IN MANY WAYS Tajikistan, population 9.7 million, is similar to Scotland; a mountainous country of great natural beauty with big, wealthy neighbours who sometimes use their economic muscle to try to win political arguments. Unlike Scotland, Tajikistan does not have any oil or gas. What it does have is water and lots of it. Over 60 per cent of all the water supplied to the downstream Central Asian Republics of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, comes from melting Tajik glaciers and more than 900 fast-flowing mountain rivers.
Tajikistan is also the poorest country in Central Asia, its economy crippled by a shortage of electricity. The massive TALCO (Tajikistan Aluminium Company) plant, the sixth largest in the world, eats up 40 per cent of the country’s meagre electricity supply, enabling it to produce over half a million tonnes of high-quality aluminium annually for export to Uzbekistan, Turkey, Japan, China, Western Europe, the USA, and others.
Talco employs over 8,000 Tajiks and, as the country’s major asset, contributes around 60 per cent of GDP. But hundreds of thousands of Tajiks have been forced to seek menial jobs in Russia in order to survive. Their monthly remittances home contribute an astonishing 36 per cent to Tajikistan’s GDP. With Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Tajikistan is more vulnerable to the impact of Western sanctions on Russia because of its economic ties with Moscow. Russia is Tajikistan’s biggest security and trading partner, and the Tajiks are now negotiating a delicate balancing act in maintaining good relations with Moscow, while not alienating the West.
Grappling with these enormous problems is the president of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon, now in his 30th year in power. Rahmon took over following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the victor of a bloody civil war which lasted 5 years from 1992 to 1997 and cost 100,000 lives. Under his leadership, Tajikistan is making a serious attempt at creating jobs and kick-starting the faltering economy. A key part of this process involves harnessing the unlimited power of Tajikistan’s greatest resource, water. The River Vaksh has proved to be an ideal vehicle for this purpose. A raging torrent which roars down from the melting glaciers of the high Pamir Mountain range on the rooftop of the world, the Vakhsh has, for millennia, sliced its way through steep sided, narrow ravines and gorges, perfectly suited for hydro-electric power projects.
During Soviet times, everything was planned centrally by Moscow. In his on-going war to ‘tame’ nature, Stalin ordered great reservoirs to be constructed in the mountainous territories of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to supply water for agricultural irrigation in the downstream countries during the hot summer months. In return, some of the rich coal and oil reserves of the downstream republics were sent to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to provide them with energy in the freezing snows of winter.
Under Stalin, Moscow put pressure on Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to empty their reservoirs during the summer months so that the cotton fields in downstream states could be irrigated. All of this changed after independence. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan now store water during the summer and release it during the winter to generate hydroelectric power.
In Soviet times, the huge Nurek Dam was constructed in Tajikistan by building one of the world’s highest embankments, at over 300 metres tall, holding back a reservoir that stretches for 70 km and drives 9 giant turbines, producing 3000 MW of electricity annually. Indeed, it is this dam which has withstood 50 years of earthquakes, storms and floods that provides most of the power for the TALCO aluminium plant. The Soviets were so impressed with the success of Nurek that they started construction of a second and even bigger hydro plant at Rogun, more than 90 km upriver from Nurek. 45 km (28 miles) of underground tunnels were gouged out of the rock on either side of the Vaksh River at Rogun. Vast earthworks were started. But the project stalled with the collapse of communism and the ensuing civil war.
Construction of the Rogun Dam has been a stop-start issue ever since, with fierce opposition to the project from neighbouring nations, particularly Uzbekistan, who claim that it is crazy to build the world’s highest dam in an earthquake zone and that any subsequent breach of the 335-metre embankment would have devastating consequences for downstream countries like their own. They also fear that Rogun will enable Tajikistan to control the flow of water to Uzbekistan which they rely on every summer for irrigating their cotton and rice crops. The Tajiks are adamant they have never and will never withhold water from their downstream neighbours. At one-point, former President Karimov of Uzbekistan even threatened war if the project went ahead. Since Karimov’s death in 2016, there has been some progress in terms of bilateral relations. Economic ties have improved and Karimov’s successor as president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has been less vehemently opposed to Rogun.
Thousands of workers are again toiling day and night to complete the Rogun project, reinforcing the underground tunnels and installing lock gates, six turbines and water-aggregation equipment necessary to produce 3600 MW of electricity every year. Swarms of huge dumper trucks and bulldozers are deepening the natural reservoir that will soon hold over 13.4 km² (5.17 miles²) of water at an average depth of 400 metres, flooding this mountainous valley and providing enough energy to meet all of Tajikistan’s needs with enough left over to sell green, environmentally friendly energy to neighbouring Afghanistan and through there to Pakistan.
The scale of this project is impressive enough, but its strategic importance for this area of extreme poverty and high political sensitivity is of global significance. Tajikistan shares a 1300 km (830 mile) border with Afghanistan. In Afghanistan and nearby Pakistan, there is abject poverty and a lack of job opportunities which has driven successive generations of young people into the arms of the drugs barons and Islamist terrorists. A secure supply of electricity from Tajikistan will transform the economies of these ravaged regions and provide new sources of employment and opportunities for their impoverished and war-weary citizens.
The Rogun Dam deserves a clean bill of health. The West and the EU in particular, must show support for this ambitious project for the sake of Tajikistan and Central Asia’s long-term stability. The alternatives, continuing poverty and desperation for its beleaguered people – are in no one’s interests.
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