Kort Michael. Central Asian Republics
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132 ■ CENTRAL ASIAN REPUBLICS
Russia’s international power was only a shadow of what the former Soviet
Union had known. What is more surprising was that Uzbekistan became
a security partner of the United States. That partnership grew out of the
conquest of most of Afghanistan by the Taliban. After coming to power
in the mid-1990s, the Taliban gave refuge to Osama bin Laden and his
terrorist organization al-Qaeda. When al-Qaeda terrorists destroyed the
World Trade Center in September 2001, the United States concluded
that in order to destroy al-Qaeda it had to first drive the Taliban from
power. That required military bases near Afghanistan, and one of the best
locations available was southern Uzbekistan, which borders northern
Afghanistan. Soon U.S. troops were in Uzbekistan. In late 2001, an
American military assault, assisted by local Afghans, drove the Taliban
from power. But the United States was unable to completely destroy
either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, which meant it still needed bases in
Uzbekistan to continue the hunt. As of early 2002, the United States had
Uzbekistan has provided assistance to the United States in its effort to wipe out
terrorists based in Afghanistan. In March 2002 Presidents Islam Karimov and
George W. Bush shook hands in the White House after signing agreements deal-
ing with a variety of issues.
(AI Photo, Uzbekistan)
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UZBEKISTAN ■ 133
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THE WORLD’S MOST RIDICULOUS BORDERS
“People are trapped. They cannot travel, cannot trade, cannot create
business,” a human rights activist in Bishkek told a Western journalist in
May 2002. She was referring to people in the Fergana Valley who live in
patches of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan that are completely
surrounded by foreign territory. These enclaves are the result of borders
drawn during the Soviet era. They had little practical meaning at the
time because all of Central Asia belonged to one country. But when the
Soviet regime fell, what had been lines on a Soviet map became inter-
national borders. Residents who routinely had traveled from village to
village on business or for personal reasons suddenly had to stop for hours
at border posts, waiting to get their visas stamped or to pay bribes to
cross from one country into another. Daily life was badly disrupted, and
people, unable to do business or visit friends and family, suffered finan-
cially and personally. Matters worsened after 1999, when Uzbekistan
tightened its border controls after bombings in Tashkent that were
blamed on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Barbed-wire fences cut
villages off from schools, markets, and other vital resources. Irrigation
channels were cut or diverted, denying people access to vital sources of
water. Some of the fences ran right through the center of villages.
Two of the major Fergana Valley enclaves belong to Uzbekistan,
both surrounded by Kyrgyz territory. Sokh, the largest, has an area of
about 325 square miles and a population of about 43,000. Virtually sur-
rounded by barbed wire, it is about 25 miles (40 km) from Uzbekistan
proper. Complicating matters even more, ethnic Tajiks make up 99 per-
cent of its population. Not far to the east is Shakhimardan, another
Uzbek enclave. Its population is 91 percent Tajik. West of Sokh, also sur-
rounded by Kyrgyz territory, is the Vorukh enclave, which belongs to
Tajikistan. It has a population, almost all Tajik, of 25,000. The remain-
ing smaller enclaves include a Kyrgyz village surrounded by Uzbek ter-
ritory, two specks of Uzbek territory in Kyrgyzstan, and two tiny pieces
of Tajikistan, one in Uzbekistan and the other in Kyrgyzstan.
The Fergana Valley borders make life difficult even for people who
do not live in the enclaves. Before 1991, it took about an hour to travel
between the southern Kyrgyz cities of Osh and Jalalabad. Now it takes
four hours, either via the direct route through Uzbek territory and
border checkpoints or via winding side roads. Given the political reali-
ties of the region, any possible solution to these problems lies years in
the future.
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1,500 troops deployed at a former Soviet air base in southern Uzbekistan.
In March of that year, Uzbekistan and the United States signed a military
agreement. The United States pledged its support for Uzbekistan’s secu-
rity and territorial integrity and agreed to aid Uzbekistan in carrying out
internal reforms, including political reforms that would promote democ-
racy. In 2002, that aid was $160 million, most of which was going to train
and equip Uzbek police and soldiers. This aid could be expected to help
the Uzbeks combat the drug trade and secure their borders against Islamic
militants. Aid from the United States, however, was very unlikely to
change the dictatorial nature of the Karimov regime.
NOTES
p. 114 “ ‘We travel not for trafficking alone:...’” Quoted in Calum MacLeod and
Bradley Mayhew, Uzbekistan: The Golden Road to Samarkand. (Hong Kong:
Odyssey Publications, 1999), p. 149.
p. 114 “ ‘the noblest public square in the world.’ ” Quoted in Michael Mewshaw,
“Uzbekistan’s Golden City,” The New York Times Magazine, March 3, 1996,
p. 27.
p. 119 “ ‘We have not had enough water for three years...’”Quoted in Elena
Dubrovskaya, “Agricultural Crisis Prompts Uzbek Officials to Revive Interest
in Plan to Divert Siberian Rivers.” 1 July 2002. Eurasianet. Available on-line.
URL: http://www. eurasianet.org/departments/environment/articles/eav052002.
shtml Downloaded July 1, 2002, p. 1.
p. 125 “ ‘order and internal peace.’ ” Quoted in The Jamestown Foundation Monitor,
January 13, 2000.
p. 125 “‘democracy, Uzbek style.’” Quoted in The Boston Globe, November 6, 2001,
p. A3.
p. 125 “ ‘there is no possibility for any free or fair vote, . . .’ ” The Boston Globe,
November 6, 2001, p. A3.
p. 127 “ ‘All we hear nowadays is Timur, Timur, Timur...’”Quoted in “Uzbek
Despot Labeled a Hero.” www.th-record.com1998/01/1-5-98/tamerl.htm
Downloaded October 17, 2002.
p. 127 “‘Uzbekistan has plenty of grat composers of its own.’” Igor Rotar, Quoted in
“Myths and Prejudice Across the FSU,” Russia and Eurasia Review (The
Jamestown Foundation, December 17, 2002), p. 3.
p. 129 “‘Families live with their heads down . . .’” Quoted in Jennifer Balfour, “The
Crisis Facing Uzbek Youth Today,” April 4, 2001. Eurasianet. Available on-
line. URL:http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav040401.
shtml Downloaded July 1, 2002, p. 2.
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UZBEKISTAN ■ 135
pp. 129–130 “ ‘I’m glad Karimov is locking these Wahhabis up....’” Quoted in
Mathew Brzezinski, “Whatever It Takes,” The New York Times Sunday Maga-
zine, December 16, 2001, p.76.
p. 131 “ ‘glacially slow Richard Pomfret,’ ” “Recent Economic Reforms in Uzbek-
istan. Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, Weekly Briefing, September 26, 2001.
Available on-line. URL:http://www.cornellcaspian.com/analyst/010926_
H1htm. Downloaded October 18, 2002.
p. 133 “ ‘People are trapped. They cannot travel,...’” Quoted in The New York
Times, May 21, 2002, p. A8.
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136
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Turkmenistan is a poverty-stricken country with a tyrannical govern-
ment. It also has natural resources that have the potential to make it rich.
Made up largely of vast, inhospitable deserts, during the Soviet era it
attracted little outside attention. That indifference turned to interest
when the Soviet Union collapsed and Turkmenistan became an inde-
pendent country in the waning days of 1991. Suddenly the world’s fifth-
largest natural gas reserves under Turkmenistan’s desert sands and
beneath the waters of its share of the Caspian Sea were free from
Moscow’s control and potentially open to development by energy com-
panies from the industrialized world. Significant oil reserves further
enhanced Turkmenistan’s potential importance to foreign investors and
governments. As the last decade of the 20th century began, Turk-
menistan’s enormous energy resources had made the country impossible
to ignore the country any longer.
A Country Map
Turkmenistan, the southern-most of the former Soviet republics, covers
an area of 188,500 square miles (488,100 sq km), about the size of Cal-
ifornia and South Carolina combined. Like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan
looks a bit like a tank, only less than one-fifth the size of its giant
northern neighbor and facing in the opposite direction, its turret
pointed toward the east. Turkmenistan’s longest border is a 1,007-mile
9
TURKMENISTAN
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TURKMENISTAN ■ 137
(1,621-km) frontier with Uzbekistan to the north and northeast. A
235-mile border in the northwest separates Turkmenistan from Kaza-
khstan. Turkmenistan has a 616-mile (992-km) border with Iran to the
southwest and a 462-mile (744-km) border with Afghanistan to the
southeast. Due west is Turkmenistan’s 1,098-mile (1,768-km) Caspian
Sea coastline. Part of that coastline loops around Garabogaz Bay, a
7,000-square mile (18,100-sq km) inlet that really is the world’s largest
lagoon. The bay is almost completely cut off from the main body of the
Caspian Sea by a sliver of land about 40 miles long, split in two by a
narrow strait that in some places is only about 1,600 feet wide. Its shal-
low waters are much saltier than those of the Caspian Sea and almost
as salty as the ocean. Turkmenbashi (formerly Krasnovodsk), the coun-
try’s main port, is on a peninsula just south of the bay. The Garagum
(Black Sands) Desert, where shifting winds create sand mountains more
than 60 feet high and several miles in length, covers about 80 percent
of the country. The Garagum and other desert regions in Turkmenistan
are expanding, as are deserts elsewhere in Central Asia. The main relief
from Turkmenistan’s desert landscape is in the south, where the
Köpetdag mountains form a natural border with Iran. The mountains
stand on shifting plates in the earth’s crust that make the region an
earthquake zone. In 1948, a powerful earthquake demolished Ashgabat
(population 525,000) and killed more than 100,000 people. There are
smaller mountains along Turkmenistan’s border with Kazakhstan. Most
of the population lives in oasis settlements near the country’s few
sources of freshwater.
The Amu Darya is Turkmenistan’s most important river. It enters
the eastern part of the country from Afghanistan, becomes part of the
Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan border, and then flows completely into
Uzbekistan along its course toward the Aral Sea. The Murgap River, a
much smaller stream, enters southeastern Turkmenistan from Afghan-
istan and flows northward until it disappears into the country’s desert
sands. The Mugap’s waters fill the Sary Yazy, the largest of the country’s
11 reservoirs. Turkmenistan’s other major waterway is the Soviet-built
Garagum Canal, which runs from the Amu Darya for 900 miles (1,448
km) across the desert as it irrigates the country’s enormous cotton fields.
Along the way the canal loses about half its water. Leakage from the
Garagum and other canals has created more than 2 million acres of
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useless salt marshes in Turkmenistan’s deserts. Meanwhile the Aral
Sea to the north has been starved of water, and only about 3 percent of
the country’s land is actually irrigated. The most visible product of
wasteful irrigation is Lake Saryqamysh in the north along the border
with Uzbekistan. Most of the lake, formed by agricultural water runoff
that collected in a subsea-level desert depression, is in Turkmenistan.
Almost all of the fish living in its polluted waters are unfit for human
consumption.
The disastrous consequences of the Soviet-era irrigation projects have
not dissuaded President Niyazov from planning an even larger scheme: a
plan to create a 1,540-square-mile (4,000-sq. km) sea in the middle of the
Garagum Desert with the goal of meeting Turkmenistan’s growing water
requirements for the next 50 years. Niyazov approved the project in 2000
at a projected cost of $4.5 billion and immediately allocated $37.8 mil-
lion for 100 bulldozers and 160 earth excavators to be bought in Japan.
The project is to be funded by a specially formed Lake of the Golden
Century Organization.
CLIMATE
Most of Turkmenistan has a subtropical desert climate. Summers are long
and very hot, with temperatures in the Garagum Desert often reaching
122°F (50°C) during the day. Winters are short and much cooler. Most of
Turkmenistan gets barely three inches (80 mm) of rain per year with the
exception of the mountain areas in the south, where average annual rain-
fall is between 11 and 12 inches (300 mm).
NATURAL RESOURCES
Turkmenistan has enormous natural gas deposits, probably the fifth
largest in the world. It also has significant oil deposits. Half of the coun-
try’s irrigated land is devoted to producing cotton, which has made
Turkmenistan the world’s 10th-largest cotton producer. Like Uzbek-
istan, Turkmenistan faces a critical shortage of water. Much of its soil
and underground water has been polluted by pesticides and agricultural
chemicals as well as by increased salt levels caused by poor irrigation
methods.
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TURKMENISTAN ■ 139
People
Turkmenistan’s population as of mid-2001 was about 4.6 million and was
growing at the rate of about 1.85 percent per year. Ethnic Turkmen make
up about 77 percent of the population. The main minority groups are
Uzbeks (9.2 percent), Russians (6.7 percent), and Kazakhs (2 percent).
About 89 percent of the population are Sunni Muslims and about 9 per-
cent are Eastern Orthodox Christians. One of the few positive legacies of
the Soviet era is a literacy rate of 98 percent: 99 percent for men and 97
percent for women. About 650,000 Turkmen, the descendants of people
who fled Soviet collectivization, live in Afghanistan, and about 1 million
live in northern Iran.
CULTURE AND DAILY LIFE
There are few places in Turkmenistan where the people can escape the
endless din of propaganda glorifying Saparmurat Niyazov, the country’s
dictator. The goal of that campaign is to turn Niyazov, a man whose ego
far exceeds his talents, into the greatest hero of the Turkmen people. One
man who never needed propaganda to become a genuine national icon
was Feragi Magtymguly, the national poet of the Turkmen and their most
honored literary figure. Magtymguly probably was born in 1733 and died
around 1790. His poems were written in simple language and combined
traditional Turkmen proverbs and home-spun wisdom with Islamic
imagery. Among his themes was Turkmen unity and nationalism, which
resonated powerfully at a time of destructive inter-clan warfare. His
poetry was beautifully suited to traditional Turkmen music, and many
poems became favorites with folk singers who accompanied themselves
with a two-stringed instrument called the dutar. Magtymguly and his
poems remain as popular today as ever with the Turkmen people, who
continue to call him “Magtymguly, Bestower of Happiness.”
Many old customs are alive and well in Turkmenistan. The elderly are
still deeply respected, and youngest sons are expected to stay at home to
care for their parents when they reach old age. More Turkmen, both men
and women, continue to wear traditional clothing on a daily basis than
do people in other Central Asian countries. The male outfit consists of
baggy pants stuffed into high boots, heavy silk jackets, and shaggy wool
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hats. Women wear colorful ankle-length silk dresses over silk trousers.
Many marriages are still arranged. Beautiful handmade Turkmen rugs are
often still an important part of a bride’s dowry. Notwithstanding the
country’s constitution, which declares that men and women have equal
rights, Turkmen tradition governs most marriages, leaving men with the
power to make most decisions. Fathers marry off their daughters in order
of their age.
While Turkmen eat mutton and other meats, their diet includes many
vegetarian dishes, including a meatless plov made with dried fruit. Other
traditional foods included cornmeal pancakes, flat bread, and a variety of
porridges made with various ingredients.
Politics and Government
The story of Turkmenistan’s political life since 1991 is the story of the
evolution of President Saparmurat Niyazov’s personal dictatorship. Born
Ashgabat in the year 2000 was still a city where many of the old ways survived.
This vendor, in his traditional shaggy wool hat and silk jacket, is selling his
wares in a local market.
(AP/Wide World Photos/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
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TURKMENISTAN ■ 141
in 1940 and orphaned as a young child, Niyazov rose to leader of the
Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR during the Soviet era. He won the
post of president in October 1990 in an election in which, running unop-
posed, he received 98.3 percent of the vote. He soon pushed aside all
potential rivals, driving most of them into exile, and established a bru-
tally repressive personal dictatorship. Niyazov was reelected president to
a five-year term in 1992 with a reported 99.5 percent of the vote in
another election where he appeared alone on the ballot. In a referendum
two years later, 99.9 percent of the voters approved extending Niyazov’s
term by five years to 2002. Electoral support, however, did not satisfy him:
In 1999 he had himself declared president for life, the only politician in
Central Asia to take that step. That presumably would allow him to rule
well into the next century. He told his countrymen that this will be the
“Golden Century of the Turkmen.”
Turkmenistan has a parliament, but it is a legislature without any
power that meets solely to approve Niyazov’s decisions. People brave
enough to dissent often disappear without a trace or end up in prisons and
labor camps. Niyazov’s political opponents must go into foreign exile in
order to survive. Niyazov has periodically removed officials from office
without cause and purged government agencies in order to prevent any-
one from gaining enough strength to challenge his rule. In 2002 he thor-
oughly purged his security apparatus from the top down, allegedly for
corruption. The main reason for the purge almost certainly was a series of
defections by former top officials, all of whom wisely chose to live abroad.
While nobody inside Turkmenistan dared complain or criticize Niya-
zov’s exercises in self-glorification, Turkmen living outside the country
eventually began speaking up.
In June 2002, several of them met in Vienna, Austria, in an attempt
to bring the situation in Turkmenistan to the attention of the interna-
tional community. It was the first time a group of exiled Turkmen dissi-
dents had gotten together to speak to an international audience. The
group had some credibility because it included two former foreign minis-
ters, one of whom had broken with Niyazov in late 2001. In what surely
was an understatement the group declared. “The cult of personality sur-
rounding him [Niyazov] has reached grotesque proportions.” Shirali Nur-
muradov, a Turkmen poet living in exile in Sweden, described the
situation more graphically. “You know, there is a cult, but no personality,”
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