Tajikistan
The roof of Central Asia, a Persian-speaking land of the Pamir Mountains
Tajikistan is the smallest of the Central Asian states and the most vertical, a Persian-speaking nation where the colossal Pamir Mountains, the so-called Roof of the World, cover the eastern half of the country. Unlike its Turkic neighbors, Tajikistan looks culturally and linguistically toward Iran, its language a close cousin of Persian. It is the poorest of the post-Soviet republics, scarred by a brutal civil war in the 1990s, yet it commands the headwaters of Central Asia's rivers and a landscape of staggering alpine grandeur largely unknown to the outside world.
The Pamirs dominate the east, rising to Ismoil Somoni Peak at 7,495 meters, the highest in the former Soviet Union, and feeding glaciers including the immense Fedchenko, one of the longest outside the polar regions. The lower west holds the fertile Fergana and Vakhsh valleys where most people live. The Amu Darya and its tributaries originate here, giving the country huge hydropower potential, harnessed at dams such as Nurek and the giant Rogun project. The climate is continental, arid in the lowlands and frigid on the high plateau.
Long part of the Persian and later Bukharan cultural sphere, the Tajiks trace their heritage to the ancient Sogdians and Bactrians of the Silk Road. Incorporated into the Soviet Union, the republic gained independence in 1991 and almost immediately collapsed into a devastating civil war that lasted until 1997. Recovery has been slow, with the economy heavily dependent on remittances from migrants in Russia, cotton, aluminum, and hydropower. The cities of Khujand and Penjikent preserve a deep Persianate heritage, and the Pamiri peoples of the high east maintain distinct languages and traditions.