Tajikistan: The Land of Buzkashi (Chasing a Goat)

Istanbul, March 2007

Dear Friends and Family:

Greetings from Istanbul. I started this morning at 3:30, waking up ahead of my alarm, fearing that I might miss my flight from Dushanbe to Istanbul--and be obliged to wait another three days for the next flight out of Tajikistan.

Tajikistan seems to be a country that belongs neither to Europe nor to Asia and until September 11, 2001 was forgotten by both. Even today, the local radar on www.weather.com shows weather patterns for Saudi Arabia rather than central Asia. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the south, China to the east, Uzbekistan to the north and Iran to the west. The capital, Dushanbe, is at the bottom of a valley with mountain ranges on all sides. Indeed the US military employs Tajik pilots for their flights in Somalia because the pilots are so accustomed to flying in difficult conditions with changing winds.

Starting in 2001, the developed world could no longer forget countries like Tajikistan. Hundreds of millions of dollars of aid are given by governments in the hope that economic development will prevent isolated countries from becoming failed states. The US provides almost $25 million a year just in advisors on legal enforcement. The Chinese Government has promised to provide $650 million, including the building a mountain road from Dushanbe into Uzbekistan. The Aga Khan Foundation has just built a major bridge into Afghanistan.

Tajikistan has three main industries: aluminum, cotton, and narcotics transit. The aluminum plant is a legacy from the Soviet period. It generates air pollution into Uzbekistan and consumes so much power that most of the country has no electricity all winter. Even Dushanbe suffers from regular power cuts. Furthermore the aluminum plant was the first facility seized by the current President when he crossed the Uzbek-Tajik border in 1992 with 300 men. As recently as three years ago, the plant is thought to have financed one of the government institutions, whose leader came to contest power with the President—and is now in jail on charges of corruption. The senior officials seem to prefer to choose in their inner circles those with criminal or corrupt backgrounds. It is very convenient. When they become popular and powerful, senior officials can dismiss them and press charges—and then take credit for cleaning out the government.

Cotton is a still more complex story. Two international cotton traders provided financing for the local cotton industry through a series of intermediaries. During the Soviet period, the cotton gins were used to siphon off profits. In other central Asia countries, theft from the cotton sector was accomplished by under-reporting the total cotton production. In Tajikistan, it was more subtle. The cotton gins underreported the throughput rate for cotton processing.

Today the gins are owned by 25 to 30 well-connected intermediaries that finance the local cotton farmers, with refinancing from the same two international traders. The local intermediaries provide seed, fertilizer and tractors (not necessarily at market prices) and are repaid through the production of raw cotton sold to the gunnery (also not necessarily at market prices.) A few bad crop years has put some 30,000 farmers in hock to what are essentially loan-sharks. The government and the local representatives of the international community have spent several years trying to figure out what to do. The plans seem to benefit the intermediaries. So my question, is who owns the intermediaries? That, it seems, is a tricky question but knowing who owns and controls the key economic facilities is essential in understanding a country’s economy.

Last Sunday, the group with whom I am traveling decided to go watch Buzkashi, which literally means goat-grabbing. In a crude form of polo, men riding on horses compete to pick up the carcass of a headless goat. Buzkashi is most commonly associated with Afghanistan but is a common form of competition throughout central Asia. Last Sunday, we arranged with a tour guide to watch the spectacle. It gave interesting insights into Tajik economic life--and how relationships determine one's success in business.

We watched as several hundred horsemen descended into a valley and prepared for the competition. It seems that Buzkashi has no rules, except that the riders are supposed to act on their own. Of course, they work in teams, with some riders protecting the route for the rider with headless-goat in his hands. These informal alliances are necessary to win the valuable prizes for picking up the headless goat and taking the carcass across the finish line. However there is no umpire, just a rider with a loudspeaker telling the crowd who has done what to whom and why all of this is for the greater glory of the Republic of Tajikistan.

The business world seems to be similar. The rules seem to be non-existent and their are no umpires. Informal alliances are critically necessary for survival. And they are very tight in Tajikistan.

In my travels, I have never before found myself receiving virtually no information from local officials. Usually there are some who are well-informed but not part of the inner group and willing to share their insights. In Tajikistan, it was primarily the well-funded international community who talked about who owned what. Only one local Tajik explained a few parts of the puzzle.

Much of my information came from the internet, which surprisingly the internet is not censored. Perhaps it doesn’t need to be. My impression, confirmed by resident expatriates, was that all our meetings were taped and the information relayed to our government counterparts.

This is Tajikistan. Virtually all economic activity eventually goes through the senior officials or their family members. In Dushanbe, all economic activity requires the informal support of the powers that be.

I found a blogger who said that his DVD store has been visited by a representative of the top brass. The rep explained that his DVD store was in competition with the daughter’s store and she would like him to close his shop. In his blog, the DVD store owner expressed appreciation that he had received a verbal warning. He was happy to close rather than have the store broken into and his inventory destroyed or still worse. When I relayed this story to residents of Dushanbe, to a person they agreed with the blogger—that he was lucky to have received verbal instructions to close his business.

Of course, the big business in Tajikistan is narcotics trafficking. Virtually all of the heroin consumed in Europe is thought to originate in Afghanistan and be transported across Tajikistan. In my travels, black market activities remain in the shadow, but they cast a long shadow—of businesses that are not present but should be.

Nevertheless on this trip, I found a Tajikistan quite different from the country I visited in June 2000. While stopping at red lights remains optional, most cars appear to obey traffic signals, particularly when the traffic police are present. My hotel did not have a tank in the driveway as it did in 2000. People walk on the street in the evening as they did not in 2000. Tap water is light brown rather than dark brown and I fell sick with dysentery and nausea only about five times in two weeks, rather than constantly.

However it is still a country in need of improvements. On the flight out of Dushanbe, I sat beside the representative for Colgate Palmolive, who said that business in Tajikistan was good but that it would remain a problem until people became accustomed to clean water. Only then would they recognize the need for good oral hygiene.

As for me, I am waiting for an international hotel chain to open in Dushanbe. Several five star hotels are rumored to be under construction, but they all require the approval of the mayor. With all land technically belonging to the state, local government officials wield great power. As one of my contacts explained, the top officials keep the mayor in power to show that if they were not there, the mayor would likely be in charge—and his tactics did not involve giving just verbal warnings to competitors. In the press, he is known as a narco-baron.

It was two weeks of asking lots of questions, protected by the international institution for which I work. I felt as if, just asking the questions of who owns and controls this company and that bank was shedding some light on a very opaque community.

Will fly back to DC in the morning but am planning to be back in central Asia before the summer begins in earnest.

Now the cleaning staff of my hotel is trying to dust the banisters and palisades and I must close.

Sue