Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Within the Soviet Union, the country's modern borders were drawn when it was part of Uzbekistan as an autonomous republic before becoming a full-fledged Soviet republic in 1929. On 9 September 1991, Tajikistan became an independent sovereign nation when the Soviet Union disintegrated. A civil war was fought almost immediately after independence, lasting from 1992 to 1997. Since the end of the war, newly established political stability and foreign aid have allowed the country's economy to grow. . . . Tajikistan is a presidential republic consisting of four provinces. Most of Tajikistan's 8.7 million people belong to the Tajik ethnic group, who speak Tajik (a dialect of Persian). Many Tajiks also speak Russian as their second language. While the state is constitutionally secular, Islam is practiced by 98% of the population." [Wikipedia] "Most Tajiks, despite these cultural affinities, are Sunni Muslims, not Shi’ites. Territorially minute though it is, regionalism to the point of state failure plagues Tajikistan: the government in Dushanbe is repeatedly at odds with the barely connected northern part of the country, a boiling cauldron not only of Islamic fundamentalism but also of anti-Tajik, Uzbek activism." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 226]