Garm, Tajikistan

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Garm, (Tajik:Гарм, alternative spellings Harm and Gharm), is a district in the Rasht Valley area of central Tajikistan. The principal city in the district has the same name. Garm was also the name of an oblast (or province) that existed in Tajikistan from the 1920s until 1955. During the 1920s Garm was a hotbed for the Basmachi, the anti-Soviet resistance in Central Asia. In the 1920s, during the reorganization of borders in Central Asia, a Garm oblast was created out of the old Qarategin and Darvaz, districts of Bukhara. The Garm Oblast consisted of much of the Qarategin Valley, as well as the district of Kalai-Khumb. During the 1950s much of the population of Garm was forcibly relocated by the government to western Tajikistan. This population of people was known as the Garmis. In 1955 the Garm oblast was abolished and the land was redistributed to the Gorno-Badakshhan Autonomous Oblast and the Regions under Republican Subordination Oblast. The Garmis continued to have a distinct clan identity in Tajikistan and when civil war broke out in the newly independent country in 1992 many Garmis sided with the Islamic opposition. During the war many Garmis were targeted for massacres. The town of Garm was controlled by the opposition during the later part of the civil war in Tajikistan.