From the Ground up Case Studies in Community Empowerment

REBUILDING BROKEN LIVES After gaining Independence in 1991, Tajikistan endured economic collapse, civil war, and widespread hunger. To help rural people back on their feet, ADB financed a pilot microcredit-based livelihood project for women and farmers. Implemented through two international NGOs, the Aga Khan Foundation and CARE International, the experiment encountered many challenges, but produced several positive outcomes The women’s group composes a peaceful scene, without a hint of the tumultuous circumstances that spawned it. In a drab building in Vahdat district in western Tajikistan, a dozen women, mostly young, are bent over a long table, their fingers busy with embroidery. Along a wall behind them, older women are stitching a floral- patterned kurpacha, the thick, multipurpose Tajik quilt. Some of the girls are teenagers, who are only dimly aware of the horrors that followed Tajikistan’s unsought independence in 1991. But Zebo Oimatova, 52, a benevolent figure in traditional kurta (robe) and headscarf who is watching over the room like a mother hen, remembers it all—economic ruin, villages torn apart by civil war, the hardscrabble existence and, finally, a chance to rebuild shattered lives. In 2002, Ms. Oimatova, a warm-hearted woman of simple sincerity, was elected chairperson of a women’s federation, a community-based organization created under a pilot Asian Development Bank (ADB)-financed project to provide microcredit for women to start small businesses and farmers to improve crops. Despite being overawed—“I thought I could not manage the job because I am only average and not so well educated,” she confesses—Ms. Oimatova has seen her group grow from a handful to over 2,500 members and, importantly, become self-sufficient. Like hundreds of other village organizations seeded by the ADB-financed project, this federation—called Bonuvoni Karasu—continues to provide small loans and training for a variety of income-generating activities though the project closed in 2004. Such community-based organizations provide cash and social cohesion in a still-fragile economy with high unemployment and widespread poverty. Tajiks are proud of their rich cultural and historical heritage and, as the soaring national monument in the center of Dushanbe attests, believe they are the true heirs Opposite page: of the great Samanid empire of the 10th century that spanned much of Central Asia. Mir Pirov, a doctor who lives in Guliston, Vahdat But modern history has not smiled upon the country and independence, usually a district: He now earns coming-of-age milestone, turned a stable life upside down for Ms. Oimatova, a primary far more income from schoolteacher married to a college instructor and a mother of seven—and most of her farming than medicine. 7 million compatriots. 92//93 “Many families, including mine, were starving and we lived off boiled alfalfa soup and mulberries” The severance of lifelines with Moscow, engine of the Soviet $3.2 million grant from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, economic behemoth, saw the slowing down or closure of state- which was set up to explore innovative ways of helping poor run industrial enterprises and collective farms in all the former people. republics. Jobs evaporated. Social services eroded. With the Tajikistan Government as partner, ADB decided that a In the political vacuum, civil war broke out between the Soviet- major part of the experiment would be to use nongovernment backed secular government and forces controlled by radical organizations (NGOs) to implement the project. This would Islamists. The conflict claimed up to 50,000 lives in 1992. encourage the development of civil society as Tajikistan made a Hearing from neighbors in Karasu that young women were wobbly transition from a command to a market economy. being abducted, Ms. Oimatova fled with her family, which included three daughters, to stay with a relative in the Rasht In the event, ADB selected two international NGOs with Valley. “We became refugees, leaving everything behind,” she markedly different backgrounds. The lead role was allocated recalls. Her husband went to the Kyrgyz Republic to try his luck to the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) which, besides contributing as a trader. $300,000 to the project, had nearly a decade of experience in Tajikistan and a staff of 3,000 people on the ground. AKF is Ms. Oimatova did return home, but the next decade was largely headed by the Aga Khan, the Paris-based spiritual leader of the a hand-to-mouth existence based on the land. “We grew apples Ismaeli Muslims, a moderate sect that promotes education and and strawberries and produced milk, which we sold or bartered women’s rights. for other items,” she says, her careworn face a chart of her experiences. The second NGO was CARE International, which was began as an American humanitarian agency after the World War II and is It was against this backdrop in 2002 that ADB launched the now an international confederation working in 66 countries with Tajikistan Rural Poverty Reduction Project, financed by a headquarters in Geneva. CARE opened its office in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe in 1994 and had a staff of 200 by 2002. Right: The donkey is a common mode of transport in rural Tajikistan. Opposite page: Youths at Elok village in the Rasht Valley. Each NGO had its own approach and this was welcomed by Kishwar Abdulalishoev, general manager of AKF’s Mountain ADB. “There are many pathways out of poverty, and the whole Societies Development Support Program, was one of many from idea was to try out different ways of ensuring sustainable rural Gorno-Badakhshan who had been studying in Dushanbe and livelihood through community participation,” says Lourdes returned home after conflict broke out. He has good reason to Adriano, an ADB Senior Rural Development Economist who recall the food shortages. administered the project in its later stages. “The NGOs were given flexibility in implementing the project innovatively.” “During the war, the roads from Osh (in the Kyrgyz Republic) and Dushanbe were blocked by opposing troops, so nothing It was the first time the Tajikistan Government had worked could come into our villages. Many families, including mine, with NGOs in an ADB-supported project, as well as the first were starving and we lived for months off boiled alfalfa (animal time the NGOs were partnering ADB. It was to prove, as they fodder) soup and dried tut (mulberries),” he says. say, a “learning experience” for all parties. In the context of development effectiveness, the relationships, especially those In a joint effort with the Government and the international between the Government and the NGOs, were to be almost as donor community, AKF brought in food by trucks from Osh and important as the impact of their work. distributed it around the province. AKF also initiated agriculture programs that it would later build upon in the ADB-supported AKF had arrived on a humanitarian mission in 1993 to relieve project. It helped the Government transfer state farmlands, famine-like conditions in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous with rights of tenure, to village families for private cultivation. Oblast, the large and sparsely populated eastern province AKF also brought in new wheat varieties and inputs, such as made up almost entirely of the Pamir mountains. The Pamiri fertilizer, which helped increase local food production. tribes who dwell beneath snow-capped peaks and glaciers are ethnically distinct and most are Ismaeli Muslims. They generally After the Government of Tajikistan signed a peace agreement live in extremely simple conditions. with the United Opposition in 1997, it asked AKF to extend 94//95 Right: Valdosheva Jamma, a manager at the Aga Khan Foundation, with members of a microcredit group in Elok village. its operations to the Rasht Valley. This was the base of the government.’ It was even perceived that we were establishing opposition and it was hoped that development would also a parallel government—and so did some of our donors—as strengthen peace-building. we were setting up village organizations as grassroots-level partners for implementation of development projects,” says A cornerstone of AKF’s approach is its village organization Mr. Abdulalishoev. program, which it had implemented elsewhere, including in northern Pakistan. AKF brought it to Tajikistan in 1998. “We supported the villagers to make decisions for the development of their village. It was all very new for the “We had seen an institutional gap at village level because the government, but slowly they saw that we were contributing to chain of government had broken down. Formal organizations peace-building and economic development and they supported like village committees and farmers’ associations were not us.” working as they had no support from the oblast, district, and subdistrict authorities,” says Mr. Abdulalishoev. “So we AKF intended to pilot test the village organization model in encouraged villages to set up their own organizations, elect 14 villages in Gorno-Badakhshan, but demand was so great that leaders, arrange their own funds, and plan and implement they ended up covering 90% of the province’s rural communities activities. We contributed funds to help the poorest of the within 2 years. In 2000, AKF took the bottom-up approach poor.” Interestingly, Mr. Abdulalishoev was also a village to the Rasht Valley and, 2 years later, to Khatlon province. By leader under this program, later obtaining a masters degree in mid-2004, it had introduced the program in 817 villages in Pakistan under an AKF scholarship and joining the foundation’s 18 districts across three major regions. Mountain Societies Development Support Program 7 years ago. Some villages did not wait for AKF to arrive. In the Rasht However, the AKF approach proved sensitive, especially with a Valley village of Zarkamari 3, people heard about the program government long used to a top-down approach.

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