Тажикстанның Бадахшан Таулы Автономды Облысы

Autonomous region of Tajikistan

Gorno Badakhshan, officially the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region in eastern Tajikistan, in the Pamir Mountains. It makes up nearly forty five percent of the country's land area but only two percent of its population.

The official English name of the autonomous region is the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region. The name "Badakhshan" (Бадахшан; ) is derived from the Sasanian title bēdaxš or badaxš. "Gorno Badakhshan" literally means "mountainous Badakhshan" and is derived from the Russian name of the autonomous region, Gorno Badakhshanskaya avtonomnaya oblast. The Russian abbreviation "GBAO" is also commonly used in English language publications by national and international bodies such as the government of Tajikistan and the United Nations.

Borders and political authority in the Western Pamir had always been contested by imperial powers. Between the 17th and 19th century, several semi self governing statelets, including Darwaz, Shughnun Rushan and Wakhan, ruled over the territories that are today a part of Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Region in Tajikistan and Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan. In the late 19th century, the emirates of Kokand and then Bukhara held political authority over the region until the Western Pamir was colonized by Russia, completed in 1896. Although Russia and the British empire in 1896 denominated their shared border through the Pamir, which resulted in the creation of the Wakhan corridor, other regional powers like China and Afghanistan, but also the ruling elites of Badakhshan, Bukhara, Kashgaria and Kashmir equally worked for expending their influence in the Pamir. So, the Sarykol range has been demarked de facto as Eastern border in 1894 between the Qing empire and the Russian empire. This imperial history still has relevance nowadays as it determined contemporary southeastern borders of the present day autonomous region.

The Tajikistani Badakhshan as distinctive polity with its contemporary Western borders and the Russian designation GBAO was created as autonomous republic in 1925. Later in 1929, this was changed to autonomous oblast, of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik SSR). The Soviet Orientalists' obsession with categorization of peoples led to the fixation of among others the identity category of Pamiris, or 'Mountain Tajiks' in the Soviet ethnogenesis. During the Soviet Union years, a lot of resources had been allocated to Gorno Badakhshan as borderland of the Soviet Union, for instance through privileged access to higher education and the construction of infrastructure like the Pamir highway in 1935, which is still remembered nowadays as a time of modernity. Therefore, people from the Pamirs used to have facilitated upwards mobility and access to political offices in the Tajik SSR. In scholarly discourse, this is regarded as a measure to safeguard loyalty to state socialism of the subjects at the strategically important Soviet 'frontier'.

When the Tajikistani Civil War broke out in 1992, the local government in Gorno Badakhshan declared independence from Tajikistan. Many politically active Pamiris later joined the democratic political movement La’al e Badakhshan during the Tajik Civil war, which demanded autonomy and democratic rule for the region. Regionalism was an important structuring factor in the Tajik Civil war, so that the Ismaili identity became a key marker of mobilization. La'al e Badakhsan joined the United Tajik Opposition in 1997. Because of that, they were subsequently targeted by the popular front, which constituted the later government and then excluded from the political sphere of independent Tajikistan. The Gorno Badakhshan government later backed down from its calls for independence. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Ismaili development organization AKDN delivered supplies to Gorno Badakhshan from Kyrgyzstan, which prevented the starvation of the population during the civil war. While the AKDN itself frames this engagement as temporary measure, many of the inhabitants demand a permanent presence of humanitarian aid. Many see it as continuation from the provisioning of goods during the Soviet times. This shared experience of Soviet and Ismaili development aid together with the neglect and crackdown by the Tajik state led to people perceiving themselves as Pamiri rather than Tajik. In 2011, Tajikistan ratified a 1999 treaty to cede of land in the Pamir Mountains to the People's Republic of China (PRC), from the Chinese state perspective ending a 130 year old border dispute and China's claims to over of Tajik territory. At other instances Chinese scholars claimed control over the entire Pamir Mountains. However, the government of the Republic of China (ROC) based in Taipei does not recognize this treaty and continues to claim the territory, as reflected in its official maps. Whereas the government of Tajikistan celebrates the ceding of land as diplomatic victory, many Tajikistani scholars, opposition and parts of the population contest the existence of a 'dispute' altogether, seeing Badakhshan's territory in its entirety belonging to Tajikistan. Clashes erupted on 24 July 2012 between the Tajik military and militants loyal to the former warlord Tolib Ayombekov, after Ayombekov was accused of murdering a Tajik general. On 18 May 2022, around 200 anti government demonstrators, led by Mamadboqir Mamadboqirov, blocked a road in Rushon which led to the regional capital Khorog. The violent clashes between Tajiikistani military and the GBAO population in 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021 and in 2022 are peaks in the steady militarization of the region. Spectators assess these actions by the government as strategy to gain full political control over the formerly autonomous Gorno Badakhshan, as well as over the informal opium trade, culminating in the assassination of several influential local leaders. This violates the Tajik peace accord. In May 2022, Tajik government forces killed 40 civilians protesting against the torture and murdering of the youth representative Gulbiddin Ziyobekov. The Tajik interior ministry stated that the protestors attempted to "destabilise the social and political situation" in the region. Many of the protestors, but also journalists and human rights activists were detained in the subsequent cover up. Additionally, the government seized properties and kidnapped even oppositional Pamiris abroad. Genocide watch is stressing the polarization and the persecution of Pamiris through the government.

The population living in Gorno Badakhshan as of 2019 is estimated at 226,900. The largest city in Gorno Badakhshan is Khorog, with a population of 30,300 (2019 est. ); Gorno Badakhshan is home to a number of distinct languages and dialects of the Pamir languages group. The Pamiri language speakers represented in Gorno Badakshan are speakers of Shughni, Rushani, Wakhi, Ishkashimi, Sarikoli, Bartangi, Khufi, Yazgulyam, and Oroshani. Vanji, formerly spoken in the Vanj River valley, became extinct in the 19th century. There is a sizable population of Kyrgyz speakers in the Murghab district. Russian and Tajik are also widely spoken throughout Gorno Badakhshan. Many Eastern Iranian languages spoken in Gorno Badakhshan are on the endangered list of the UNESCO. The Pamiris are increasingly being marginalilzed in linguistic and religious terms, as they deviate from the vision for nationhood of the Tajik state. In 2009 the year of I'mam Hanafi Islam was celebrated, but a majority of Pamiris are followers of Ismaili Shia Islam. Subsequently, religious institutions had to be reregistered leaving all institution ousted not fitting the state's religious beliefs. The 2010 law on language requires all documents to be made in Tajik. This creates difficulties for the many inhabitants of Gorno Badakhshan who do not speak Tajik to access state services.

The First Secretary of the Gorno–Badakhshan Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Tajikistan was the highest position in the region during the Soviet era.

The chairman of the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region is the head of the regional government. They are appointed by the president of Tajikistan.

During the 20th century, the Soviet modernity project to establish roads connections in the Pamir led to the communities becoming part of a transit district between Osh, Khorog and Dushanbe. Nowadays, the routes Khorog–Osh and Khorog–Dushanbe are both segments of the Pamir Highway. A third road was constructed through the Kulma Pass in 2004 by China in order to connect Khorog to Tashkurgan. Gorno Badakhshan is separated from the Pakistani territories of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit Baltistan by the narrow, but nearly impassable, Wakhan Corridor. Another road leads from Khorog to Wakhan and across the Afghan border. Even though connectivity is promoted in Gorno Badakhshan, as the "Golden gate of Tajikistan" local traders largely do not profit from the rise of trade. Instead logistic companies and elites from Dushanbe dominate the long distance trade, as the Pamiris are increasingly excluded from central posts and have to obtain visas from Dushanbe to travel to China, which is very costly.

In 2019, the European Union and Germany, in coordination with Tajikistan, committed 37 million euros to finance the construction of an 11 MW run of the river hydro power plant along the Shokhdara river. The project is intended to also supply energy to Badakhshan, Afghanistan.

Khorog is the highest location where bandy has been played.