TAJIKISTAN'S FUTURE IS STILL BLEAKEST OF THE OLD U.S.S.R.

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan The news from Tajikistan is mostly bad.

At least 80 percent of the population of 7 million lives in poverty, and a
third of the children are malnourished. A million Tajik men have fled to
Russia to look for work, stranding their families here. Most of the heroin
used in Europe passes through Tajik territory, leaving a rising number of
addicts in its wake.

Rampant corruption discourages potential investors in the struggling
economy. Tajikistan has modest natural endowments, and no oil or gas. An
impoverished government has a total budget for 2002 of barely $175 million
- - about half the cost of one new American ballpark.

And yet, the mood in this tree-lined capital nestled beneath the snow-
capped Gissar mountains is decidedly upbeat. Citizens and officials speak
enthusiastically about an improving economy, stable national politics and
an easier atmosphere in the country, especially on the streets of Dushanbe.
Tajikistan today is full of reminders that "compared to what?" can be one
of life's most revealing questions.

Here the comparisons are to the first years of independence after the
Soviet Union crumbled in 1991. Starting out as "the most backward of all
the former Soviet republics by any measurement," in the words of President
Imamali Rakhmonov, Tajikistan quickly stumbled into a civil war.

The war, a struggle for power among competing clans, killed between 65,000
and 150,000, created more than a million refugees and stymied the country's
development for five years. People were gunned down on the streets of
Dushanbe. Residents of the capital can tell tales of survival from a time
when some never left home for months on end.

Only in 1997 did the warring factions make peace, after Russian troops
helped the government put down rebels led by the Islamic Renaissance Party.
Only last year did the threat from Tajikistan's neighbor subside.

That threatening neighbor was Afghanistan, which shares a mountainous,
1,300-kilometer (800-mile) border with Tajikistan. For years Tajikistan
warned the world that the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan were fundamentalist
fanatics who posed a real danger to international peace. In 1998 Rakhmonov
suggested, in a speech to the United Nations, that the international
community surround Afghanistan with a "security zone" to protect its neighbors.

"To our great disappointment, the world only turned to this problem after
the tragic events in the U.S." of Sept. 11, Rakhmonov said in an interview
here. Other senior officials said they had tried and failed to convince the
Clinton administration that the Taliban were dangerous.

Tajikistan offered an air base to the United States last autumn, but the
Pentagon decided at the last moment to use instead the Manas air base in
neighboring Kyrgyzstan. According to U.S. officials, the Tajiks have been
eager to help the war effort in any way they can.

But the news from Tajikistan remains mostly bad. Like all the new nations
of former Soviet Central Asia, this republic was ill-equipped for
independence and is still struggling to find its way.

The government "is desperate" to revive the economy, according to a Western
diplomat here, but doesn't know what to do. It hopes for money from abroad,
and has received quite a lot, but donations have rarely created meaningful
economic activity.

Corruption, over-regulation, senseless tax policies and inertia have
frustrated the development of a private sector beyond retail trade and
simple services, according to business people, bankers and diplomats here.

The economic situation "is very critical, very bad," said Sulton Kuvatov, a
former official in the Internal Affairs Ministry who is trying,
unsuccessfully, to register an opposition political party. Meanwhile, he
makes a living running a furniture business. "I don't see a future" for the
Tajik economy, he added, predicting that poverty could persist for a
generation.

Afghanistan still casts a dark shadow across Tajikistan. It does so with
poppies and the opiates made from them, especially opium and heroin.
Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the heroin consumed in Europe,
according to the United Nations drug control office, and most of
Afghanistan's production passes through Tajikistan on its way to market.

This trade has had devastating consequences in Tajikistan. Tajiks' share of
the drug business may total $200 million a year, a senior U.S. official
here said. Another Western diplomat estimated that drug money constitutes
about a third of the gross domestic product of Tajikistan.

A good portion of this money ends up in the pockets of government
officials. Dushanbe is rife with rumors as to who is taking payoffs, though
proof is hard to come by.

The drug trade has also created local users, some of them drug couriers who
are paid in cheap, impure heroin. The crumbling health care system is
totally overwhelmed by the fast-growing population of addicts - probably
20,000 or more today, according to officials here.

"The people in the drug business today have stars on their shoulders and
armies behind them," said Kuvatov, speaking of his former colleagues in the
Internal Affairs Ministry. He also may have been referring to Russian
officers stationed here, commanders of a border patrol unit that has been
on the Afghan frontier since independence.

The fruits of the drug trade are visible on Dushanbe's broad boulevards,
where a snazzy Jaguar or red Mercedes convertible may appear, and in the
booming upscale neighborhoods of this city, where huge, ugly villas are
sprouting behind high walls. The locals presume that such ostentation is
probably linked to drugs, as there are so few other sources of real wealth
in this impoverished land.