Sangak Safarov

Gold-toothed Sangak Safarov has eight children and, at 65, is waiting for the birth of his ninth. He started late because he spent most of his adult life in prison. And he has, by his own estimate, 8,000 fighters at his command, perhaps the decisive force in the civil warfare afflicting the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan. Tajikistan has a government elected by its Parliament; it has an Interior Ministry and a Security Ministry and mayors.

Gold-toothed Sangak Safarov has eight children and, at 65, is waiting for the birth of his ninth. He started late because he spent most of his adult life in prison. And he has, by his own estimate, 8,000 fighters at his command, perhaps the decisive force in the civil warfare afflicting the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan. Tajikistan has a government elected by its Parliament; it has an Interior Ministry and a Security Ministry and mayors.

Two warlords in Tajikistan killed each other in a shootout that also left up to 15 bodyguards dead, a journalist quoted military officers as saying Tuesday. The warlords, vying for power within the Tajik Popular Front, died in a hail of bullets after an argument in the southern region of Kurgan-Tyube, the journalist said.

Two years after she was widowed and uprooted by war, Saipocho Kholikova returned here from a refugee camp and stood in the vine-covered portico of her home. Backed by escorts from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, she confronted a warrior of the victorious Kulyabi clan who had moved into the four-room house. "They opened the gate and told him I am back and I would live here," Kholikova recalled, sitting cross-legged on the matted floor of her vacant living room.