Tunçer-Kilavuz, Idil. "Understanding Civil War: A Comparison of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan". Europe-Asia Studies, Vol.63, No.2 (2011): 263-290.

Tunçer-Kilavuz, Idil. "Understanding Civil War: A Comparison of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan". Europe-Asia Studies, Vol.63, No.2 (2011): 263-290.

• This paper examines why, despite similar social structures, economic issues, and institutional legacies of Soviet rule, civil war erupted in Tajikistan, but not Uzbekistan (263).
• The Tajik Civil War lasted from 1992 to 1997 and cost between 60,000 and 100,000 lives. It also displaced almost 700,000 people either as refugees or internally within the country (263). The civil war was fought between the United Tajik Opposition [UTO] and supporters of the Dushanbe government. The UTO itself was composed of the Islamic Revival Party [IRP], the Rastoxez party, the Democratic Party of Tajikistan [DPT], and Lali Badaxshan.  Both Rastoxez and the DPT were founded as elite nationalist movements similar to other reformist group established during the end of the Soviet Union. Lali Badaxshan advocated for the autonomy and rights of the Badaxshan region, a goal which frequently overlapped with more democratization. The IRP advocated a number of economic and social reforms, including democratization, while featuring call for a return to Islam as a center-point of Tajikistani life and identity (264).
• There is a massive source mine on page 264 on proposed scholarly reasons for the Tajik Civil War. The author specifically evaluates the arguments that the civil war was caused by popular grievances, a weak state, rivalries between sub-state actors -- either 'clans' or regional cliques, and multi-factor analyses by other scholars (264).
• A common explanation of the conflict is that there was a wealth and power disparity between citizens of different regions of Tajikistan, with Xujand being dominant, while Gharm and Badaxshan were overwhelmingly poor, causing the poorer groups to rise up against the existing order (265).
• This explanation, however, has several flaws by reducing the issue to wealth and power disparity. Despite being as poor as the Gharmis, the authorities in Kulyob sided with the Dushanbe government in the civil war, demonstrating that factors were at play besides poverty. Furthermore the Soviet government parceled out positions to elites from all provinces, resulting in a relatively inclusive government (265).
• The argument also fails to explain the divergent situations in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Both states had wealth and representation inequalities, and if this was the only issue then we would have seen a rebellion emerge in Xorezm, Surxandaryo, and Qoraqolpoqiston (265). Similarly, at the time of the Soviet Union's collapse, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan faced similar levels of poverty, malnutrition, and unemployment. If poverty had been the primary factor, then civil war also should have broken out in Uzbekistan during the early years of independence (266). 
• Some scholars have suggested that Tajikistan emerged from the Soviet Union as a weak state, and therefore lacked the administrative resources to deal with the social issues raised by independence, however this argument fails on several levels. Firstly, it fails to explain divergence, as all of the post-Soviet states outside of the Baltic faced the same issues in early independence and no others collapsed into civil war. Additionally, while Tajikistan shared the features of a weak state, it did not suffer from a lack of administrative ability or human capital which typically allow state collapse elsewhere (266).
• Violence in Tajikistan did emerge on a regional basis, but that description misses out on the importance of personal networks and non-regional networks of patronage in mobilizing resources. The conflict was certainly not between primordialist 'clans' (267). Some of the largest actors were the heads of former Kolxoz, who used their discretionary control over all resources to mobilize their tenant farmers, using the same systems of authority created under the distribution systems of the Soviet period (268).
• The systems of patronage, extended families, and regionalism all play an important part in explaining how mobilization and political organization occurred during the Tajik Civil War, but it does not explain why conflict broke out in the first place, nor why conflict erupt in Tajikistan, but not elsewhere in Central Asia (268). 
• The author provides many prominent examples of political figures defying expectations about the standard regional or familial nexuses of mobilization, such as pro-government Gharmis, on page 269.
• Although originally the conflict did not began as wholly regional, the structure of mobilization based around localized kolxoz guaranteed that the conflict would become more regionalized as warfare became more popular. As the conflict continued, enmity between regions also intensified and regional identity became a useful nexus for political mobilization (269).
• Studies undertaken on multiple insurgencies in different regions and in different time periods with large n-sample populations indicate some general traits of insurgencies. Insurgencies are more likely in rough terrain, among poor and uneducated populations, in countries with easily lootable resources, and in situations of weak state coercive power. Alternatively, insurgencies are less likely in societies with higher education levels, and the diversity of a population has no bearing on the likelihood of conflict (270).
• Some of these factors explain the divergence between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but the two countries shared the same rates of education, unemployment, and poverty immediately following independence (270). The roughness of the terrain also seems unimportant, as the civil war was not centered in the mountainous East of Tajikistan, but flat valleys in the West and South (271).
• Some factors expressed in these study indicate that more populous Uzbekistan, with easily transportable resources like goal, should have been more suitable to civil war (270). From the mid 1980s until the early 1990s, Uzbekistan actually had higher markers of instability than Tajikistan, especially considering the dominance of Islamist groups in certain parts of the Farg'ona Valley (271).
• Since the current theories for explaining the eruption of conflict in Tajikistan, but not Uzbekistan, are insufficient, the author attempts to explain the outbreak of war in Tajikistan using the theory of 'bargaining' used in international relations. This theory states that war is the cause of a miscalculation of power when two sides fail to reach a compromise, so the conflict should be analyzed from this perspective. There is a source mine of theorists on the concept (271).
• Because this theory holds that war stems from miscalculation, understanding the conception of power relations held by each side is necessary to determining the root causes of a conflict (272).
• Prior to the civil war, the political elite of Tajikistan believed that they were extremely powerful, a belief rooted in their extended power throughout the Soviet period and the fact that they survived the Gorbachev era reforms. The opposition also believed that they were powerful because they had had unprecedented success in elections and control large swathes of the countryside through patronage networks (272). 
• Because both sides believed that they were strong and underestimated the resources at the disposal of the other faction, hardline voices were dominant in negotiations. Each side believed that resorting to violence would accomplish goals the other side was unwilling to give in negotiation, allowing for the transition into civil war (272).
• In the early years of independence in Uzbekistan the political situation was drastically different, the Uzbekistani apparatchik had been gutted by Gorbachev's reforms, meaning that the position of President Islom Karimov has weak and dependent on satisfying three main factions within the governing elite. More critical, Islom Karimov recognized that his position was weak and adjusted to these restrictions on his range of action (272). President Karimov worked to divide the opposition during this period and succeeded in fracturing the movement, a declining power relative to the state recognized by opposition leadership (273).
• The consolidated nature of both the elite governing group and the opposition in Tajikistan allowed for the miscalculation of power which led to civil war, whereas the recognized divided nature of both the regime and opposition in early Uzbekistan -- with multiple sides balanced by the Karimov regime -- meant that no side overestimated its ability in negotiations and started a conflict (273).
• The elite structures in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, constructing during the Soviet period and inherited by the newly independent republics, had a significant effect in determining the position on regime and opposition during the period of early independence. All of the first secretaries of the Tajik SSR since 1964 were Xujandi (273), giving that group a perception of total control, whereas power in Uzbekistan was divided between three different regional cliques (274).
• The construction of the dominant elites of early independence developed from the administrative needs of the Soviet Union, which favored more economically developed regions. In Uzbekistan this favoritism benefited the agricultural regions of Farg'ona and Samarqand, and the industrial capital of Toshkent. In Tajikistan, Xujand was by far the most developed region, producing a quarter of the cotton and over 40% of industrial output. Comparatively no other district had any economic power, meaning that the Soviets favored Xujand exclusively (274).
• Tajikistan also experienced a rapid reorganization of regional power throughout its period to reflect the weakness of the regions outside of Xujand. Whereas in the 1940s most regions had oblast designation, reforms in the 1950s divided these into raions subject to direct federal control from Dushanbe. This further weakened regional power and cemented Xujandi power, as they controlled the federal government and were the only group to also have their own oblast-level power base (275).
• While Kulyab and Qurg'onteppa did gain oblast status in the late 1970s, this was too late for them to develop the same types of localized power base to capture the federal government as benefited Xujand (276).
• Importantly, just because some regional networks were dominate in forming Soviet-era cadres does not mean that citizens from other regions were not included in government. More often these regional bases was simply a tool to better control elites from other regions and restrict competition to a more limited number of elites, with personal connections serving as better indicators of loyalty than regional identity (276).
• Changes in perceptions of factional power during the transitional period in early independence were the next significant factor in determining whether Tajikistan or Uzbekistan collapsed into civil war. On the eve of independence Tajikistan appeared to be the more stable government, it had decades of stable Xujandi rule whereas the Uzbekistani leadership had been gutted and the Farg'ona Valley had been rocked by race riots against the Mesxetian Turks. It was the miscalculation of both government and opposition in Tajikistan that led that country into war, and the deft political calculations of the Karimov administration which preserved Uzbekistan (277).
• A wonderful, detailed and in-depth description of Tajikistan's descent into civil war from mass protests by young Communists in 1990 to the outbreak of civil war in late 1992 is available from page 277 to 279.
• The description provided of the conflict indicates that the Xujandi elite consistently refused to recognize the possibility that their faction could lose control of the government. One respondent interviewed by Dr. Tunçer-Kilavuz says there was a perception among the Xujandis that they were the only people capable of governing and that eventually the other groups would have to recognize this and give them power again (279-280). 
• One of the author's contacts said that the Xujandis accepted the Kulyabi faction seizing power and appointing Emomali Rahmon as president, in the belief that the Kulyabis would return the position and power to the rightful possessors, the Xujandis, in the next election cycle (280).
• The Xujandi elite believed that they were so superior as a political force that they did not bother bargaining with allies or opposition forces, on the assumption that regardless of the military outcome, they would maintain political authority by default. This uncompromising and arrogant attitude of the Xujandi administration led the opposition to believe that they could only gain power by fighting (280).
• The selection of Islom Karimov as the representative and central actor in the Uzbekistani regime was a comprimise between a number of powerful interests, because they believed that President Karimov would be a good arbiter between the factions and less powerful than the heads of each clique (281). The Karimov administration was very willing to ally without other factions, rehabilitating the Samarqand faction after it had been crippled by purges in the 1980s and convincing a branch of the Birlik movement -- which called itself Erk -- to cooperate with the government in exchange for registration in the next election alongside the XDP (282).
• During the transitional period, Islom Karimov succeeded in preventing permanent pro-regime and anti-regime coalitions from developing, preventing any group have fully secure enough in its allies or power to resort to violence. When pressure against the Karimov administration came from within the XDP, Karimov actively recruited support from opposition groups like the IRP or Birlik, and repressed opposition only when he ran a united front within the government (282).
• The author provides a comparison of two networks for political mobilization on the individual level, between two mediating figures: Qazi Akbar Turajonzoda in Tajikistan, and Mufti Muhammad Yusuf in Uzbekistan (283).
• From 1988 onwards, Qazi Turajonzoda was the head of the Muslim Spiritual Board of Tajikistan, and was important in bring together secular and Islamist members of the Tajikistani opposition and mobilizing support through connections in a nationwide network of mosques. He was especially key in resolving disputes in the early 1990s between quietest Hanafi imams and the more radical political mullahs of the IRP (283). 
• Qazi Turajonzoda originally tried to introduce a number of reforms within the system which would have institutionalized respect for Islamic values, but after repeated failures within a recalcitrant government he began supporting members of the opposition. He never joined an official group, but worked to unite the Tajikistani opposition around singular leadership and common goals (284).  
• Mufti Yusuf had a similar position to Qazi Turajonzoda, serving as the head of the Soviet era body responsible for the spiritual affairs of Muslims, and was similarly connected to both official and unofficial elements of Islam within Uzbekistan. He had a strong personal backing -- with many in the Farg'ona Valley encouraging him to run for President -- like his Tajikistani counterpart (284), but he remained loyal to the establishment and endorsed Islom Karimov's candidacy (285).
• Whereas Qazi Turajonzoda acted to unite different elements of Islamic authority within Tajikistan, Mufti Yusuf actively opposed the politicization of Islam and denounced the IRP in Uzbekistan as contradicting the principles of the Hanafi school (285).
• Although Islom Karimov later targeted Mufti Yusuf for his political influence, forcing him to flee the country in 1993, the initial alliance between official Islam and the Uzbekistani government was an example of co-opting the opposition, turning Islamists against quietists, the nationalists against everyone, and Erk and Birlik against each other. This prevented a strong showing by the opposition in early elections, allowing the Karimov regime to solidify its hold on the country (286).
• "This article has argued that macro-structural explanations alone cannot explain the occurrence of civil war in one country and its absence in another. It is rather the interactions between structures, processes, networks and actor choices that influence different outcomes. The initial perceptions of the extent of their power provided the framework in which elites made their decisions, and influenced subsequent developments and elite behaviour. However, developments in the transition period in turn changed the existing perceptions" (287).
• "In the final analysis, however, the war in Tajikistan was fought for the sake of gaining power at the republic level. Many of the respondents interviewed for this study stated that the goal was to gain or keep hokimiyat (power). The war was fought for control of the state, and resulted from the power struggle and interactions between incumbents and challengers. [...] Violence and war do not have the same causes, but war causes violence. This study finds that what caused the war in Tajikistan was the decision of political actors to go to war, based on their evaluations of their own power, and that of their adversaries, which emerged under the influence of structural, process-related and network-related variables. Once started, the violence developed its own dynamics" (287).