Tajikistan: Ismaili Resurgence
Members of a minority faith punch above their weight as their spiritual leader is also a major aid donor.
By Shirin Azizmamadova in Dushanbe (RCA No. 418, 05-Nov-05)
The Ismailis of Tajikistan, a religious minority concentrated in the eastern mountains, have come a long way since Soviet times, when they were afraid even to have a picture of their spiritual leader the Aga Khan on display at home.
The Soviet authorities were hostile to religion in general, but took a peculiarly strong dislike to Ismailism, originally a branch of Shia Islam, even though it preaches tolerance rather than jihad. As a result believers were forced to practice their faith in secret for decades.
Shirin Sarkorova, who lives in the village of Khuf in the Badakhshan region, still treasures the photograph of the current Aga Khan’s grandfather, which she kept hidden away in a chest for almost 40 years.
The sudden collapse of Communism meant that the Ismailis were able to practice their faith freely, and even meet their leader. In return, the Aga Khan Foundation, AKF, invested large sums of money to help their remote mountain communities survive and develop.
However, much of AKF's activity took place away from the view of many Tajiks simply because the Pamir plateau is almost another world, perched on the Afghan border with China and Pakistan not too far away.
Now perhaps for the first time, the Sunni majority of Tajikistan will come face to face with the Aga Khan’s engagement with the country. Two months ago, the foundation stone was laid for an Ismaili centre similar to those established in other parts of the world.
The 20 US dollar million project is scheduled for completion in just two years, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the present Aga Khan's elevation to the position of Imam. The plan is to hire hundreds of unemployed Tajiks to do the construction work.
The Ismailis differ from the ethnic Tajiks culturally as well as religiously, speaking languages only distantly related to Tajik, a form of Persian.
In this part of the world, the Ismaili faith is also strong in adjacent mountainous areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Ismailis believe that members of the Aga Khan lineage are the true Imams or heirs of the Prophet Muhammed. They split with the main Shia community over a succession issue in the eighth century.
The Aga Khan is thus of central importance to his followers, and many elderly Ismailis are grateful that they have lived long enough to see him in the flesh. The Aga Khan’s first visit to Badakhshan was in 1995.
Said Sharipov is warden of a jamaat-khana, the prayer house that takes the place of a mosque for Ismailis, in the Rushan district. “My grandfather told me about our Imam. I have seen him,” he told IWPR.
Unlike other Muslims, Ismailis pray twice a day, and the clergy consists of the khalifa (literally “caliph”) who looks after one or two villages.
The Imam has brought his followers in Tajikistan a lot more than a spiritual renaissance, since the Aga Khan Development Network of which the foundation is part is an international development agency working in areas as diverse as healthcare and culture. Many Badakhshanis credit him with saving them from starvation after the collapse of Soviet economics and infrastructure, and in the ensuing civil war.
“Without him, I can’t imagine how we would have lived. He builds schools. Children are given food every day. And look how many Pamiris are studying abroad,” said Sharipov.
“This veneration for our Imam is not surprising,” said sociologist Sayora Ashrapova. “Of course, the Aga Khan Foundation has provided invaluable aid for the revival of the region. It is very good…. especially in winter, when road from Dushanbe to [main Badakhshan town] Khorog is closed and the region is virtually cut off from the rest of the country for months on end.
“Life is tough. For all their industriousness, the people of the Pamir cannot do without outside help.”
From early humanitarian aid starting in 1993, the AKF has progressed to more sophisticated grassroots development programmes that had already been tried-and-tested in similar mountainous parts of northern Pakistan.
“Over 12 years of work, it may amount to millions of dollars,” said Hakim Feerasta, AKF head in Tajikistan.
“Along with humanitarian aid, we began agricultural reforms. Our main objective is to make people less dependent on aid, and give them an opportunity to develop their own business. Currently around 80 per cent of residents of the Pamirs provide for themselves.”
Along with the Ismaili centre, the other big scheme at the moment is to open an international university in the Badakhshan provincial centre Khorog. Japanese postmodernist architect Arata Isozaki has been chosen to design the campus - one of three in Central Asia, the other two being located in non-Ismaili Kyrgyzstan and Kazakstan.
The university is intended to focus on educating people from poor mountainous areas in the wider region as far as Turkey and China, and the construction project is being hailed as futuristic. In an area where power cuts mean people rarely watch TV or listen to the radio, communications will be by email and satellite link
Feerasta makes the point that AKF assistance is targeted at everyone, not just the Ismailis. AKF has branched out to run projects in other areas of Tajikistan where there are no Ismailis and most people are Sunni Tajiks.
The AKF is still closely identified with Badakhshan. One official with the central government in Dushanbe acknowledged that in the eastern Pamirs, “the Ismaili leader carries a lot more weight than the central authorities do in the shape of Badakhstan regional head Alimamad Niyozmamadov”.
Among other Tajiks the Ismailis are regarded as belonging to a slightly different world – culturally and spiritually as well as geographically.
The construction of an Ismaili centre in the capital has met by residents with a guarded response rather than outright hostility.
"Members of other faiths create schism in society. Look how many ethnic Tajiks have adopted other religions,” said Dushanbe resident Izatulla, clearly referring to the activities of proselytising Christian groups. “For me, the Ismailis aren’t really proper Muslims.”
Many Sunni clerics are wary of a group they consider schismatic from a theological point of view.
“I have to say many Muslim clerics are not happy with the idea of building an Ismaili centre,” said a religious official in Dushanbe who asked not to be named.
He said there were some Ismailis attending the Islamic University in Dushanbe, but they kept their beliefs to themselves, “and we try to turn a blind eye to them – we do not tolerate members of sects in the mosques”.
One urban resident said he did not agree with the Ismailis' liberal attitudes.
“They really are different from us,” said Dushanbe resident Maksud Shukurov. “Many families clearly practice total equality between men and women. For example, they sit down at the table together when they have guests – even men who are strangers…. Personally I don’t like such freedom for women.”
But apart from the new centre in Dushanbe, the focus of Ismaili life will remain far away from such objections, up in the Pamir mountains, where the main aim is to carve out an existence in this harsh environment.
“Life has got very difficult since the Soviet Union collapsed,” said Asilbegim, a neighbour of Shirin Sarkorova in Khuf. “Sometimes I look over at Afghan Badakhshan. You can see it across the Panj river. We’re becoming like them. But we have been saved by our Imam.”
Shirin Azizmamadova is the pseudonym of an independent journalist in Dushanbe.
Tajikistan: Ismaili Resurgence
My interest in this subject concerns the potential for the progress and development of the Central Asian Jamats to create a "ripple effect" for progress and development in the region - to act as catalysts and role models for other communities in that region seeking new directions in the socio/cultural/economic spheres of life after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
<BR><BR>Nice post, my family (from Canada) is interested in the tourism sector of Dushanbe in Tajikistan. I have heard that the "serana hotel line" is building in Dushanbe, and that is just a begining for the progress to be made!kmaherali wrote:My interest in this subject concerns the potential for the progress and development of the Central Asian Jamats to create a "ripple effect" for progress and development in the region - to act as catalysts and role models for other communities in that region seeking new directions in the socio/cultural/economic spheres of life after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Tajikistan ends cooperation with the Aga Khan 2024-11-27
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/pa ... r-AA1uSAjF
PANNIER: Grievous blow for the Pamiris as Tajikistan ends cooperation with the Aga Khan
Intellinews on MSN.com| By Bruce Pannier
The oppressed Pamiri peoples of eastern Tajikistan have seen their ways of life torn apart in the last three years, and now it appears that the Tajik authorities are set to cut decades-old ties with their chief benefactor and spiritual leader, the Aga Khan.
Pamir Inside, a media outlet run by Pamiris who have fled Tajikistan, on November 18 reported that there has been no renewal of the agreement between Tajikistan and the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) that expired on October 31.
The news comes as no surprise given the events that have unfolded since 2022 in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), the rugged mountainous region where the Pamiris live under the watchful eye of the Rahmon regime.
Eighty-seven-year-old Prince Shah Karim al-Husseini Aga Khan (pictured above) is the 49 imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, some 200,000 of whom, namely the Pamiris, make up the majority of the population in remote GBAO.
The Pamiris differ not only religiously, but also ethnically, linguistically and culturally from the Tajiks.
The AKDN works in more than 30 countries around the world, but was unable to have a presence in Tajikistan during the time of the Soviet Union and only managed to start operations there in 1995, four years after the collapse of the USSR. Since then, over nearly 30 year, it has invested more than $1bn in Tajikistan.
Thanks to the Aga Khan’s organisation, small hydropower plants generate electricity for remote communities of GBAO, which extends across more than 40% of Tajikistan. The AKDN has also financed research on hybrid crops that can grow at the high altitudes of the region and has built water sanitation facilities to provide GBAO towns and cities with clean drinking water.
It was also AKDN funds that between 2007-2018 paid for the construction of six bridges that connect Tajikistan to Afghanistan, boosting cross-border trade.
A medical centre and a park in GBAO’s capital, Khorog, were, meanwhile, built with funding from the AKDN, which also established a bank, First Microfinance Bank of Tajikistan.
The AKDN has also built three universities for mountain communities: one in Kazakhstan, one in Kyrgyzstan and one in Khorog.
The AKDN-backed University of Central Asia in Khorog has attracted professors from other countries, including Western countries, and provided quality education to young Pamiris, many of whom might otherwise not have been able to receive a higher education.
Tajikistan is the poorest country in Central Asia and GBAO is its poorest region.
Without the AKDN assistance, the standard of living in GBAO would be significantly lower than it is today.
And here we might find the reason for Dushanbe not prolonging the AKDN contract with Tajikistan.
The government is strapped for cash, and GBAO is only connected to the rest of Tajikistan by a single road that is often closed by heavy snowfall and avalanches. The unreliable air connections between Dushanbe and Khorog are sometimes suspended for weeks due to the unpredictable weather conditions in the mountains.
n relation to GBAO and the Pamiri, Rahmon (right) has not honoured the terms of the 1997 Tajik Peace Accord that settled his country's civil war, instead opting to gradually turn the screw of oppression (Credit: Tajik presidency).
The assistance the AKDN provides is worth more than the Tajik government can afford to spend on GBAO, making the Aga Khan more popular than the Tajik president, Emomali Rahmon, among Pamiris.
Rahmon, as it happens, has personal cause to begrudge special efforts that help the Pamiris.
During the 1992-1997 Tajik Civil War, a Pamiri independence party, Lali Badakhshan, featured among the coalition of forces, the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), that was trying to bring down Rahmon and his government.
The nearly inaccessible terrain of GBAO provided perfect shelter for the UTO during the civil war. The UTO knew vehicles and aircraft could not follow them into jagged mountains.
Under the terms of the 1997 Tajik Peace Accord, the former combatants were supposed to forgive and forget and work together to improve Tajikistan.
The UTO, to a great extent, has lived up to these terms. Rahmon’s government has not.
Once peace was firmly rooted in Tajikistan and the chances of a renewal of hostilities dissipated, Rahmon worked to erode the influence of his former adversaries.
Leading members of the groups that made up the UTO were harassed and imprisoned or fled the country.
GBAO’s remoteness allowed the region a reprieve, but in May 2022, with all other resistance in Tajikistan firmly crushed, it was GBAO’s turn.
In the years after the civil war, the stiffest challenge to the Rahmon government’s complete control over Tajikistan came from GBAO. Violence broke out in 2008, then several times after during the next 14 years, usually sparked by government efforts to impose its rule over GBAO.
Rahmon’s regime was forced to negotiate deals with local Pamiri powerbrokers to keep the peace and promote the illusion that the government had tamed GBAO.
In November 2021, a young Pamiri man named Gulbiddin Ziyobekov was essentially assassinated by local security personnel, though police claimed Ziyobekov died while resisting arrest.
In early 2020, Ziyobekov had beaten a local deputy prosecutor for molesting a local girl, and forced the deputy prosecutor to apologise in a video.
The killing of Ziyobekov quickly sparked violence as locals demanded justice. Two more Pamiris were killed in clashes with police.
Calm was restored, and, as had happened during previous conflicts in GBAO since 2008, local officials and officials sent from Dushanbe worked with local community leaders to resolve the issues.
Months and months passed, however, and nothing was resolved. So, on May 14, 2022, a group of Pamiris informed the administration in Khorog of plans for a peaceful rally on May 16 to demand Ziyobekov’s killers and those responsible for the two people killed in the later violence be brought to justice. Another demand was the release of the locals jailed for their alleged part in the clashes.
When people started to arrive at the rally, security forces and police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. Violence erupted and, this time, the Tajik authorities had no intention of seeking a compromise.
The government initiated what it described as a counter-terrorism operation and sent reinforcements to the region to crush resistance and round up anyone who could potentially rally local support.
Since the clash, the park in Khorog has been seized by the state, the Serena hotel and medical centre in Khorog that both belonged the AKDN have been nationalized and the government has cancelled the licence of the Aga Khan Lyceum in Khorog and taken control of the Aga Khan’s University of Central Asia.
The crackdown does not stop there. A programme sponsored by the AKDN to send some Pamiris to study at the London-based Institute of Ismaili Studies was scrapped.
The two Ismaili centres in Tajikistan, one in Khorog, the other in Dushanbe, remain open, but only for prayers. Both centres are banned from conducting educational or cultural activities.
In January 2023, government officials told GBAO elders to spread the word that Ismailis were no longer allowed to pray in their homes and must remove any portraits of the Aga Khan.
Amnesty International said in a report released in September this year that the Pamiris face “systemic discrimination,“ and there have been reports that many Pamiris are fleeing GBAO.
The agreement between the AKDN and Tajik government gave AKDN organisations diplomatic status in Tajikistan. With the expiration of that agreement, the organisations can continue operations as regular NGOs, but the Tajik authorities’ actions against AKDN establishments of the past three years suggest that what is left of the Aga Khan’s network in Tajikistan will soon be taken over by the state.
PANNIER: Grievous blow for the Pamiris as Tajikistan ends cooperation with the Aga Khan
Intellinews on MSN.com| By Bruce Pannier
The oppressed Pamiri peoples of eastern Tajikistan have seen their ways of life torn apart in the last three years, and now it appears that the Tajik authorities are set to cut decades-old ties with their chief benefactor and spiritual leader, the Aga Khan.
Pamir Inside, a media outlet run by Pamiris who have fled Tajikistan, on November 18 reported that there has been no renewal of the agreement between Tajikistan and the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) that expired on October 31.
The news comes as no surprise given the events that have unfolded since 2022 in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), the rugged mountainous region where the Pamiris live under the watchful eye of the Rahmon regime.
Eighty-seven-year-old Prince Shah Karim al-Husseini Aga Khan (pictured above) is the 49 imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, some 200,000 of whom, namely the Pamiris, make up the majority of the population in remote GBAO.
The Pamiris differ not only religiously, but also ethnically, linguistically and culturally from the Tajiks.
The AKDN works in more than 30 countries around the world, but was unable to have a presence in Tajikistan during the time of the Soviet Union and only managed to start operations there in 1995, four years after the collapse of the USSR. Since then, over nearly 30 year, it has invested more than $1bn in Tajikistan.
Thanks to the Aga Khan’s organisation, small hydropower plants generate electricity for remote communities of GBAO, which extends across more than 40% of Tajikistan. The AKDN has also financed research on hybrid crops that can grow at the high altitudes of the region and has built water sanitation facilities to provide GBAO towns and cities with clean drinking water.
It was also AKDN funds that between 2007-2018 paid for the construction of six bridges that connect Tajikistan to Afghanistan, boosting cross-border trade.
A medical centre and a park in GBAO’s capital, Khorog, were, meanwhile, built with funding from the AKDN, which also established a bank, First Microfinance Bank of Tajikistan.
The AKDN has also built three universities for mountain communities: one in Kazakhstan, one in Kyrgyzstan and one in Khorog.
The AKDN-backed University of Central Asia in Khorog has attracted professors from other countries, including Western countries, and provided quality education to young Pamiris, many of whom might otherwise not have been able to receive a higher education.
Tajikistan is the poorest country in Central Asia and GBAO is its poorest region.
Without the AKDN assistance, the standard of living in GBAO would be significantly lower than it is today.
And here we might find the reason for Dushanbe not prolonging the AKDN contract with Tajikistan.
The government is strapped for cash, and GBAO is only connected to the rest of Tajikistan by a single road that is often closed by heavy snowfall and avalanches. The unreliable air connections between Dushanbe and Khorog are sometimes suspended for weeks due to the unpredictable weather conditions in the mountains.
n relation to GBAO and the Pamiri, Rahmon (right) has not honoured the terms of the 1997 Tajik Peace Accord that settled his country's civil war, instead opting to gradually turn the screw of oppression (Credit: Tajik presidency).
The assistance the AKDN provides is worth more than the Tajik government can afford to spend on GBAO, making the Aga Khan more popular than the Tajik president, Emomali Rahmon, among Pamiris.
Rahmon, as it happens, has personal cause to begrudge special efforts that help the Pamiris.
During the 1992-1997 Tajik Civil War, a Pamiri independence party, Lali Badakhshan, featured among the coalition of forces, the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), that was trying to bring down Rahmon and his government.
The nearly inaccessible terrain of GBAO provided perfect shelter for the UTO during the civil war. The UTO knew vehicles and aircraft could not follow them into jagged mountains.
Under the terms of the 1997 Tajik Peace Accord, the former combatants were supposed to forgive and forget and work together to improve Tajikistan.
The UTO, to a great extent, has lived up to these terms. Rahmon’s government has not.
Once peace was firmly rooted in Tajikistan and the chances of a renewal of hostilities dissipated, Rahmon worked to erode the influence of his former adversaries.
Leading members of the groups that made up the UTO were harassed and imprisoned or fled the country.
GBAO’s remoteness allowed the region a reprieve, but in May 2022, with all other resistance in Tajikistan firmly crushed, it was GBAO’s turn.
In the years after the civil war, the stiffest challenge to the Rahmon government’s complete control over Tajikistan came from GBAO. Violence broke out in 2008, then several times after during the next 14 years, usually sparked by government efforts to impose its rule over GBAO.
Rahmon’s regime was forced to negotiate deals with local Pamiri powerbrokers to keep the peace and promote the illusion that the government had tamed GBAO.
In November 2021, a young Pamiri man named Gulbiddin Ziyobekov was essentially assassinated by local security personnel, though police claimed Ziyobekov died while resisting arrest.
In early 2020, Ziyobekov had beaten a local deputy prosecutor for molesting a local girl, and forced the deputy prosecutor to apologise in a video.
The killing of Ziyobekov quickly sparked violence as locals demanded justice. Two more Pamiris were killed in clashes with police.
Calm was restored, and, as had happened during previous conflicts in GBAO since 2008, local officials and officials sent from Dushanbe worked with local community leaders to resolve the issues.
Months and months passed, however, and nothing was resolved. So, on May 14, 2022, a group of Pamiris informed the administration in Khorog of plans for a peaceful rally on May 16 to demand Ziyobekov’s killers and those responsible for the two people killed in the later violence be brought to justice. Another demand was the release of the locals jailed for their alleged part in the clashes.
When people started to arrive at the rally, security forces and police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. Violence erupted and, this time, the Tajik authorities had no intention of seeking a compromise.
The government initiated what it described as a counter-terrorism operation and sent reinforcements to the region to crush resistance and round up anyone who could potentially rally local support.
Since the clash, the park in Khorog has been seized by the state, the Serena hotel and medical centre in Khorog that both belonged the AKDN have been nationalized and the government has cancelled the licence of the Aga Khan Lyceum in Khorog and taken control of the Aga Khan’s University of Central Asia.
The crackdown does not stop there. A programme sponsored by the AKDN to send some Pamiris to study at the London-based Institute of Ismaili Studies was scrapped.
The two Ismaili centres in Tajikistan, one in Khorog, the other in Dushanbe, remain open, but only for prayers. Both centres are banned from conducting educational or cultural activities.
In January 2023, government officials told GBAO elders to spread the word that Ismailis were no longer allowed to pray in their homes and must remove any portraits of the Aga Khan.
Amnesty International said in a report released in September this year that the Pamiris face “systemic discrimination,“ and there have been reports that many Pamiris are fleeing GBAO.
The agreement between the AKDN and Tajik government gave AKDN organisations diplomatic status in Tajikistan. With the expiration of that agreement, the organisations can continue operations as regular NGOs, but the Tajik authorities’ actions against AKDN establishments of the past three years suggest that what is left of the Aga Khan’s network in Tajikistan will soon be taken over by the state.