Tajikistan on road to democracy
By K.N. Pandita – On November 6, 2006, Tajiks will vote for the presidential candidate. To some it is unbelievable that Tajikistan, the only republic of Central Asian region, which got engulfed in a civil and a fratricidal war after it decided to opt out after the demise of the Soviet Union, is now struggling to institutionalise her democratic political arrangement.
Large scale turmoil in Afghanistan, the state with which she has more than five hundred miles of common border to her south, had its impact on Tajik political situation. With a few pockets like Garm where radical Islamists wanted a theocratic state to replace the given model, internal as well as external forces interplayed and forged a disastrous civil war, which came to an end only five years later after an armistice of sorts was signed.