Sovereignty as a Resource: Performing Securitised Borders in Tajikistan’s Pamirs

This paper scrutinises the translation of sovereignty into daily actions at the border. The Soviet Union established a heavily securitised and sealed border, which was perpetuated in post-Soviet, civil war-stricken Tajikistan by assigning the task to the Russian Federation’s border forces. After having taken over the task of guarding the border, the slowly recovering post-conflict state tried hard to maintain its own border control. Drawing on interviews with borderland people, this article discusses the convergence of Tajikistan’s strong claim but weak support for sovereignty, with the daily life of the borderland people. It will show how – given the Pamirs’ special status as a border district – far-reaching sovereign authority of state agents, aiming to provide security at the border, has been translated into arbitrary actions ensuring individual benefits and has been hidden by intransparency. The article argues that the lack of adequate support from the central government encourages state representatives at the border to reinterpret the sovereign power assigned to them in order to serve their own individual benefits and purposes. Instead of being used to maintain the state territory, the sovereignty’s power is diverted to serve individual interests, in the end serving to destabilize the border, the opposite of the intended purpose.