A durable and instable peace? : Exploring authoritarian modes of peacebuilding in Tajikistan

Abstract: After independence from the Soviet Union Tajikistan fell into civil war in 1992. The armed conflict ended in 1997 after a peace agreement had been signed between the warring parties. Since, Tajikistan has become increasingly authoritarian, and experts have predicted the renewed onset of war. Yet, peace has been kept for over 20 years. Within peace and conflict research, scholars have turned attention to illiberal ways of ending conflict and building peace. Can two of the concepts from this illiberal turn, illiberal peacebuilding and authoritarian conflict management (ACM), explain the Tajik peace? With the ACM framework as the starting point, this thesis introduces the distinction between containment and termination from the illiberal peacebuilding concept to capture variation. Focus is on how the Rahmon regime attempts to (re)establish control over the ACM domains of discourse, space and economics to manage conflict and build peace in the immediate aftermath of civil war. The results demonstrate how ACM functions in the absence of violence, that there is no linear relationship between violence and termination methods, and that containment first, termination second is often opted for. Two improvements are suggested for the ACM framework. First, that a legal domain is introduced, and second, that the distinction between containment and termination is applied to future research, as it has proven useful in capturing variation. The results suggest that the indicators that supposedly point to a failure of peacebuilding in Tajikistan is in fact indicative of how the peace proliferates. However, violence continues to occur, even though the peace has lasted for two decades. Could this present us with a paradox of peace – one that is simultaneously durable and instable?