ABSTRACT
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in December 1991, many foreign observers predicted that the new countries of Central Asia would be among the more unstable successor states. In the event, during their first two years of independence the Central Asian states have proved politically stable despite varying degrees of economic decline, with the single exception of Tajikistan. During the last six months of 1992 what had been the poorest of the republics of the USSR was ravaged by a civil war that wound down in the first months of 1993 but has never fully ended. Estimates of the number of casualties have varied widely, between 20,000 and over 100,000; it appears that the war in Tajikistan has cost more lives than have been lost in the years of fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh.1
