ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses countless conversations among research subjects, analysis of scholarly materials, and the interpretation of how the current political administration came to Badakhshan. It deals with several local historians for a number of years, and they made important contributions. Numerous border experts, local scholars, and elders assert that formal institutions and outside systems of governance, including proxy-leaders and partnerships, never fully replaced the traditional local systems of governance and their associated leaders. The chapter also discusses Russians who began swiftly consolidating territories, which would become part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Soviet regime redrew the map of Central Asia according to ethnic majorities, a process that involved the meticulous work of Soviet ethnographers. The Soviets attempted to control the religion through creating a network of religious institutions in the form of official Islam. The khalifas represented the local population officially and the Soviets received information from them but, hidden from view, were informal religious leaders.
