"The young man, feeling tThe young man feeling the breath of death, knelt down and kissed the shoes of the executioners" - the harrowing story of witnesses to the civil war in Tajikistan

Daryo” presents the stories of individuals who witnessed and endured the atrocities of the Tajik civil war (1992–1997), a conflict that claimed thousands of lives.

A Brief Look at How the War Began

The roots of the Tajik civil war can be traced back to Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika reforms, which began in 1985. During this period, the Democratic Party of Tajikistan and the Islamic Revival Movement emerged as challengers to the Communist Party. What began as a political struggle soon escalated into a conflict rooted in ethnic divisions.

During the Soviet era, leadership roles were predominantly assigned to officials from Leninabad (now Khujand), who allied with individuals from Kulob to consolidate power, particularly within law enforcement. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, other groups, including the Badakhshans, Hisors, and Westerners living on the right bank of the Surkhob River, began asserting their claims for representation and influence.

The Events of “Bloody February”

The tragic events of February 11–17, 1990, known as Bahmanmohi Khunin (“Bloody February”), marked a dark chapter in Tajikistan’s history and profoundly impacted the republic. During these days of unrest in Dushanbe, 23 people were killed—four Russians, two Tatars, and the rest Tajiks. Dozens more were injured. These events are often seen as a prelude to the civil war.

A family that fled to Afghanistan

At that time, everything was quiet in Qabadian (an ancient city in the Khatlon region, in the south of Tajikistan - ed.), as if the war was far away. I had heard about the war on the radio, but it didn’t interest me. As it turned out, the war was very close - several young men had already been killed in a village not far from us. While sitting in the car, I heard gunfire, and then I started to worry.

The closer we got to the border, the more the gunfire became, and my father left us on the bank of the Panj River, where my uncle’s family was waiting. The gunfire stopped shortly after. My father went back to guard the house, and we sat in a hole to wait.

We waited until it was dark and then crossed the Panj River on the left. I saw how people crossed the river under a hail of bullets, some in balloons, and some trying to swim across the river themselves. Three people did not make it to the shore alive, and they buried them in Afghanistan. At that moment, my heart broke, I was so horrified by what I saw, I could not even cry, I froze.

When we crossed to the other side, the border guards, having been warned about the refugees, cut the barbed wire in one place. At that moment, my mother threw a blanket over the wire so that we would not get hurt while climbing up. After crossing the wire, we pulled the blanket, but it caught on the wire and tore, and all the cotton wool came out. They took us to the camp. That night, this torn blanket served as our cover. 

A few days later, 3 families arrived. We were warmly welcomed in Afghanistan. They helped us with everything, but I was still worried about my father: How is he? Is he alive?

My father returned 10-12 days later, his legs were swollen, and he was all scratched up. It turned out that the militants had already taken over Qabadian and burned our house.

We lived in Afghanistan for 5 years. I finished school here, and I managed to work with my mother in a biscuit factory. We were the last to return to our homeland only when the war in Afghanistan began.

In 1996, the Taliban took over Kabul and declared the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

After returning to Qabadian, we began to rebuild our burned-down house. It took three years to renovate the house. But despite that, we were happy to return to our homeland.

The story of 15-year-old Dilobar

— When the war began, I was in the 9th grade, and I had to walk to school No. 53. I used to walk through Shahidon Square, where the place was called the “Wolfs” camp. There I would see various posters and people. They would make speeches on the steps of the Central Committee and the Supreme Council.

At that time, the song “Az khobi garon, khobi garon, khez” (“Awaken from deep sleep, from deep sleep”) was very popular, almost the anthem of one of the squares. I felt adrenaline and thought “oh, how wonderful.”

At that time, I did not understand how serious the events were, I was a teenager. I watched everything, sometimes I even participated. Sometimes I would get a piece of bread, and then, rejoicing, I would walk to the zoo. Because at that time, buses stopped at the Putovsky market.

• “In Tajikistan, opposition supporters were called “Borichals”. The movement developed as an alliance of the “Islamic Revival” party (banned by a court decision in the Republic of Tajikistan), the Democratic Party and some movements affiliated with it.
• “Yurchiklar” were the names given to supporters of presidents Rahmon Nabiyev and Emomali Rahmon, who remained loyal to the communist and secular ideology. The etymology of this word is unknown.

We left for Samarkand in the fall of 1992. There were students of our parents, former students who worked on the railway, who helped us get on the train. Whoever came and sat down first got a ticket!

The train was crowded. I remember that at one point I was lucky and got a luggage rack where I could put my suitcases. It was at the end, at the end of the compartment, I found this place closer to night and hid there, it was very warm. When we arrived in Samarkand, we were already met by relatives, and at midnight we walked to the house where our grandparents lived.

We stayed in Samarkand for a couple of months, and in the winter of 1993 we returned home. A shell hit our house, a three-story building turned into a one-story house. When I looked, the concrete wall had collapsed, all the windows were shattered, and the facade and back were riddled with bullet holes. At that moment I realized that everything was different here now, the situation was very serious.

Then neighbors, friends, acquaintances told how they survived. There were really scary moments. When a car drove into the yard at night, you start thinking: Who did they come for? Why did they come? Maybe now there will be a knock on the door and something will happen?

After a long break, I returned to school, and the division into “Wolves” and “Walkers” began. The people you had previously interacted with suddenly became different and began to perceive you differently – this was the reality of school in those years.

The story of a 21-year-old countryman during the war

— It was the end of October 1992. I was living in the center of Qabadian, and rumors began to spread that the popular front was advancing. At that time, many Tajiks from the so-called “opposition zone” lived in our city - Garmiya, Darvaz, Pamir. I myself am a Kyrgyz-Tajik. One day, they packed up all their belongings and started to flee. I looked out the window and saw people leaving the city, carrying their luggage. After a few days, Qabadian was almost empty.

My older brother also packed up his belongings and tried to flee to Afghanistan, and almost succeeded. According to his friends, when he reached the border, he remembered that he had forgotten something in the city and turned back. Unfortunately, he was captured and killed on his way home. We don’t know where he was buried, we haven’t found his grave yet.

Then they started closing the roads, it was impossible to leave — they were killing people on the spot.

They took another man in front of me. In November, we went to the Farogat neighborhood for a few days on business. On the way back, we stopped at our acquaintances’ house when we were passing through the village of Kurort, because we noticed a lot of militants. We called our relatives in Qabadian, told them where we were, and asked them to pick us up.

They said, “Don’t go anywhere, wait here, we’ll be there soon.” My second brother was a paratrooper, a tall, very strong guy who had been fully involved in the Afghan war from the beginning to the end. While I was hiding in the house of our acquaintances and waiting quietly, my brother would periodically go out into the yard and go back into the house. He was noticed. The militants entered through the gate and ordered him to go with them. I tried to persuade my brother to stay, but unfortunately, there was no other choice. The guards did not have time to arrive, the militants took him away.

My brother was killed on November 14 in Kurort. We found his remains 8 years later. Theyshot and poured concrete over 5 people for serving in Afghanistan and killing Muslims.

This place was shown to us by a person who was passing by while they were being shot. We searched for the exact spot for a long time and dug up all the ground around this area. But we found nothing, only a concrete slab. In the end, we began to break the concrete slab. The first thing I saw was his shoes. They were the shoes he was wearing the last time I saw him.

A Mother and Daughter’s Testimony

Mother and daughter's story

Girl:

— "They got on the bus in broad daylight to check their passports. Ordinary people, only with machine guns. They look at the documents and take the men off the bus, then shoot them right there. They don't even take them to the side. I would never believe it if someone told me. I witnessed it with my own eyes..."

In one of these incidents, I saw two men being taken out: one of them was a very young, well-mannered guy, and it was he who tried to explain something to the armed men. He spoke a mixture of Tajik and Russian... He begged and pleaded, shouting that his wife had recently lost her sight and that there were three babies at home. In response, they only laughed, and the armed men were also ordinary guys, most of them very young. Feeling the breath of death, the young man knelt down and kissed the shoes of the executioners. Everyone was silent, the whole bus. The bus was moving, and a sound was heard: ta-ta-ta… I was afraid to even look back… (cries.)

At first I thought that we would never have a war. We love our homeland with all our heart. We went through a big war (World War II), the people suffered, we won, now our army is powerful, no one can touch us anymore, they said. We ourselves started shooting at each other. The current war is not like before. Now neighbors are shooting at neighbors, children who studied together in the same school are now enemies and killing each other, they are raping girls who were sitting together at the school desk. Everyone is crazy…

Over there, the Pamir Tajiks are fighting the Kulob Tajiks. They are all Tajiks, they have the same Quran, the same religion, but the Kulobs are killing the Pamirs, and the Pamirs are killing the Kulobs. First, they gathered in the square, prayed. I wanted to understand them, so I went there. I asked the elders: “Who are you protesting against?” They answered: “We are protesting against the parliament. We were told that it is the parliament that is a very bad person.” Then the square cleared and the shooting began. Suddenly the country changed, unfamiliar…

Citizens’ protest in Dushanbe

Photo: livejournal.com

I worked as a nurse in a maternity ward. Night shift. A woman was giving birth, she was in severe pain, screaming… A sanitary nurse ran in. What’s the matter? What!!! Is it possible to enter a delivery room in such a state?! “The girls are invaders,” she said. And they were wearing black masks and had weapons. They immediately shouted at us:

— Give us drugs! Give us alcohol!

— No drugs, no alcohol!

They pushed the doctor against the wall: “Give us!” The woman, her eyes shining, groaned with relief. With joy… And the cry of a baby who had just been born was heard. I bent over the child, I couldn’t even remember – who was he: a boy or a girl? He didn’t have anything yet, not even a name. The invaders shouted at us: who is this baby – a Kulob or a Pamir? Not a boy or a girl, but a Kulob or a Pamir? We are silent… They shout: “Who is this?” We sit silently. Then they snatched the child (he probably lived in this world for only five or ten minutes), then threw the baby out the window… I am a nurse, I have seen many children die. But such a death…

Mother:

— I was the deputy station chief in Dushanbe, and there was another Tajik deputy chief. We worked day and night. The cars were full - people were running away. At two in the morning, I sent the Moscow train, and in the hall there were children from Kurgan-Tepe who had not caught the train. I hid them, locked them. Two militants came to me. They had automatic weapons.

— Oh, what are you guys doing here? — I say, and my heart trembles.

— It's your fault, your doors are open.

— I sent the train. I didn't have time to close the door.

— What kind of children are these here?

— Ours, Dushanbe.

— Maybe from Kurgan? Aren't they from Kulob?

— No, no. Ours.

Photo: shoes-web.ru

They left. If only they had opened the hall! All of them… They would have shot me in the forehead too! There was only one authority left in Tajikistan—a man with a gun. In the morning, I took the children to the Astrakhan train and ordered them to be taken without opening the doors, as if they were carrying watermelons. (He was silent at first. Then he cried for a long time.) Is there a creature more savage than a human? (He was silent again.)

**Note: this story is taken from Svetlana Alekseyevna’s book “The Chernobyl Disaster.”

The Toll of the War

The civil war in Tajikistan resulted in immense suffering. According to official records, over 60,000 people lost their lives. Approximately 25,000 women were widowed, and 55,000 children became orphans. By early 1993, over a million refugees were registered in the country.

The scars of the war remain etched in the memories of those who lived through it. These stories serve as a stark reminder of the devastating consequences of conflict and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable adversity.

Written by: Sardor Ali Nurmatov

Translated by: Tawney Kruger 

Source: https://daryo.uz/en/category/tojikiston-e/yzr9f808elh7