IT IS 5 A. M. , and the sky is hinting of dawn in the outskirts of Kurgan-Tyube, Tajikistan. A light clicks on inside a small wooden hut and 32-year-old Zabir, a former laborer at a collective farm, rises from his bed. He puts on the dirty clothes he wore the day before, prepares a small breakfast of bread and kefir, grabs his Kalashnikov and goes off to find the war.
He won't have to look far. The fighting could be in his backyard, in the cotton fields where he once worked, or in the store where he bought his food.
"I fight because I will not let these swine have my home", said Zabir. "We must win this war, bring the women and children back, and then have life be normal again". Kurgan-Tyube's transformation from a peaceful farm town into a battlefield of civil war was frightfully short for the 80, 000 people who once lived here. Today, fields of unharvested cotton and grapes surround the town. Fruit trees laden with pomegranates, lemons, apricots and apples stand beside nearly every abandoned home.
Only the men who are fighting and a few holdouts, mostly older residents, remain in the rural town.
"This was the most beautiful city", said Makhmat Karim, a 41-year-old gas pump attendant who sports a small pistol as his only weapon. "Now we have this".
Even in its peaceful moments, the town is a desperate place. Whenever the fighting stops, refugees step timidly from their shelters and pour across the Vakhsh River bridge, carrying with them what few possessions they can manage.
"It makes no sense", says one woman, weeping as she flees along the road from Kurgan-Tyube. "This is Tajik against Tajik".
THE FIGHTING that has raged in Tajikistan this year is veiled in ideological rhetoric: pro-communist versus anti-communist, hardliner versus democrat, Islamic fundamentalist versus everyone else. But this is a clan war. In the presence of foreign reporters, fighters supporting ousted President Rakhmon Nabiyev, an old-style communist leader, talk of the threat of Islam and their opponents warn of the red menace.
But among themselves, they speak a different language. Then, the enemy is "Kulyabi swine" or "Garmi bandits", accusations one might have heard centuries ago and which refer to clan divisions far older than Communism.
The Bolsheviks formed Tajikistan in 1924 from a collection of warring tribes - mostly Garms, Kulyabis, and Pamiris - that shared the only non-Turkic language of Central Asia. The capital of the new republic was moved from Gissar, today the site of a massive mud-walled fortress, north to Leninabad and then again to Dushanbe.
The Soviets suppressed the Muslim religion and culture and made Russian into the language of government. An enormous power plant was built in the south. Cotton became the primary crop.
" Except for occasional outbreaks of fighting, the Communists kept a lid on the ancient tribal hatreds that had regularly incited the region to war. Kurgan-Tyube became a showplace of the communist victory over tribal suspicion and warfare.
But the trouble was never far below the surface, and when the Soviet yoke was lifted late last year, inter-clan violence returned to Tajikistan as if the half-century hiatus had never existed.
President Nabiyev, an old-style Communist
politician, was forced from office on Sept. 7 after months of demonstrations and sporadic armed clashes. Though he was supported by Takis from the more industrialized Kulyab and Leninabad regions, the Garms of mid-Tajikistan and the Pamiris of the east won the day under the dual banner of democracy and Muslim revival.
Nabiyev was replaced by President Akbarsho Iskandarov, who is half Pamiri. For the Kulyabis, this meant seeing their champion replaced by the very tribes that Nabiyev had offered to protect them against. The Kulyabis launched an attack on Kurgan-Tyube, ostensibly to protect Kulyabis there. They also moved on Dushanbe with the intention of returning Nabiyev to power. They got as close as 15 kilometers from the capital before being turned back by a surprisingly weak central government.
Even the names used by the combatants are confusing. The pro-government fighters call themselves "opposition" - because they are fighting in opposition to those who oppose the present government.
The events are a mystery to nearly everyone. As residents flee their homes, they wonder why life can't be the way it used to be. Politicians in the capital, Dushanbe, call daily for the warring sides to lay down their weapons, and don't understand how they can be so powerless over these two rag-tag armies. Soldiers may know why they fight, but have little understanding of why the enemy fights.
Meanwhile, the death toll mounts. According to commanders in Kurgan-Tyube,
1, 000 people have been killed or wounded since early September.
As the woman fleeing along the road from Kurgan-Tyube said, "It makes no sense".
TWELVE KILOMETERS outside of town, just across the railroad tracks, is the Kurgan-Tyube bus station. A bleak stopping point along a nearly deserted road, the station has become a command post for pro-government fighters.
The fighter's ostensible purpose is to prevent Kulyabis from the south from circling through the surrounding cotton fields and attacking from the north. If these soldiers have a higher goal in this slipshod battle, they are unable to articulate it. The fighting seems driven more by simple momentum and habit than by anything else.
The group supports the present regime headed by President Iskandarov, but receives little military help from Dushanbe. "We have a good relationship with Iskandarov", said one fighter. "But he is weak".
The fighters have just one armed personnel carrier; the Kulyabis have two tanks and one armed personnel carrier. Only three men at the bus station post have automatic weapons, while the rest are carrying hunting rifles, shotguns, pistols and knives. Most of the weapons in the hands of the fighters at the bus station were either taken from the enemy or smuggled across the Afghan border, only 50 kilometers away". When the tank comes we just hide until it passes", said Tosh Murazoyev. "Then we stand up and start shooting at it. When it turns around and comes back, we hide again until it passes again".
The buildings are covered with bullet holes, the scars of weeks of battles in which the site changed hands several, times. It is impossible to walk without crunching glass beneath your feet; there is not a window plane left unbroken. Inside, the station is gutted.
In two days spent among the 25 fighters who rotated duty at the bus station command post, a strange rhythm emerged of short bursts of fighting followed by long bouts of lounging around and boasting. Except for the Kalashnikovs and a light tank parked nearby, the group often seemed to be on a picnic.
Ibragim Saffarov, a former gas pump attendant who served in Afghanistan, carefully checked and rechecked the magazine of his weapon. "I took it from a dead Kulyabi", he boasted of the gun. "Now I want to get another one for my brother. It's dangerous to fight without an automatic".
Outside the bus station, a Lada screeches to a halt and a man in camouflage dress leaps out. The men become tense as it is decided who will go to a fresh round of fighting at the Turkmenistan collective farm. Those with Kalashnikovs are taken, while the others stay behind to guard the station. The car speeds away. The commotion ends and the picnic resumes.
Bed rolls are stretched out on the porch of a old kiosk and unshaven men in soiled jeans lounge about, tinkering with their weapons and, talking about their lives before the war. A cat comes by for a share of lunch and some men feed it while others delight in kicking it away. A fight breaks out over the cat.
Zabir returns four hours later very agitated. The Kulyabis have taken the command headquarters. In a somber moment he longs for the days of law and order.
"Four or five years ago, we had a murder here and we searched and searched until we found the culprit", he said. "Now such things happen everyday".
He won't have to look far. The fighting could be in his backyard, in the cotton fields where he once worked, or in the store where he bought his food.
"I fight because I will not let these swine have my home", said Zabir. "We must win this war, bring the women and children back, and then have life be normal again". Kurgan-Tyube's transformation from a peaceful farm town into a battlefield of civil war was frightfully short for the 80, 000 people who once lived here. Today, fields of unharvested cotton and grapes surround the town. Fruit trees laden with pomegranates, lemons, apricots and apples stand beside nearly every abandoned home.
Only the men who are fighting and a few holdouts, mostly older residents, remain in the rural town.
"This was the most beautiful city", said Makhmat Karim, a 41-year-old gas pump attendant who sports a small pistol as his only weapon. "Now we have this".
Even in its peaceful moments, the town is a desperate place. Whenever the fighting stops, refugees step timidly from their shelters and pour across the Vakhsh River bridge, carrying with them what few possessions they can manage.
"It makes no sense", says one woman, weeping as she flees along the road from Kurgan-Tyube. "This is Tajik against Tajik".
THE FIGHTING that has raged in Tajikistan this year is veiled in ideological rhetoric: pro-communist versus anti-communist, hardliner versus democrat, Islamic fundamentalist versus everyone else. But this is a clan war. In the presence of foreign reporters, fighters supporting ousted President Rakhmon Nabiyev, an old-style communist leader, talk of the threat of Islam and their opponents warn of the red menace.
But among themselves, they speak a different language. Then, the enemy is "Kulyabi swine" or "Garmi bandits", accusations one might have heard centuries ago and which refer to clan divisions far older than Communism.
The Bolsheviks formed Tajikistan in 1924 from a collection of warring tribes - mostly Garms, Kulyabis, and Pamiris - that shared the only non-Turkic language of Central Asia. The capital of the new republic was moved from Gissar, today the site of a massive mud-walled fortress, north to Leninabad and then again to Dushanbe.
The Soviets suppressed the Muslim religion and culture and made Russian into the language of government. An enormous power plant was built in the south. Cotton became the primary crop.
" Except for occasional outbreaks of fighting, the Communists kept a lid on the ancient tribal hatreds that had regularly incited the region to war. Kurgan-Tyube became a showplace of the communist victory over tribal suspicion and warfare.
But the trouble was never far below the surface, and when the Soviet yoke was lifted late last year, inter-clan violence returned to Tajikistan as if the half-century hiatus had never existed.
President Nabiyev, an old-style Communist
politician, was forced from office on Sept. 7 after months of demonstrations and sporadic armed clashes. Though he was supported by Takis from the more industrialized Kulyab and Leninabad regions, the Garms of mid-Tajikistan and the Pamiris of the east won the day under the dual banner of democracy and Muslim revival.
Nabiyev was replaced by President Akbarsho Iskandarov, who is half Pamiri. For the Kulyabis, this meant seeing their champion replaced by the very tribes that Nabiyev had offered to protect them against. The Kulyabis launched an attack on Kurgan-Tyube, ostensibly to protect Kulyabis there. They also moved on Dushanbe with the intention of returning Nabiyev to power. They got as close as 15 kilometers from the capital before being turned back by a surprisingly weak central government.
Even the names used by the combatants are confusing. The pro-government fighters call themselves "opposition" - because they are fighting in opposition to those who oppose the present government.
The events are a mystery to nearly everyone. As residents flee their homes, they wonder why life can't be the way it used to be. Politicians in the capital, Dushanbe, call daily for the warring sides to lay down their weapons, and don't understand how they can be so powerless over these two rag-tag armies. Soldiers may know why they fight, but have little understanding of why the enemy fights.
Meanwhile, the death toll mounts. According to commanders in Kurgan-Tyube,
1, 000 people have been killed or wounded since early September.
As the woman fleeing along the road from Kurgan-Tyube said, "It makes no sense".
TWELVE KILOMETERS outside of town, just across the railroad tracks, is the Kurgan-Tyube bus station. A bleak stopping point along a nearly deserted road, the station has become a command post for pro-government fighters.
The fighter's ostensible purpose is to prevent Kulyabis from the south from circling through the surrounding cotton fields and attacking from the north. If these soldiers have a higher goal in this slipshod battle, they are unable to articulate it. The fighting seems driven more by simple momentum and habit than by anything else.
The group supports the present regime headed by President Iskandarov, but receives little military help from Dushanbe. "We have a good relationship with Iskandarov", said one fighter. "But he is weak".
The fighters have just one armed personnel carrier; the Kulyabis have two tanks and one armed personnel carrier. Only three men at the bus station post have automatic weapons, while the rest are carrying hunting rifles, shotguns, pistols and knives. Most of the weapons in the hands of the fighters at the bus station were either taken from the enemy or smuggled across the Afghan border, only 50 kilometers away". When the tank comes we just hide until it passes", said Tosh Murazoyev. "Then we stand up and start shooting at it. When it turns around and comes back, we hide again until it passes again".
The buildings are covered with bullet holes, the scars of weeks of battles in which the site changed hands several, times. It is impossible to walk without crunching glass beneath your feet; there is not a window plane left unbroken. Inside, the station is gutted.
In two days spent among the 25 fighters who rotated duty at the bus station command post, a strange rhythm emerged of short bursts of fighting followed by long bouts of lounging around and boasting. Except for the Kalashnikovs and a light tank parked nearby, the group often seemed to be on a picnic.
Ibragim Saffarov, a former gas pump attendant who served in Afghanistan, carefully checked and rechecked the magazine of his weapon. "I took it from a dead Kulyabi", he boasted of the gun. "Now I want to get another one for my brother. It's dangerous to fight without an automatic".
Outside the bus station, a Lada screeches to a halt and a man in camouflage dress leaps out. The men become tense as it is decided who will go to a fresh round of fighting at the Turkmenistan collective farm. Those with Kalashnikovs are taken, while the others stay behind to guard the station. The car speeds away. The commotion ends and the picnic resumes.
Bed rolls are stretched out on the porch of a old kiosk and unshaven men in soiled jeans lounge about, tinkering with their weapons and, talking about their lives before the war. A cat comes by for a share of lunch and some men feed it while others delight in kicking it away. A fight breaks out over the cat.
Zabir returns four hours later very agitated. The Kulyabis have taken the command headquarters. In a somber moment he longs for the days of law and order.
"Four or five years ago, we had a murder here and we searched and searched until we found the culprit", he said. "Now such things happen everyday".
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