Politics of Transformation and Ismailis in Gorno-Badakhshan, Tajikistan

Abstract This paper examines the process of societal development in the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan prior to and during the era of socialist construction in the early 1930s and 1940s. It studies the basis of a shift from popular-based participatory development to a bureaucratic and top-down approach to societal transformation in the 1950s and onward until the demise of the Soviet imperial power and the emergence of the independent republic of Tajikistan.
A major focus is the argument that bureaucratization of state and society in Tajikistan in the 1960s and 1970s led to the emergence of anti-establishment discourse as seen in the increasing Islamization in the 1980s and subsequent armed clashes between defenders of the status quo and those of privatization and market economy in the 1990s. The war which resulted in the collapse of administrative and economic activities in Tajikistan, particularly in the Gorno-Badakhshan region, attracted international attention. This paper also analyzes the role of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in the process of reconstruction, privatization and integration of Gorno- Badakhshan into the world community in the twenty-first century.