Organizational List
AKF Aga Khan Foundation
CIS Commonwealth of Independent States
CNR Commission on National Reconciliation
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
IOM International Organization for Migration
IDP Internally Displaced Persons
KGB State Security Service (Soviet era)
MVD Ministry of Internal Affairs
NGO Nongovernmental organization
OSI Open Society Institute
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
RI Relief International
UNDHA United Nations Department of Humanitarian Assistance
UNDPKO United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations
UNDPA United Nations Department of Political Affairs
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNMOT United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan
UNOCHA United Nations Office
UNOHCHR United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
UNOPS United Nations Office for Project Services
UTO United Tajik Opposition
November 13, 1997. Southern Tajikistan. After nearly five years of exile in Afghanistan, the final group of 28 Tajik refugee families returns home. With all their worldly possessions—from sewing machines to small farm animals—they make the journey by truck, river barge, and railway, and are met by their relatives at the Shaartuz train station. Jubilation abounds amid hope for the prospect of a lasting peace.
November 18, 1997. Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Several armed men burst into the apartment of two French humanitarian aid workers and spirit them away under cover of darkness to an undisclosed location. The news grips the international community with fear, and paralyzes their work. Less than a fortnight later, one hostage escapes, but the other is killed in a government raid on the captors’ safehouse.
Home from Exile
The highs and lows within the space of five days vividly illustrate the shifting centers of turmoil across the divided landscape of Tajikistan today. While the sudden attack on international relief workers brought a pessimistic halt to their work, the slap of trowels against fresh mud walls in villages some 100 miles to the south punctuated the rush of Tajik refugees to construct makeshift shelters before winter finally set in.
The flush of excitement over peace and repatriation has passed, but everyone in southern Tajikistan marvels at how swiftly and smoothly the final group of refugees returned from Afghanistan. Given the savage violence between neighbors in some of these villages during the brief civil war of 1992–1993, many feared the kind of retribution that has marred repatriation attempts in places such as Bosnia, Rwanda, and Georgia-Abkhazia.
“I rode the train back with the refugees from Afghanistan,” says one UN official from Dushanbe shortly after the final blitz of 3,200 returnees in October and November. “I had to see it to believe it—that people could go back to their neighbors.” Tajikistan has been spared the bloodletting familiar to the Balkans and central Africa.
But there are other factors that helped speed up the repatriation following the peace plan signed by the Tajik government and United Tajik Opposition in June 1997, after more than three years of bitter negotiations. Chief among these were the firm guarantees of amnesty for ex-combatants, which were reinforced during personal visits to the refugee camps by leaders of both the government and the opposition. Additional offers of job training and credit financing were extended by the government, giving opposition supporters more reason to trust the promise of safe reintegration.
At the same time, conditions for the refugees in Afghanistan deteriorated dramatically when a camp was shelled in fighting between the ruling Taliban forces and Afghan rebels from the northern region near the Tajik border. Insecurity in the place of asylum undoubtedly contributed to the decision to return.
Finally, the international relief community contributed to the repatriation process through a program of cross-border contact for refugees and their families, which cracked the barrier of threatening propaganda to which the refugees were exposed under a strict camp administration.
Over the years, refugees received letters from family members in Tajikistan who had returned from the camps, but they recall having doubts about the authenticity of the correspondence. The turning point occurred about two years ago, when the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) took charge of returnee protection in Tajikistan from the departing United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and initiated telephone contacts every Friday. Refugees in Afghanistan could talk for three minutes with a relative or friend in Tajikistan; according to returnees, hearing a person’s actual voice “made a big difference.”
Once refugees prepared to return, OSCE field officers back in Tajikistan helped prepare the local villages for their arrival, seeking to prevent confrontations that could arise, for example, when returnees found their homes occupied by others. This preventive field monitoring proved to be an effective complement to the UNHCR’s logistical work in assembling and transporting the refugees from the camps across the Amu Daria River to the appointed transit centers in Tajikistan.
Now that they are back, however, the real work of long-term reconciliation and state-building is not going as smoothly as the repatriation. The reasons for this are best understood in the context of Tajikistan’s history and composition.
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