made fully compatible. Tajikistan continues to depend on trade with the CIS countries. In the first nine months of 1995, 59 per cent of foreign trade activity was conducted with them with the volume of imports five times greater than that of exports. To access the provisions it needs, including up to 80 per cent of the flour it consumes, Tajikistan needs foreign currency or enough goods to barter. It is seeking at present to enter the Customs Union established between Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia.

   Over seven decades, Soviet policy deliberately allocated industries to one republic that depended on raw materials from another, thereby ensuring a strong dependent connection between the republics. Tajikistan, like the other Central Asian republics, was primarily an agrarian society, providing raw materials for enterprises located elsewhere. Cotton, for example, was sent to be processed in Russia. The few industries that did exist within the territory of Tajikistan, such as the aluminium and uranium plants, were related to the defence industry of the Soviet Union: specialists were brought in from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to work in them. When workers of these factories began to leave the republic in 1990, they left few trained cadres to take over from them. Immediately following the break-up of the Soviet Union, the leaders of Tajikistan failed to nationalize the large industries located in its territory; much of what the plants produce today has already been 'promised' to Russia.

   During the Soviet period, the cities were the seat of the light industries, mainly managed by the Russian-speaking population, while the Central Asians lived mainly in the rural areas. The capital, Dushanbe, was, for example, before glasnost, considered to be a 'Russian' city: the population of Russian-speakers was considerably more than that of Tajiks in 1959, and only slightly less in 1989, even after the in-migration from rural to urban areas by the native population since the 1970s. The Russians were mostly industrial workers, health-care professionals, teachers in higher education institutions and administrators. Their exodus from the republic was seen as a heavy loss to the economy. Out of 500,000, an estimated 320,000 had left by the end of 1994.

   Lack of contributions from the centre has also affected the relationship between the central government in Tajikistan and the regions. The state budget is shrinking at a time when regional governments and their subordinates are lobbying hard for economic incentives. Devoid of an operational system of transfer and allocation of resources, the hukumats (Executive Committees) at the nohia (oblast - region) level seek their own contacts within the central government as well as abroad. Jamiats (village councils) are subordinate to local government and contribute a great deal to nohia budgets from the production of kolkhozes and sovkhozes on their territories; they complain of the imbalance between their input and the local government's meagre allocations for their needs.

   The extent of the cooperation between the central government, the hukumats and the jamiats will be tested in 1996, when, according to a presidential decree, 50,000 hectares of land will be distributed to households for their personal cultivation. The Ministry of Agriculture, together with the provincial governments, councils of villages, heads of households, heads of brigades and councils of elders will decide on the distribution of these lands in each region.

   The central government, in the meantime, remains responsible for the allocation of structural aid received from international organizations, which amounts to 10 per cent of the flour use of the republic, as well as for foreign investments in different regions, regulated by national laws. The structural aid is supposed to be sold through state shops in the centre and in the regions, but when our team conducted a Women's Economic Survey throughout the country in the summer of 1995, we did not hear of any state store, either in Dushanbe or in any of the regions, which actually sold flour. The regional governments complained of the limited amount of flour they received from the government, which in some regions was much less than the vulnerable population was receiving in the form of humanitarian aid.

   Humanitarian aid, distributed by NGOs and International Agencies such as the Aga Khan Foundation, German Agro Action and World Food Program, is dispersed directly to the vulnerable population, which happens to be located in the war-damaged areas of Qurghon Teppa, in the geographically isolated Badakhshan and in the politically segregated Gharm regions.

2. Search for market alternatives

   With a central government unable to answer to local and regional needs, hukumats and their subordinate jamiats are increasingly looking into establishing direct links with suppliers of food. At the same time, individuals are increasingly relying on the network created by their extended families, and people of the same geographical origins, to survive. Although there is no doubt that during the Soviet period a parallel economy allowed everyone to tap into unofficial markets, the recently booming activity has been characterized by a number of negative factors following the 1992 civil war.

   First and foremost is the necessity to survive, a reality that usually leads to the opening of all sorts of creative, hitherto unexplored, paths. The second factor is the preponderance of international relief organizations that distribute aid both through the government and directly to the vulnerable population in different regions. Third is the displacement of the population, both within the country and especially within the CIS, for political and economic reasons following the war. And fourth is the creation of new patron-client relationships, a peculiar phenomenon born out of the political and regional monopoly of specific institutions, especially the power ministries.

   To illustrate these points, let us take the example of the provision of flour, since bread is a staple food in Tajikistan, and very important for the daily diet, from both a nutritional and a psychological point of view. Even if the table is set with an abundance of food but lacks bread, it is said not to be a complete meal in Tajikistan. Even though the government is buying flour from Kazakhstan and Russia, and receiving in grant or in loan large quantities of flour from the European Union and the US government, a serious shortage continues. In summer and autumn 1995, people were reduced to making bread out of barley and wheatbran. The findings of the author's economic survey during that period confirm that of all regions targeted by the international community, humanitarian aid is most effectively distributed in Badakhshan, particularly in those areas where the Aga Khan Foundation's programme for the relief and development of Pamir ensures that every single household in the mountainous province of Badakhshan receives flour, tea, dried milk and salt. But nowhere else in Tajikistan can humanitarian aid be so evenly and systematically distributed; and even in Badakhshan, the closure of roads in the winter prevents the proper continuation of this life-saving allocation of resources.

   Returnees from Afghanistan who have resettled in Qurghon Teppa in the province of Khatlon have begun planting wheat in the small garden plots next to their houses, or in any piece of land that they can rent from the kolkhoz. The population of those regions close to the Uzbek or Kyrghyz borders is sending its dried or fresh fruits and vegetables to markets abroad in exchange for flour and some consumer goods. In the northern province of Leninobod, high-quality dried apricots are sent to Uzbekistan, and potatoes from the central province of Gharm make their way up as far as Russia. These transactions, either in the form of cash or barter, are carried out by a selected number of private entrepreneurs on behalf of their community. In Badakhshan, for example, they buy leather and wool from the local population which they take to sell in Russia via Osh in Kyrghyzstan, and buy flour which they either distribute free or sell back to their communities.

   More typically, though, this economic activity is the responsibility of an extended family network, such as in Gharm, where a large number of men who had fled the region for fear of political persecution following the civil war are now working in Russia and other countries of the CIS. Many Gharmis, known for their entrepreneurial skills, are not exactly 'political refugees' and can return to visit their towns and villages on a regular basis. Extended families can use these visits to send back their potatoes to be traded or sold for flour. Gharm, however, presents a peculiar problem for the transportation of goods both within the country and across the border. Because most of the region was considered politically oppositionist, the government sent large numbers of troops from the Ministry of the Interior troops to guard the region. The numerous checkpoints, staffed by a force often hostile to the local population, inevitably created problems for the transportation of goods. If, on the one hand, goods were confiscated from local merchants at the checkpoints, there is also evidence that some Interior Ministry personnel brought flour from Kulob or Hissor to the region to trade for potatoes. Client-patron relationships, as well as those of buyers and sellers, have many layers in post-civil war Tajikistan.

3. Economic regionalism

   Such links as are outlined above tend to occur on the individual, family and informal levels. The lack of a substantial official relationship and economic cooperation between regions today is in part a legacy of a Soviet policy of control which not only divided people along largely arbitrary lines, but in particular applied differential treatment to regions within one country and to special interest groups within one region. Three main factors are responsible for today's trend of economic regionalism (i.e. the tendency for producers and consumers to operate within the economy of a particular region, instead of building on a national economy): favourite regionalism; geographical impenetrability; and incompatibility and competition between communities.

Favourite regionalism

During the Soviet period, industries were mainly concentrated in the northern province of Leninobod and in and around Dushanbe. Mahalgaroi (regionalism), during the Soviet period, had translated in local politics into the distribution of power and privilege based on regional loyalties. It was a form of nepotism in which the kin, in this case formed around a geographical location, played an important role in the placement of cadres, and in lobbying for the allocation of resources. The region to benefit economically was chosen as Leninobod because of its proximity to Uzbekistan, its large urban population, the lack of high mountains on its territory, and the preponderance of its educated cadre that was loyal to Moscow and to the ideals of communism. Economic and political privilege went hand in hand. Most of the recent Secretaries of the Communist Party were appointed from this region.

If the Dushanbe region, including Tursunzade became home to a large aluminium factory, and the cotton fields of Qurghon Teppa were cultivated using migrant workers and good technology, some of the more mountainous regions, such as Gharm, Badakhshan and eastern Kulob, received almost no allocations for industrial development. Hence, it is not surprising that representatives of these three poor regions played a leading part in the 1992 civil war. Regional competition over trickled-down resources was played out in the armed forces and the KGB, in the markets and among mafia groups controlling parts of Dushanbe.

If today the province of Leninobod, with its capital Khujand, is striving to develop its industries and agriculture by seeking investment in the form of Western capital and technology, Kulob, Gharm and Badakhshan still need the creation of an infrastructure. As a point of departure from Soviet times, when the ruling nomenclature from Leninobod favoured its own region of origin, the present government, even though it is mostly made up of former kolkhoz chairmen from Kulob and the Kulobi administration of Qurghon Teppa, does not have a systematic policy of allocating resources to its province of origin. During the war, a number of Kulobis, formerly of the paramilitary formation called the Popular Front, managed to gather wealth and positions in the capital. However they do not necessarily return the riches accumulated in Dushanbe to Kulob. In fact, the eastern part of the province, today called Khatlon, is still one of the poorest regions in Tajikistan.

Community competition

Competition over resources in Tajikistan has been caused not only by poverty, but also by the forced creation of economic communities. According to IMF estimates, in the 1980s Tajikistan produced 11 per cent of the cotton of the Soviet Union although the size of its population was less than 2 per cent of the Union's. ₃ To be able to squeeze so much cotton out of a primarily mountainous territory, the Soviet regime displaced large numbers of people from the mountains of Gharm and Zarafshon to settle in the cotton plantations of Vakhsh in Khatlon and New Mascho in Leninobod.

The Qurghon Teppa region in the Khatlon nohia presents a typical example of communities where local competition for resources has made coexistence impossible. The province of Khatlon was created in early 1993 out of the former provinces of Kulob, home of the main victorious groups, and that of Qurghon Teppa, where most of the battles took place. Regional affiliation and ethnicity are mixed in this oblast, and reconciliation between communities is very difficult. What created and will continue to create animosity among the local population is not ideological preferences for democracy or communism, but competition for resources. Uzbeks and so-called 'Arabs' see themselves as the local people, as opposed to the Gharmis who were settled later and who, in the former's eyes, became rich by confiscating the best lands and positions. The Gharmis were in fact settled by force in the Vakhsh valley of Qurghon Teppa in the 1960s in order to cultivate Egyptian cotton in the fertile lands. ₄ That the Gharmis managed to achieve good living standards after an initial period of maladjustment is attributed among their population to the fact that they are an industrious people.

Today, however, many having lost their lives and their homes during the 1992 civil war, they are among the most vulnerable and needy populations of the south. As a result, international NGOs and UN agencies pay special attention to these groups, rendering relief as well as assistance in income generation. Here again, exclusive attention to one group tends to create feelings of resentment. As the Gharmis return from Afghanistan and once again work on the land, renewed competition mixes with this sense of revenge and resentment, creating a potentially explosive situation. The task of building peacefully coexisting mixed ethnic communities in the former Qurghon Teppa province is very difficult indeed.

Although a June 1994 decree gave the refugees the right to work and move freely throughout the country, most returned to their prewar place of settlement, even though it may not have been their original place of birth. In Qabodion and Qurghon Teppa, for example, Gharmi returnees from Afghanistan settled in villages which had been completely destroyed and had to be reconstructed from scratch, instead of in Gharm. Many no longer had homes or families in Gharm since they had been settled in Qurghon Teppa in the 1960s as part of the project of economic development. In their new environment, they had been made to work the fertile land, an activity they and the UN agencies hope they will soon take up again. But resettlement is not a happy story. Many returned to devastated homes which stood next to an untouched domicile of their 'enemies', the Arabs and Uzbeks. In many cases the returnees' homes remained occupied by members of the victorious Popular Front, who expropriated the land and the property of the losers, and whom the government sometimes did not have the power to evict. In some instances the refugees had to work under the management of a new leadership of collective farms and raions (districts) who were drawn from the winning groups.

The case of New Mascho in the upper Zarafshon valley is another example of dissent created out of displacement of the population. In the 1950s, the Soviet regime forcibly removed all able-bodied people from the mountains of Mascho to the cotton plantations of the Zarafshon valley in northern Leninobod. Ever since, the representatives of Mascho have been fierce enemies of the communist regime and were represented in large numbers in the opposition. The dissenting Maschois stand out from the conservative population of Leninobod and mutual trust has still not been established. The artificiality of communities, arranged together to fit the demands of the centre, has not been conducive to harmony between ethnic or regional groups.

Geographical impenetrability

The danger in Tajikistan, therefore, is that competition and lack of cooperation between different regions could lead to the federalization of the country, a highly undesirable outcome, given that most industries are located in the north, while the south is poor. The only way to avoid the fragmentation of Tajikistan is to build enterprises in various locations which would be interlinked and interdependent, and to concentrate on the creation of an infrastructure in the south. Since many of the regions are not even linked by road, the first priorities for a national government should be the completion of the Anzob tunnel on the road from Dushanbe to Leninobod and the opening of the road from Khatlon to Badakhshan via Shurobod.

Currently, Leninobod could easily detach itself from the rest of the republic, especially from a physical point of view. The road between Dushanbe and Khujand goes through a mountain pass at Anzob which is closed from October to May when communications are cut except for a difficult detour via Uzbekistan. The construction of a tunnel at Anzob, which began during the Soviet period, was halted in recent years. With an increasing rate of foreign investment, and with the presence of a leadership interested in reforms, Leninobod can potentially survive in a separate economic zone. The same cannot be said for a southern Tajikistan deprived of its industrial north.

The eastern province of Badakhshan is also at an impasse. The region is connected to the western part of Tajikistan by a mountainous road that passes through Kalaikhumb and the Gharm valley. For much of its route, the road follows the Pianj river which borders on Afghanistan: as a result, the road is considered one of the most dangerous in the republic. Fighting in Tavildara and frequent shelling of the border regions have closed the road to all but urgent needs. The other link with the outside world is by way of a long detour via Murghob in eastern Badakhshan and Osh in Kyrghyzstan. This is the primary road by which provisions reach Khorog, the capital of the province. It is, however, a very long and therefore expensive route. Another possible and desirable connection would be the opening of the Wakhan corridor in Afghanistan, which would link Badakhshan to Pakistan; plans for this are under discussion locally and internationally.

Conclusions

Unless a better infrastructure links the different regions together, any relaxation of the existing tight political control could exacerbate existing ethnic and regional competition among the local population, who might in turn be recruited by politicians in search of support. Economic incentives brought about by reforms, in the absence of mechanisms for cooperation, can intensify local feuds, enrich a limited few and widen the gap between the centre and the regions. The opening of new markets, the search for alternative modes of subsistence, the handover of responsibilities from the centre to the regions and from institutions to individuals are all positive steps towards a market economy. In Tajikistan, however, given the lack of centripetal forces holding the country together, there is a real danger that economic regionalism will destroy what remains of the national economy and accelerate the country's disintegration.

Footnotes

Note 1: 'Dar borai vaz'iati ijtimoii mamlakat dar davomi nuh mohi soli 1995', Jumhuriat, 2 November 1995, 3, also published in Sadoi mardum, 2 November 1995, 3. Back.

Note 2: Document of the World Bank: Tajikistan Country Economic Memorandum, 28 April 1994, chapter 1. See also IMF: Economic Reviews, No. 14, November 1994, Tajikistan, p. 3. Back.

Note 3: IMF Economic Reviews, No. 7, May 1992, Tajikistan, p. 2. Back.

Note 4: For a history of migrations, refer to Sh.I. Kurbanova, Pereseleniie: kak eto bylo (Dushanbe: Irfon, 1993). Back.