You seem to have a lot to say, and plenty of knowledge of Tajikistan. You interested in writing for this blog?

In western countries such organizations are funded by a number of rich and environmentally conscious citizens. NGOs are an important element of a democratic society. Needless to say how much they have changed our perceptions about environment for the past few years. However, the idea of having such institutions in a post soviet society is quite new and somewhat undermines the government’s interpretation of events. In the past the government was everything and no matter what it did we supposed it was well thought out. Now however we see NGOs coming to these countries and trying to voice concerns of the public thereby to some extend undermining governments complete control over its people. Some governments (including Russian government) inevitably try to get rid of such competition.

While I generally agree that NGOs are the source of new ideas in Tajik society, they could hardly be described as political and aimed at revolution. If anything their presence changes the perception of public about certain issues be it AIDS, family planning, human rights or how juridical and economic reforms should be carried out. It also changes public’s perception about its rights to demand basic freedom and rights from its government. In that NGOs are a great educational tool and the only democratic institution that bring about change in all ex-soviet republics.

It is sad but true that in the areas of health, education and economic reforms NGOs are the only organizations that government listens to. So if they were not present many problems in Tajik the society would be ignored. Let’s face it, Tajik government would not pay a lot of attention to what an average farmer has to say. It would if an NGO was involved because failure to attend to the issues mentioned by NGOs will hurt Tajikistan’s image in the western hemisphere. This would not be an issue if there were no NGOs in the first place.

We all know that politically stable Central Asia is in both US and Russia’s interest and NGOs to the extend that contribute to this are crucial to this process. However, Russia sees that process without NGOs and would support repressive regimes (as evidenced by its strong support of Islam Karimov) while the US sees the same process more complete with some elements of democracy in Tajik society. This is basically what Tajik government does not see at the moment. If they saw this would they be strong enough to deal with differences that NGOs bring about? So far Tajik political elite has been tolerant to the difference in political approches and hopefully this time they will be wise enough to make the right choice. We all know that repressive regimes are nothing short of a time bomb.