By Ecumenical News International
26 Oct 2007
Tajikistan has been at peace for 10 years. After its seven-year civil war, however, bitter memories still linger in people’s lives – writes Peter Kenny.
The country remains the poorest of the former Soviet republics, where many people still harp back nostalgically to times before the collapse of communism.
Yet many of Tajikistan’s people, whose language and culture are linked with Iran, have stopped waiting in vain for the State to come to their rescue. They have discovered groups, made up of themselves, that can help them, as they continue to pick up the pieces after a war that killed as many as 100 000 people, from a relatively small population of 7 million people, and that “pitted brother against brother”.
…snip…
Although Christians are a tiny minority in predominantly Muslim Tajikistan, and exist mainly among the small group of Russian speakers who remain in the country, Toshmatov, himself a Muslim, says people and officials have no problem working for and with NGOs backed by Christian organizations. Like many others, he notes that the local mosque and the leaders around it have an important bearing on civic affairs. He says most local Christians belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, but it is not involved with local NGOs. And, while mosques and their leaders exert an influence on any civic affairs groups, the only Muslim organization supporting local NGOs materially in the area, as far as Toshmatov is aware, is the Aga Khan Foundation.
Ismailimail 