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 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE
IN THE PAMIRS
(GORNO-BADAKHSHAN, TAJIKISTAN)

This is the first book to deal comprehensively with the history, anthropology
and recent social and economic development of the Pamiri people in Gorno-
Badakhshan, Eastern Tajikistan since Olufsen and Schultz published their
monographs on the Pamirs in 1904 and 1914. After the collapse of the Soviet
Union, such high mountain areas were more or less forgotten and people would
have suffered severely from their isolation if an Aga Khan Foundation project
of 1993–4 had not afforded broader support. A picture of an almost surrealistic
world: Pamiri income and living conditions after 1991 dropped to the level of a
poor Sahelian country, former scientists, university professors and engineers
found themselves using ox-ploughs to plant potatoes and wheat for survival. On
the other hand, a literacy rate of 100 per cent and excellent skills have proved to
be an enormous human capital resource for economic recovery, resulting in an
increase in agricultural production which during Soviet times had never occurred.

Frank Bliss is Professor for Development Anthropology at Hamburg University

and partner of Bliss & Gaesing – Associated Consultants, planning and evaluation
participatory development programmes.
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC
CHANGE IN THE PAMIRS
(GORNO-BADAKHSHAN,
TAJIKISTAN)

Frank Bliss

Translated from German by Nicola Pacult and Sonia Guss

with the support of Tim Sharp
 First published 2006
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2006 Frank Bliss

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bliss, Frank.
Social and economic change in the Pamirs : (Gorno-Badakhshan,
Tajikistan) / Frank Bliss ; translated from the German language by
Nicola Pacult and Sonia Guss with support of Tim Sharp.– 1st ed.
p. cm.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Kåuçhistonåi Badakhshon (Tajikistan)–Economic conditions. 2. Kåuçhistonåi
Badakhshon (Tajikistan)–Social conditions. 3. Ethnology–Pamir Region. I. Title.
HC421.3.Z7K843 2005
958.6–dc22 2005001405

ISBN10: 0–415–30806–2 (Print Edition)

ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–30806–9
 CONTENTS

List of illustrations viii

Preface xiii
Abbreviations xvii

1 Introduction 1
The basic situation 1
Study methods 7
On the subject of the book 13

2 General features of Gorno-Badakhshan 18

Physical geography 18
Natural resources 30
Landscapes of the Pamirs from a cultural-geographic
perspective 37
The population of Gorno-Badakhshan 44

3 History of the Pamirs 49

The Pamirs and the Silk Road 49
The pre-Islamic period 51
From Islam to the eve of the Great Game 58
The Great Game and the Russian occupation of the Pamirs 67
The early Soviet period 75
Travellers on the ‘roof of the world’ 82

4 Ethnology of the Pamiris 90

Indo-Europeans in the Pamirs 91
Economy 103
Power and administration 143
Pamiri society 147
Household life 152

v
 CONTENTS

Inventory of material culture 165

Communications and transportation 184
Music, dance, games and poetry of the Pamiris 188

5 The Kyrgyz of the Murghâb 193

History and tribal organisation 193
Kyrgyz traditional economy 197
Housing and equipment 205
Social life 213

6 Ismailis and Sunnis 221

Islam and Islamic groups in the Pamirs 221
Ancient religious traces and current popular faith 237

7 Economy and society in the Soviet system 243

Public administration and Soviet development policy 243
Collectivisation of agriculture and the economy of the state
farms 249
Social infrastructure in Soviet times 254
Employment, income and individual prosperity 259
Soviet society, family and gender 261

8 The economic collapse 271

The end of the Soviet Union and the civil war in Tajikistan 271
Economic collapse 278
Employment, income and diet 282
Agriculture, industry and trade 284
Social infrastructure and services 288
Socio-cultural effects 291

9 International development aid 297

The Humanitarian Assistance Programme of the
Aga Khan Foundation 298
Agricultural development 305
Other economic and welfare activities 316
Communal development 318
The programme’s impact on agriculture, productivity
and diet 320
Impact on industry, business and trade 322
Society in transition and the ‘new thinking’ 324
A summary of external development assistance 328

vi
 CONTENTS

10 Development constraints and prospects 330

The development potentials and constraints of the
Pamir region 331
Induced development constraints: drugs and border troops 336
Development prospects and conclusions 339

Glossary 344
Notes 351
Select bibliography 362

vii
 ILLUSTRATIONS

Plates
0.1 The khalifa of Roshorve reads one of the holy books of the
Ismailis xvi
1.1 The author with some village elders in a village near the Chinese
border 8
1.2 The team repairing access to a bridge in order to allow the car
to cross a river 9
1.3 Team members cross a ‘bridge’ over the rapids of the Bartang
river 9
1.4 The team is received in one of the most isolated villages of the
upper Bartang near Lake Sares 11
1.5 Traditional reception in the village of Nisûr 12
2.1 Near Roshân city the Pyandsh loses its force and flows gently
through a series of serene lakes 19
2.2 A typical view of the Pyandsh river in the southern Darwâs area 19
2.3 Track on a typical Pamir plain 20
2.4 Landscape in a typical small Pamir 21
2.5 An enormous scree slope along the track to the upper Bartang
valley 22
2.6 A typical inflow to the Pyandsh river 23
2.7 The beginning of the Shakhdara valley 24
2.8 In the middle Bartang valley rocks reach down to the river 24
2.9 A rich pasture for yaks and cattle near the village of Javshangoz 30
2.10 A high mountain stream at about 4,200 m with live peat soil 31
2.11 The most impressive artsha tree in the Roshorve area at an
altitude of 3,100 m 32
2.12 One of the last forests in the Pamirs 33
2.13 Above the banks of the Wandsh river lies the most remote
village of the area, Poi Masûr 44
3.1 Ancient fortress in the upper Shakhdara valley near the village
of Javshangoz 51

viii
 ILLUSTRATIONS

3.2 Earthen jar from Shugnân 53

3.3 Ancient rock engravings near the main road from Khorog to
Ishkashim 54
3.4 ‘Owring’ or footpath on the Afghan side of the Pyandsh near
Kala-i-Khumb 55
3.5 Kala-i-Wamâr, the most important stronghold in the Roshân area 64
3.6 The 8th battalion of line from Bukhara in Kala-i-Khumb 66
3.7 Soviet troops entering Pamir territory in order to establish
Soviet control 79
3.8 A man stands in Tajikistan and looks across the Pyandsh to
Afghanistan 81
3.9 Farmer from the Bartang valley 84
4.1 Young fair-haired girls from the middle Wandsh valley 96
4.2 A 15-year-old fair-haired girl from the middle Wandsh valley 96
4.3 Some girls from the Yasgulem valley, showing a ‘Dinarian’
physical type 97
4.4 Older women from the village of Porshnev, Shugnân District 97
4.5 Two village elders from the Darwâs area near Kala-i-Khumb
with some Iranian and/or Turkish features 98
4.6 A farmer from the upper Wandsh valley with an Iranian
appearance 99
4.7 Older men from the village of Roshorve showing the effects of
rough living conditions in a high mountain area 100
4.8 Women from the village of Porshev (Shugnân) harvest potatoes
with a hooked implement 105
4.9 A young man using a traditional wooden plough 107
4.10 A young girl in Namadgut (Ishkashim District) using a sling to
drive birds away from ripe wheat fields 109
4.11 Older women in the village of Tusyan (Shakhdara valley)
cutting wheat with sickles 110
4.12 With all the Sovkhoz machinery out of order, a boy from the
Shakhdara valley leads a team of five oxen round a threshing
floor 111
4.13 Men from Tusyan (Shakhdara valley) use zekund (wooden
pitchforks) to separate spelt grain from its straw in the wind 112
4.14 A woman in Sejd (upper Shakhdara valley) cleans the wheat in
a soil-filled sieve 113
4.15 A young woman from Roshorve (Bartang valley) cleans wheat
in a final stage before it is stored as bread grain 114
4.16 A man from the Ishkashim District (Wakhân valley) operates a
small traditional water mill 115
4.17 Woman from Shidz (Roshân) preparing mulberry flour 117
4.18 Older man from Khorog laying out apple slices on old sacks to
dry them in the sun 118

ix
 ILLUSTRATIONS

4.19 Enormous stack of hay and dried herbs on the roof of a Pamiri
house for use as cattle fodder 121
4.20 An irrigation canal about 100 m above the Pyandsh river 126
4.21 Beginning of a small irrigation canal in the lower Shakhdara
valley near the intake 127
4.22 Irrigation in progress in a field in the Roshân District 128
4.23 Wooden (walnut) container for fine clothes 134
4.24 Cradle for small children in Roshorve 135
4.25 One of the last men in the Pamir region to make the famous
rabôb 136
4.26 Woman from Jomdsh spinning with a spindle 138
4.27 Woman from Shidz using a rebuilt spinning wheel 139
4.28 Young woman in Roshorve (upper Bartang valley) prepares
bread 161
4.29 Baking bread in a mud oven 162
4.30 Group of women and girls smoking opium, c. 1900 164
4.31 Typical traditional Pamiri house with small light dome,
(tshor khonâ), Pyandsh valley 168
4.32 Traditional Pamiri house in Vîr with small stock of fodder on
the roof 169
4.33 Tshor khôna seen from the interior of a Pamiri house 171
4.34 Interior of a newly (1980) built Pamiri house in traditional
style showing common furniture 172
4.35 Old but still used granaries or storage houses in the village of
Basîd 173
4.36 Bowmen in the Yasgulem valley in the 1920s 176
4.37 Old woman in Roshorve (Bartang) uses tersgen to heat a
Russian-type iron stove 177
4.38 Two women in the middle Bartang valley with heavy loads of
dried shrubs 177
4.39 Woman from Gharm-Tshashma (Shugnân) wearing the national
Tajik dress 180
4.40 Men from Garan wearing woollen chupân 181
4.41 ‘Owring’ on the Afghan side of the Pyandsh 185
4.42 Suspension bridge over the Bartang river 187
4.43 The khalifa of Roshorve plays an old rabôb that he inherited
from his father 188
4.44 Girls in Roshorve (Bartang) with tambourines preparing to
receive guests 189
4.45 A reception party in Nisûr 190
4.46 Dancing girls in a Pamiri village 191
5.1 Kyrgyz ‘summer’ camp in late September with three yurts in the
valley of the upper Aksu 198
5.2 Family life inside a yurt 203

x
 ILLUSTRATIONS

5.3 Construction of a yurt; the wooden frame has already been

erected 206
5.4 Permanent Kyrgyz houses and yurts use the same furniture and
household effects 208
5.5 Preparations to make a felt carpet, c. 1930 210
5.6 Old woman in a Kyrgyz camp near Rang-kul preparing sheep
wool twine for a pullover 212
6.1 Local leader from Ishkashim, end of the nineteenth century 228
6.2 Group of dervishes in an unknown place in the Pamirs, c. 1900 233
6.3 ‘For decades I have been a disciple’ – an old man in the tradition
of Sufism 234
6.4 Mazâr or holy place in the upper Wakhân area 239
6.5 Older man from Yasgulem tries to break a sheep’s leg bone 242
7.1 Modern combine of Soviet production on farmland near the
Shakhdara river 251
7.2 Village library in Tusyan 258
7.3 Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Illich (Lenin) – the
‘founding fathers’ of socialism and communism – on a painted
board in a rayon centre 266
8.1 Armed opposition forces (GBAO in origin) controlling the
entrance to the Wandsh valley 277
8.2 Almost empty government store in Khorog 288
8.3 The old khalifa from Roshorve shows two pairs of boots that he
made himself 294
8.4 Water wheel on the Gund river built to replace the urban water
supply system 295
9.1 Food aid store in the Gund valley 301
9.2 Rehabilitation of infrastructure to ensure basic communication 302
9.3 Volunteers from Roshorve (Bartang) digging a trench on an
extremely difficult slope 314
9.4 The first signs of an economic recovery: the basar of Khorog 324
10.1 Younger women and men at a festival near Khorog 334
10.2 CIS troops with light tanks near their headquarters in Khorog,
c. early 1990s 338

Figures
1.1 Map of Badakhshan, under Afghan, Bukhara and Russian
dominion, 1896–9 3
1.2 Area map of Tajikistan, Gorno-Badakhshan and neighbouring
countries, 2003 5
1.3 Map of Gorno-Badakhshan and the Afghan Wakhân Corridor,
2003 16

xi
 ILLUSTRATIONS

4.1 Section through the roof of a Pamiri house 168

4.2 ‘Lantern’ roof of a Pamiri house with four layers of poles
symbolising the four elements 170

Tables
2.1 Population of GBAO per rayon for 1997 46
2.2 Population of GBAO, 1910–86 47
4.1 The various languages of the Pamir, c. 1920s 101
4.2 Numbers in each ethnic or language group, 1980s 101

xii
 PREFACE

The idea for this book was born one summer evening in 1997 in the small village
of Roshorve in the upper Bartang valley. I had, together with several colleagues,
driven up to the 3,000 m line at which the village lay in the course of a monitoring
mission for the Pamir Relief and Development Programme (PRDP), sponsored by
the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische
Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). After a ten-hour journey, we had managed to reach the
most remote community of Tajikistan, perhaps even of all former Soviet central
Asia. Immediately after our arrival, a sheep was slaughtered for us, which was later
served together with bread, potatoes and other regional products on a large carpet.
We barely had time to eat before several musicians came to the house of our host,
playing the rabôb (a type of violin) and several tambourines, and singing old songs
from the Pamirs. Even though it was late, women, men and children joined us from
all around and we danced until midnight. Exhausted, we finally fell into the steppe
rug beds prepared for us.
Before falling asleep, I turned the day’s events over in my mind. The bumpy
drive through the gorges of the Bartang, precarious bridges, being stuck in a side
stream with the Russian jeep, being pulled out of the icy water by friendly farmers,
finally arriving in Roshorve with the sunset, where we were greeted by a group
of young girls with bread and salt as well as by music. Then the unforgettable
evening with more music and the joy of dancing and the prospect of many more
exciting days at the foot of the Peak of the Revolution (Pic Revolutija) with its
altitude of 6,794 m, in a region practically cut off from the rest of the world. What
occupation could be more interesting than that of an ethnologist? By the next
morning, when we were able to begin the day with freshly baked bread with butter
and tea, it was clear to me that someone ought to write about the people in the
Pamirs, their eventful past and their enormous present problems after the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the independence of Tajikistan.
My monitoring duties for the PRDP (renamed in the interval, due to an extension
of area of operation, MSDSP, Mountain Society Development and Support
Programme) did not end until 1998. They were followed by missions to the Kyrgyz
Republic and other countries which left me no time to pursue my idea, even though
I had already taken around 2,500 pictures specifically for the planned publication.

xiii
 PREFACE

But in 2001 I could finally take up the idea again. The first enquiry to the Curzon
publishing company and its editor-in-chief Jonathan Price was immediately
accepted. The idea for a book about a mostly forgotten region of central Asia,
which, because of the events in Afghanistan, found itself once more in the public
spotlight, immediately found approval and after another trip to the Pamirs in 2003,
my seventh to Tajikistan in all, the project could finally be realised.
Without the support of many participants, the logistics of travel and data collec-
tion from 1995 to 1998 and in 2003 would certainly not have been possible. I found
much support, especially for the latest trip, in His Excellency Hakim Ferasta,
ambassador of His Highness the Aga Khan in Tajikistan, with whom the project
team was already able to discuss important questions about the development of the
region in earlier years. The difficulties of our various stays in Gorno-Badakhshan
were overcome through the skills and hard work of the project manager of the
PRDP/MSDSP Yogdor Faizov and the national programme director Mohammed-
Amin. Physically taxed, certainly, by long drives in the jeep over many thousand
of kilometres on stony mountain trails and foot marches in the thin air of the
mountain settlements, was my translator Nazira. When other members of the group
could rest after the drive, Nazira would accompany me to the interviews, help-
ing me with the notes as well after returning from the tours. The same devotion
was shown by my colleague Mamadsaid Saidamidovitsh, who tirelessly did his
own research, prepared sketches of the villages we visited, and later prepared
the interviews. Part-time members of the party, as interviewers, were Shoista
Nazarbekovna, Ruqiya Mastibekovna, and Aziza Jumakhonova. Finally, the com-
mitted linguistics student Ruhafzo helped me in my interviews. My special thanks
go to all those persons named above.
Mamadsaid also helped in taking the numerous pictures in the villages we
studied. We also received further pictorial material from the ethnography museum
in Khorog as well as from the city library, along with part of the Russian literature
on the Pamirs. It should also be emphasised that we received further documents
from the village bookstore in Tusyan. It would probably not have been possible in
any other country of the so-called ‘Third World’ for a village with 343 households
to have its own bookstore, and even, as in this case, have a sense of its own history.
Some of the pictures printed in this publication are taken from the travel literature
of the nineteenth century or early twentieth. The author owes the Linden-Museum
in Stuttgart a debt of gratitude for providing some figures for Chapter 4. The same
is true for Markus Hauser who granted the author the right to use two recently
drawn maps of Gorno-Badakhshan. Unless otherwise labelled, the remaining
pictures were taken by the author himself. These are dated (from 1995 to 2003)
accordingly.
No ethnographical research can occur without its key informants. As a repre-
sentative for the many men and women who patiently talked with us, Abû Bakîr
from Murghâb Town is mentioned here. He also repeatedly invited us to visit his
yurt camp, where he presented us with small sections from the life of the trans-
humance livestock herdsmen. The teacher Mubarakshov and his wife Bibishon

xiv
 PREFACE

from Tusyan also took us into their house, presented us to many other families in
the small village or accompanied us to the fields – for the potato harvest, for
example. Mubarakshov of all people was forced to experience what it means to live
in such an extreme environment as the Pamirs when a landslide in 1996 destroyed
part of his house.
The cooperation of the khalifa of Roshorve (Bartang) cannot remain un-
mentioned. He instructed us for hours on the traditions of the Pamiri, their
agriculture, their methods of animal husbandry and their private life. But more than
that, the old man turned his guests’ every wish into reality: whether it was a
spontaneous music and song evening in his house, the organisation of another
song and dance evening with different groups in the old cinema of Roshorve, or
the presentation of different crafts by the persons concerned. Khalifa Zurbek
Nashkirjev also brooked no opposition to his accompanying us to the canal con-
struction works in the upper Bartang valley and, after a long day, reaching for
the rabôb himself. It is to him (Plate 0.1), a man who was born at the time of
Stalin, who spent his youth during the worst period of forced acculturation and
who, fully cognizant of the risks, salvaged the holy books of the Ismailis as well
as the knowledge of his father and grandfather for the present, that this book is
dedicated.

Note on the transliteration

The search for a functional, uniform transliteration method for terms from the
Pamiri, Tajik, Arabic and Russian languages remains an insoluble problem. Even
the most commonplace or regional names such as Khorog or Shugnân diverge
greatly in spelling according to the different transliterations used by English,
German, French or Russian authors. In the end, a unified system of transliteration
was abandoned for the present volume, as well as the use of diacritical signs as
they are set down in the Encyclopaedia of Islam. Place names and local desig-
nations are therefore written in such a way as to make their pronunciation as
clear as possible to English readers. However, when warranted, signs are used to
show the lengthening of vowels, so as to come as close as possible to the actual
pronunciation (Roshân, Shugnân). Clearly identified place names in quotations
from the works of other authors are adapted to this system.

Frank Bliss

xv
Plate 0.1 The khalifa of Roshorve reads one of the holy books of the Ismailis that his
father hid during Stalin’s religious persecutions after 1936/7 (1997).
 ABBREVIATIONS

ACTED Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development

(French NGO)
AKDN Aga Khan Development Network
AKF Aga Khan Foundation
AKFED Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development
Arab. Arabic
ARF Agricultural Reform Programme
BMZ Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit
und Entwicklung (Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation
and Development)
Chin. Chinese
CIDA Canadian International Development Agency
CIS Confederation of Independent States
CP Communist Party
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CSS Committee for State Security (former KGB)
EC European Commission
ECHO European Community Humanitarian Assistance Office
Enc. Islam Encyclopaedia of Islam
ESF Enterprise Support Facilities (of AKDN)
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
FRG Federal Republic of Germany
GBAO Autonomous Oblast of Gorno-Badakhshan
(Gorno-Badakhshanskaja Avtonomnaja Oblast)
GDP gross domestic product
GDR German Democratic Republic (East Germany until 1991)
GNP gross national product
Gr Greek, Greece
GTZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit
(German Technical Cooperation)
H Year of Hiǧra (Islamic calendar)

xvii
 ABBREVIATIONS

HAP Humanitarian Assistance Programme

HDI Human Development Index
IDA International Development Association (part of the World
Bank group)
IFC International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank group)
IFRC International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
IMF International Monetary Fund
inh. inhabitant/s
IRP Islamic Renaissance Party
KGB Soviet (Internal) Secret Service
M&E Monitoring and Evaluation
MSDSP Mountain Societies Development and Support Programme
(enlarged PRDP since 1997/98)
MSF Médecins Sans Frontières
NGO non-governmental organisation
NOVIB Nederlandse Organisatie Voor Internationale
Ontwikkelingssamenwerking (Netherlands Organisation for
International Development Cooperation)
p.a. per annum
p.d. per day
p.h. per head
PRDP Pamir Relief and Development Programme (see MSDSP)
PSF Pharmaciens sans frontière
RR Russian Republic
RRb Russian rouble
st sotikh (Russian unit of square measure of 100 square metres)
SU Soviet Union
TASIF Tajikistan Social Investment Fund (World Bank)
TJR Tajik rouble
1US$ = 290 TJR (September 1996)
1US$ = 750 TJR (September 1997)
1US$ = 880 TJR (October 1998)
1US$ = 1,650 TJR (mid-1999)
1US$ = 2,200 TJR (mid-2000)
TJS Tajik Somonî, since 30 October 2000
(1US$ = 3.15 TJS in winter of 2003/4)
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
US-AID US Agency for International Development
USSR Union of the Socialist Soviet Republics
VO Village Organisations
WB World Bank
WFP World Food Programme

xviii
 1
INTRODUCTION

The basic situation

The central Asiatic Pamir region was, until well into the last decades of the
nineteenth century, one of the least explored areas of the world. Apparently poor
in resources and at first strategically unimportant, the high mountain country had
remained, until the beginning of the ‘Great Game’ around 1870, at the periphery
of historical events. The defence capabilities of its inhabitants may have contributed
to the fact that neither the Chinese, the Hellenic Bactria, the Islamic expansion
forces, the Mongols under Ghengis Khan and his successors, nor even the Moghul
rulers, could (or would) bring the Pamir under their direct control. Even when in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Emirate of Bukhara and the Afghani
kingdom took possession of parts of the Pamir, it hardly constituted an annexation
as such but rather a nominal rule, more or less confirmed by the tribute delivered
by the otherwise independent local lords.
The first concrete reports on the Pamir available in Europe were probably
from Marco Polo, who at least crossed the highlands on his voyage to the Great
Khan of the Mongols from 1273 to 1274 (Lentz 1933b: 1–31). After the Venetian,
no European returned to the region until Father Benedict Goez in 1603, who,
however, failed to leave a detailed description and therefore added nothing to
our previous knowledge (see p. 86). Thereafter, for almost two and a half centuries,
the Pamir remained of no interest at all to Europeans until Lieutenant Wood of the
Indian Navy delivered the first detailed report of this area in 1841. A Journey to
the Source of the River Oxus is about a ride in the eastern Pamir in 1838 in order
to search for the source of the Pyandsh (also to be found in the literature as Pjansh,
Pandsh, etc.) that is also the Oxus of Antiquity (Wood 1872). Despite a few treatises
in geographical circles, the journey initially had few consequences, and the Pamir
and its population remained unnoticed for some decades more.
This situation changed dramatically when, in the late 1860s, indications of
Russian expansion into central Asia became apparent to British India. At the same
time a weak point on their northern border in the Hindu Kush was diagnosed and,
after some preliminary research, the British realised with some surprise that the
Pamir region represented, in terms of global politics, a no-man’s land between

1
 INTRODUCTION

China, Russia and British India. In consequence, the following years witnessed
increasing competition between the British and the Russians, at first in the explora-
tion of the so-far geographically practically unknown Pamir region. This was
followed by 25 years of fighting over spheres of influence and borders whose
value was perceived according to imaginary or actual security interests: the so-
called ‘Great Game’ had begun and would occupy British Indian and Russian
politicians for almost three decades. Ironically at the end of 1895, and after
considerable trouble, almost exactly the same borders were established as had
already been suggested in 1873. However, exploration of the region contributed
greatly to filling out the ‘white stain on the map’.
Thanks to the ‘Pamir Convention’ of 1895, the border between British India and
Tsarist Russia was definitively set along the artificial partition line of Wakhân (see
Chapter 3). The result was that, after a few years in which old frictions between
Afghanistan and the Russian protectorate of Bukhara over parts of the Pamir slowly
subsided, political and scientific interest in the Pamir declined. The Great Game
was over and the emergence of the Soviet Union in 1917 turned an apparently
uninteresting area into a practically unreachable one. Thus, although small-scale
studies in and about the Pamir were still conducted, the region remained – barring
a few Russian, German and one or two French expeditions – once more outside
any sphere of interest, specialist circles excepted (Figure 1.1).
This situation changed once more when the first signs of a second Great Game
appeared. By 1979 the Pamir had already been turned by Soviet forces into a
secondary deployment point for the occupation of Afghanistan. But it would be
another decade or more before the Pamir, or rather the former Soviet and present
Tajik Gorno-Badakhshan, made it once again onto the front pages of the
international press. With the fall of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan declared its inde-
pendence on 9 September 1991. Over the following years, frictions emerged
between individual political or rather regional power- and interest-based factions
in the country that ultimately resulted in a devastating civil war. This really only
ended in 1997.
Already brought to the edge of economic collapse by national independence,
the impact of the war on Tajikistan was to cause a complete implosion of the
economy and a humanitarian catastrophe of far greater proportions than in any of
the other former Soviet republics. The fact that the ‘opposition’, which after losing
the fight for the capital Dushanbe continued the war partly from Afghanistan and
partly out of Gharm and Gorno-Badakhshan, was controlled by Islamic forces
immediately attracted Western attention. In fact, from the end of 2001 Tajikistan
became a deployment point for the US in its fight against international terrorism
in its Afghan guise of the Taliban and al-Qaîda. This war is in reality nothing other
than the continuation of the fight for the oil reserves of Central Asia, which had
already been introduced at the beginning of the 1990s when the US still expected
support from the Taliban (see Rashid 2002).
The humanitarian catastrophe that had already begun to develop in Tajikistan in
1992 undoubtedly reached its regional peak in the Pamir region of the Autonomous

2
Figure 1.1 Map of Badakhshan, under Afghan, Bukhara and Russian dominion, 1896–9
(Olufsen 1904).
 INTRODUCTION

Oblast of Gorno-Badakhshan (Gorno-Badakhshanskaja Avtonomnaja Oblast =

GBAO)1 from 1993 onwards. In order to appreciate the scale of the catastrophe,
some brief background is required. The high valleys of the Pamir and the deep-cut
valleys of the Pyandsh and its inflows have supported a small Indo-European (Indo-
Aryan) mountain folk for at least 3,000 years. These people, after centuries of
oppression and internal fighting, had by 1990 finally achieved a minimal state
of wealth, first through integration into the Tsarist empire but more particularly
through Soviet improvements after the Second World War. Yet this wealth was
not entirely due to their own diligence, but included substantial transfer payments
from the Soviet central government as well. Consequently, in 1993 only 10–20 per
cent of Gorno-Badakhshan’s food needs were still produced locally.
Moreover, the 180,000 or so mountain people, as well as several tens of thou-
sands of refugees from the civil war, were effectively cut off from the rest of
Tajikistan in the winter of 1992–3. The only direct route from Dushanbe through
the Tavildara (Gharm) valley and over the passes of the Darwâs range to Khorog,
the capital of GBAO, had been bombed in several places so that, apart from
beaten tracks, every sort of direct connection to the Pamir region was cut. A third-
class road through Kulyab along the Afghan border to Darwâs was equally
unusable due to a landslide and military blockades. Thus until 1998 the only
feasible route led through Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (Ferghâna valley, Osh)
and then the Murghâb (Pamir highlands) to Khorog, in a detour of 1,400 km (see
Figure 1.2).
An open road would definitely have made the provision of humanitarian
help more feasible, yet in 1993 direct support from the central government would
hardly have been possible. Apart from the fact that Gorno-Badakhshan had found
itself on the wrong side in the war, the economic plight in the rest of Tajikistan
was anyway very severe. For example, it was supposedly not rare for 11- to 12-
year-old girls to be sold for a sack of wheat (see Bruker 1997: 3). Consequently
only nine – according to other sources seven – per cent of the previous supply of
food reached Gorno-Badakhshan from the rest of Tajikistan. Gorno-Badakhshan
therefore found itself in a situation similar to that of a ‘lost world’ in an unreachable
region of the planet.
A glance at the people’s pre-existing situation may provide a better under-
standing of the gulf that now confronted them. Between 1950 and 1990, a backward
region of central Asia had been brought, for various reasons2 and with substantial
effort and at enormous cost, to a level of material wealth at least five times greater
than that of neighbouring Pakistan, China and Afghanistan. Even though there
existed substantial differences in income between a sovkhoz director and a simple
worker in Gorno-Badakhshan, the average standard of living of most families
was substantial. Every third household owned a car and almost all families had a
TV set. Our interview partners (teachers for example) talked about learning
holidays they had taken in the 1970s and 1980s in far-off areas of the Soviet Union
and even in Eastern Europe. Each larger town had its own high school and hospital.
For a rural region, the proportion of academics to the general population was

4
 INTRODUCTION

Figure 1.2 Area map of Tajikistan, Gorno-Badakhshan and neighbouring countries, 2003.
Reprinted with permission of the author. Copyright Markus Hauser, the Pamir
Archive.

exceptional. Even in the smallest villages, German (at least) was taught as a second
language, while cinemas were already to be found in middle-sized villages. Plays
by Schiller and Goethe were performed alongside those of Soviet poets such as
Gorki – not only in the capital, Khorog, but on tour in provincial towns as well.
Agriculture was mechanised as much as possible under local conditions (slopes,
small scattered fields) and the most important workers in the sovkhozes and
kolkhozes were fully trained agronomists as well as mechanical and agricultural
engineers. In contrast, only 100 m away on the Afghan side of the Pyandsh,
Stone Age tools were still in use. Almost all the houses had electricity, many of
them running water as well. In the space of one generation, heating and cooking
went from relying on wood to using electricity or coal. In Khorog there were cheap
rental apartments with bathrooms and central heating. In other words, even though
the population had no civil freedoms in the Western sense, people enjoyed, even
according to modern standards, relatively happy and materially secure lives,
especially after certain religious as well as other social freedoms were accorded in
the 1980s.
The civil war destroyed everything, even though national independence and the
end of subventions from Moscow had already sowed the seeds for material
collapse. Although in 1992 and 1993 some food products, a little clothing and a
few spare parts and fuel still arrived from central Tajikistan, by 1994 these flows

5
 INTRODUCTION

had ebbed to an irrelevant trickle so that by 1995, when I arrived in Khorog to

evaluate German participation in the humanitarian actions of the Aga Khan
Foundation, regional and individual reserves had been exhausted. In the area of
agricultural production and in the upkeep of the infrastructure, this meant that for
want of spare parts and fuel hardly any tractors could still run, and thus practically
all the industries in Khorog had come to a standstill. Neither the factories nor
governmental institutions paid wages and, indeed, until the introduction of the
Tajik rouble (TJR), there wasn’t even a currency. Bundles of Russian roubles were
worthless, not just because of inflation but also because there simply was nothing
left in the markets to buy.
City children who had previously been clothed and cared for in the secondary
schools had to go in rags, whereas village people who were used to working with
books began to sew primitive boots out of untanned leather. In one village we
met a young widow with four children who, in the autumn, owned no more than
two blankets. The winter, with its temperatures of –25°C was already approaching.
Everything in the house had already been used up or exchanged against food.
A few potatoes had come from supportive neighbours who barely had anything
themselves. The concrete paving around the city blocks and in the squares of
Khorog had been wrenched up to plant potatoes. In the parks of the capital and in
backyards, barley was sown or herb beds planted. The fact that young men drifted
in search of work and asked their elders for help in building an ox plough only
showed how much the economy had collapsed. It also indicates that people had
begun to see their situation clearly and no longer regarded it as a temporary lull.
The ‘Agricultural Reform’ programme that, starting in 1996/7, was supposed
to lead to privatisation of agriculture and a production revolution, at least confirms
this view. This was in strong contrast to the views of individual former high
government and Communist Party functionaries who on the one hand lived on
humanitarian help while on the other still believed in 1998 that the whole
catastrophe was really only a temporary lull. In all seriousness, they insisted to us
that help from Russia would be coming soon and that the socialist production
system therefore need not be changed in any way. Without outside humanitarian
help, practically none of those living in GBAO could have survived after 1993.
Naturally, emigration out of Pamir would have been possible, but where would the
people, who in part had just escaped the civil war in Tajikistan, have gone to?
Tajikistan seemed to have been forgotten by the international community. Apart
from a few million dollars from the European Union and a few other donors,
practically no support was provided by the rich countries of the West. It was
truly fortunate for the inhabitants of GBAO that the Aga Khan, as head of the
Ismaili religious community, intervened with an extensive assistance programme.
Traditionally, the Pamiri in the eastern districts of Roshân, Shugnân, Ishkashim
and Wakhân are Shiites, belonging to the subdivision of the ‘Seven Imâm-Shia’
(see Chapter 6). Although their relations with their religious leader in Bombay,
India had been violently cut off under Stalin, perestroika during the 1980s had
allowed a cautious rapprochement to take place. In 1993, the imâm, as the Ismailis

6
 INTRODUCTION

call their leader, took equal responsibility for the Shiites and Sunnites of Pamir and
introduced emergency measures through the Aga Khan Foundation in Geneva.
These measures were later built up into a development programme.
The first task was to transport basic food products over 700 km via Kyrgyzstan
and through the Murghâb into the side valleys of the Pyandsh, for which an enor-
mous flotilla of trucks was rented. Further measures included providing agricultural
inputs and cultivation counselling, as well as developing new agricultural land
by building irrigation canals and privatising land ownership as the basis for
increasing productivity. Since providing for over 230,000 people was too expensive
even for the Aga Khan Foundation, a call for help was sent out to the international
community. Among other agencies, the German Federal Ministry for Economic
Cooperation and Development (BMZ) announced it was ready to finance part of
the humanitarian action. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit
(German Technical Cooperation, or GTZ) was, as executing agency, charged to
evaluate the humanitarian measures.

Study methods
Together with a staff member of the GTZ, I was able to travel to Pamir for such
an evaluation for the first time in May 1995. The trip itself was already time-
consuming. The flight landed in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). From there we travelled
in cars, the truly uncomfortable Russian jeeps, to the Ferghâna valley on the
other side of Osh in Kyrgyzstan, arriving after a 14-hour ride (Plate 1.1). The next
morning, at 4.0 a.m., we continued over the Alai and Trans-Alai passes, past
Lake Kara-kul and over the Ak-baîtal pass (4,655 m) through the – even in May –
icy highlands of the Murghâb. After a stop in Murghâb town, not to mention
passing through to date at least ten controls by various border guards, the police
of three different countries, and Russian border guards as well (see Chapter 10),
we embarked on the last 320 km of a 1,400-km-long tour through three countries
to Khorog.
Later on, once the logistics had been arranged, the trip became more comfortable
as we could take the plane to Osh and had to drive ‘only’ the 700 km or so through
Alai and Murghâb. The overland link between Dushanbe and Gorno-Badakhshan
was only reopened towards the end of 1998, shortly after my mission had been
completed. The main access road in the Murghâb and to Khorog, a mixture of bad
asphalt and rather good dirt road, basically came to an end in the capital. From
Khorog, a narrow fortified road led to Ishkashim and Roshân, and to the Darwâs
district. There were also within the valleys (Shakhdara, Wandsh and Yasgulem)
various sections of tarred road, but for want of repairs, and taking into account the
numerous landslides in GBAO, they were in pretty bad shape, so that transportation
really required an all-terrain vehicle. Access to the more remote villages was
generally via dirt roads, which were, like the main ‘road’ in the Bartang valley,
rather adventurous (see pp. 184–188). If one had to cross a tributary of the Bartang
in the summer months, then it was only possible in the mornings when the snow

7
 INTRODUCTION

Plate 1.1 The author with some village elders in a village near the Chinese border. In a
Kyrgyz village it is the custom that only the elders (aksaqal) welcome male
visitors. Meetings with women have to be organised separately (1998).

had not yet started to melt too much. Where the vehicle could not go, we had to
travel on foot. More than once, strong arms helped us cross a stream on a rickety,
narrow wood plank-and-rope construction (Plates 1.2, 1.3).
Thanks to the strong support of the Aga Khan Foundation and strong local
commitment (for many other development projects unimaginable), our first
evaluation mission was carried out successfully. Despite the transportation prob-
lems, we managed to visit all the districts of GBAO and speak to hundreds of
men and women. Although we were there because of the general privation in the
land, none of the village communities allowed us to waive their right to offer
us hospitality and shelter for the night. The support from the project and the popu-
lation continued until the end of my time in GBAO, and allowed us to visit
practically the whole region with all of its side valleys and to include it in the result
observation system.
This system works as follows: first, the economic, socio-political and social
situation is reviewed. For that, the different sources of income and their situation
were documented, as well as the details of diet, social infrastructure (e.g. schools,
health providers) and the communal development situation. The level of popular
consciousness was also investigated: how did people evaluate their situation,
where did their priorities lie for the solution of their biggest problems and what
was their stand on development alternatives (see Chapters 9 and 10)? The goal was

8
 INTRODUCTION

Plate 1.2 The team repairing access to a bridge in order to allow the car to cross a river
(1998).

Plate 1.3 Team members cross a ‘bridge’ over the rapids of the Bartang river. This is the
only access to the village of Shadûd (1995).

9
 INTRODUCTION

also to see how the old Soviet system was evaluated and how, for example, land
privatisation might be accepted as an alternative.
All those concerned were included in the survey. Thus, in each village, not only
were private households interviewed, but also the village leaders, the former
representatives of the Soviet system such as kolkhoz and sovkhoz directors, and
religious leaders. At the district level, the available statistics were collected
and interviews were conducted to determine the favoured development options,
current potential, and the most severe constraints. This work was relatively easy,
for despite some difficult circumstances yet to be described (e.g. unpaid salaries,
absolutely no operating resources), all the various functionaries still continued to
work. Thus, important basic data that is often unavailable even in countries with
ten times the income of Tajikistan continued to be collected.
In order to be able to demonstrate the achievement of the changes planned under
the Pamir Relief and Development Programme (PRDP), it was necessary to choose
representative villages so as to be able to follow developments there. Given the
available resources, complete documentation was unthinkable. Thus, two villages
in each district were chosen as samples, for which more detailed data was collected.
Apart from a history of the village, which served to better understand the changes
since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the data concerned mostly agricultural
production, available food (per household), the development of irrigation and
thus of usable land, energy provision, employment, living conditions, clothing etc.
These villages were chosen according to certain criteria that included average
climatic conditions, available land or grazing grounds and number of animals,
general infrastructure and, not least, the interest of the population in taking part
in the monitoring. Because the monitoring entailed many rounds of discussion
as well as the collection of personal data, sample status had to be voluntary. But
our requests were never refused. On the contrary: later on invitations piled up to
include other villages in the monitoring.
As a start, individual households in the sample villages were studied and tested.
During the house visits, we experienced an open-heartedness that we had not
expected in a situation of such extreme deprivation. The people showed us their
small stores and told us about every possible way to earn an income, no matter
how small. Some felt almost ashamed at not being able to tell us exactly how many
buckets their last potato harvest had yielded. The high rate of general education
was naturally an advantage, for almost all the men and women in GBAO could
write and count. ‘Leave your questionnaire here and we will gather all the details’,
was the answer in several cases. These offers led us, in 1998, to leave the household
questioning and the general communal data collection completely in the hands of
contact persons in the reference villages.
An important and often-used method of data collection was group discussion,
carried out as focus group discussions and as general village or village section
gatherings. The focus group discussions worked well from the beginning and
brought good results – for example on the state of the canal construction work, the
past and future questions of maintenance or the evaluation of individual cultivated

10
 INTRODUCTION

products. Not so with the village discussions. Especially at the beginning of 1996,
discussions only ensued with difficulty due to the Soviet tradition of acclamation
democracy. Many of those present simply didn’t dare to tell us their opinion.
This led us to reduce the size of the discussion groups and to prepare them better.
If a question was explained and even introduced by taking the position of a devil’s
advocate, then the opinions came more directly. By 1998, no one hesitated any
more in presenting a personal opinion in any of the villages.
Younger farmers and women took part in the discussions to different degrees.
Their participation at the village level was extremely variable. (Plates 1.4, 1.5).
The women’s situation in the GBAO is certainly in no way comparable to that in
the neighbouring Islamic states (see pp. 153–155, 267–270), yet formal equality
of rights in the working world and before the law did not always provide sufficient
support, even in the Communist socio-political system. The same general remark
also applies to young people. Within socialism, to attain one’s majority at 18 still
didn’t mean that one was equally entitled to voice one’s opinion. Therefore, in
order to grasp the ever-important opinions of the younger generation and of the
women, two different tracks were taken: one was to hold gatherings on the condi-
tion that an equal number of men and women or older and younger villagers be
invited; the other was to hold discussions only with women or only with younger
men. Talks with young girls took place mostly on an individual basis, or else they
took part in the mixed discussions with their mothers.

Plate 1.4 The team is received in one of the most isolated villages of the upper Bartang
near Lake Sares. Men constitute the welcoming committee, but women and girls
participate in the meeting (1997).

11
 INTRODUCTION

Plate 1.5 Traditional reception in the village of Nisûr (upper Bartang valley). At the
village entrance virgins offer bread and salt to the visitors (1997).

In parallel to the interviews, observation (including participatory observation),

as well as photographic documentation, was used. The pictures were to serve a
double purpose: first, we wanted to document the situation in the villages in photo-
graphic form so as to be able to establish optically the changes over the course
of the PRDP. Thus we could document that people in many villages already felt
motivated by the small progress achieved between 1995 and 1998 in the way they
improved the exteriors of their homes, rehabilitated public buildings or rebuilt
canals. Second, the pictures taken during the first visit and quickly developed in
Khorog were used to show our thanks to our participants. We shared them out
generously between the households taking part in the project, which led during
the next visit to a much quicker and more open beginning to the talks. In the course
of our work, a third reason was added – namely, a photographic documentation of
Gorno-Badakhshan for this publication.
Meanwhile, the observation already mentioned was systematically applied. Thus
every village study began with a walk through the settlement and its agricultural
areas. On these occasions the different types of land use (field, orchard, pasture),
the quality of the soil (slope, stones, irrigation facilities) or the state of the irrigation
facilities were investigated. In the same way the social infrastructure, (e.g. kinder-
gartens, schools, health facilities), the communications links (e.g. bridges, roads)
and in some cases the presence of markets were compiled through observation
– and naturally also through accompanying interviews. A plan was drawn of each

12
 INTRODUCTION

village, usually with the help of seasoned farmers, on which such things as changes
in the evaluation of used land could be laid out later on.
Participatory methods of data collection were not limited to drawing this sort of
plan. Every village appraisal – as well as the yearly appraisals later on during the
course of project monitoring – was, for example, accompanied by a problem and
priority census. These censuses gathered and prioritised the village’s most urgent
problems as seen by groups of ten men and ten women who had been invited from
various backgrounds. The same approach was used to establish solution priorities
and, in individual cases, to identify possible solutions. Thus whereas in 1996 poor
food supply was without exception the most serious problem for all groups, later
on other things were added thereby documenting at the same time deficiencies and
progress. So that when in 1998 the unsatisfactory state of the schools became the
most serious problem in Tusyan, it meant that on the one hand the food situation
had improved, but on the other that the high school could barely be used any more
for lack of even minimal heating supplies.
The monitoring system as presented here was abandoned after 1999 because it
was seen as requiring too much effort and by some even as being too academic.
Yet the results were very much in demand as initial humanitarian assistance was
slowly transformed into broad support for endogenous development processes.
The methods introduced to the villages by the monitoring process proved to be
especially useful in setting development strategies and priorities by those con-
cerned. Moreover, the results of the project monitoring process between 1996
and 1998 are the basis for this book. Although new progress was documented
during a more recent field visit in 2003, it would not have been possible for a single
researcher to collect within a reasonable time-frame the mass of data that was
collected by the village-supported studies.

On the subject of the book

It is now necessary to consider the area studied and delimit it both geographically
and conceptually. In the title, we speak of the ‘Pamirs’, and doubtless the subject
is the inhabitants of the Pamir range. But what are ‘the Pamirs’? A similar word
first appears in the writings of the seventh-century Chinese Buddhist pilgrim
Hiouen-Thsang (Hiouen-Thsang 1857; see also pp. 82–83, this volume), who
mentions a Pomilo, which comes very close to the Kyrgyz word for the moun-
tainous land, Pamil. The term can also be found in the Chinese Tang history
as Pomi (around AD 750). With the term Pamier in the work of Marco Polo, the
attribution becomes free of doubt. The later word Pamir (locally Pomir) probably
dates from the sixteenth century (see Curzon 1896: 14–15).
Linguistically, the word ‘Pamir’ probably describes a specific form of moun-
tain and valley. Kreutzmann, basing his thesis on several other authors, gives
the translation as pâ = mountain and mira = ‘broad area’ (1996: 50–51). This
description is based on the plateaux (= broad areas) in a high mountain range, which
accurately describes the character of the Murghâb and its side valleys and is also

13
 INTRODUCTION

characteristic of the neighbouring parts of Pamir in the Afghan Wakhân. Another

interpretation of this term, just as plausible, by Satulowski includes the elements
mir and pan or pai, the first to be translated as ‘mountain’ and the second as ‘foot’,
which would make ‘Pamir’ the ‘mountain foot’ or ‘mountain socle’ (1964: 21).
Other origins, especially from popular etymology, are possible but not very
probable. Thus Mursajew offers several alternatives (1956: 252–254): (1) the
derivation from the Sanskrit word mir meaning ‘lake’ – though there are many
lakes in Pamir, they are not truly characteristic of the landscape; (2) Pa-i-michr,
which in Uzbek (?) means ‘socle of the sun’ – in Afghanistan, in his times, this
expression was also used to mean ‘the socle of the sun’ (that is, the ‘socle of
Mithra’, the sun-god of the ancient Iranians).
In many reports one also finds Bamyar, a Persian compilation of pay-I-mehr,
which makes the Pamir into the ‘roof of the world’ (see Dor and Naumann 1978:
24–25). Some authors point to the fact that the Kyrgyz do speak of Pamir as the
Roof of the World, using the expression Bam-I-duniah (see Von Hellwald [1875]
1880: 238). Pa-mir, ‘Property of the Mir’ is another variation, which is, however,
somewhat too banal for a regional name so often used (ibid.).3
However, the word Pamir in the translation we prefer (according to Kreuzmann),
cannot strictly speaking be applied to as wide an area as that of the seven or eight
Pamirs as they are presented in geographical introductions. The Kyrgyz themselves
do not know any one region with the name of Pamir, but understand under Pamir’s
landscapes the common denominators that we have seen in the above-mentioned
pâ mir. Therefore, it is better to call the area we are studying not Pamir, but
the Pamirs (see pp. 18–20). Here, too, Satulowski gives a somewhat different
interpretation. For him, pamir does not designate a particular type of landscape
but a specific valley, thus called by the Kyrgyz at the end of the nineteenth century
that valley through which flows the source of the Pyandsh, coming from Lake
Sari-kul (former Lake Victoria) (1964: 20).
A further refinement is that the subject of this book is not the Pamirs in general,
but those high mountain valleys belonging to Tajikistan and thus to Gorno-
Badakhshan. There exists a profusion of literature about ‘the Pamirs’, or individual
regions having nothing to do with the former Soviet area. Whoever searches the
academic literature under the key word ‘Pamir’ will be rather surprised. De Grancy
and Kostka speak, for example, in the most extensive scientific work ever to
be published on the Pamir region (1978), about the ‘Great Pamir’ in Wakhân
without ever having set foot in GBAO. Yet they had, indeed, studied Badakhshan,
and even the Wakhân region and the Wakhî population of Badakhshan – but only
on the Afghan side. Here one must once more give an explanation.
Often, Pamir or the Pamirs are described as a part of Badakhshan. The word
‘Badakhshan’ (Gorno-Badakhshan means nothing more than ‘mountainous
Badakhshan’) is used for a region encompassing northern Afghanistan with its
capital Faizabad, continuing along the Wakhân band (see Figure 1.1) and the
current oblast of Gorno-Badakhshan. The claim that Badakhshan formally desig-
nates only the Afghan area on the left of the Pyandsh (Pandsh) therefore cannot be

14
 INTRODUCTION

upheld as the individual parts of Badakhshan show continuity, both politically and
culturally (for example, linguistically), on both the left and right sides of the
Pyandsh. Thus in the middle of the nineteenth century most of the regions of
Shugnân to the right of the Pyandsh lay in what is currently GBAO, 80–90 per cent
of Roshân was to be found on the current Tajik side, and at least one-third of Wakhân
was in the same situation. Only Darwâs, today a district of Gorno-Badakhshan,
was formally not part of Badakhshan at all, although one-third of it lay in what is
now Afghanistan. In fact, the entire region on both sides of the Pyandsh belonged
to the Emirate of Bukhara and was only divided in 1895 according to the Pamir
Convention. Since then, a part of Darwâs now belongs to Afghan Badakhshân while
another part became the Darwâs rayon (district) of GBAO.
In the light of this historical situation, every scientific study of ‘Pamir’ encounters
the difficulty that each piece of information on ‘the Pamirs’, ‘Badakhshan’ and even
the individual regions or socio-political units such as ‘Wakhân’, ‘Shugnân’ or,
indeed, ‘Darwâs’, must be carefully examined to ascertain whether the former
Soviet or the Afghan part is meant. In practice, however, the problem is less acute
as until 1895, and indeed in some cases even until the closure of the borders in the
1930s, the people to the right and left of the Pyandsh not only spoke the same
language but also belonged to the same socio-political unit, intermarried and
practised economic exchange.
Many authors, lamenting the sad state of sources for the late nineteenth century
and the early twentieth, also openly admit that they have mostly relied on docu-
ments concerning the area on the right side of the Pyandsh. Not only have statistics
for that region been collected since the Russian occupation, but Russian and later
Soviet researchers carried out many studies that are almost non-existent for
the neglected Afghan area. On the other hand, I have also based this book on
information about the area officially belonging to Afghanistan since 1895, as good
recent (since the 1960s) social studies about Gorno-Badakhshan are rare whereas
ethnological study of the Afghan Wakhân has made great progress.
Of the seven Pamirs cited by Dor and Naumann (1978: 25), four lie within
Tajikistan. These are (1) the Khargushî Pamir (‘Rabbit-Pamir’), which is none
other than the basin around Lake Kara-kul on the southern edge of the Trans-Alai
Mountains (Figure 1.3); (2) the Rang-kul Pamir (‘Pamir of the Colourful Lake’)
around the lake of the same name in the far east of Gorno-Badakhshan not far
from the Chinese border; (3) the Sariz Pamir (‘Pamir of the Yellow Track’), the
heart of the Murghâb around Murghâb town (the former Russian military station
Pamirskij Post); and (4) the Alitshur Pamir, consisting of the valley of the river
of the same name. The other Pamirs are the Tshong or Great Pamir, the Kitshik
or Small Pamir, both lying in the Afghan Wakhân, and the Taghdin-bash Pamir
(‘Pamir of the Mountain Top’) in Chinese territory.
Since all the Pamir zones in GBAO lie above 3,000 m, some parts even above
4,000 m, agriculture is barely possible. The climate of the Pamir region (see
pp. 26–27) – that is to say, apart from the cold, and also the dryness of a high moun-
tain steppe – limits vegetation to no small degree, which also limits the resources

15
Figure 1.3 Map of Gorno-Badakhshan and the Afghan Wakhân Corridor, 2003. Reprinted with permission of the author.
Copyright: Markus Hauser, the Pamir Archive.
 INTRODUCTION

for animal husbandry. Accordingly, settlement in GBAO occurs mainly in the

lower and more protected valleys of the river system of the Pyandsh, Gund (Gunt)
and Bartang where about 90 per cent of the current Pamiris in Badakhshan have
always lived. The Gharm valley to the west of Trans-Alai and the mountain of
Peter the First do not belong to Gorno-Badakhshan, although the higher part of the
area is often associated with the Pamir region in the literature under the name of
Karategîn. Where relevant the bibliographies of the histories of the few villages
on the upper course of the Wakhsh (Gharm) river, or its source river the Muk-Sû,
will be included in the comments.
A last remark to readers who are contemplating a trip to the region: the road to
Khorog from Kyrgyzstan (Osh) can theoretically be used all year round, but the
direct route from Dushanbe to Darwâs may be closed during some of the winter
months (usually November/December to May). A more southerly track along the
Afghan border to Darwâs is extremely difficult. Travelling in Pamir is dangerous,
even in May, especially in the pass areas between Murghâb and Kyrgyzstan. On
25 May 1995 we were almost snowed in with our all-terrain vehicle at the Kisil-
Art (Kisil-Yart) pass, at a height of over 4,000 m. The following year, a vehicle
of the Aga Khan Foundation was caught for three days in the middle of Murghâb
in a –20°C snowstorm. Even without considering such constraints as access
permissions for foreigners, the presence of Russian border patrols that are much
more nervous and trigger-happy at night, and the bad infrastructure, make GBAO
a difficult and dangerous travel area. (In late 2004, most Russian border posts in
the Pamirs were handed over to the Tajik army.)

17
 2
GENERAL FEATURES OF
GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

Physical geography
The geographical importance of the Pamir region varies greatly according to the
different perspectives of the various scientific publications. If the enormous
highland plateau of China is taken into consideration, together with the Tarim Basin
and the Takla Makhân desert, the Pamir quickly shrinks to occupy a rather marginal
position on the western rim of the mountainous massif as a whole. However, in
relation to actual mountain ranges, the Pamir occupies a central position. A glance
at the maps – for example in Capus (1890a: 3) and Reclus (1881: pl. 1) – shows
that the most important mountain chains of central Asia begin or at least meet there.
To the north over the Alai, the mountains form a continuous chain over thousands
of kilometres as the Tien-Shan, the Alai-Taû and finally the Altai. In the south,
counting its secondary mountains, the Hindu Kush also extends to the south-west
into Pakistan and Afghanistan. To the south-east, the impressive mass of the
Himalaya and the Tibetan highlands extends over more than 20 degrees of latitude.
Only in the west does the Pamir descend steeply with the streams that drain the
Alai into the Tajikistani heartlands.
The Pamir region is usually defined as a square of some 300 km on each side.
This equates to a surface area of about 62,000 sq. km, of which the oblast of Gorno-
Badakhshan alone makes up 47,000 sq. km. The Trans-Alai range, with the peak
of Lenin (7,134 m) and that of Korshenewskaja (7,105 m), may be considered as
marking the northern border with Kyrgyzstan. The Kashgar-Kandar range, that
includes the highest peaks of the region, the Kungur II (7,719 m) and the Mustag-
Ata (7,546 m), marks the Pamir’s eastern border with China. The Pyandsh forms
a natural border for the Pamir to the south and south-west (see Figures 1.1, 1.2;
Plates 2.1, 2.2).
The Tajikistani Pamir region can be divided into two parts that are differentiated
by their landscape and vegetation: the Western and Eastern Pamir. The Eastern
Pamir is a high-altitude plateau that is cut and bordered by mountain ranges of up
to 5,800 m whose deepest valleys already lie at 4,000 m. In the centre of the region
lies the actual plateau, or great Pamir, in a transitional landscape of alternating
Pamir-hollows and steep V-formation alpine valleys (see Rickmers 1930: 54). The

18
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

Plate 2.1 Near Roshân city the Pyandsh loses its force and flows gently through a series
of serene lakes (1995).

Plate 2.2 A typical view of the Pyandsh river in the southern Darwâs area. On the left
Afghan side is a typical isolated settlement with a few acres of fields on alluvial
land deposited by a small conflux (1995).

19
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

four Pamirs that also carry the same name on the Tajik side (see p. 15 and
pp. 41–42) represent especially grand Pamir landscapes. Each side-valley in the
Eastern Pamir region in fact forms a smaller Pamir of its own.
The boundary regions of each Pamir often present desert landscapes bordered
by crumbling mountains. Large areas are covered with rubble, boulders and
moraine deposits, the tracks of immense glaciers of the past (see Satulowski 1964:
15–16). Despite the high altitude and the enormous mass of the mountains, one
does not feel as though one were in a high mountain range due to the small differ-
ence in altitude between the Pamir valleys and the mountains (Plates 2.3, 2.4).1
The 5,700-m-high Koksukurbashi was thus described by Rickmers, perhaps
with some truth, as a ‘Riesenhügel’ (giant mound) (1930: 50). More rugged valleys
in the Pamir are often the remnants of ancient surfaces carved out by water and ice
(ibid.: 62 fig.).
The appearance of the outer mountains of both the Eastern and Western Pamirs
is influenced by their relative altitudes, for the valley bottoms are often very deep.
The variations range from around 1,200 m in Darwâs and 2,200 m in Ishkashim
(Rickmers 1930: 280). Coupled with mountain altitudes of over 6,000 m, such as
Karl Marx peak between the Pyandsh and the Shakhdara valley, there is a huge
difference in height. This already lends a ragged and wild appearance to the land.
If the amount of rubble in the area of the Pamir high plateaux has already been
remarked upon by many travellers, the slopes of the side-valleys of the Pyandsh
are even more littered with rubble fields of at least 1,000 m relative height. This

Plate 2.3 Track on a typical Pamir plain with marginal vegetation leading to a Kyrgyz
summer camp at about 4,200 metres (1996).

20
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

Plate 2.4 Landscape in a typical small Pamir with the upper Aksu river some kilometres
below the village of Shaîmak (1998).

makes both road and canal building all the more difficult (Plates 2.5, 2.6). Whether
the sandy surfaces in the upper Pyandsh valley represent a further stage of mountain
weathering is not yet clear. In any case, true Barkhan dunes with their characteristic
horseshoe shapes can be found there as the two upper source rivers of the Pyandsh,
the Pamir-Darya and Wakhân-Darya respectively, meet near the village of Langar.
The characteristics of high alpine mountains are also present in the Western
Pamir, especially in the area of the Peter the First range and the Academy range
up to the Trans-Alai. In the middle of the mountain massif, Communism peak
(recently renamed into peak Ismaîl Somonî) stands out. At 7,495 m it is the highest
mountain of the former Soviet Union.2 Geologically, the massifs of the Rush chain
and the Shakhdara chain in the south and south-west also belong to this mountain
type, even if their heights are ‘only’ a paltry 6,726 m (Karl Marx peak) and 6,510
m (Friedrich Engels peak) (Plate 2.7). Characteristic of the Western Pamir, and
especially of the southern ranges, are the deep, narrow gorges with rapids at their
bottoms (Plate 2.8).3 At the other extreme are the massive glaciers that often snake
across the landscape for many kilometres. At almost 72 km, the Fedshenko glacier
is one of the longest in the world. The Amu-Darya, or Pyandsh, owes its existence
to this glacial zone – as does Lake Aral, now irreparably damaged through overuse
of water for cotton irrigation.
Surrounded by rugged mountain ranges, the Pamir, especially in the older
literature, is represented as a zone of relatively easy passage. This is why the region
has, despite its sterility, served as a place of transit for thousands of years. This

21
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

Plate 2.5 An enormous scree slope along the track to the upper Bartang valley (1997).

image is, however, only partly correct. Because of the bisecting mountain ranges
described above, and the ruggedness of the border zones and of the Eastern Pamir,
year-round passage through the area is only possible along a very few routes (see
pp. 49–51).
For example, passage through GBAO from west to east was not possible at all in
winter until the road from Darwâs to Khorog and then to Ishkashim was built. Even
in summer, travelling that route – particularly through certain river valleys – was
extremely difficult. Until late into the Soviet period there were generally only narrow
footpaths, or donkey trails, through the region at the very most. Rickety construc-
tions of planks, stones and wickerwork clung precariously to the cliffs over the
raging rapids below, ‘one often knows not how’ (Lentz, in Rickmers 1930: 222).
But these structures are still used today on the Afghan side (see Plate 4.41; also
pp. 184–188, this volume). The ‘easy’ passes of Ak-baîtal in the Murghâb (4,655 m)
and Kizil-art in the Trans-Alai (4,200 m) as well as the easterly routes from the
Indian Chitral via Ishkashim (Afghanistan)4 to Tashkurgân or Kashgar in China, on
the other hand, pose few problems in the summer. However, they are only open in
winter under the best weather conditions. Consequently the Pamir did not represent
a good through-route at all. It simply represented the only possible passage through
the central Asiatic mountains.
The numerous high mountain lakes of Pamir ensure that, apart from two
exceptions, the area enjoys ample drainage. The first exception is the Khargushî
or Kara-kul Pamir, which drains into the lake of the same name. The second is the
Rang-kul Pamir not far from the Chinese border, whose rainfall flows into Lake

22
Plate 2.6 A typical inflow to the Pyandsh river. The consequent alluvial deposits are the
basis for agriculture and housing (1997).
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

Plate 2.7 The beginning of the Shakhdara valley with the ‘pyramids’ of Karl Marx peak
(6,726 m) and Friedrich Engels peak (6,510 m) in the background (1997).

Plate 2.8 In the middle Bartang valley rocks reach down to the river leaving almost no
space for the road (1995).

24
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

Rang-kul. Other lakes like the Yashi-kul or the Sari-kul (formerly Lake Victoria)
accumulate water for the larger rivers that drain them. Otherwise such lakes are
simply crossed by a large river, as the Yashi-kul is by the Gund. The rest of the
Pamir valleys, as well as the boundary mountain ranges, provide the source waters
for the Pyandsh or Amu-Darya (the Oxus of Antiquity).5
For a long time the actual source of the Pyandsh river was a subject of contention
among geographers. The supposition that the Pyandsh basically originates in the
Wakhân-Darya was in the 1870s one of the bases for disagreement between Russia
and British India. In any case the Russian side accepted this supposition, because
this would have included parts of the Afghani Wakhân as part of the Khanate
of Kokand and would thus have given the latter to Russia after the invasion of
1875. The British, on the other hand, considered that the current Bartang (called
Murghâb in its upper course) was the true source, and on this basis in 1873 accepted
somewhat hastily, being ignorant of the Russian view on the subject, a border
‘along the Pyandsh’. Only later on, in the course of explorations carried out in the
context of the ‘Great Game’, was the true state of things understood – namely, that
the Pamir-Darya, and thus a river between the other two, was most probably the
source.
If we assume that the Pyandsh does indeed spring from the Pamir-Darya, then
Wood was indeed partly correct when he considered the Sari-kul lake, which he
was the first European to view in February 1838, as the ‘source of the river Oxus’
(1872). There is a purely academic discussion which throws doubt on this assump-
tion. It sees the Bartang, with a seasonally greater flow and probably greater in
length, as the actual main source of the Amu-Darya. However, it must be conceded
that the Sari-kul is not, in fact, the ‘source’ of the Oxus but rather a sort of reservoir
fed by several brooks which themselves cross small pools. Strictly speaking one
should consider the longest of these brooks as the source stream.
From the lower source lake, Sari-kul, the Pamir-Darya shoots down through
narrow gorges. In the 100 km to Langar, where the confluence with the Wakhân-
Darya from Afghanistan occurs and the actual Pamir is formed, the river descends
an impressive 1,116 m. In the next approximately 200 km to Khorog there is a
descent of another 1,029 m (see Olufsen 1904: 8). Together with other tributaries
above Langar, the Pyandsh has a total of five source rivers, thus giving it its name
(‘five’). As it flows through extremely steep gorges, 1,000 to 2,000 m deep, between
the Hindu Kush and Pamir, the roaring mass of water and certainly the inacces-
sibility of the riverbanks definitely make the Pyandsh valley between Sari-kul and
Darwâs one of the most impressive natural sights of western central Asia.
Up to the mouth of the Gund near Khorog there are only unimportant, though
occasionally voluminous, tributaries. The Gund, however, its own flow almost
doubled before it reaches Khorog thanks to the Shakhdara tributary, swells the flow
in the Pyandsh by almost 80 per cent. After this, the most important tributary in
GBAO is without doubt the Bartang, which for a long time ran through the most
inaccessible gorges. Above Lake Sares, created by an earthquake (see pp. 28–30),
the part up to Murghâb town is called the Murghâb (Murghâb = ‘water near which

25
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

birds nest’). In the rest of the upper course, the now tiny river is called Aksu (Ak-
su).6 Its source lies not far to the east of the Sari-kul, so that both main arms of the
Pyandsh – although more than 900 km long – spring from the same mountain
massif (cf. map in Rickmers 1930, scale 1:1,000,000 and official map Tadshikskaja
SSR 1974, scale 1:1,000,000).
Below the mouth of the Bartang, the Pyandsh gathers two more tributaries
worth mentioning in GBAO, the Yasgulem and the Wandsh (Vanj). These spring
from the glaciers around the Ismaîl Somonî peak in Western Pamir.
The waterways of the Wandsh system are especially tumultuous and their
water levels can change within a few hours due to diurnal snow melt. Summer
after-noons can thus bring a flood that is equally perilous to man and beast. In a
less acute way this pattern can also be seen in the tributaries of the Bartang and
Shakhdara.7 In addition to these daily changes in flow, especially in the summer,
there are also great seasonal differences. Thus whereas in summer areas that are
not prone to flooding quickly dry out, lower-lying areas are at risk from
rising water levels as snow and glaciers continue to melt. In the Bartang valley
or by the Wandsh one can observe how during this time the water ‘nibbles’ at the
cultivated river banks and frequently tears away pieces of fertile land, some
of them containing fruit trees. As there are no areas in reserve in the river valleys,
in some places the available cultivatable soil is in this wise being slowly but
inexorably reduced.
Living conditions, especially in the Eastern Pamir, are extreme. Luknizki (1954:
213) characterises the climate as ‘härter als in der Arktis’ (‘stuffier than in
the Arctic’), for the air there is not as thin as in the Pamir with its average altitude
of over 4,000 m. In 1934, temperatures of –51.2°C were measured at the Bash-
Gumbes pass. Until then, the lowest measured and officially confirmed temperature
had been –46.7°C in Murghâb (see Rickmers 1930: 271). In the winter of 1995/6,
temperatures of under –54°C were reliably measured once more,8 with the
consequence that even some of the yaks didn’t survive. The average temperature
is decisive: in Murghâb town, at 3,640 m, an average air temperature of –1°C was
measured in 1929, ranging from –17.8°C in January and 13°C in July. Diurnal
temperature peaks of up to 40°C contribute to the fact that the snowline is extremely
high, at 4,800 to 5,500 m. The Pamir biological station not far from Murghâb
town measured a temperature of 33°C at 1.0 p.m. and one of –6.4°C at 4.0 p.m
on 9 July 1934. As a consequence of such swings, stones burst and cliffs crumble
(see Luknizki 1954).
Such enormous daily variations in temperature are also important for people.
Intense sunshine in summer, combined with very dry air, compels even the Kyrgyz,
who are adapted to the climate, to take protective measures. Mursajew reports
that they rub their faces and hands with mutton suet (1956: 261). The shepherds
of the Pamir also use appropriate protective measures. Although for a while one
could buy sunscreen everywhere in GBAO (as one could anywhere else in
the Soviet Union), since the economic crises after the civil war only the traditional
methods remain available.

26
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

In most of the high plateaux of Eastern Pamir, yearly precipitation totals around
70 mm, and in Murghâb 58.6 mm (Rickmers 1930). About half of this falls as
summer rain from July to August. Consequently, not the rain but ice and snow
melt from the boundary mountains is the source of the Pamir rivers and thus of all
human life in Eastern Pamir. The rain, or the snow, in the high valleys helps support
the growth of a meagre fodder base for the animals, but droughts may last for
several years.
The Pamir winter lasts from October to April and sometimes into May. Even at
the end of May there can be snowstorms for which the shepherds must at every
moment be prepared. The amount of snow can vary greatly from valley to valley.
Whereas some valleys near Murghâb remain almost snow-free throughout the
year, a few kilometres further to the west 20, 30 or even 50 cm snowfalls cover
the ground. Because of the constantly varying climatic conditions, the snow comes
in the dozens of different states chronicled by the Kyrgyz (Rickmers 1930: 51).
Decisive for the people is whether the yaks can find fodder under the snow. For
this reason, snow that has thawed and refrozen the same day represents the worst
possible situation.
The seasons can vary greatly everywhere in GBAO; that is to say, the spring
with its period of growth may be as many as 14 days late (see Rickmers 1930: 38).
This can have an extreme impact on the harvests in the valleys of the Western
Pamir.
In the Western Pamir, however, winter temperatures are distinctly more ‘mod-
erate’ than in the Murghâb, with an inter-year average of around 8°C. The average
temperatures are about –8°C in December, but quickly rise to –3°C in January. The
growing season begins in March or the beginning of April at the latest. In Khorog
the monthly average temperature in summer is (at an altitude of 2,160 m) 19.2°C
in June to 22.5°C in August. Although the winters are relatively mild, enough snow
may already have fallen by November so that the traffic between the valleys comes
to a halt until April or May. In West Pamir (Shugnân, Roshân and Darwâs rayon),
annual precipitation is about 250 mm, and in wet years up to 300 mm.
Rickmers errs when he sets the limit of barley cultivation, and thus of agriculture
in general, at only 2,000 m (1930: 284). At least currently, barley and even wheat
still ripen at 3,000 m and often even provide a yield at 3,300 m and occasionally
at 3,650 m (e.g. in Javshangoz, upper Shakhdara valley).
Despite the arid climate, the area referred throughout this book is rich in water.
However, most of the high mountain lakes are salty and of no use to man or beast.
The brooks and streams that are fed by the glaciers represent an impressive average
water yield. The average flow of the Pyandsh around Khorog is estimated at
500 to 800 cubic metres a second. However, droughts may still occur in the upper
regions. In the winter, glacial discharge is minimal whereas in the summer in the
middle altitudes the entire water supply, bound in the form of snow and ice, can
melt. Thus, depending on the area, the brooks may dry out, starting July/August.
This means that irrigation-based agriculture, on which the people of Pamir are
forced by the climate to depend, suffers in many places from water shortage.

27
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

On his voyage to the source of the Oxus, John Wood already encountered a
typical phenomenon of the central Asian mountains: the earthquakes. In his case,
the earthquake was followed by strong aftershocks.9 Near his campsite 12 of the
25 villagers died, with one house burying all its inhabitants completely. Overall,
several hundred people died from that earthquake (1872: 184–185). Olufsen speaks
of recurring earthquakes during his expedition, which he attributed at first to
‘collapses within the mountains’ (1900: 147). The collapse of the old castle in
Darwâs around that time was the result of an earthquake (Olufsen 1904: 46). The
Wandsh district of the Pamirs is particularly plagued by earthquakes that often
destroy the villages (Olufsen 1911: 33).10
Apart from earthquakes, though perhaps caused by them, ‘snow and stone slides
and avalanches are of every day occurrence, and falling fragments of rock often
destroy the villages and cultivated fields, on which occasions also many human
beings are killed’ (Olufsen 1911: 26). A violent landslide in 1995/6 destroyed
a whole village with over 20 houses in the Wandsh valley. In another case in 1996,
three houses were destroyed in Khorog itself and two people died. An especially
impressive cliff which had collapsed during an earthquake and come to a stop only
metres away from the Khorog market hall can still be viewed today.
Screes can also be caused by prolonged rainfall. In another example in Tusyan,
during which three homes were destroyed, a leaking canal had been the cause.
The plateau, soaked through for months, suddenly slid. A viscous mass flowed
down, pushed several walls over and then solidified in the buildings, so that all the
household goods were destroyed. When larger overhangs slide into narrow valleys,
they sometimes pull the side-walls along with them and thus gain impressive
mass. If this is then temporarily held up it can lead to an even greater subsequent
slide in which whole villages, together with their cultivated land, vanish within
seconds under the boulder-strewn mud. In the last three decades about half a dozen
such incidents have been reported. All caused extensive damage, but, due to
forewarning, not all were lethal. In the Bukhara period, and again after the collapse
of the Soviet Union, a landslide, even if there were no deaths, had the potential to
wipe out an entire village.
Definitely the most spectacular landslide, described many times in the literature,
happened on 19 February 1911 near Ussoi in the upper Bartang valley, and thus
along the upper course of the Murghâb river. The overhang of an impressive
mountain, looming about 3,000 m above the Murghâb, started sliding and collapsed
with unimaginable violence into the valley. The earth was said to have trembled
throughout the entire Pamir region all the way to Afghanistan. A good description
of the events on that day can be found in Luknizki (1957: 243–250). According to
the author, had a whole city stood at the scene it would have vanished without
a trace. Yet it so happened there was only a small village (kishlak) in the vicinity
with about a hundred people (200 according to other estimates), plus their live-
stock and of course a few hectares of fields and orchards. Over two billion cubic
metres of massive stone and mud bore down on the village, where a thousand
cubic metres would have been enough to flatten it. Six billion tons, according to

28
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

Luknizki, was the weight of the 700 to 800-metre-high and 8-kilometre-wide

collapsed cliff. The event caused earthquakes to shake surrounding villages, and
houses collapsed and buried people and animals. There seem to have been only
three survivors in Ussoi, who provided the only eyewitness account:

Im Februar 1911 war ich mit Freunden nach Sares gegangen, das zwanzig
Kilometer flussaufwärts lag, um dort an einem Fest teilzunehmen. An
einem dieser Festtage wurde die Gegend von einem Erdbeben erschüttert
. . . Die gesamte Bevölkerung von Sares kam eiligst aus ihren Hütten
herausgekrochen, die dann beim zweiten Erdbeben einstürzten. Menschen
kamen dabei in Sares aber nicht ums Leben. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt brachen
im Bereich der Siedlung Ussoi Felsen herab, im Nu stieg eine dichte
Staubwolke auf und entzog das Gebiet unseren Blicken. Und diese
Staubwolke stand einige Tage über ihm, erst drei Tage später war es
möglich, zu der Stelle vorzudringen, an der Ussoi einmal gestanden hatte.
Von dem Kishlak war auch nicht die geringste Spur mehr übriggeblieben;
alle Bewohner, die sich zum Zeitpunkt des Bergsturzes in der Siedlung
aufgehalten hatten, waren tod . . .
(Luknizki 1957: 244)

One outcome of this event was that a mass of rubble about 800 m high formed
in the Murghâb river valley. Depending on various estimates it was from 5 to
more than 8 kilometres wide. It began to dam the river, so that by October 1911
this natural dam had already caused the formation of a reservoir some 20 km long,
reaching all the way to the village of Sares and forcing its inhabitants to flee.
In the autumn of 1913, the lake was measured for the first time by Russian scientists
from Pamirskij Post (now Murghâb town). It had by this time grown to 28 km in
length and an average of 1.5 km in width. Its greatest depth was 279 m. The water
level rose by 36 cm each day. Information about this lake was only made public –
and thus only then aroused scientific interest – in 1914. However, it was becoming
more and more difficult to reach the lake, as the rising waters covered all but the
steepest mountain slopes.
However, it was noted that, starting in April 1914, water had begun to seep
through the dam and form small rivulets. In 1925 the rivulets had become a breach,
with a flow of 70–78 cubic metres per second.11 One of the problems this posed
was the possibility of the dam bursting one day and causing an enormous flood
crest. This would not only destroy all life in Bartang but would also cause great
damage in the Pyandsh all the way to southern Tajikistan. Further studies revealed
this scenario to be unlikely because of the enormous width of the dam. In 1934 it
was also observed that the lake had increased to a length of 60 km and a depth of
500 m. Since then, water flows into and out of the dam have achieved a balance
and the lake has ceased growing (see Mursajew 1956: 250–251).
It is, however, astonishing that in subsequent reports about the landslide of 1911
it was overlooked that in the following years the Murghâb, and with it the Bartang,

29
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

that had previously been the river in the Pamir region with the highest flow
(seasonally at least), almost completely dried up. This must have had important
consequences for local water supplies, especially for the intricate water collection
system for irrigation in the cotton areas of Tajikistan.

Natural resources
As with the climate, there are very great differences between the flora and fauna
of the high valleys of Eastern Pamir and that of the deep-cut river valleys in
Western Pamir. There are extensive Russian studies on the flora, some of which
go back to Ivanov (Iwanow) and Fedshenko (Fedschenko, Fedtshenko) (1903–7;
see Schultz 1916). According to these studies, the flora of Eastern Pamir is
relatively poor and restricted to about 300 species. Weed and grass steppes pre-
dominate, becoming sparse prairie near the rivers. These provide nearby grazing
grounds, some of which can even be used year-round (for example in the village
of Konakurgan near Murghâb town; see Plate 2.9). In some areas, high moors
with strong turf genesis are created (Plate 2.10). This is dug up with spades by the
inhabitants of the upper Shakhdara and Gund valleys, dried, and then used in the
villages as peat fuel, sometimes after being transported a long way.
Among the herbs, the most common species are types of Artemesium and
Astralagus, and especially, at least in the past, wild lavender, which the Kyrgyz

Plate 2.9 A rich pasture for yaks and cattle near the village of Javshangoz (3,250 m) in the
upper Shakhdara valley (1998).

30
 GENERAL FEATURES OF GORNO-BADAKHSHAN

Plate 2.10 A high mountain stream at about 4,200 m with live peat soil. The peat is dried
and burned when no other fuel is available (1998).

call tereske (von Schulz 1916: 208) or ‘tergsen’. Since the plant is so closely bound
up with Kyrgyz culture, it is also called ‘Kyrgyz lozenge’. The tereske that is
sometimes dried and used as fuel, the only one available apart from cattle dung
especially for the Pamiri in the high valleys, could in fact be part of a group of
similar plants, as other authors talk of different species (of lavender). Agachanjanz
translates ‘tereske’, for example, as ‘Hornmelde’ (German term; Latin: Eurotia/
Krascheninnikovia ceratoides) (1980: 26). We had the impression that a kind
of wild rosemary and other, non-aromatic plants were also occasionally tagged
by the Pamiris with the Kirgisi term ‘tereske’. More will be said of this plant in
Chapter 4 (see pp. 176–178), where the threat of ecological catastrophe through
overuse of plants for fuel is discussed.
The grasses of the Pamir are very nutritious but, due to the low rainfall, grow
so sparsely that grazing animals can never ‘get a mouthful’ (original: ‘nie mit
vollem Mund fressen können’) (von Schulz 1916). Other plants that grow on the
flat marshes around lakes and in river basins with poor drainage seem to be edible,
at least to yaks. Geiger also mentions wild leek or spring onion as being an
important plant, from which the Pamir is supposed to have got its Chinese name
of Thsung-ling or ‘Onion Mountain’ (1887: 54). Another important plant, because
like tereske it can be used for fuel, is Acantolimum diapensioides, which grows in
cushion-like formations.
Juniper ( juniperus pseudosabina) used to be found everywhere in the Pamir
region, even up to 3,820 m in the Langar area. At the higher altitudes it grows only

31
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
S., not above 16 D. S., 2¾c plus 25 per cent equals 3.44c per
pound. Sugars above 16 D. S., not above 20 D. S., 3¼c plus
25 per cent equals 4.06c per pound. All sugars above 20 D. S.
and all refined sugars, 4c per pound plus 25 per cent equals
5c per pound.
Tariff act March 3, 1883, effective June 1, 1883: Sugars not
above 13 D. S. and not above 75-degree polarization, 1.40c
per pound and .04c additional per degree or fraction thereof.
Sugars above 13 D. S., not above 16 D. S., 2.75c per pound.
Sugars above 16 D. S., not above 20 D. S., 3c per pound.
Sugars above 20 D. S., 3½c per pound.
Tariff act October 1, 1890, effective April 1, 1891 (McKinley
bill): Bounties effective July 1, 1891. Bounties declared
unconstitutional by the United States supreme court: Bounty
on domestic productions, sugars testing 80 degrees to 90
degrees, 1¾c per pound. Bounty on domestic productions,
sugars testing at least 90 degrees, 2c per pound. All sugar
not above 16 D. S., free. All sugar above 16 D. S., duty ½c
per pound. All sugar above 16 D. S. from bounty-paying
countries, duty ⁶⁄₁₀c per pound.
Tariff act August 27, 1894, effective August 28, 1894
(Wilson bill): Bounty on domestic production repealed. All
sugars 40 per cent ad valorem. All sugars above 16 D. S. and
all sugars discolored, 40 per cent and ⅛c per pound. All
sugars from bounty-paying countries, ¹⁄₁₀c per pound
additional.
Tariff act July 24, 1897 (Dingley bill): Raws not above 16 D.
S. and not above 75-degree polarization, .95c per pound.
Each additional degree or fraction thereof, .035c per pound
additional. Sugar above 16 D. S. and all refined, 1.95c. All
sugars from bounty-paying countries, countervailing duties
equal to bounties additional.
 Tariff act August 5, 1909 (Payne-Aldrich bill): Raws not
above 16 D. S. and not above 75-degree polarization, .95c
per pound. Each additional degree or fraction thereof, .035c
per pound additional. Sugar above 16 D. S., and all refined,
1.90c per pound. All sugars from bounty-paying countries
countervailing duties equal to bounties additional.
Tariff act October 3, 1913, effective March 1, 1914
(Underwood bill): Raws testing not above 75-degree
polarization, .71c per pound. Each additional degree or
fraction thereof, .026c per pound additional. No. 16 D. S.
clause repealed. All Philippine sugars to be admitted free.
After May 1, 1916, all sugars to be admitted free of duty.

In April, 1916, a bill was passed by Congress repealing the free-

sugar clause of the tariff act of October 3, 1913. The President
signed the bill on April 27, 1916.
The Democratic party was defeated in 1896 and the following year
saw the passage of the Dingley bill, which levied a duty of 1.685 on
96-degree raw centrifugals under 16 D. S. in color and 1.95 on raws
over 16 D. S. and on refined sugars. Under the beneficial influence
of this law the industry revived and within a period of about two
years from the enactment of the bill twenty-four beet factories
sprang into being. One-half of the number were unsuccessful[33]
because the stimulating provisions of the new tariff caused ventures
to be made hastily and without regard to actual conditions. Of the
twelve factories that survived, nearly all were situated in California
and Michigan.
From 1900 to 1902 the building of beet plants was not so rapid,
for the reason that the failures just mentioned and the popular
demand for preferential terms for Philippine and Cuban sugars were
not exactly encouraging. A 25 per cent preferential was given to
Philippine sugars March 8, 1902, and a concession of 20 per cent of
the duty was allowed Cuba December 27, 1903; still,
notwithstanding the failures and the political agitation, five or six
beet factories were erected each year during this period. The
number of beet factories operating in the United States in 1915 was
sixty-seven and the total daily slicing capacity was 73,320 tons. The
acreage harvested was 611,301 acres, ninety-three per cent of
which was worked by independent farmers and seven per cent by
the factories. The total amount of beets sliced during that season
was 6,150,293 short tons, which produced 874,220 short tons of
sugar.
The following is a list of the factories themselves:

DATE SLICING
BUILT CAPACITY
ARIZONA
Southwestern Sugar & Land Co.[34] Glendale 1903 600 tons
CALIFORNIA
Alameda Sugar Co. Alvarado 1870 750 ”
American Beet Sugar Co. Chino 1891 900 ”
American Beet Sugar Co. Oxnard 1898 3000 ”
Anaheim Sugar Co. Anaheim 1911 800 ”
Huntington
Holly Sugar Co. 1911 1200 ”
Beach
Los
Los Alamitos Sugar Co. 1897 800 ”
Alamitos
Santa Ana Co-op. Sugar Co. Dyer 1912 1000 ”
Southern California Sugar Co. Santa Ana 1909 600 ”
Spreckels Sugar Co. Spreckels 1899 4000 ”
Union Sugar Co. Betteravia 1898 900 ”
Hamilton
Sacramento Valley Sugar Co.[34] City
1906 700 ”
San Joaquin Valley Sugar Co. Visalia 1906 450 ”
Pacific Sugar Co.[34] Corcoran 1908 600 ”
COLORADO
American Beet Sugar Co.[34] Lamar 1905 400 ”
American Beet Sugar Co. Las Animas 1907 800 ”
American Beet Sugar Co. Rocky Ford 1900 1600 ”
Great Western Sugar Co. Brush 1906 1100 ”
Great Western Sugar Co. Eaton 1902 1000 ”
Great Western Sugar Co. Fort Collins 1903 2000 ”
Fort
Great Western Sugar Co. 1906 1150 ”
Morgan
Great Western Sugar Co. Greeley 1902 1000 ”
Great Western Sugar Co. Longmont 1903 2000 ”
Great Western Sugar Co. Loveland 1901 1800 ”
Great Western Sugar Co. Sterling 1905 1000 ”
Great Western Sugar Co. Windsor 1903 1100 ”
Holly Sugar Co. Swink 1906 1200 ”
National Sugar Mfg. Co. Sugar City 1900 500 ”
Grand
Western Sugar & Land Co. 1899 600 ”
Junction
IDAHO
Amalgamated Sugar Co. Burley 1912 725 ”
Utah Idaho Sugar Co. Blackfoot 1904 860 ”
Utah Idaho Sugar Co. Idaho Falls 1903 950 ”
Utah Idaho Sugar Co. Sugar 1904 900 ”
ILLINOIS
Charles Pope Riverdale 1905 450 ”
INDIANA
Holland St. Louis Sugar Co. Decatur 1912 800 ”
IOWA
Iowa Sugar Co.[34] Waverly 1907 500 ”
KANSAS
Garden City Sugar & Land Co. Garden City 1906 900 ”
MICHIGAN
Continental Sugar Co. Blissfield 1905 900 ”
German American Sugar Co. Bay City 1901 1500 ”
Holland St. Louis Sugar Co. Holland 1899 400 ”
Holland St. Louis Sugar Co. St. Louis 1903 600 ”
Menominee River Sugar Co. Menominee 1903 1150 ”
Michigan Sugar Co. Alma 1899 1400 ”
Michigan Sugar Co. Bay City 1899 1400 ”
Michigan Sugar Co. Caro 1899 1200 ”
Michigan Sugar Co. Crosswell 1902 700 ”
Michigan Sugar Co. Carrollton 1902 900 ”
Michigan Sugar Co. Sebewaing 1902 850 ”
Owosso Sugar Co. Lansing 1901 600 ”
Owosso Sugar Co. Owosso 1903 1200 ”
Mt.
Mt. Clemens Sugar Co. 1902 600 ”
Clemens
Western Sugar Refining Co.[34] Marine City 1900 600 ”
West Bay
West Bay City Sugar Co. 1899 900 ”
City
MINNESOTA
Minnesota Sugar Co. Chaska 1906 700 ”
MONTANA
Billings Sugar Co. Billings 1906 2000 ”
NEBRASKA
Scottsbluff Sugar Co. Scottsbluff 1910 1850 ”
Grand
American Beet Sugar Co. 1890 400 ”
Island
NEVADA
Nevada Sugar Co.[34] Fallon 1911 600 ”
OHIO
Continental Sugar Co. Fremont 1900 500 ”
Continental Sugar Co. Findlay 1911 800 ”
German American Sugar Co. Paulding 1910 900 ”
Ottowa Sugar Co. Ottowa 1912 600 ”
Toledo Sugar Co.[34] Toledo 1912 1100 ”
UTAH
Amalgamated Sugar Co. Lewiston 1905 900 ”
Amalgamated Sugar Co. Logan 1901 750 ”
Amalgamated Sugar Co. Ogden 1898 750 ”
Utah Idaho Sugar Co. Elsinore 1911 620 ”
Utah Idaho Sugar Co. Garland 1903 950 ”
Utah Idaho Sugar Co. Lehi 1891 1165 ”
Utah Idaho Sugar Co. Payson 1913 700 ”
Layton Sugar Co. Layton 1915 450 ”
WISCONSIN
Chippewa
Chippewa Sugar Refining Co. 1904 500 ”
Falls
Rock County Sugar Co.[34] Janesville 1904 600 ”
U. S. Sugar Co. Madison 1906 600 ”
Menominee
Wisconsin Sugar Co. 1901 600 ”
Falls
WYOMING
Sheridan Sugar Co. Sheridan 1915 750 ”
Total capacity (76) U. S. factories 73,320 tons
 TERRITORY OF HAWAII
The Hawaiian islands lie in the north Pacific ocean, between 18
degrees 54 minutes and 22 degrees 15 minutes north latitude and
154 degrees 50 minutes and 160 degrees 30 minutes west
longitude. The group consists of eight inhabited islands and a
number of small barren islets extending several hundred miles in a
west-northwesterly direction.
The area of the various inhabited islands in square miles is as
follows:

Hawaii 4210
Maui 728
Oahu 600
Kauai 547
Molokai 261
Lanai 139
Niihau 97
Kahoolawe 69
Total 6651

All of them are of volcanic and comparatively recent origin, and

their age, or at least the time since the last eruptions on them,
decreases from west to east. On Hawaii, the largest and most
easterly of the group, the volcanic forces are still active and its
surface is covered with lava thrown up at no very remote period.
The principal port is Hilo and the highest mountain peaks are Mauna
Kea (White mountain), 13,823 feet, and Mauna Loa (Great
mountain), 13,675 feet.
Maui is formed by two mountains connected by an isthmus.
Mauna Haleakala, the higher of the two, rises to a height of 10,032
feet.[35] Kahului is the most important town and seaport.
 Oahu is of irregular quadrangular shape. Two nearly parallel
mountain ranges traverse it from southeast to northwest and
between them is a plateau that slopes down to the sea both in a
northerly and southerly direction. The principal port is Honolulu, the
“cross-roads of the Pacific,” a flourishing city of about 60,000
inhabitants and the capital of the group. It is admirably situated on a
fine harbor and, in addition to its commercial importance, is one of
the most attractive spots in the world on account of its balmy
climate and wondrously beautiful surroundings. It is strongly fortified
and a considerable military force is maintained there.
Pearl Harbor lies about seven miles from Honolulu in a westerly
direction. Here the United States government has established a
great naval station, one of the finest in existence. It has the most
improved apparatus for supplying coal or fuel oil to vessels; there
are machine shops, storehouses and barracks; and the huge dry-
dock when completed will accommodate the largest dreadnaughts.
The entrance from the sea has been dredged to make it navigable
for ships of the greatest draft and the station is protected by
powerful long-range guns of the most modern type.
Kauai, the oldest island of the group, is irregularly circular in
shape, with a maximum diameter of about 25 miles. On the
northwest a precipice rises to a height of 2000 feet and beyond that
is a mountain plain, but the other portion of the island consists of
shore plains with the mountain peak, Waialeale, 5250 feet high, in
their midst. The shore plains are broken by ridges and broad, deep
valleys and the island is well watered on all sides by mountain
streams. There are a number of ports, but no large towns.
The climate of the Hawaiian islands near sea-level does not vary
greatly from one year’s end to the other. It is cooler than other
regions in the same latitude and extremely healthful. The northeast
trade winds blow with periodic variations from March to December,
or, as one writer says, 264 days out of 365 every year.[36] The
leeward coast, protected by high mountains, is refreshed by regular
land and sea breezes. The heaviest rainfall is from January to May,
and naturally the greatest precipitation takes place on the windward
side of the principal islands. The extremes of local rainfall in the
larger islands have been known to range from 12 inches to 300
inches for the year. In Honolulu the average temperature runs from
72 degrees to 74 degrees, the maximum about 88 degrees and the
minimum 52 degrees Fahrenheit. In ascending the mountains a
lower temperature will be encountered as a matter of course and
some of the highest mountain peaks are covered with snow nearly
all the year round. Winds seldom blow with extreme violence and
hurricanes are unknown.
Singular it is that so little should have been written upon a subject
so important as the history of the growth of the sugar industry of
the Hawaiian islands. Jarves and Thrum bring the narrative down to
1875 and Mr. H. P. Baldwin, in his book entitled “The Sugar Industry
in Hawaii” (1895), contributes a fund of valuable information which
is freely drawn upon in this chapter.
Tradition has it that a Japanese junk touched at the island of Maui
during the thirteenth century and a Spanish vessel is said to have
put in on the south coast of Hawaii during a voyage from Mexico to
the Philippines in 1550. Be this as it may, our knowledge of these
islands dates only from the time of their discovery by Captain Cook
in 1778. He found sugar cane growing there when he landed and
speaks of it in his description of his first visit as being “of large size
and good quality.” According to the old natives, it grew wild and
luxuriant in the valleys and lowlands. As far back as 1837 Mr. D. D.
Baldwin recalls having seen fields of white cane on the edge of the
woods at Hana, Maui, at an elevation of 2000 to 3000 feet. The
natives made no attempt to use sugar cane except as an article of
food, although it is said that in ancient days it served as an offering
to their gods, particularly the god “Mano” (shark).
Cleveland[37] says that upon his first visit to the Sandwich group
in 1799 the natives came alongside the ship in canoes bringing many
fruits and vegetables, among which was sugar cane.
 L. L. Torbert, one of the early planters, in a paper read before the
Royal Agricultural Society in January, 1852, claims that the earliest
sugar factory was put up on the island of Lanai in 1802 by a
Chinaman who came to the islands in one of the vessels trading for
sandalwood. He brought with him a stone mill and boilers, and after
grinding one small crop and making it into sugar, went away the
next year taking his apparatus with him.
Anderson[38] makes a statement that 257 tons of sugar were
exported from the islands in 1814, but cites no authority upon which
to base his assertion.
According to Jarves[39] the first instance of the manufacture of
sugar goes back beyond 1820, but the name of the pioneer planter
is unknown. It is certain that at first molasses was manufactured
and then sugar some time before 1820.
Don Francisco de Paula Marin made sugar in Honolulu in 1819, the
year before the arrival of the first missionaries. Lavinia, an Italian,
did the same thing in 1823. His method was to pound the cane with
stone pestles on huge wooden trays (poi boards) by native labor,
collecting the juice and boiling it in a small copper kettle.
Accounts from various sources agree that the making of sugar and
molasses was general in 1823-24. This undoubtedly had direct
connection with the manufacture of rum, which was extensively
carried on at that time.
In 1828 a considerable amount of cane was raised in the
neighborhood of Honolulu and mills were built in the Nuuanu valley
and Waikapu, Maui. A pioneer cane grower, Antonio Silva by name,
lived at the latter place, and some Chinamen had a sugar mill near
Hilo. In those days mills were made of wood, very crudely put
together and worked by oxen.
The first attempt at sugar cultivation on a large scale was made at
Koloa, Kauai, by Ladd & company, a Honolulu merchant firm, in
1835. This was the beginning of what is now known as the Koloa
plantation, and the first breaking of the soil for planting cane was
done with a plough drawn by natives. A mill was established here at
the same time, and the enterprise was managed by a Mr. Hooper.
As has been said, the general character of the mills was rude and
primitive and it continued to be so up to 1850. The rollers were
generally of wood and the kettles in which the juice was boiled were
whalers’ trypots. The buildings were adobe or simple grass huts.
Only one grade of sugar was made. The juice was boiled to a thick
syrup and put into coolers to grain, after which the granulated mass
was packed in mats, bags, boxes or barrels with perforated bottoms
for the molasses to drain off. The mills were run by bullocks, horses
and in some cases by water power, and were fed by hand, one stalk
at a time. The whole process, both in the field and in the mill, was
very crude and imperfect.
The value of the sugar exported from the islands from 1836 to
1841 was $36,000 and that of the molasses for the same period
$17,130.
An article by the late William Ladd on the “Resources of the
Sandwich Islands,” published in the “Hawaiian Spectator” for April,
1838, speaks thus prophetically of the manufacture of sugar, then in
its infancy:
“It is a very common opinion that sugar will become a leading
article of export. That this will become a sugar country is quite
evident, if we may judge from the varieties of sugar cane now
existing here, its adaptation to the soil, price of labor and a ready
market. From experiments hitherto made, it is believed that sugar of
a superior quality may be produced here. It may not be amiss to
state that there are now in operation, or soon to be erected, twenty
mills for crushing cane propelled by animal power, and two by water
power.”
Just here it may be remarked that at that time the price of labor
was a potent argument in favor of making the islands a sugar-
producing country, for native labor was available in abundance and
the current rate of wages was from 12½ cents to 37½ cents per
day, or $2.00 to $5.00 per month.
In an article on commercial development,[40] Thrum says:
“Hawaiian produce in the early days had to seek distant markets,
for we find shipments of sugar, hides, goat skins and the first
shipment of raw silk moving to New York per the bark Flora in 1840.
A trial shipment of sugar was sent to France, but it did not offer
sufficient encouragement for any renewals. The Sydney market was
also exploited with sugar, where it obtained better figures than
similar grades of Mauritius.”
Between the years 1840 and 1850 a cane field and rude mill in
Lahaina, Maui, were owned by David Malo, a well-known Hawaiian,
who made molasses and sold it for home consumption. His
apparatus consisted of three whaling-ship trypots set up on adobe
and stone mason work. The crushing was done with wooden rollers,
strengthened by iron bands.
In 1841, Kaukini, governor of Hawaii, planted about one hundred
acres of cane in Kohala and the crop when harvested was ground
under contract by a Chinese named Aiko.
In Wyllie’s “Notes” on the islands, published in the “Friend,”
December, 1844, the quantity of sugar exported from the island of
Kauai is estimated at about 200 tons, and the molasses at 20,000
gallons. Hilo, in the same year, exported 42 tons of sugar. Maui had,
at that time, two mills, but the amount of sugar produced is not
reported.
In 1851, D. M. Weston, then manager of what is now the Honolulu
Iron Works, invented the first centrifugal machine for drying sugar,
and this machine was installed on the East Maui plantation in the
same year. This, it is claimed, was the first centrifugal to be used for
the purpose anywhere.
Prominent among the early planters are the names of Stephen
Reynolds, William French, Ladd & company, Dr. R. W. Wood, L. L.
Torbert, W. H. Rice, and later on S. L. Austin, A. H. Spencer and
Captain Makee.
In the year 1854 or 1855, Captain Edwards of the American
whaler George Washington brought from Tahiti two varieties of cane,
one known as Cuban and the other as Lahaina. The latter proved to
be profitable to raise and fifteen or sixteen years later began to
displace other species throughout the islands. Since then its
popularity continued to increase and up to twenty years ago it was
the variety most in favor on all Hawaiian plantations.
Twelve varieties of cane were imported from Queensland,
Australia, in 1880, but of these only one—the Rose Bamboo—
compared with the Lahaina in productiveness, and that only in high
altitudes.
In 1898 Lahaina and Rose Bamboo seemed to have outlived their
usefulness on the Hamakua coast of the island of Hawaii, and while
they continued to give excellent results in the low, sheltered valleys,
it became evident that they could not be profitably grown on the
uplands. The yields in the Hamakua region were becoming smaller
each year and the plantation owners had to seek a new variety. A
cane known as Yellow Caledonia[41] solved the difficulty and
wonderful crops of it have been raised uninterruptedly in that section
ever since.
In 1856 no fertilizers were used and practically nothing was known
of irrigation. The average yield of sugar at that time was one ton per
acre. The extraction of sugar from the cane was less than 50 per
cent, while today in the best mills it exceeds 98 per cent and the
average result from all Hawaiian factories shows over 90 per cent.
The industry struggled along under severe handicaps and
discouraging circumstances until 1857, when the number of
plantations on the islands had dwindled down to five: Koloa and
Lihue on Kauai, the East Maui and the Brewer on Maui and a
Chinese outfit near Hilo, Hawaii.
 In 1858-59 steam was adopted as the motive power in the mills;
wooden mills were superseded by those built of iron and in 1861 the
first vacuum pans were introduced. The same year saw the number
of plantations increase to twenty-two, nine of which employed steam
for the grinding of the cane.
The outbreak of the Civil war in the United States cut off the
supply of sugar drawn from the Southern states and caused the
price of Hawaiian sugar in kegs to advance to ten cents a pound.
This gave the Hawaiian producers their first real start. In 1863 the
export tonnage was 2600, and this increased until in 1860 it reached
8869 tons.
A small plantation was started at Paia, Maui, by a Captain Bush in
1868 and in the following year he disposed of it to S. T. Alexander
and H. P. Baldwin. The former gentleman was then manager of the
Haiku plantation and the acquisition of his interest in the Paia
venture necessitated his going to Honolulu to borrow the sum of
$9000, which he managed to do, but not without difficulty. Mr.
Alexander was the father of irrigation in Hawaii. He promoted and
built the Haiku ditch, which was the forerunner of the present
magnificent water-distributing system of the islands.
The period from 1869 to 1876 was one of arduous struggle for the
planters. Their very existence was at stake. The duty levied on
imports by the United States cut their margins down to nothing,
labor was scarce and the cost of obtaining it great, the rate of
interest was from ten to twelve per cent, agents’ commissions for
buying and selling ran from five to ten per cent; in short, many
plantations were threatened with utter ruin, and so seriously
discouraged did the business men become that the only gleam of
hope for the salvation of the sugar industry seemed to be
annexation.
Repeated efforts were made to negotiate a reciprocity treaty with
the United States. Finally this was accomplished; the treaty was
consummated in 1876 and a new Hawaii was born.
 The expansion that followed was more rapid than the finances of
the country could stand. Depression ensued, and as a result the
resources of the islands were taxed to the utmost.
The demand for labor during this period of expansion was so great
that the pay of the laborers in the fields was raised to one dollar a
day, with free rent, fuel and medical attendance. Laborers were
sought for in the far corners of the earth, and in consequence the
islands have a race mixture rarely found anywhere else in the world.
In 1876 the annual crop of the islands could have been put in one
vessel of the capacity of those that are now engaged in freighting
Hawaiian raw sugars to the United States, the total being in the
neighborhood of 13,000 short tons. At that time, however, this
seemed an enormous amount to the planters with their small
acreage and mills. It is well known that one planter was very much
exercised as to how he was possibly going to handle the
extraordinary production of 1100 tons from his plantation, which was
then the largest in the islands.
The crop came on the market in such small quantities that it was
of no value to refiners, as they could not depend upon definite
deliveries. It was therefore put up in special containers, known as
“island kegs,” and sold directly to the wholesale grocers on the
Pacific coast.
Some plantations turned out sugars that found especial favor with
the trade, and these grades brought as high as 14 cents per pound.
Under the benefits of reciprocity the crop increased by leaps and
bounds and in a short time the planters ceased selling these raw
grocery sugars and turned their attention to supplying the wants of
refiners. The “island keg” became a thing of the past and the small
sailing vessels which had heretofore carried all the island products to
the mainland gave way to steamers. At the present day there is only
one sailing vessel plying regularly between San Francisco and the
islands, and she usually loads at a port where the large freighting
steamers do not care to venture.
 Annexation to the United States in 1898 was the next important
step in the development of Hawaii. Its immediate effect was to
create a feeling of security and confidence in every direction, for
while the reciprocity treaty had produced excellent results, the
danger of its being made the subject of attack in Congress was ever
present. The hoisting of the American flag in the islands
permanently dispelled any anxiety on that score.
Of all the early pioneers whose steadfastness and courage kept
the sugar industry alive through so many vicissitudes, but few
survive. Their descendants have succeeded to their possessions and
responsibilities, and today in Hawaii cane cultivation and sugar
manufacture have attained a higher degree of development than has
been reached by any other country in the world. Crude methods and
appliances have long since disappeared. Scientific principles govern
the treatment of the land and the selection and care of the cane.
The irrigation works are marvels of engineering skill. The mills are
modern steel-frame structures, with concrete floors and equipped
with machinery of the most improved type. And the end is not yet.
The minds of many highly trained men are constantly at work upon
the various problems presented by the industry, and what the fruit of
their effort will be, who shall say?
Production of Hawaii since 1837 in tons of 2240 pounds:

1837 2
1838 40
1839 45
1840 161
1841 27
1842 ...
1843 511
1844 229
1845 135
1846 134
1847 225
1848 223
1849 292
1850 335
1851 9
1852 312
1853 287
1854 257
1855 129
1856 248
1857 313
1858 538
1859 816
1860 645
1861 1,144
1862 1,342
1863 2,363
1864 4,649
1865 6,838
1866 7,915
1867 7,646
1868 8,175
1869 8,171
1870 8,386
1871 9,715
1872 7,587
1873 10,326
1874 10,967
1875 11,197
1876 11,640
1877 11,418
1878 17,157
1879 21,884
1880 28,386
1881 41,870
1882 50,572
1883 50,941
1884 63,685
1885 76,496
1886 96,528
1887 94,984
1888 105,307
1889 108,110
1890 115,977
1891 122,761
1892 109,178
1893 136,269
1894 148,600
1895 133,596
1896 201,632
1897 224,200
1898 204,834
1899 252,506
1900 258,522
1901 321,463
1902 317,510
1903 391,063
1904 328,103
1905 380,579
1906 383,226
1907 392,872
1908 465,288
1909 477,818
1910 461,687
1911 506,090
1912 531,480
1913 488,212
1914 550,926
1915 577,183
1916 545,000
 LOUISIANA
The cane crop of Louisiana comes from the southern part of the
state, principally along the banks of the Mississippi, the Bayou Teche
and the Bayou Lafourche. As this region is outside the tropics, being
between 29 degrees and 31 degrees north latitude, frosts must be
looked for in winter. The sugar industry of Louisiana, therefore, as
well as that of Texas, Florida and Georgia, has to cope with climatic
conditions that are unknown in most other cane-producing countries.
All of the sugar plantations are situated in the low plains, the
highest elevation above sea-level not exceeding 83 feet. The annual
rainfall varies from 67 to 95 inches, and 80 inches may be taken as a
fair average, which amply suffices for the needs of the growing
cane. In December, January and February there is always the danger
of frost and planters must be constantly alert to guard against this
as far as possible. During the autumnal equinox much damage to
the cane is caused by hurricanes that rush in from the Gulf of
Mexico.
Sugar cane was brought to Louisiana in 1751. According to
Gayarré, two ships that were transporting troops from France to
Louisiana touched at a port in Hispaniola during the voyage and the
Jesuits of the island obtained permission to put some sugar cane on
board these vessels to be taken to Louisiana and there delivered to
their Jesuit brethren.
The same means were employed to send a number of negroes to
cultivate the cane, which was planted according to direction on a
piece of ground belonging to the order situated just above the
present course of Canal street, New Orleans. The cane grew to
maturity and was sold in the market as a luxury.
In 1759 a rich colonist, Dubreuil by name, built a mill and
attempted to make sugar, but his efforts were unsuccessful and the
idea was abandoned. Tafia, a kind of rum, was made from sugar
cane shortly afterward.
In 1791 Don António Mendez, an officer of the Spanish crown who
lived in St. Bernard parish, bought from a Spanish refugee from
Santo Domingo named Solis his land, crop of cane and distilling
outfit and attacked the problem with a firm determination to conquer
it. He called in a Cuban sugar maker named Morin to assist him, but
whether it was that he lacked the means to erect a proper factory, or
whether he became discouraged, the fact remains that he only
succeeded in turning out a few small barrels of sugar. There is
evidence that he did something in the way of refining as well, but
not in an appreciable quantity.
The first crop of sugar sufficiently large and profitable to serve as
an incentive to others was raised by Etienne de Boré about 1794. Of
this achievement Gayarré says: “When the whole agricultural interest
of Louisiana was thus prostrated and looking around for the
discovery of some means to escape from annihilation, and the eager
and anxious inquiry of every planter was ‘What shall I do to pay my
debts and support my family?’, the energy of one of the most
spirited and respected citizens of Louisiana suddenly saved her from
utter ruin and raised her to that state of prosperity which has
increased with each successive year.”[42]
In 1794 de Boré purchased seed cane from Mendez and Solis and
after planting it he went ahead with his preparations for harvesting,
crushing and manufacturing. The following year the sugar he
produced sold for $12,000, a considerable sum of money in those
days. The boiling of the sugar juice to grain was done under the
direction of Antoine Morin, the former associate of Mendez. The
method was naturally very primitive, the mill being driven by animal
power, and much sugar was lost in the bagasse.
Following the example of de Boré, many planters set out cane and
built sugar mills. Their operations were highly successful and they all
became wealthy within a comparatively short period.
 The industry continued to flourish and prosper, and the year 1820
marked a decided step forward. Up to that time the only two kinds
of cane that had been grown in Louisiana were the Creole (from
Malabar or Bengal) and the Tahiti. The cane originally planted by de
Boré and from which he made his first sugar was the Creole; the
Tahiti variety was not introduced from Santo Domingo until 1797. It
became patent to the planters that neither of these canes was suited
to the Louisianan climate, and they set about looking for a hardier
plant. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century the purple and
striped varieties were brought by the Dutch from Java to the island
of St. Eustatius, and from there a quantity of these canes was taken
to Savannah, Georgia, about 1814. They throve extremely well and a
former resident of Savannah who had moved to Louisiana and
become a planter there, having heard about them, secured some for
seed purposes. His experiment proved wonderfully successful and
from this single estate the cultivation of the new canes spread over
the entire sugar-producing region. As these varieties could stand
greater cold than the Creole and the Tahiti, the planters were able to
extend their growing area northward and in this way greatly increase
their acreage. As recently as 1897 these canes still constituted the
crops of Louisiana with a few exceptions.
Of late years, however, seedling canes obtained from Demerara
have come into great favor in consequence of the researches of the
botanists at the experiment station. In addition to an advantage
both in cane and sugar over the varieties previously used, the time
of vegetation is shorter, so that the canes mature earlier, and this,
on account of the short season in which Louisianan cane has to
ripen, makes the Demeraran decidedly desirable. It has also been
proved that Demeraran cane is better able to resist damage by
storms, so that taking it all in all it would appear that the newer
varieties are quite likely to displace the older kinds.
Cane is usually planted in the same ground every three years. The
crop of plant cane is followed by a crop of ratoons and then maize is
put in. As soon as the maize is cut the field is sown with a species of
large pea (Vigna sinensis) and when summer is over the pea vines
and the maize stubble are ploughed under. A month after this is
done, furrows are dug about six feet apart and early in October cane
is planted once more. In this operation two rows of whole cane
stalks are placed in the furrows and covered with five or six inches
of earth as a protection against frost. Most of this layer of earth is
removed in the spring to help the growth of the young cane shoots.
Stable manure, cotton-seed meal, nitrates, phosphates and kainite
are used as fertilizers.
Harvesting begins at the end of November, and, weather
permitting, the cane is allowed to remain standing in the fields until
required for grinding. If, however, the Government Weather Bureau
should predict cold, the cane is cut without delay, piled in the
furrows and covered with dry cane leaves to prevent it from
freezing. Cane stored in this manner keeps well so long as the
weather remains cold, but as soon as warm weather comes it rapidly
deteriorates.
Labor in Louisiana is both scarce and costly, consequently
agricultural machinery is used in the fields as far as possible.
HAULING CANE IN THE FIELDS, LOUISIANA
 HAULING CANE IN THE FIELDS, LOUISIANA

The steam engine was first employed in the crushing of cane in

the year 1822. About this time, when slavery was such a
tremendous factor in the South, sugar raising was marked by a
tendency toward the large plantation method. From 1830 to 1840
the number of plantations in Louisiana decreased, but the number of
slaves employed on them increased 40 per cent. Later, however, the
plantations began to grow in number and by 1853 there were more
than fifteen hundred of them, as against 668 thirteen years
previous. In those days, each plantation had its own sugar mill, so
that 1853 may be taken as close to the high-water mark for the
number of mills in the South. With the outbreak of the Civil war, the
industry was virtually wiped out of existence, and when its
rehabilitation was begun, it was carried on along entirely different
lines and the separation of the raising of sugar from the
manufacture was gradually brought about. Year by year the small
mills were abandoned and the crops of cane raised by the planters,
large and small, were brought to the central factory to be worked
up. Today, where large plantations still exist, it is the practice to rent
subdivisions of land from twenty to fifty acres in size to tenants who
grow cane for the central mill.
In 1880 there were 1144 small sugar mills in Louisiana and their
output of sugar was 121,886 tons. In 1911, 187 mills handled a crop
of 5,930,000 tons of cane which gave 308,439 tons of sugar, and
this would have been considerably exceeded had it not been for a
disastrous freeze. In 1880, 273 factories used horse power, in 1900
only 5, in 1905 none at all. The advent of the vacuum pan and the
consequent abolition of the open-kettle method marked another
great advance in manufacturing development. In 1880 about 42 per
cent of the sugar produced in Louisiana was turned out by factories
equipped with vacuum pans. The government statistics for 1909
show a total of 316,829 tons of sugar boiled in vacuum pans and
only 3,678 tons of open-kettle sugar.
As has been said, the growing season for cane in Louisiana is
limited and the harvesting is done before the plant has attained its
full maturity. Whether or not this has any effect upon the flavor of
the sugar and molasses produced is a moot point. It is none the less
true, however, that the Louisiana “Clarifieds” and the so-called New
Orleans molasses possess a flavor distinctively their own.
In the plantation fields, too, the scientists have worked wonders.
To illustrate the benefit resulting from the application of modern
methods to the cultivation of cane, in 1885 the average yield of cane
per acre in Louisiana was about three-quarters of a ton, while in
1909 the average yield per acre in cane was about 20 tons, the
recovery of sugar per ton of cane over 157 pounds, or 3140 pounds
of sugar per acre.
The Louisiana state experiment station was established by the
sugar planters at Audubon park, New Orleans, in 1885 and endowed
for a term of years. This institution has grown in importance until at
the present time it has ample grounds, well-equipped laboratories
and a sugar house with an installation of the latest and best sugar-
manufacturing machinery, all directed and operated by the students
of the institution. Here is carried on the work of developing
seedlings, improvement of cane varieties, investigation of cane
diseases, together with the study of all questions of bettering
plantation and factory methods.
The sugar production of Louisiana in long tons from 1860-61 to
the present time is as follows:

1860-61 117,431
1861-62 235,856
1862-63 43,232
1863-64 39,690
1864-65 5,331
1865-66 9,287
1866-67 21,074
1867-68 19,289
1868-69 42,617
1869-70 44,382
1870-71 75,369
1871-72 65,635
1872-73 55,891
1873-74 46,078
1874-75 60,100
1875-76 72,958
1876-77 85,102
1877-78 65,835
1878-79 106,909
1879-80 88,836
1880-81 121,886
1881-82 71,304
1882-83 136,167
1883-84 128,318
1884-85 94,372
1885-86 127,958
1886-87 80,858
1887-88 157,970
1888-89 144,878
1889-90 128,343
1890-91 215,843
1891-92 160,937
1892-93 201,816
1893-94 265,836
1894-95 317,306
1895-96 237,720
1896-97 282,009
1897-98 310,447
1898-99 245,511
1899-00 147,164
1900-01 270,338
1901-02 321,676
1902-03 329,226
1903-04 228,476
1904-05 355,530
1905-06 336,751
1906-07 188,571
1907-08 302,855
1908-09 273,178
1909-10 269,431
1910-11 263,308
1911-12 315,066
1912-13 137,119
1913-14 261,337
1914-15 216,696
1915-16 122,768
 PORTO RICO
Porto Rico, the most easterly and the fourth in size of the Greater
Antilles, lies at the entrance to the Caribbean sea, between 17
degrees 50 minutes and 18 degrees 30 minutes north latitude and
between 65 degrees 30 minutes and 67 degrees 15 minutes west
longitude. It is about 100 miles long by 36 miles wide and has an
area of 3606 square miles.
A range of mountains from 2000 feet to 3700 feet in height runs
from east to west. The south slope of the island rises abruptly from
the foothills, while on the north the ascent is more gradual and
broken to a great extent by rugged spurs and deep ravines. There is
but little coastal plain on the north, except at the river mouths, but
on the south a considerable stretch of lowlands is found. Although
many indentations occur in the coast line, few of them afford safe
shelter for ships. There are thirty-nine rivers and a great number of
smaller streams, but none of the rivers is navigable for more than a
mile or two from the sea.
The climate is healthful and is tempered by the northeast trade
winds that, with certain modifications due to local conditions, blow
steadily the year round. The mean annual temperature is about 80
degrees Fahrenheit. The rainy season begins in May and ends in
November and the average yearly precipitation at the foot of Mount
El Yunque on the northeast coast is 120 inches. At San Juan it is 55
inches, while other sections of the island are semi-arid or subject to
severe droughts. Porto Rico is particularly free from epidemics. The
last case of yellow fever was reported in 1897. Cholera and bubonic
plague are unknown, and dysentery diseases, formerly common, are
steadily decreasing. Like other West Indian islands, it is subject to
hurricanes, that of 1899 having been unusually disastrous. The
census of 1910 gave the population as 1,118,012.
 A. Moscioni, Photo.
SUGAR PLANTATION SCENE IN PORTO RICO