If recent media and think tank reports are to be believed, the impoverished Central Asian state of Tajikistan is sliding towards disaster. It “teeters” on the edge of an “economic collapse”, said the international affairs journal Foreign Policy in May.‍[1] It is moving towards “state failure” and a possible Islamist insurgency, said the International Crisis Group (ICG) in an early-warning report in January.‍[2] It is facing the “prospect of a major expansion of Islamist militancy”, wrote Ahmed Rashid, a veteran war reporter with extensive experience of covering Central Asia, in a New York Times article published last summer, entitled “Jihad’s New Frontier: Tajikistan”.‍[3]

The problems are certainly piling up for the post-Soviet republic, which achieved independence in 1991, suffered a civil war between 1992 and 1997 and has endured economic troubles ever since. Its economy has taken a recent hit from economic recession in Russia, where more than a million Tajik migrants earn money for their families back home. The security situation is looking frailer following Taliban advances in northern Afghanistan, a stone’s throw from the Tajik border. There are fears of a social backlash due to hundreds of thousands of Tajik migrant workers having returned from Russia, with little prospect of finding work. Moreover, Western observers are doubtful that the Tajik government is up to handling the situation. It has responded to the growing problems by ratcheting up repression and consolidating its hold on the state apparatus, risking a backlash. Such developments have left foreign experts concerned about a violent blow-up in the fledgling Tajik state.‍[4]

This report questions such claims. True, increased political repression and economic turmoil spell a bleak future for the Central Asian state. That future may well contain episodes of violence – a risk that needs to be addressed. But predictions of collapse downplay the staying power of the Tajik regime and exaggerate the gravity of the challenges it faces. This report considers the regime’s sources of power along with possible conflict-drivers in Tajikistan, arguing that although limited violence cannot be excluded there is little evidence that a serious threat is brewing against the stability of the Tajik state.