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Tajikistan: Sweeping reforms urgently needed - ICG

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15 February 2009

DUBAI, (IRIN) - An international think tank has warned that Tajikistan will be confronted with serious economic problems leading to unrest in the country unless real changes are made soon. In a report released on 12 February entitled Tajikistan: On the Road to Failure, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said that without sweeping reforms to tackle food security, energy infrastructure and corruption, President Emomali Rakhmon's government is in danger of collapse.

'...Tajikistan is looking increasingly like its southern neighbour [Afghanistan]—a weak state that is suffering from a failure of leadership. Energy infrastructure is near total breakdown for the second winter running, and it is likely migrant labour remittances, the driver of the country's economy in recent years, will fall dramatically as a result of the world economic crisis,' the report stated.

'Tajikistan's leaders clearly feel that any reform will destroy their grip on power,' Paul Quinn-Judge, ICG's Central Asia Project Director, said. 'Significant improvement is highly unlikely under President Rakhmon.'

About 70 percent of Tajiks live in abject poverty in the countryside and hunger is now spreading to the cities, particularly Khujand, once one of the most prosperous and politically influential parts of the country, according to the report.

The ICG said that in 2008 the number of Tajik economic migrants heading primarily to Russia and Kazakhstan reached over one million, or at least half of the country's labour force. Their remittances exceeded US$2 billion, almost half of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

However, with the onset of the world economic crisis, economic migration is likely to diminish sharply in 2009, and along with it the remittances that are so vital to the country's economic stability, the ICG's report said.

Also on 12 February, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that widespread limited access to food in Tajikistan has been exacerbated by a drought-reduced cereal crop in 2008 for the second year in succession—leaving the country needing much greater cereal import requirements.

Tajikistan is having difficulties mobilising cereal supplies commercially and food aid will be necessary to bring relief to the poor, FAO said in its Crop Prospects and Food Situation report.

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