WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- While mountains and brutal winter weather seem to go together, the frigid cold front that has settled over Central Asia is causing unparalleled misery in two of the region's poorest nations, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

While Afghanistan has received extensive international press on its population's sufferings in the region's worst weather in 2-1/2 decades, Tajikistan, nestled among the Pamir and Tien Shan mountain ranges, is in equally dire straits but is receiving much less media coverage. Temperatures have fallen in some places to -31 F.

Of all the former Soviet "stans," Tajikistan suffered the most following the Soviet collapse in 1991. The following year, Tajikistan descended into a brutal civil war. When it ended five years later with a U.N.-brokered agreement, Tajik civil strife had claimed more than 50,000 lives and more than one-tenth of the population had fled the country. The country's slow recovery means that two-thirds of Tajikistan's 6 million people are estimated to live below the poverty line.

What is adding to the country's misery is its legacy of Soviet-era "mega" projects, in this case the Nurek hydroelectric facility on the Vakhsh River. Nurek, which supplies 70 percent of Tajikistan's power, was begun in 1961 and completed 19 years later on a deep gorge on the Vakhsh River with nine turbines, producing 3 gigawatts of the country's 4 gigawatt hydroelectric output. Nurek's reservoir covers 38 square miles and is more than 40 miles long. Nurek is now nearly idle because its Toktogul water reservoir is down to a critical level as rivers feeding it freeze over. While estimates vary, local sources say Nurek's 20-foot-deep reservoir reserves are shrinking 1-3 feet per day, which at some point will force the closure of the hydroelectric power plant. Runoff from melting snow to replenish Nurek's reservoirs is not expected until March or April.

Further increasing the country's misery, energy imports from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are down because they need energy for their own consumption. Tajikistan's Energy Ministry complains that Uzbekistan cut natural gas supplies to Tajikistan on Jan. 24 over payment disputes and subsequently suspended electric power exports to Tajikistan on Feb. 4, causing Turkmenistan to assist Tajikistan by doubling its export of electricity to 7 million kWh. On Feb. 10, however, Turkmenistan itself suffered from a severe cold front and reduced exports to its usual rate of 3.5 million kWh. On Jan. 24, during a meeting in Moscow, Tajik Prime Minister Akil Akilov asked Kyrgyz Prime Minister Igor Chudinov to increase electrical supplies to Tajikistan, but now Kyrgyzstan has completely halted exports of electricity to Tajikistan. Chudinov explained Bishkek's decision by noting that beginning in February, Kyrgyzstan was to supply 11 million kWh of electricity daily to Tajikistan, while in April-May Tajikistan in turn was to supply 55 million kWh of electricity to Kyrgyzstan, but as Tajikistan refused to comply with its contractual commitments, Kyrgyzstan stopped supplying electricity entirely.