David Trilling
Eurasianet

With the worst winter weather in several generations having already forced strict rationing of electricity in Tajikistan, officials are now worrying that unless there is an immediate warming trend, they may have to declare a state of emergency in the Central Asian nation.

Frigid temperatures have gripped the region for weeks. "There has not been such a winter in our region for 40 or 50 years," Sharifkhon Samiyev, head of the state power company Barq-i Tajik, told the Asia-Plus News Agency, adding that the water level in the Vaksh River remains dangerously low due to ice build-up. If thawing does not occur soon, the level may drop to a point where hydro-power plants will be unable to operate.

"If we do not receive additional electric power, a critical situation might arise in the country where a state of emergency may be declared," Samiyev said.

Perhaps the hardest hit section of the country during the cold crisis has been the mountainous Badakhshan Region, an autonomous area in eastern Tajikistan that borders Afghanistan. Remote even during temperate weather, some areas of Badakhshan are presently cut-off from the outside world.

According to the United Nations Development Program, three of Gorno-Badakhshan's seven districts are now isolated due to heavy snowfall blocking roads. "These closed roads have also had an impact on local supplies of food and other basic commodities," said an UNDP situation report issued January 31.

Back in August, when the first hints of the oncoming winter were only starting to appear, I traveled in Badakhshan, both on the Tajik and Afghan sides of the border, which is marked by the Pyanj River. I crossed from Tajikistan at three points: Kalaikhumb, Shegnan, and Ishkashim. In 2006, the Aga Khan funded infrastructure improvements, including the building of bridges at all three points. Since then, the UNDP has embarked on an ambitious program to train and equip border police on both sides of the river.

Badakhshan encompasses areas on both the Tajik and Afghan sides of the Pyanj River. It wasn't until the mid-1920s - with the rise of the Soviet Union - that the border really started to mean anything. Prior to the arrival of the Bolsheviks, Tajiks in Afghanistan and in Russian Turkistan were one people whose extended families and tribes frequently traversed the river to trade, gossip and marry. They still speak roughly the same language, though the Tajiks have become Russified, while those on the Afghan side of the border have maintained much stronger ties to the region's Islamic heritage.

The material difference between the Tajik and Afghan regions of Badakhshan are stark. The villages on the Tajik side have electricity (at least in warmer times), access to rudimentary healthcare and other services and enjoy comparatively easy access to the outside world via roads. Across the Pyanj, Afghans speak the same language, but ride donkeys and hurry around on goat paths collecting hay, gathering stones from their fields, and busying themselves with gathering the supplies needed to survive the winter. In some places, they are weeks away - in summer - from a road leading to a bazaar.

Badakhshan is actually little more than a knot of mountain ranges, and the deeper one goes into the region, villages both sides of the border look more alike. There are fewer bricks in this part of Tajikistan; the walls are commonly of mud blended with hay, as they are throughout Afghanistan. Roofs are flat; there is little corrugated metal.

On both sides, rows of white poplars swayed to the rhythms of the river. Attentive, like giant toy soldiers lining the road, they formed a crop of building materials planted with a decade's foresight. Crooked stone and mud walls delineated sloping fields of wheat, potatoes and mixed greens; from a distance, these puzzle-shaped pieces interlocked to cover the land with orchards, vegetables, and the late summer yellows of wheat in mid-harvest. These farms rested on the edges of cranky mountains that reached altitudes as high as 20,000 feet, their peaks lost in packed snow.

Even though I was in the region in early August, there was a feel about the place that winter never really departs. The glaciers above were at full-melt, providing each settlement with icy-blue source of fresh water, but already the apricot trees were dropping their leaves and preparing for the inhospitable winter. In these mountains, a chill sets in as soon as the sun disappears for the day.

Back during the summer, those on the Tajik side of Badakhshan's border, despite their own rudimentary conditions, would occasionally glance across the Pyanj and feel a twinge of superiority, knowing that their standard of living was higher than their cultural cousins on the other side. I was told many look out at Afghanistan and think that is how life would now be, if it were not for the arrival of Russian influence over a century ago. There are no vehicles to be seen on the Afghan side, as villages there are connected only by precarious trails that are periodically wiped out by landslides. It is no wonder so many statues of Lenin still stand here.
In the midst of this harsh winter, however, it's doubtful anyone in Badakhshan is harboring feelings of superiority. Everyone is too preoccupied with the basic business of survival.

Editor's Note: David Trilling is a freelance photojournalist working in Central Asia.