ABSTRACT
Tajikistan is the smallest of the five Central Asian FSU states, but its population is greater than Kyrgyzstan or Turkmenistan. The boundaries with the two Central Asian states are particularly contorted in the area of the Fergana Valley, a high-profile global flashpoint. Independence was declared in August 1991 under the Tajik Socialist Party (TSP), in fact, the renamed Communist Party of Tajiskistan (CPT). The presidential elections later that year saw the TSP candidate elected and also the formation of an alliance between the Tajik Democratic Party (TDP) and the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP). During 1996 the fighting intensified, but the fall of Kabul to taliban forces provided a spur to peace efforts. The success of the taliban in Afghanistan and the continuing civil war in that country have cast a shadow over Central Asian development, but nowhere more obviously than in Tajikistan.
