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Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the perceptions of the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan as they are framed by borderlands inhabitants of the Badakhshan province in Tajikistan. I argue that the border can be an identity resource for the people who live in the borderlands, rather than a threat.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the perceptions of the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan as they are framed by borderlands inhabitants of the Badakhshan province in Tajikistan. Badakhshan refers to the historical administrative unit covering the North Eastern region of Afghanistan and the South Eastern part of Tajikistan in the Pamirs Mountain range. Badakhshan was separated into two parts in 1895 in order to delineate the Russian and British territorial spheres of influence, and the Pyanj river became the official border to this day. Today, rather than exacerbating fear or suspicion of instability spreading to Central Asia as it is sometimes depicted in President Rahmon’s narrative, the border, seen through the eyes of locals, reveals complex relations between Tajikistanis and Afghans in Badakhshan.

In contrast to widespread stereotypes of the border amplified by the Taliban’s arrival to power in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 and conveyed in media outlets, I argue that the border can be an identity resource for the people who live in the borderlands. This resource is based on the perceived common identity features of the borderlands’ communities, namely a shared history, similar mother tongues and religious affiliations. The history of the border is seen in Tajikistan’s Badakhshan as that of a separation provoked by external powers, that divided “the same people”, as respondents framed. Through this memory, combined with common linguistic and religious features, the communities of the border hold a sense of a common identity, ignoring the administrative, political and imposed border.

This paper is based on fieldwork carried out between 2014 and 2021 along the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, and features over forty semi-structured interviews with borderland dwellers conducted between 2019 and the summer of 2021, when Taliban seized control of the border districts of Badakhshan. It is coupled with existing social science literature on the perceptions of that border. This paper aims at enriching the body of publications in border studies which focus on positive aspects of so-called sensitive borders, as well as the scholarship which tries to demystify Central Asia as a dangerous area.