Dying Dreams in Tajikistan’s Global Borderland

Abstract

Twenty-five years since the end of Tajikistan’s civil war in 1997, dreams and aspirations of international development and cross-border mobility in the country’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province, colloquially called “the Pamirs,” have evaporated. Once the mountainous region was envisaged to have a prosperous postwar future ahead of it, with emerging trade links to China and Afghanistan, substantial funding from international nongovernmental organizations, and support from wealthy Muslim institutions. Today, as the Tajik government mounts a violent campaign to eradicate opposition, people in the Pamirs are surrounded by closed international borders and an ever-shrinking space in which to participate in Tajikistan’s politics and economy.