Tajikistan - Early Politics
In the first years of independence, politics in Tajikistan were overshadowed by a long struggle for political power among cliques that sought Soviet-style dominance of positions of power and privilege and a collection of opposition forces seeking to establish a new government whose form was defined only vaguely in public statements. The result was a civil war that began in the second half of 1992. A faction favoring a neo-Soviet system took control of the government in December 1992 after winning the civil war with help from Russian and Uzbekistani forces.
Tajikistan was ruled in 1993 by a coalition of regional and clan groupings [dominated by Tajiks from the southern Kulyab/Kulob region] which won a clear-cut military victory in a civil war racking the country, particularly its southern regions, during 1992. The winning coalition was supported by Russian, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and Uzbek forces. The Supreme Soviet (parliament) elected Imomali Rahmanov, Kulyab regional executive chairman, as its Chairman and Head of State in November 1992. Much of Rahmonov's support came from the victorious People's Front forces which originated in Kulyab and Kurgan-Tube, the Uzbek-dominated Hissar region which aided in the battle of Dushanbe, and members of the traditional northern economic elite of Leninabad.
The unicameral, 230-seat Supreme Soviet of Tajikistan elected in 1990 included 227 communists and three members from other parties. This body chose Tajikistan's first president, communist part chief Rahmon Nabiyev. In the first direct presidential election, held in 1991, Nabiyev won in a rigged vote.
In March 1992, a civil war broke out in the country. An unpopular leader in a volatile country, Nabiyev was overthrown in 1992 and tried to flee the country as it fell into civil war. On September 7, 1992, at the Dushanbe airport, the president tried to fly to Khujand, but was stopped by a crowd. On the same day, he signed a letter of resignation. President Nabiev, a Khujand native, was forcibly removed from office and returned home, bringing his circle of advisors and loyalists with him. Few would ever return to Dushanbe. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Germans, Belarussians and Jews, representing the educated segment of society in Khujand emigrated to the West, and the uranium plant closed. Many area natives who had been living in Dushanbe have returned and are underemployed, given Khujand's lack of civil service and international organization jobs. President Rahmon, a native of a small town south of Dushanbe, continues to pack his cabinet and senior positions throughout the Government with relatives and loyalists. Khujanders tend to view Dushanbe as a town of peasants (including the President himself).
Akbarsho Iskandarovich ISKANDAROV, a Tajik statesman and politician, was president of Tajikistan (in 1992). From 1966 to 1970 studied at the Dushanbe Polytechnic College, received a degree in civil engineering. In 1974 he enrolled in absentia at the Faculty of Economics of Tajik State University. V. Lenin and graduated in 1979 with a degree in economics. In 1989 he graduated from the Tashkent Higher Party School. Since 1982 - instructor of the organizational department of the Kalaikhum District Committee of the Communist Party of Tajikistan. Since 1984, he worked as an instructor in the Gorno-Badakhshan regional party committee. In 1986, he assumed the post of deputy chairman of the Ishkashim district executive committee and chairman of the regional agro-industrial association. In November 1991 and April-May 1992 he was acting chairman of the Supreme Council of Tajikistan, and on October 7, 1991. took office as chairman of the Supreme Council of Tajikistan. At the same time, he was the acting president of Tajikistan, replacing the Rakhmon Nabiev. From March 1993, he was Chargé d'Affaires ai, and then Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Tajikistan to Turkmenistan (from 1993 to 2001), to Kazakhstan (from 2001) and to Mongolia (since 2004). Since 2008, he served as ambassador on special instructions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan.
The office of president was abolished in November 1992, then reestablished de facto in 1994 in advance of the constitutional referendum that legally legitimized it. In the interim, the former chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Imomali Rahmonov, was nominal chief of state. In the presidential election of November 1994, Rahmonov won a vote that was condemned by opposition parties and Western observers as fraudulent. Rahmonov's only opponent was the antireformist Abdumalik Abdullojanov, who had founded an opposition party after being forced to resign as Rahmonov's prime minister in 1993 under criticism for the country's poor economic situation.
Khujand, with six hundred thousand residents, is Tajikistan's second-largest city and the administrative center of the Sugd region, which includes Tajikistan's chunk of the Fergana Valley. During the Soviet Union when Khujand was called Leninabad, almost all leaders of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic were from the north. A uranium ("Tajik Gold") processing plant in nearby Chakalovsk provided well-paying jobs for scientists and laborers, many of whom arrived from Russia, Germany and Belarus during Stalin's forced migrations. The likeness of Bobojon Gafurov, a Khujand native and well-known Soviet-era historian, is displayed on posters and statues throughout the city.
Rahmonov's control over the judiciary was demonstrated in June 1993 when the Supreme Court banned all four opposition parties and all organizations connected with the 1992 coalition government. The ban was rationalized on the basis of an accusation of the parties' complicity in attempting a violent overthrow of the government. The president appoints judges with legislative approval but has the ability to unilaterally remove them.
Tajikistan also ratified a new constitution in 1994 that called for a unicameral, 181-seat parliament to replace the Supreme Soviet. In the first election under those guidelines, 161 deputies were chosen in February 1995 and nineteen of the remaining twenty in a second round one month later. In the 1995 parliamentary election, an estimated forty seats were uncontested, and many candidates reportedly were former Soviet regional and local officials. The sixty communist deputies who were elected gave Rahmonov solid support in the legislative branch because the majority of deputies had no declared party affiliation. Like the 1994 presidential election, the parliamentary election was not considered free or fair by international authorities.
The United Islamic Opposition Forces fought against President Emomali Rahmon's secular government in the 1992-97 civil war. The war ended with a national peace and power-sharing agreement, which saw former opposition leaders getting a 30- percent share of official positions in local and central governments. Since the end of the war, Rahmon gradually reneged on this deal and forced nearly all oppositionists out of government -- some to prison, some left the country, and others died mysteriously.
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