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A Eurasia Foundation Grantee Profile

Khorog, Tajikistan

Story and Photos by Jennifer Marsh, Tashkent Regional Office

"Look around at the beauty of this place," says Ogonazar Aknazarov as he gestures at the surrounding mountains. He is standing in Khorog, the capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomus Oblast (GBAO) in southern Tajikistan. "But we pay a price for this beauty—isolation," he notes. "That’s why I’m working to let our people know about the potential inside all of them."

A biologist by training, Ogonazar heads the Pamir Ecological Center, the first nongovernmental organization (NGO) in the region. He initially started the center in order to help preserve the environment and inform people about ecological issues and soon realized that he first needed to devote his efforts to spreading the word about civic activism. "Before people can work to save the environment, they have to understand that they have the ability to change the present situation," says Ogonazar.

That is no small feat in a place like the GBAO. The absence of an independent news media, combined with a society awaiting support from above, has instilled a sense of apathy in the population. Sharing borders with war-torn Afghanistan, China’s Xin Republic, and the Kyrgyz Republic while separated from the capital, Dushanbe, by a vast mountain range, this region may as well be the end of the earth. It covers a little less than half of Tajikistan, yet only three percent of the country’s population lives in this inhospitable land. The average salary is just $2 or $3 a month.

The GBAO was formed in 1925 as part of the Tajik Autonomous Republic of the USSR. But the area never really took part in the great era of Soviet industrialization. Its pristine valleys remained perhaps the most isolated and underdeveloped territory of the former Soviet Union. Due to its lack of industry, eighty percent of the region’s budget came directly from Moscow.

Civil war gripped Tajikistan after the Soviet Union collapsed, and the people of the GBAO were left in a dire situation. Without assistance from a central government and with no industry to speak of, the Pamiri people faced illness, hunger, and violence in their community. In 1992, the GBAO nominally declared its independence from Tajikistan and sided with the rebels in the civil war. Consequently, the government in the capital, Dushanbe, ostracized the region and refused to send food, supplies, or any other assistance. International organizations such as the Aga Khan Foundation, the United Nations, and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies came to the rescue with humanitarian aid.

The situation has stabilized over the past few years, but there is still little official support. Today, leaders are stepping up to help the community solve its own problems without help from the government. Just a few years ago, civil society did not exist in this region. Most people were unaware of the laws, their rights, or what it meant to be community activists; they assumed that it was impossible to actively improve their circumstance. With the encouragement and guidance of international donor organizations, however, local NGOs began to materialize in the mid 1990s.

As the first Eurasia Foundation grantee in the region, the Ecological Center (known as the "EcoCenter") received a $19,736 grant in 1996 to establish a resource center to help the local NGO sector develop. In the five years since then, the center has provided training and individual consulting sessions to NGO leaders and citizens alike in the GBAO cities of Khorog, Rushan, and Gant. The training and consulting sessions cover a wide range of issues including organizational management, fundraising, cooperating with government offices, and working with the news media.

As a direct result of the EcoCenter’s seminars in the Pamirs, NGOs have started springing up in unlikely places. The Xon Social Fund, registered in March 1999 in Rushan, provides assistance to local handicapped and underprivileged families. Ramazon Abdulalyev, the fund’s director, credits the EcoCenter for introducing him to the principles of civic leadership and providing the information that he needed to get started. "If the EcoCenter didn’t exist," he says, "we wouldn’t exist."

Habot Dodhudoyeva heads the NGO Madina, which focuses on creating new jobs for women through handicraft production. They recently received an $11,192 grant from the Eurasia Foundation to establish a women’s business resource center that will focus on introducing training programs on topics such as developing a business plan, locating sources of financing, and marketing. Says Dodhudoyeva, "The women have the skills and the know-how. Our job is to teach them how to market their products and how to manage and expand their small businesses."

Other new NGOs that have benefited from the EcoCenter’s programs include Gorxon, located in the Ishkashim region, which makes leather shoes for the elderly, orphans, and refugees. Another NGO, Bunyod, is working to educate farmers on legal and tax issues in the town of Rushan, while the Najot, Rukh, and Orbita NGOs are all active in Khorog on issues such as rehabilitating drug users, developing agribusiness, and lowering unemployment.

Many more initiatives are starting up everyday as the EcoCenter helps people in the GBAO break free of the Soviet mentality that assistance should be handed to them. They are beginning to realize that, with knowledge and perseverance, they are able to vastly improve their quality of life through their own efforts.

The EcoCenter’s activities are only a first step in introducing the region to the new concept of creating solutions at the grassroots level. Civic leadership can and will be a powerful tool for the people of the GBAO. Ogonazar, Ramazon, Habot, and their new NGOs are proof that a new group of leaders is determined to take a more active role in the development of their society. "People now understand that they can make a difference," says Ogonazar. "This is a new idea for us: improving our own lives at our own initiative."

April 2001

This document (c) 2001, The Eurasia Foundation.
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