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Changes and Prospects in Central Asia, East
Africa and Pakistan |
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2.1 |
Central Asia |
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Some of the effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union are
very concrete and of direct interest to the Aga Khan Development
Network (including AKU). The dissolution brought a group of
Central Asian areas out onto the international
stage as the independent countries of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, with all except Kazakhstan
having clear Muslim majorities in their populations. The Muslim
world has thus been politically extended and new international
relations have grown. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture has been
engaged in a historic preservation project in Samarkand and
the 1992 presentation of the Aga Khan Awards in Architecture
was held there. Tajikistan has been of particular interest,
since it has a substantial Ismaili population. This was a part
of the Soviet Union heavily dependent on support from elsewhere
in the Union; it is the poorest of these Central Asia republics
and its Ismaili population has been concentrated in Gorno-Badakhshan,
the poorest part of the country. There has been a diminution
or cessation of support from the exUSSR and the civil war that
broke out in 1992 led to massacres and refugee flights of Ismailis
and others. Since this Ismaili population has been in grave
need of assistance, the Aga Khan Foundation n has been active
in relief work. The report from a November 1993 mission of the
Foundation says that the AKF emergency programme was then feeding
the entire 242,000 population of GornoBadakhshan, using support
from USAID, the European Community, and other sources. Looking
beyond immediate relief needs, the AKF mission explored fields
of possible AKF activities in this new country that is bound
to be of continuing interest to the Aga Khan and the Ismaili
Jamat. Since there are presently few domestic resources to sustain
Taiikistan's well-developed educational and health systems that
previously depended on Union resources, there is abundant potential
for AKF activity. How extensively and rapidly such activity
may develop is not something we can presently judge, but when
and as it does, connections or points of interest for AKU may
be expected to follow. We learn that a student for the first
group in the Institute for Educational Development has been
brought from Tajikistan. There is also a fledgling university
in Khorog, a city of about 40,000 people in Gorno-Badakhshan,
established after the civil war drove teachers and students
back to their home territory. The needs of this struggling institution
have attracted His Highness' attention and he has suggested
that some sort of firm and lasting relationship between it and
AKU should be developed. |
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The withdrawal of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan
has also brought a potential addition to the countries of interest
to the Aga Khan institutions. Whatever the ultimate resolution
of the agonising civil war that continues to divide and ravage
the country, it will clearly be a Muslim country, and one with
a significant and needy Ismaili population. |
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