Operation Flashpoint_Red River [PC] [ProfessorX]

The year is 2013 and Tajikistan will be your home for the next few weeks. It is called the crossroads of Central Asia for a very good reason, now it’s time to go back to school! Tajikistan is a landlocked country that shares borders with Uzbekistan, China and Afghanistan, with Pakistan adjacent to its south. Over 90% of this country is mountains, mainly the Pamir range, part of the “Roof of the World”. Our operations will take place on and around the Vakhsh River, better known as the Red River. The capital city is Dushanbe and its two main exports are aluminium and cotton. The indigenous population are the Tajiks, a Persian speaking people, with a culture and history tied into Afghanistan and Iran. Its colourful history has seen it often conquered but never occupied. It belonged to the Persian Empire until the 4th century BC, when Alexander the Great claimed it for the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. Over the next two millennia, it passed between the Scythian Tukharas, Chinese, Arabs, Samanids and the Mongols (latterly as part of the Emirate of Bukhara). In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks waged a bloody war for four years, persecuting the religious and closing down mosques, synagogues and churches across the country. This led to the creation of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in 1929, which remained until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. Tajikistan declared its independence and fell almost immediately into a bitter civil war for seven years. Democratic elections were finally held in 1999 when President Emomali Rahmon was elected.