Identity Construction in the peace-building process: Case study of Tajikistan
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The third blog is going to demonstrate another example of the peace-building process and the role that identity construction plays in it. The first part of this blog will briefly introduce Tajikistan history after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The second part will assess the Human Security situation of Tajikistan by using the framework of seven insecurities in the previous blog. The third part discusses how the reconstruction of identity contributes to the Tajik peace-building process and the last part will use a village located at the Afghan-Tajik border to discuss the use of human security approaches in practice. Then, a conclusion will be drawn in concluding the content of all three blogs.
1. Brief presentation about the history of Tajikistan
The emergence of the modern state of Tajikistan began under Soviet rule after 1917 and obtained independence from the moribund USSR in 1991. In the subsequent civil war that raged between 1992 and 1997, Tajikistan came close to becoming a failed state1. The civil war has not totally ended after the peace treaty signed in 1997 as significant political violence continued sporadically until 2001. Several factors should be highlighted in order to explain the causes of the civil war for better explaining the socio-economic conditions in Tajikistan. The delimitation of Tajikistan from Uzbekistan as a Union Republic in October 1929 left Tajikistan with only the four main administrative regions of Leninabad (Khujant), Kurgan-Tyube, Kulob (these last two were merged in early 1993 to form Khatlon) and GornoBadakhshan, as well as several important ‘areas of republican subordination’ in such central districts such as Gharm and Hissor. The new Tajik Republic was left without the two ‘city symbols’ of Tajik culture and history as Bukhara and Samarkand were attributed to Uzbekistan2. This delimitation deconstructed the Tajik identity, which had a negative impact on the political stability after the downfall of the Soviet Union, as it led to the preservation of strong local identities, based around ‘identity regions’ consisting of the six main regions and districts. Scholars argues that the civil war and its consequences caused the ‘Kulyobization’ of Tajikistan, where cadres from the southern region of Kulyob (who had provided the troops which brought pro-government forces back to power in late 1992) came to hold most of the key positions in government, despite the power-sharing mechanism of the General Agreement3. The consequence of ‘Kulyobization’ led to the tensions between the North and the South which is going to be further explained in the following section.
2. The Human Security conditions in post-conflict Tajikistan
By using the framework of Human Security, we can assess how people suffer from the insecurities. The aforementioned tensions and inequalities of ‘Kulyobization’ would lead to the marginalisation of politicians from other geographical regions which raises the regional and political insecurity for citizens living in the North Tajikistan. The economic problems were also very significant in Tajikistan. After the downfall of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan no longer receives the funding from them, which led to an economic crisis. The crisis not only impacts on the wages of civil servants but also on the supply of necessities of medicines and food and therefore, people’s food insecurity, health insecurity and economic insecurity take place4. The rising of number of organized crimes and violent extremism would harm individual’s personal security. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute points out that environmental insecurity takes place in borderlands because of the fickle river that frequently floods and destroys farmlands. Therefore, the human security situation in post-conflict Tajikistan was extremely poor because individuals suffered from all seven types of insecurities.
3. The reconstruction of post-conflict identity
The inequality in the Tajik society is not only represented by the unequal power distribution between the North and the South, but also in terms of the unequal status between elites and people. This section aims to investigate how elites and people reconstruct their identity.
Mirostroitelstvo means peacebuilding in Russian, differs from liberal peace-making methods such as improving democracy and privatisation, but promoting peace through the authoritarian power which relied on the military operations to suppress nationalist movements. Mirostroitelstvo allows Russian military actions to intervene in post-Soviet spaces. For example, according to Trevor Waters, in Moldova, for example, Russian peacekeeping represented ‘an instrument of unilateral interference in a separatist conflict to further Moscow’s neo-imperialist interests’5. In the Tajik case, at the beginning of 1990s, the oppositional nationalist-Islamic forces were being marginalised as Moscow attempts to establish a loyalist government to preside over a Russian protectorate state. However, this enforcement of peace only originated from the national interest of Russia which did not take human security and ethnic tensions into account. This pattern of peace-keeping project is not aiming to promote peace or establish a peaceful post-war identity for individuals living in the area but just for avoiding chaos in the region.
On the other hand, for Tajik people, they use the word Tinji to describe peace. Tinji means wellness and peacefulness in Tajik, and it represents people’s basic need for peace in the pursuit of wellbeing. Conflict remains largely unacknowledged or weakly acknowledged in Tajik communities. Tension (Russian: naprazheniye) or disquiet (Russian: bezspokoystvo) is attributed to brief arguments caused by the lack of resources6. The use of daily language shows how people dislike the conflicts in the region and the need for ‘wellness”. Moreover, according to the aforementioned report, the peace discourse for people also includes people’s hatred of elitism in the political system and their nostalgia for the Soviet-era by highlighting the solidarity and the desire for peace . The discourse shows how people’s post-war identity differs and has been reshaped through the process of Mirostroitelstvo7. Elites attempt to use violence to solve problems while people value peace and solidarity more. According to the human security perspective, people should be free from want. And in the post-conflict Tajikistan, the government-led peacebuilding project, Mirostroitelstvo will not guarantee it but still promoting the violence in the region. Therefore, it should be highlighted that the post-conflict identity should be reconstructed through the discourse in the framework of human security and must not only be about the need of state but the need of the people.
4. How human security solves the problems: analysis on Amu River
According to the research report published by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, people lives in the area around the Amu River suffered from the poor human security conditions. It points out that the living conditions in the area has been significantly damaged by the civil war. People not only suffered from similar insecurities that we discussed in the section 2, but also suffering from the transnational organized crimes and terrorism. The human security specialists proposed the solutions based on two dimensions: boosting border development for the people, by the people and investing in cross-border community projects. According to the report, the former sections focus on providing more power to the people instead of elites in the decision-making process including decentralisation of decision-making on development priorities and ‘empowerment of local communities to allow for participation in local governance’ and launching the detailed policies on ‘mitigating risks posed to farmers by the fickle movement of rivers’ which is based on the need of farming people. The report suggests that the latter one focuses on coordination with other institutions based on the need of individuals such as ‘Establishing cross-border councils drawn from the border communities in order to give them a political voice to advance proposals around shared interests’ and ‘fostering the development of border markets as an ideal vehicle for exchanges of ideas and information about commodities with different prices, qualities and brands and building trust and improving economic conditions of people on both sides of the borders’. Overall, the solutions focus on making policies that cover people’s needs and to help them get rid of their insecurities. The use of the human security approaches can help local communities peacefully establish the new post-conflict identity which can avoid further conflicts or the detachment between the political elites and people.
5. Conclusion
To conclude, this blog focuses on the post-conflict Tajik civil society and how a human security approach can be implemented within it. It firstly introduces Tajik history and outlines the reason why the conflict took place then presents the detached post-conflict identity between elites and people. At last, it presents how the use of the human security approach could provide better solutions for the civic society.
For the conclusion of all three blog posts, the first post aims to break the myth of terrorism and relative concepts by discussing how we should correctly define these terms. The second blog posts use this theoretical discussion to discuss the role that organized crimes and terrorism play in the post-conflict society. By introducing the framework of human security, we assessed the case of the post-conflict Bosnian society and how failed peace process led to the rise of terrorism, the third blog further explains the concept of human security and implements it in the post-conflict Tajikistan and uses the comparison with the traditional military peace-making project in reaching the conclusion that human security approach is more effective in building post-conflict identity and civic society.
Bibliography
1. Nourzhanov, K., and C. Bleuer. “Tajikistan: A Political and Social History. ANU Press.” (2013).
2. Lynch, Dov. “The Tajik civil war and peace process.” Civil Wars 4, no. 4 (2001): 49-72.
3. Akiner, Shirin. “Tajikistan: Disintegration or reconciliation?.” (2001).
4. Tadjbakhsh, Shahrbanou. “National reconciliation: the imperfect whim.” Central Asian Survey 15, no. 3-4 (1996): 325-348.
5. Waters, Trevor. “Russian peacekeeping in Moldova: source of stability or neo-imperialist threat.” Regional Peacekeepers: the paradox of Russian peacekeeping (2003): 132-155.
6. Heathershaw, John. “Peacebuilding as practice: Discourses from post-conflict Tajikistan.” International Peacekeeping 14, no. 2 (2007): 219-236.
7. Ibid.