Radio War Nerd EP95—Tajikistan Civil War 1992-97

Guest: Bruce Pannier, correspondent The War Nerd talks to longtime Central Asia correspondent Bruce Pannier of RFE/RL, about the little-known Tajikistan Civil War in the 1990s that killed some 50,000-100,000. Tajikistan is the poorest of the USSR's five Central Asian republics, and the only one dominated by ethnic Persian speakers rather than Turkic. Because it borders Afghanistan, the wars there since the Soviet invasion in 1979 through today impact Tajikistan, and visa-versa. Afterwards, Brecher & Ames discuss the suspected jihadi stabbing in Hamburg; the bizarre CIA-backed Cuban civil war inside the Congo civil wars in the 1960s; Saudi Arabia's quiet war on its Shia population... Map of Tajikistan: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/images/tajikistan-map.gif Linguistic map of Tajikistan (+northwest Afghanistan) http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Tajling/lingmap.gif Photos of Tajikistan civil war (from Russian Afghanistan War Veterans site): http://rsva.ru/tadjikistan-foto/1419-vooruzhennyj-konflikt-v-tadzhikistane-1992-1993-gody-foto-iz-arkhiva-ob-edineniya-rkps Total time: 2:32:28