Gorno-Badakhshan, officially the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region in eastern Tajikistan, in the Pamir Mountains. It makes up nearly forty-five percent of the country's land area, but only two percent of its population. Name The official English name of the autonomous region is the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region. The name "Badakhshan" (; ) is derived from the Sasanian title or . "Gorno-Badakhshan" literally means "mountainous Badakhshan" and is derived from the Russian name of the autonomous region, . The Russian abbreviation "GBAO" is also commonly used in English-language publications by national and international bodies such as the government of Tajikistan and the United Nations. History Prior to 1895, several semi-self governing statelets, including Darwaz, Shughnun-Rushan and Wakhan, ruled over the territories that are today a part of Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in Tajikistan and Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan. The territory was claimed by the Chinese and Russian empires, as well as the Emirate of Afghanistan. The Chinese claimed control over the entire Pamir Mountains. In the 1890s, the Chinese, Russian, and Afghan governments signed a series of agreements which divided Badakhshan, but China nonetheless continued to contest these borders. The Soviet government established Gorno-Badakhshan in January 1925 as an autonomous republic, and later in 1929 as an autonomous oblast, of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik SSR). During the 1950s, the native inhabitants of Gorno-Badakhshan, mostly ethnic Pamiris, were forcibly relocated to southwestern Tajikistan. Gorno-Badakhshan absorbed some of the territory of the Gharm Oblast when that territory was dissolved in 1955. When the Tajik Civil War broke out in 1992, the local government in Gorno-Badakhshan declared independence from Tajikistan. During the civil war, many Pamiris were targeted for killings by rival groups and Gorno-Badakhshan became a bastion of the opposition. The Gorno-Badakhshan government later backed down from its calls for independence. In 2011, Tajikistan ratified a 1999 treaty to cede of land in the Pamir Mountains to the People's Republic of China (PRC), ending a 130-year-old border dispute and China's claims to over of Tajik territory. However, the government of the Republic of China (ROC) based in Taipei does not recognize this treaty and continues to claim the territory, as reflected in its official maps. A number of violent clashes and demonstrations have occurred in the region since the end of the civil war, with major incidences of civil unrest in 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, and 2022. Clashes