Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. It has an area of 142,326 km2 (54,952 sq mi) and an estimated population of 9,750,065 people. Dushanbe is the country's capital and largest city. It is bordered by Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. It is separated narrowly from Pakistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. Tajiks form the ethnic majority in the country, and the historical Tajik homeland lies in present-day Tajikistan as well as parts of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.
Tajikistan harkens to the Samanid Empire (819–999). The Tajik people came under Russian rule in the 1860s. The Basmachi revolt broke out in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was quelled in the early 1920s during the Russian Civil War. In 1924, Tajikistan became an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union, the Tajik ASSR, within Uzbekistan. In 1929, Tajikistan was made one of the component republics of the Soviet Union – Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic – and it kept that status until gaining independence 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The politics of Tajikistan takes place in a framework of a presidential republic, whereby the President is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Legislative power is vested in both the executive branch and the two chambers of parliament.
The president of Tajikistan is the head of state and de facto head of government of the Republic of Tajikistan. The president heads the executive branch of the country's government and is the commander in chief of the Armed Forces of Tajikistan.
Emomali Rahmon is a Tajik politician who has been serving as 3rd President of Tajikistan since 16 November 1994. Previously he was the Chairman of the Supreme Assembly of Tajikistan, as the de facto head of state from 20 November 1992 to 16 November 1994. Since 18 March 1998, he has also served as the leader of the People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan, which dominates the Parliament of Tajikistan. On 30 September 1999, he was elected vice-president of the UN General Assembly for a one-year term.
Rahmon Nabiyevich Nabiyev, also spelled Rakhmon Nabiev, was a Tajik politician who served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan from 1982 to 1985 and twice as the 2nd President of Tajikistan from 23 September 1991 to 6 October 1991 and from 2 December 1991 to 7 September 1992. He was also partly responsible for the Tajik Civil War. Rising out of the regional nomenklatura, Nabiyev ascended to power in 1982 as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan. In 1985, he was ousted in a corruption scandal.
The Tajikistani Civil War, also known as the Tajik Civil War, began in May 1992 and ended in 1997. Regional groups from the Garm and Gorno-Badakhshan regions of Tajikistan rose up against the newly formed government of President Rahmon Nabiyev, which was dominated by people from the Khujand and Kulob regions. The rebel groups were led by a combination of liberal democratic reformers and Islamists, who would later organize under the banner of the United Tajik Opposition. The government was supported by Russian military and border guards.
The Communist Party of Tajikistan is a communist party in Tajikistan, and the oldest political party in the country. The party was founded on 6 January 1924 and was the ruling party of the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1924 to 1929 and the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic from 1929 to 1990 as part of the Soviet Union as a republican branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was banned in 1991 following the 1991 coup.
The Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, was a revolutionary wave of liberal democracy movements that resulted in the collapse of most Marxist–Leninist governments in the Eastern Bloc and other parts of the world. Sometimes this revolutionary wave is also called the Fall of Nations or the Autumn of Nations, a play on the term Spring of Nations that is sometimes used to describe the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. It also led to the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union—the world's largest communist state—and the abandonment of communist regimes in many parts of the world, some of which were violently overthrown. The events, especially the fall of the Soviet Union, drastically altered the world's balance of power, marking the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the post-Cold War era.
Safarali Kenjayev was a Tajik politician who served as the Speaker of the Supreme Soviet in Tajikistan 1991–1992, Chairman of the Tajik Parliament's committee on human rights and legislation, and as head of the Socialist Party of Tajikistan, which he founded.
The First Secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan was the head of the Communist Party of Tajikistan and the highest Executive power in the republic of Tajikistan from 1924 until November 1990.
Qahhor Mahkamov was a Tajik politician who served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan from 1985 to 1991 and was the first President of Tajikistan from November 1990 until his fall in the August 1991 coup.
Qadriddin Aslonov was acting President of Tajikistan from 31 August to 23 September 1991.
Islam is the predominant religion in Tajikistan.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Tajikistan:
United Nations Security Council resolution 968, adopted unanimously on 16 December 1994, after noting statements by the president of the security council and reports by the Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on the situation in Tajikistan, the council established the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT) and addressed the process of national reconciliation in the country.
Presidential elections were held for the first time in Tajikistan on 24 November 1991. The result was a victory for Rahmon Nabiyev of the Communist Party of Tajikistan, who received 60% of the vote. Voter turnout was 86.5%.
A constitutional referendum was held in Tajikistan on 22 May 2016. A total of 41 constitutional amendments were proposed. The changes included:
The Popular Front of Tajikistan was a politicized paramilitary movement composed of volunteers that fought for the government during the Tajik Civil War. Up to 8,000 fighters served as part of the front.
