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Between national idea and international conflict: the Roghun HHP as an anti-colonial endeavor, body of the nation, and national wealth

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Roghun is the symbol of being of our nation.

It stands for life or death of the Tajik state!”.

(Siddikov 2010).

Abstract

This contribution examines the nationalist politics and international controversy surrounding the construction plans for Roghun dam and hydropower station in post-Soviet Tajikistan. Conceived in 1970s as part of the Soviet ‘hydraulic mission’, this project has taken on new meanings in the second decade after Central Asian states acquired their sovereignty. This grandiose undertaking has become the ‘symbol of the nation’ and a ‘national idea’ in Tajikistan, reflecting popular hopes for dignified living and bolstering the ruling regime’s claim to power. Meanwhile, the neighbouring Uzbekistan dismisses the project as ‘silly’ and objects to it on environmental, economic and safety grounds, water becomes simultaneously an economic, social, physical, metaphysical and cultural resource. While the clashing visions of the upstream and downstream state are deeply rooted in the local histories and political contexts, the competing doctrines of water use reflect the global trends and debates regarding proper use of transboundary water resources, commodification of water and fundamental human right to access to water including for food production. Both countries gained independence under the conditions of globalization. Tajikistani society experienced a civil war, which has been described as a ‘complex crisis of decolonization’ (Heathershaw, Post-conflict Tajikistan: the politics of peace building and the emergence of legitimate order, 2009) in the first decade of its existence as a sovereign state. The resurrection of Roghun project not only serves the economic and political interests of Tajik ruling elite, it has also become a popular anti-colonial undertaking—this time overcoming dependence on a more powerful neighbor—Uzbekistan.

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Notes

  1. Both Nurek and Roghun were conceived not only as means to regulate the flow of water for irrigation purposes. These dams were planned in conjunction with construction of the aluminium plant in Regar in order to supply the smelter with cheap electricity. Unlike other forms of smelting, which rely on heat, the production of aluminium requires passing a powerful electric current through alumina (processed from the ore, bauxite). Electricity is the second biggest cost factor in aluminium production after raw materials. The hydroelectric and aluminium industries have been inextricably linked since both first emerged. Aluminium smelters are the largest customers for many of the world’s most powerful dams (McCully 2001). Both aluminium industry and the hydropower in Tajikistan are still formally state-owned. However, after closer scrutiny, it appears that as a result of power struggles of the civil war the governing elites have ‘privatised’ this state industry (Avesta.tj 2010, March 31). Thus, the Tajik Aluminium Company’s (TALCO) director is the president’s son-in-law and the earnings are deposited in an offshore account and thus no tax is paid to the Tajik state (Heathershaw 2011: 158). The major foreign currency source for the Republic, the TALCO Aluminium Plant, consumes up to 40 % of all electricity produced by the Republic. It is therefore not surprising that aluminium industry, as the main potential beneficiary of the Roghun is closely connected with the revival of the project. In October 2004, Russian Aluminium (RusAl) and the Government of Tajikistan reached an agreement to resume work at Roghun site with the aim of completing construction of the first stage of the project, primarily for the supply of power for existing and new aluminium smelters in Tajikistan (RusAl 2005).

  2. From 1965 to 1978, the first feasibility study and a design for construction of the Roghun project were developed by the Soviet design institute Gidroproekt Tashkent. Preparatory construction works began in 1979 and the main construction activities started in 1982. The scope of work implemented from 1976 to 1990 constitutes a significant volume of construction, comprising both underground work and surface facilities. During a flood in 1993, the diversion tunnels were blocked, which caused overtopping of the 45 meter high upstream embankment cofferdam, which was subsequently washed away.

  3. It is estimated that the Roghun project would force the resettlement of over 30,000 people. The Tajik authorities started the resettlement of people from Nurobod district in Rasht valley to Dangara in late May 2009. The first 232 families have already been relocated as their houses will be submerged by the water filling up the Roghun reservoir. Although some Tajik commentators have been reported to warn against displacement of people in light of the recent Tajik history of inter-regional conflict, the issue has been conspicuously absent from public discussions around Roghun construction (Sodiqov 2009), although the recent report by Human Rights Watch (June 25, 2014), a comprehensive study of human rights violations linked to the resettlements of population due to construction of the Roghun Dam, states that, “based on the interviews with people at various stages of the resettlement process, HRW has found that the standard of living for many resettled families has seriously deteriorated” (HRW 2014: 1). In contrast to pre-independence debates, there seems to be a remarkable consensus regarding the desirability and feasibility of the project within Tajik society. Even the ‘opposition’ Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan is in favour of the construction of Roghun.

  4. This is a dominant narrative in post-independence Tajikistan, which is based on the book published in 1991, on the eve of the Soviet Union’s disintegration. Historian Rahim Masov published a controversial book entitled Istoriĭa topornogo razdeleniĭa [History of Crude Division]. This book, the first in the trilogy of the revisionist historiography of the national delimitation of the 1920s, was subsequently banned in Uzbekistan (Masov 1991, 1995, 2003). Masov’s writing since the publication of the History of Crude Division has become the voice of resentment towards Uzbekistan within the official discourse. Despite its contribution to scholarship in revealing the complex dynamics that were at work during the early period of Sovietisation of Central Asia, Masov’s writing is quite objectionable as it is premised on ideas of racial superiority of the Tajiks and projects the animosity between Tajiks and Uzbeks back into the mists of time. Since independence Masov’s ideas came into even more prominence in Tajikistan as he was appointed as the head of the Institute of History. His ideas regarding the origins of Tajiks reached their absurd conclusion in the celebration of the Year of the Aryan Civilisation in Tajikistan in 2006.

  5. The estimated project costs range between USD 1.3 billion to 6 billion. Large dam projects are notorious for cost and construction time overruns and, given Uzbek opposition to the project and the transport blockade of the past year, there is all likelihood of Roghun construction will be drawn out for at least another decade.

  6. Rustam Samiev argues that the only optimal and possible way to convert the money earned by the sale of shares of the Roghun HPP from somoni into the US dollars or Euros is to the currency from the sale of the Tajik aluminium, which was the original intention of the government. “However, the currency that TALCO brings into the economy of Tajikistan (about 30–40 m USD) is insufficient to convert all the ’Roghun monies’, which now already comprise 300 m USD for 2010. The Tajik state would need to tap into the currency reserves held at the off-shore accounts, including those of the “Oriyonbonk” in Dushanbe”, the analyst writes. According to the expert’s estimates, over the ‘post-Ansol’ period the off-shore accounts of TALCO should have accumulated up to USD 1.5 billion, which is sufficient for conversion of all the money made from the sale of the Roghun shares (Avesta.tj, 8 January 2010).

  7. For instance, during the first week of March 2010 Roghun was the main subject in all the main Uzbek newspapers. Almost all of the articles talk of the “serious concerns of the society” that the decision of the Tajik government to start the construction of the Roghun HPP has stirred up and the potential threat to the security of many millions of people in the region such construction may entail. UzA agency’s Projects of gigantic HPPs in the Central Asian region are a threat to the security of millions of people was published in practically all the newspapers. An article by a Kyrgyz observer Aleksandr Knyazev, who compared the construction of Roghun to Kyrgyzstan’s own great HPP project in Kambarata, was discussed in the UzA’s piece. Knyazyev is quoted calling both of the projects “crimes, directed against own and neighbour-states’ populations”. Milliy Tiklanish newspaper on the 3rd of March printed an article called Harm to nature talking of the “great threats” of the construction of Roghun and evoking the traditions of centuries-long shared water use of the great grandfathers. XXI Asr on the 5th of March published an opinion piece called “A dangerous path”, in which the issue is referred to as a “matter of life and death”.

  8. Water is involved in the homological metaphor of belonging as the ‘essence’ of social connections—blood. Veronica Strang’s research on water in Dorset suggests that ‘water plays a vital part in the construction of identity’ at all levels—from local to national to the ideas of shared humanity (Strang 2004: 5). The importance of ‘blood’ in the construction of kinship, ethnic, racial, local and national identities has long been established. Water in this discursive encounter acts as a ‘source of life’, essential for ‘development’ of a nation-state, its ‘integrity’ and ‘independence’ for its ‘cycles of life and death’ (Strang 2004: 79).

  9. A satirical depiction of water as the essence of one’s being, as defining one’s identity, is found in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove (1964), where deranged general Jack D. Ripper gives the following speech: “I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion and the International Communist Conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids”.

  10. “Controlling the arteries, which bring life”, Qishloq Hayoti newspaper, 25 March 2009.

  11. “Thrombi of the dams. Who will estimate the consequences?”, Pravda Vostoka, 15 September 2009?.

  12. “Held hostage by a poisonous executioner”, XXI Asr newspaper, 30 April 2009.

  13. Narodnoe Slovo is the Russian language version of the Halq So’zi newspaper in Uzbekistan.

  14. “Between two rivers: the Amu Darya and Syr Darya basins need to be viewed as a single whole”, Qishloq Hayoti , March 3, 2009.

  15. Water—weapon of political pressure”, XXI Asr, 26 March 2008.

  16. An Uzbek proverb “Oqar suvning haromi yo’q” [There is nothing ‘forbidden’ in the flowing water], for example, confirms the belief in water’s purifying qualities.

  17. Jahon is the international news agency functioning under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan.

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Suyarkulova, M. Between national idea and international conflict: the Roghun HHP as an anti-colonial endeavor, body of the nation, and national wealth. Water Hist 6, 367–383 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-014-0113-7

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