Sandwiched between Afghanistan, China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, tiny Tajikistan (pop. 5.9 million) once ranked as the poorest republic in the former Soviet Union. Today it claims the distinction of having the bloodiest civil war (50,000 casualties and 500,000 refugees) and the most brutally repressive regime of the former Soviet republics. PNS associate editor Andrew Meier, currently on an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship to write about Russia's "Near Abroad," recently spent a month in Tajikistan, described by the Committee to Project Journalists as the most dangerous spot for a reporter in the world.

DUSHANBE -- To be Tajik these days is to be in limbo -- between Communism and Islam, Asia and the West, reform and repression. "We are no longer living," one retired engineer in Dushanbe said on his way to the local tea-house for his daily meal of tea and rice. "In fact, we can barely breathe."

After five years of civil war the body count in this tiny Central Asian state of Tajikistan rivals, if not exceeds, that of the better-known Chechnya. Of all the former Soviet republics, none has fallen farther.

Five years after gaining independence from the U.S.S.R., the neo-Communist regime of President Imomali Rakhmonov controls little more than the capital Dushanbe. A work force that once harvested the country's vast cotton fields now survives as hunter-gatherers. Meanwhile, a hardened core of a few hundred Islamic warriors wages fierce skirmishes in outlying villages in a relentless drive to overthrow the Rakhmonov regime.

The conflict -- depicted as "ethnic" by the West -- is in fact regional. It pits the north, developed by Moscow during Soviet rule, against the impoverished south and valley regions. Both sides have committed atrocities. But the war's worst are occurring in the rural south, where the Soviet-backed Popular Front torched village after village of Gharmis and Pamiris living in mud-brick villages scattered among the cotton fields. Today most of those villages have been bulldozed beyond recognition.

Except for periodic assassinations in Dushanbe, the heaviest fighting is centered around the remote town of Tavildara at the edge of the Pamir mountains. The regime hangs on, but only in the shadow of Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers which cruise the tree-lined streets of the capital daily.

With blue faux-U.N. patches sewn onto their old Red Army uniforms, 25,000 troops of Russia's 201st Motorized Rifle Division are stationed here as the dominant power in the CIS collective peace-keeping force.

Why, many Western observers wonder, does Moscow care about tiny Tajikistan? Boris Yeltsin offers the answer: its 900-mile border with Afghanistan constitutes, in effect, "Russia's border." Russia cannot afford to see Tajikistan go the way of the militant Islamic ruled Afghanistan.

In the four years since it banished all opposition parties, the Rakhmonov government has earned a reputation as the most repressive in the former USSR. By now, most of the country's dissenters have been silenced -- either by prison terms, exile or assassination. With 41 journalists murdered since the civil war began, Tajikistan ranks as the most dangerous place in the world for reporters, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Following mutinies within its own armed forces in January, the regime faced riots in the country's northern city, Khojent, the power base of the Uzbeks who shared in the Popular Front's 1992 victory. Last year, according to the United Nations, the country set the world record for diphtheria epidemics, with 4,455 cases recorded. The World Bank has been visiting since 1993 but has yet to authorize a loan. Dushanbe has scant heating or hot water. In the villages, there are few of the amenities of civilization, such as working hospitals or schools.

Rakhmonov's regime can, however, claim the symbols of sovereignty. There is a new currency -- the Tajik "rubl" has replaced the Russian "ruble" -- and a new Constitution and Parliament. Tajikistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and even President Clinton's $150 million Central Asian-American Enterprise Fund. But given the bloody birth of the regime, its dependency on Russia and its Central Asian neighbors, sovereignty has yielded little more than a soapbox for the triumphant Popular Front and a treasure-chest for redistributing their war booty.

"The Russians are quite happy with this low intensity conflict," one of the United Nation's 44 military observers here says. "Keeping things on a low boil doesn't cost them much, and it justifies their presence."

U.N. Special Envoy Gerd Merrem reports that the U.N.-sponsored peace talks, stalled last spring in their fifth round, will resume soon. But the last cease-fire signed in July was broken within five hours. An agreement was signed to let the United Nations monitor the plight of 10,000 villagers cut off without aid for months in Tavildara. But so far all efforts to reach the town have been rebuffed.

Until all countries backing the contenders reach a cease-and-desist agreement, the civil war is bound to continue. No one in Dushanbe is willing to predict the outcome.