Tajikistan, 1992 — rebel coup attempt

Event Summary

The dataset records an event coded as an attempted rebel coupi in Tajikistan on 25 October 1992 during the violent early phase of the Tajikistani Civil War. Tajikistan, newly independent after the Soviet collapse, had descended into conflict in 1992 as opposition forces, a coalition of democratic, Islamic, and regional factions, challenged the old communist establishment. President Rahmon Nabiyev, elected in disputed 1991 balloting, had been seized by opposition demonstrators and forced at gunpoint to resign in September 1992, leaving the acting president Akbarsho Iskandarov heading a shaky coalition government that exercised little real control as rival militias fought vicious battles.

In this atmosphere of collapsing authority and factional warfare, an armed action in late October 1992, an attempt by one of the contending forces to seize power in the capital, formed part of the escalating struggle for control of Dushanbe. The chaos deepened through the autumn; Iskandarov's coalition resigned in November, and by December pro communist forces, backed by Russia and Uzbekistan, captured the capital and installed Emomali Rahmon, who would rule Tajikistan for decades as the civil war ground on until 1997.