Follow-up

If you want to read that Senator Lugar article you will need to cut and paste it into your address bar. it's not a real link I guess.
Anyway someone asked me what are the Iranians and Russians doing to influence people here. The Russian media is a powerful and ubiquitous force here. My view is that the Russian media is biased against the U.S. and the West and reports stories accordingly. A prime example was the Georgia/Russia war this past summer. They also play the same game as the U.S. does by giving money strategically to countries they see as in the "sphere of influence." Read up about what happened with Manas AFB in Kyrgyzstan. It's all just conjecture with a lot of truth thrown in.
Like Senator Lugar said the Iranians are opening more cultural centers. But I haven't seen any of these yet. But their language and culture are similar to Tajikistan. Three countries, Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan have their primary language as Farsi (Persian).
There are a lot more things going on that I don't know about and don't have time to learn about. I just read a little bit here and there. If I had more time I could write a more complete response full of examples that are well researched.
But the feeling here is- Khujand is becoming more "Islamic" so maybe Iran is winning out over Russia who is Christian and more secular. The U.S. is a distant third.