Author Response on the Book Review Roundtable
First of all, I would like to thank all the reviewers for taking the time to read my book and their intriguing comments on its content and to Civil Wars for agreeing to publish this review panel. After Payam Foroughi informed me about the review roundtable in 2017, I started rereading the Origins of the Civil War in Tajikistan, bracing myself for the reviews and anticipating critique on issues I would address in a different form today. I expected criticism for at least three themes and topics: First, I had (and still have) the impression that I did not elaborate the issue of contingency sufficiently and fully, both from the empirical and the theoretical points of view, and in particular the link between agency and contingency in the specific historical constellations (for instance, the rise of field commanders in the early days of the civil war). Second, I should have invested more time and space for discussing masculinities in Soviet and postSoviet Tajikistan, particularly the relevant social imaginaries, the institutional context and importantly the relational aspects of masculinity. Finally, I should have expanded the section on the autobiographical sources and elaborated in greater detail the particularities of the source genre. To some extent, the reviewers mentioned these issues, but highlighted a range of other themes and topics which are at the least as relevant and important as the ones I have anticipated. Parviz Mullojonov kindly shares his first-hand knowledge on the origins of the conflict and reminds us of the early involvement of Russian special forces, in particular Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), supporting the militias from Kulob as early as June 1992. Based on a few autobiographical accounts, I have referred to their involvement (p. 291f.) but should have consulted a broader range of sources documenting the Russian military involvement that might have tipped the military balance in favour of the ‘People’s Front’ already in the Summer of 1992. Importantly, Mullojonov raises a topic I have indeed largely ignored, i.e. that of ‘hybrid warfare’ and the Russian media’s role in undermining public support for the interim government in Dushanbe between May and September 1992. My ignorance on this issue is to some extent related to the primary sources I have consulted, but Mullojonov addresses here a highly relevant question for future research.