Tajikistan: Islam, Migration, and Changes
In the past few years, Tajikistan’s domestic situation has been shaped by the shrinking place given to the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT). The Tajik authorities used the Islamic State threat to liquidate the IRPT, the last structured opposition force, and eventually banned it in late 2015. State-sponsored narratives have been making massive—excessive—use of “Islam” as a tool to better control society (through women’s dress code, for example); to denounce regional warlords and opponents; and to instrumentalize regional powers such as Iran.
However, societal evolutions are much more complex than the black and white state narrative would have us believe, with migrations and youth bulge at the core of social transformations, not to mention difficulties in making the Tajik economy—from energy use to agriculture—and public finance viable.
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