Its total area is only about 143,100 square kilometres (55,300 sq mi). It is slightly smaller than Wisconsin, USA. Tajikistan’s borders total to 3,651 kilometres (2,269 mi) long.
A map of TajikistanKarakul lakeDushanbe railway station
The climate has hot summers and mild winters.
Almost all of the country (85 percent) is mountainous with river valleys running across, however high altitude mountains of Pomir are in the eastern part of the country, (which is the west end of the Himalayas). The climate there is semiarid to polar. The mountains cover an area of about 120,000 km2 (46,000 sq mi). There are other countries within the mountain range. The mountains are between 3,600 to 4,400 metres (11,800 to 14,400 ft) high.
Karakul lake is located within a 52-kilometre-wide (32 mi) meteorite crater, which would have formed about 25 million years ago,[8] or less than 5 million years ago.[9]
History
The land that is now Tajikistan has been lived in since 4,000 BC. It has been under the rule of various empires throughout history, mostly the Persian Empires.
In the year 800, Islam came to north-east of Iran, (Nowadays called a part of this Land Tajikistan)[10]
On 9 September 1991, after long periods of mass protests against the Soviet Government, the Parliament of Tajikistan declared independence from Soviet Union, and held the first presidential elections.
Rahmon Nabiev, who ran the country during Soviet Union in the late 1970s and early 1980s, became its president. He was unable to bring any much-needed reforms to the country, and so there were protests in the capital city, Dushanbe.
The government responded by organizing a pro-government demonstration, mainly made of old Communist Party members and people from the southeast of the country brought to the city. Anti-government protests did not stop, so the government gave weapons to the pro-government demonstrator. Then the Opposition armed themselves.
After this bloody civil war broke out. In which all of the new democratic parties, political organizations, and movements together with the political Islamic movements created an alliance, opposing the old communist government and southerners.
In 2010 a leaked US Embassy cable described Tajikistan as
"... The greatest obstacle to improving the economy is resistance to reform. From the President down to the policeman on the street, the government is characterized by cronyism and corruption. Emomali Rahmon and his family control the country's major businesses, including the largest bank, and they play hardball to protect their business interests, no matter the cost to the economy writ large... The government has limited opposition party operations and rejected electoral law reforms for the February 28, 2010, parliamentary elections. The Embassy does not expect the elections to be free and fair. There has been almost no coverage of opposition political parties by state media, and most of the population is unaware of the purpose of the elections..." [11]
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