Abstract
The human toll of the Tajik civil war is not yet fully known. In the short period of fighting between the summer of 1992 and the spring of 1993, up to 50,000 may have died and 500,000 fled to neighbouring Afghanistan or became internally displaced. One undisputed factor is the war's heavy toll on the lives of women. In just one war-torn southern region, more than 20,000 households are now headed by women. Many lost their husbands to war, others to the crime that is now endemic in Tajikistan.
Tajikistan is a patriarchal society in which women living without men are accorded little respect. When they marry, Tajik women marry into their husband's families, moving in to live with the in-laws. The death of their husbands makes them, in a sense, internally displaced persons.