TAJIKISTAN, FLAG OF


Meaning of TAJIKISTAN, FLAG OF in English

horizontally striped red-white-green national flag with a central gold crown. The flag's width-to-length ratio is 1 to 2. After World War II the member republics of the Soviet Union altered their flags to bring in stripes of national colours. Tajikistan was the last of the 15 to act. Previous Soviet Tajik flags had been red with the usual communist hammer, sickle, and star emblem above the name of the state in gold lettering. On March 20, 1953, Tajikistan added two horizontal stripes, white over light green, to the Soviet Red Banner with its gold hammer and sickle and gold-bordered red star. The green represented viticulture and agricultural produce, while white stood for the cotton that had made Tajikistan famous. Tajikistan proclaimed its independence on September 9, 1991, but again it was slow to alter its flag. The new design, dating from November 24, 1992, incorporates the same four colours as the 1953 flag. Green is now said to stand for agricultural production, while red is a symbol of state sovereignty. White has the same meaning as previously, referring to the cotton crop. The crown in the centre of the white stripe is capped with an arc of seven gold stars: these are said to represent unity among the different social classes of the country, including workers, peasants, and intellectuals. Whitney Smith History The Tajiks are the direct descendants of the Iranian peoples whose continuous presence in Central Asia and northern Afghanistan is attested from the middle of the 1st millennium BC. The ancestors of the Tajiks constituted the core of the ancient population of Khwarezm (Khorezm) and Bactria, which formed part of Transoxania (Sogdiana). They were included in the empires of Persia and Alexander the Great, and they intermingled with such later invaders as the Kushans and Hepthalites in the 1st6th centuries AD. Over the course of time, the eastern Iranian dialect that was used by the ancient Tajiks eventually gave way to Farsi, a western dialect spoken in Iran and Afghanistan. The Arab conquest of Central Asia that began in the mid-7th century brought Islam to the region. But tribal feuds weakened the Arabs, and, with the rise of the Samanids (819999), the Tajiks came under the rule of an Iranian dynasty. The first Turkic invaders (from the northeast) seized this area of Transoxania in 999, and in time, because both conquered and conquerors were Muslim, many Tajiksespecially those in the valleys of the Syr Darya and Amu Daryabecame Turkicized. This resulted in the transformation of a formerly purely Iranian land into Turkestan. The name Tajik, originally given to the Arabs by the local population, came to be applied by Turkic invaders and overlords to those elements of the sedentary population that continued to speak Iranian languages. Until the mid-18th century the Tajiks were part of the emirate of Bukhara, but then the Afghans conquered lands south and southwest of the Amu Darya with their Tajik population, including the city of Balkh, an ancient Tajik cultural centre. Russian conquests in Central Asia in the 1860s and '70s brought a number of Tajiks in the Zeravshan and Fergana valleys under the direct government of Russia, while the emirate of Bukhara in effect became a Russian protectorate in 1868. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, a considerable proportion of the Tajik people was included in the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic established in April 1918. In August 1920 the Revolution was extended to the khanate of Bukhara, which embraced most of the territory occupied by modern Tajikistan; the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic was declared in October 1920, and early in 1921 the Soviet army captured Dushanbe and Kulob. Tajikistan was the scene of the Basmachi revolt in 192223, and rebel bands under Ibrahim Bek operated in eastern Bukhara until 1931. The Tadzhik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created as part of the Uzbek S.S.R. in 1924; in January 1925 a Special Pamirs region was created out of the Kara-Kirgiz and Tajik parts of the Pamirs; and in December 1925 this region was renamed the Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous region. On Dec. 5, 1929, the status of the Tadzhik A.S.S.R. was raised to that of a Soviet socialist republic. As a full-fledged member of the Soviet Union, the backward, mountainous Tadzhik S.S.R. underwent a spectacular economic and social transformation. A small-scale industrial base was established, and the quality of health care and education improved. As leader of Tajikistan's Communist Party from 1926 to 1956, B.G. Gafurova historian respected in the Westinstilled a sense of nationhood in the Tajik people. The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to the somewhat reluctant declaration of full independence on Sept. 9, 1991. After independence, political chaos and endemic turmoiloccasionally degenerating into civil warplagued the new nation; communists fought to retain power in the face of opposition from an alliance of Islamic and democratic forces. The presidential election of November 1991 was won by Tajikistan's former communist strongman Rahman Nabiyev; in March 1992 massive nonviolent protests began in Dushanbe. After government forces opened fire on the demonstrators in April, violence soon spread to the southern city of Kulob and elsewhere. Opposition forces drove Nabiyev from office in August and briefly took power, but by November a government led by Imomali Rakhmonov had regained control, backed by Russian troops. A mass exodus to Afghanistan followed. Sporadic fighting continued as the Islamic fundamentalist forces and their allies, now based in Afghanistan, continued to launch attacks on the Russian and Tajik troops guarding the border. By the mid-1990s the fighting had left tens of thousands dead and displaced more than a half million people. In 1994 Rakhmonov was elected president, and under his authoritarian leadership Tajikistan began the long process of national reconciliation. Denis Sinor The economy Tajikistan's economy depends on agriculture, which employs two-fifths of the labour force. The civil war that followed Tajikistan's independence devastated agriculture and industry in the republic. Resources Tajikistan possesses rich mineral deposits. Important metallic ores are iron, lead, zinc, antimony, mercury, gold, tin, and tungsten. Nonmetallic minerals include common salt, carbonates, fluorite, arsenic, quartz sand, asbestos, and precious and semiprecious stones. Energy resources include sizable coal deposits and smaller reserves of natural gas and petroleum. Some of the fast-flowing mountain streams have been exploited as hydroelectric power sources. The land Relief More than nine-tenths of Tajikistan's territory is mountainous; about half lies 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) or more above sea level. The Trans-Alay range, part of the Tien Shan system, reaches into the north. The massive ranges of the southern Tien Shanthe Turkestan Mountains and the slightly lower Zeravshan and Gissar rangesdefine the east-central portion of the country. The ice-clad peaks of the Pamir mountain system occupy the southeast. Some of Central Asia's highest mountains, notably the Soviet-named Lenin (23,405 feet [7,134 metres]) and Communism (24,590 feet [7,495 metres]) peaks, are found in the northern portion of the Pamirs. The valleys, though important for Tajikistan's human geography, make up less than one-tenth of the country's area. The largest are the western portion of the Fergana Valley in the north and the Gissar, Vakhsh, Yavansu, Obikiik, Lower Kofarnihon (Kafirnigan), and Panj (Pyandzh) valleys to the south. The entire southern Central Asian region, including Tajikistan, lies in an active seismic belt where severe earthquakes are common. Seismologists have long studied the region, especially in connection with the massive hydroelectric dams and other public works in the area. The people The name Tajik came to denote a distinct nationality only in the modern period; not until the 1920s did an official Tajik territorial-administrative unit exist under that name. The area's population is ethnically mixed, as it has been for centuries; but more than three-fifths of the population is ethnically Tajik, a proportion now rising as non-Tajiks emigrate to escape the protracted civil war. On the basis of language, customs, and other traits, the Tajiks can be subdivided into a number of distinct groups. The Pamir Tajiks within the Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous region include minority peoples speaking Wakhi, Shughni, Roshani, Khufi, Yazgulami, Ishkashimi, and Bartang, all Iranian languages. Another distinct group is formed by the Yaghnabis, direct descendants of the ancient Sogdians, who live in the Zeravshan River basin. So closely are the Tajiks mixed with neighbouring Uzbeks that the Soviet partition of the area in 1924 failed to segregate the two nationalities with any degree of thoroughness. With nearly one million Tajiks in Uzbekistan and more than one million Uzbeks in Tajikistan, these nationalities remain in intimate, though not always friendly, interrelation. The country's other ethnic groups include Russians, Tatars, Kyrgyz, Ukrainians, Germans, Jews, and Armenians.

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