It is 20 years since Tajikistan's 5-year-long civil war came to an end, having claimed between 50,000 and 100,000 lives. Vahdat Township, some 25 kilometers east of Dushanbe, hosted official celebratory events on June 27 that included a speech by President Emomali Rahmon and a concert.
A decision on holding the main events dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the National Unity Day of Tajikistan in Vahdat Township was made in January this year.
President Emomali Rahmon participated in the celebrations in Vahdat Township and congratulated Tajikistanis on this holiday.
Representatives of cities and districts of the country, Tajik intelligentsia, diplomatic missions active in the country as well as guests from other countries have reportedly been invited to participate in the celebrations in Vahdat Township.
While, in Vahdat, President Rahmon participated in an official opening of a number of new facilities, including a new school, which will accommodate 1,240 pupils.
The main celebrations took place at a new stadium of Vahdat. Construction of the stadium began in 2014 and 50 million somoni were reportedly spent for construction of it.
Civil war broke out in May 1992. Half a million people, nearly one-tenth of Tajikistan’s population at the time, had lost their homes. More than 100,000 citizens of the country had fled to Afghanistan.
The United Nations arranged peace talks; appointed a special representative for Tajikistan, Ramiro Piriz-Ballon, to push these talks forward; and created the UN Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UMOT), military observers sent to monitor the warring factions’ compliance — or more often record their noncompliance — in respecting agreements reached at the peace talks.
For the purposes of achieving peace and national accord in Tajikistan and overcoming the consequences of the civil war, inter-Tajik talks on national reconciliation were conducted from April 1994 to 1997 under the auspices of the United Nations.
Protocols that were agreed and signed in the course of eight rounds of talks between delegations of the Government of Tajikistan and the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), six meetings between the President of Tajikistan and the UTO leader, and also three rounds of consultations between the delegations of the sides in Almaty, Ashgabat, Bishkek, Islamabad, Kabul, Mashhad (Iran), Moscow, Tehran and Khusdeh (Afghanistan) constituted the General Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and National Accord in Tajikistan.
The confronting sides signed the General Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and National Accord in Tajikistan in Moscow twenty ago, on June 27, 1997.
