Official name Republic of Tajikistan
Population 7,320,815 (2006 estimate)
Area 143,100 sq km
Capital Dushanbe 575,900 (2002 estimate)
Population growth rate 2.19 percent (2006 estimate)
GDP per capita (U.S.$) $320 (2004)
GDP by economic sector
Agriculture, forestry, fishing 24.2 percent (2004)
Industry 30.6 percent (2004) Services 45.3 percent (2004)
Natural resources
Hydropower, some petroleum, uranium, mercury,
brown coal, lead, zinc, antimony, tungsten, silver, gold
Languages Tajik (official), Dari, Russian, Uzbek
Religious affiliations
Sunni Muslim 80 percent Shia Muslim 4 percent
Atheist 2 percent Orthodox Christian 1 percent
Non-religious 12 percent Other 1 percent
Introduction
Tajikistan, landlocked republic in south eastern Central Asia, bordered on the north by Kyrgyzstan, on the north and west by Uzbekistan, on the east by China, and on the south by Afghanistan. Dushanbe is the country’s capital and largest city. Tajikistan contains the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (Badakhshoni Kuhi), an ethnically based political subunit that occupies about 45 percent of the country’s territory.
In Tajik, the official state language, the country is called Jumhurii Tojikiston (Republic of Tajikistan). Tajiks, who speak a form of Persian, constitute a majority of the country’s population. In 1929 Tajikistan became the Tajik (or Tadzhik) Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Tajikistan became independent in 1991. Shortly after independence, a civil war broke out between the Communist-dominated government and opposition groups. The two sides formally signed a peace accord in June 1997.
Environmental Issues
The environment of Tajikistan suffers from several decades of ecological mismanagement under the Soviet system. Tajikistan was one of the leading suppliers of cotton in the USSR. Pressured to fulfil export quotas, farm managers saturated the land with chemical fertilizers. Harmful levels of toxic pesticides, herbicides, and defoliants are now found throughout the food chain in Tajikistan. Excessive tapping of rivers for the irrigation of cotton crops has caused high levels of soil salinization, which in turn requires more intensive irrigation to maintain crop yields. Irrigation in Tajikistan directly affects the water levels of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, which both drain into the Aral Sea, a large salt-water lake that lies in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The Aral Sea has shrunk to less than half its original size due to reduced inflow from these two rivers since the 1960s.
