Sher Khashimov

What started as a limited economic investment in the early 2000s has turned into a full-blown dependency: 60 percent of Tajikistan’s $3.3 billion foreign debt is owed to China’s state-run Export-Import Bank. Of the $132 million Tajikistan repaid to its foreign creditors in 2021, over $65 million went to China; almost $22 million of the money paid to China that year was interest accrued.

In Tajikistan, as word spread of Turkish police arresting contractors for flouting building codes and thereby possibly amplifying the tremors’ staggering death toll, many residents took to social media to vent their fears, concerned that their own codes have been routinely ignored during a building boom over the last decade.

Even in Tajikistan's repressive information environment, social media has become a space where people (particularly young people) can make their voices heard and challenge social norms. That said, the reverse is also true. While some use social networks to tackle taboos, others use the very same platforms to reinforce conservative norms, particularly when it comes to gender and sexuality. Men police and humiliate Tajikistani women by leaking their private photos and personal information online. Social media platforms, patriarchal culture, and labor migration enable this trend.

Fighting on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is not a new phenomenon. Previous clashes mostly involved citizens throwing rocks at their neighbors across the border. Given that half of the 600-mile border between the two countries remains undelimited, it is difficult to manage scarce water sources. While locals have frequently sparred over springs and access to pastureland, political elites on both sides have leveraged nationalist resentment to bolster the legitimacy of their rule. However, September’s spasm of violence marks a steep jump not only in the intensity of violence but the asymmetry in digital information campaigns.

Harrowing images of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have shocked the public—but also raised tough questions about whose lives matter in the West. Critics have focused on the telling contrast in coverage between the welcome given to Ukrainian refugees and the cold shoulder given to those from countries like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan as well as the lack of assistance provided to African and South Asian students trying to leave Ukraine. Before the Russian invasion, however, another country in Eurasia elicited similar questions.

Russia’s three-week war in Ukraine has had a shockingly high death toll, although Russian and Ukrainian authorities dispute the number of troops killed on both sides. The fog of war makes it difficult to discern not only how many soldiers have died, but also who those soldiers are and where they came from. Central Asian nationals residing in Russia are being pressured to fight in Ukraine as Moscow's military incurs heavier-than-expected losses, evidence suggests and migrants' rights activists say.

This is the story of just one small group of Kazakhstanis, a collection of artists who came to embody the growing chorus for change in their country. Even as the bullets were flying, they sketched, painted and doodled. Their work now feels like the purest form of reportage we have on the protests and their bloody aftermath.

Every fall, Muhibahon, a 30-year-old master’s student who lives in Hisor, a small town 30 minutes outside of Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, is forced to drastically change her daily routine. As October sets in, she wakes up at 6 a.m. every day to iron clothes for all five members of her family, make everyone breakfast, prepare some food for dinner, and charge everyone’s phones before local authorities cut off the electricity in her town at 8 a.m.

This was no ordinary internet blackout. For five days, the ninth largest country in the world was a black box. On the evening of Jan. 5, we set our respective alarms for 5:30 a.m. We wanted to get the earliest possible updates from our colleagues in Kazakhstan, who had been chronicling three days of demonstrations as they spread from the western oil-producing city of Zhanaozen to other urban centers across the Central Asian nation. Early morning on the East Coast was already late afternoon in Kazakhstan, yet when we woke up, nothing seemed to have changed. Our friends’ Instagram stories were 12 hours old; the single checkmarks next to our WhatsApp and Telegram messages to activists and journalists we know signaled that they hadn’t been delivered. A sinking feeling of worry set in.

This was no ordinary internet blackout. For five days, the ninth largest country in the world was a black box. On the evening of January 5, 2022, we set our respective alarms for 5:30 a.m. We wanted to get the earliest possible updates from our colleagues in Kazakhstan, who had been chronicling three days of demonstrations as they spread from the western oil-producing city of Zhanaozen to other urban centers across the Central Asian nation. Early morning on the East Coast was already late afternoon in Kazakhstan, yet when we woke up, nothing seemed to have changed.

Scholar Alice Kaplan once wrote that people adopt other cultures “because there’s something in their own that doesn’t name them”. Compared to the US, time in Tajikistan, where I’d grown up, seemed like a frustratingly nebulous and relative notion — tied more to people’s feelings, and not as much to calendars.

Following Russia’s lead, the autocratic Kazakh government is moving to control social media, forcing journalists to defend their profession.

Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, is changing rapidly from a Soviet city once known for its quiet tree-lined avenues into a bustling megapolis with towering glass high-rises. As many of the city’s Soviet-era buildings, like the former headquarters of Tajikistan’s Communist party and the famous Mayakovsky theatre, are being torn down, one grand building still proudly stands at the city’s heart – the marble white Opera and Ballet Theatre named after writer Sadriddin Ayni.

The Central Asian republics, in particular Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, have become accustomed to exporting excess labor capacity, generating much-needed revenue for households, and relieving pressure on their governments to create jobs and provide public goods and services. But the Covid-19 pandemic laid bare the vulnerabilities of the region’s over-dependence on migration.

Today, Kazakhstan has only a handful of independent traditional media outlets left, which lack the ability to cover the country’s vibrant sociopolitical life, something that has thrived despite authoritarianism. The gap, however, is now being filled by alternative media: Scores of bloggers are using YouTube, Telegram, and Instagram to report on events and to contradict the narrative served by pro-government traditional media. Alternative journalism is blooming, raising questions about how far it can go before the Kazakh government pulls the plug.

Although there are no meaningful mechanisms for Dushanbe’s young people to claim their right to the city, they are finding informal ways to do so, from documenting the changes to challenging and negotiating the narratives surrounding Dushanbe’s post-Soviet transformation on their social media profiles. Urban development has thus become one of many important social issues dissected via digital methods of storytelling.

The COVID-19 crisis has sparked new efforts to connect Tajiks around the world to their culture. In early 2020, Masud Khalifazoda, the Tajik ambassador to the UK, reached out to movie director and poet Anisa Sabiri, with an idea to open the Tajik Cultural Centre (TCC): a cultural centre in the UK that would help connect English-speaking audiences to Tajik culture. “We planned to hold our first events in London, but the pandemic disrupted our plans. We, however, didn’t give up and decided to move online.”

Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, is changing rapidly. In what was once a Soviet city known for its quiet tree-lined avenues, new highrise towers and grand administrative buildings are emerging. It is an extraordinary transformation taking place as Tajikistan reimagines what it means to be an independent Central Asian republic with its own national identity. But some residents are questioning the price at which it comes: the demolition of the city’s Soviet architecture and with it, the loss of childhood homes and memories to large-scale construction.

Barely twenty-four hours after the polls closed in Kyrgyzstan’s flawed parliamentary election in October, protesters stormed and occupied the White House, the home of Kyrgyzstan’s executive and legislative branches. The people of Kyrgyzstan woke up the next morning to images of protesters drinking tea in President Soronbai Jeenbekov’s office while politicians who had just been sprung from prison held rallies on Ala-Too Square. Overnight, the protesters had managed to fracture Kyrgyzstan’s political status quo.

The long-term effects of migration from Central Asia are more negative than positive. Socially, migration is resulting in a brain drain, particularly in Kazakhstan, with the most talented and qualified Central Asians staying abroad permanently, degrading their countries’ social fabric. Economically, migration is making the region, particularly Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, even more vulnerable to external shocks and is disincentivizing the government from developing the economy. Politically, migration is serving as a pressure valve that prevents the buildup of unemployment-fueled social and political frustration and helps the undemocratic regimes to stay in power.