TAJIK ISMAILIS</I> - 2004-08-05

THE RECENT DEATH of Ronald Reagan led many in the West to celebrate once again the fall of the Soviet Union 13 years ago. But in Khorog, a town of around 25,000 on the Tajik-Afghan border, that historic event is remembered with less happy feelings. Abandoned cranes, half-finished cement buildings and the hulls of Soviet tanks all hark back to an era when subsidies ran rich to this distant corner of Moscow's empire. Over lunch, Zebo, a local university student, frankly describes what holds up the economy: 'Without the Aga Khan we would all be dead. There would be nothing to eat.'