Yearender: Tajikistan at the crossroads

Under the mighty snowcapped Kofarnihan Mountains, Taloi Safid, a tiny village of 2,000 inhabitants, could hardly be described as remarkable. A simple rural Tajik farming community, 30 km east of the capital, Dushanbe, its name in Tajik means White Gold, a reference to the rich cotton fields surrounding its periphery – the traditional main source of income for the 300 families for whom Taloi Safid is home. But a closer look at the impoverished community's simple, ramshackle wooden homes reveals something strange. Here it is the women who do most of the farming, a direct consequence of the acute lack of men left amongst the population, most of whom now work in Russia as labour migrants to provide for their families. "My husband left eight years ago. I make do with my lot," Djumagul Nozimova told IRIN. However, making do is not easy for the mother of eight, who struggles day and night working a rented farm of dairy cows and chickens, alongside two other women, both of whose husbands are working in Russia. "We don’t have time to fight. We just want to get by and put bread on the table," the 46-year-old said resignedly, her two friends nodding in agreement. In many ways their plight is similar to what faces most Tajiks, a mountain people numbering 6.5 million and the poorest in Central Asia. Their struggle reflects much of the reality of Tajikistan today, and the challenge ahead for a country very much in transition. FIRST 12 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE To understand that challenge, one must first examine the last 12 years during which Tajikistan - a country about the size of Greece - has been independent. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the nation's first few years were marred by violence and turbulence. Heavily specialised to produce cotton and aluminium, and tightly integrated with the economies of the other Soviet republics, Tajikistan was dealt a severe blow by the loss of its traditional markets and the resulting revenue falls following the demise of the Soviet Union. Independence deprived the country of much-needed Soviet subsidies, foodstuffs and aid, a loss it is still reeling from today. Within nine months of independence, a bloody five-year civil war broke out, ultimately taking some 60,000 lives, while threatening to divide the nation along regional lines. Though ostensibly between pro-communist and Islamist forces, long-suppressed clan, regional and ethnic rivalries quickly emerged as major factors in the conflict. As a result, towards the end of the decade, Tajikistan’s hardships reached catastrophic proportions, requiring emergency humanitarian assistance from outside. Then a drought lasting from 2000 until 2001 left many households more vulnerable than ever before, and prompted a major upsurge in labour migration, particularly to Russia. Now, at least one in four families has a member working abroad. ECONOMY According to the World Bank, Tajikistan is the poorest of the former Soviet republics, with over 83 percent of its population living below the national poverty line. A full 17 percent of the population is considered destitute. Salaries average just US $11 a month, while the minimum wage is just $2, figures which makes it hard to understand how people get by.

Poverty is particularly problematic in rural areas of the country

For example, inside the foyer of Dushanbe's TCUM department store, a large plastic Christmas tree gracing the entrance is priced at 2,500 Tajik somoni (about US $850), or the equivalent of the monthly salaries of 100 doctors. What is clear is that the war devastated the country's economy and infrastructure, particularly in the rural areas. Free of debt at independence, Tajikistan subsequently accumulated $1 billion worth of external liabilities, equivalent to 100 percent of its GDP. GDP fell by more than 65 percent compared to 1991 and foreign investment froze at an average of US $2.5 per capita per year between 1991 and 2000. Nearly 20 percent of the country's schools were destroyed during the civil war, while the rest fell into disrepair. Health care and other social services plummeted. Today, grinding poverty is, without doubt, the primary challenge facing Tajiks, with unemployment estimated to be over 30 percent. "Extreme poverty remains a reality for the majority of the population," David Lewis, the Central Asia project director for the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Belgium-based think-tank, told IRIN. According to a comprehensive report by the ICG earlier this year, a good indicator of the decline of the economy was that the state budget in 2003 will ultimately total just 10 percent of what it was in 1990. And with government revenues amounting to just $212 million, and spending exceeding that, it is clear that the government has no funds to invest in development - something viewed as vital to the country's long-term future. The report went on to explain that a combination of low incomes and tax evasion meant that the greater part of the government's revenue was accrued from taxes on cotton and aluminium exports, thereby rendering the country's treasury particularly vulnerable to shifts in world prices. LABOUR MIGRATION So, under such circumstances, labour migration has come to constitute a critical component of survival. An International Organization for Migration (IOM) study completed in August suggests that annually between 600,000 and 900,000 Tajiks now migrate - primarily to Russia - to send much-needed remittances to their families. "Fifty percent of the country’s population – or some 3 million people – are dependent on the remittances sent back from their family members working abroad," Muzafar Zaripov, a programme officer and focal point for labour migration for IOM, told IRIN in Dushanbe. He said the combined value of money and goods reaching the country from its migrant workers in 2002 was between $200 million and $230 million, a sum roughly equating to the annual budget. Meanwhile, procuring the necessary permits to work legally in Russia is no easy task - often entailing bribes for the authorities. In fact, about 80 percent of migrant workers now entering Russia do so illegally, thereby rendering their status both dubious and problematic. "The vast majority of Tajik labour migrants work irregularly in Russia and other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, where they’re vulnerable to exploitation and suffer considerable hardship," Igor Bosc, the IOM chief of mission in Dushanbe, told IRIN, citing areas of social and legal protection as the primary problem areas being faced. FOOD SECURITY But for most Tajiks, those are risks worth taking. According to the UN, Tajikistan grows only 40 percent of its cereal needs. Lack of access to food and productive resources, including land, seeds and water, remains the root cause of the problem. According to a special report by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in August 2002, with the average household plot being just 0.13 ha, Tajiks at best can produce only 50 percent of their household needs. As a result, supplementary food purchases consume a large proportion of household income, leaving little to spare to pay for essential services such as health care and education. Tajikistan needs about 1.2 million mt of wheat a year, importing most of its shortfall from Russia and Kazakhstan. Whereas the country enjoyed a relatively strong wheat harvest of 800,000 mt this year, food security for the poorest strata of the population, numbering about 300,000, remains fragile. This is exemplified by recent rises in food prices over the past year, particularly of bread, which increased by 50 percent. Although such increases are not so evident in urban areas, they impact strongly in the countryside, where incomes are lowest.

For most Tajiks in Dushanbe, life is a constant struggle just to get by

"Poverty is a rural phenomenon in Tajikistan," Ardag Meghdessian, the WFP country director in Dushanbe, told IRIN, warning that many families would be adversely affected. "Given the harvest this year and the increase in prices, this seriously proves our point that Tajikistan is a food-deficit country," he said, noting that for the foreseeable future, the country would need all the assistance it could get, including food aid. Anne Pater, the head of mission in Dushanbe for the international NGO Action Against Hunger concurred, drawing particular attention to the plight of children. "Close to 350,000 children under the age of five in Tajikistan are chronically malnourished. This is a major source of concern," she said. According to Pater, 4.7 percent of under-fives suffer from acute malnutrition, and that this proportion could rise to more than 10.7 percent in the event of a decrease in access to food and safe drinking water, an outbreak of waterborne diseases, or of any other negative trend. "Any of these factors could quickly result in the number of acutely malnourished children to rise dramatically," she warned. HEALTH SERVICES Moreover, such a scenario can only serve to exacerbate the already strained health-care system. According to the UN, civil war, transition, sharp economic decline and resource shortages have all contributed to a widening gap between the health-care budget and actual costs. Meanwhile, budgetary allocations to the health sector have been declining in recent years. "Tajikistan spends just 1.0 percent of its GDP on health," Paul Handley, the officer in charge for the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Tajikistan, told IRIN. Medical care being at a premium, the allocations are clearly unrealistic, with the result that medical staff charge for services which should ostensibly be free, another aid worker explained. According to government statistics, about $5.2 million was allocated to the health sector in 2002, this sum equating to less than $1 per person, a situation rendering external assistance essential. Although the government's reform plans aimed at strengthening preventive primary health care with the introduction of family medicine, thereby to improve the cost-effectiveness of medical care and encourage private investment, have shown promise, results have been slow to materialise. Compounding the problem were recurrent outbreaks of infectious diseases such as typhoid, measles, anthrax, brucellosis and Congo-Crimea hemorrhagic fever, which regularly overwhelmed medical capacities, this year's UN consolidated appeals process (CAP) for the country said. According to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2002, the ongoing regional malaria epidemic continues to spread from districts bordering Afghanistan to new areas, notably the Ferghana Valley. Vivax malaria is now endemic in many parts of Tajikistan, and the WHO estimates that 400,000 new cases of infection occurred in 2002, while increasing levels of falciparum malaria and resistance to anti-malaria drugs were of particular concern. Meanwhile, tuberculosis is also on the rise, with official statistics showing an increase in cases from 32 per 100,000 in 1996 to 64 per 100,000 people in 2002. Continued