The Handbook of Central Asia: A Comprehensive Survey of the New Republics 9780755619818, 9780755632671, 9781860644290

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To Canzio and Luciana

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Preface

Unlike the Baltic states and those of Caucasians, the five republics of Central Asia have not had to fight for their independence. For their leaders, the decision to dissolve the Soviet Union in December 1991 was a surprise for which they were not prepared. The unilateral decision, taken by the three 'Slavic presidents', had at times been considered an implementation of the advice of Alexander Solzhenitsyn that the Russians sever ties with their southern peripheries, perceived as a turbulent demographic and financial burden. The rupture of the USSR therefore relaunched the core of the Eurasian continent like a destabilised tectonic plate. Having been welded to Russia for 150 years, this region today must overcome more than a century of colonisation and detach itself from the effects of Muscovite centralisation, both its positive consequences (the receipt of large subsidies) and in its negative ones (development according to Russian interests). Located in one of the world's most strategic zones, between Russia, China and a troubled Middle East, Central Asia relies on its substantial human and natural resources in the renegotiation of its geopolitical status. Following decades of near oblivion, the heart of this mythical continent becomes, once again, a region coveted both by its larger neighbours and major world powers. FIVE NEW STATES IN SEARCH OF AN IDENTITY The highly contradictory nature of the Soviet legacy is highlighted by the delineation of these states which have never enjoyed an autonomous existence. Initially devised in order to separate the populations, amongst which the outbreak of a pan-Islamic rebellion was feared, the partition into republics had paradoxical effects. The decision to create these distinct national entities may be proposed as one of Stalin's rare lasting successes, but it is one which has undergone much harsh criticism. After benefiting from the Soviet system (the establishment of universities, academies of science, cultural and local linguistic institutions, and the formation of national elites), there is little questioning today of the legitimacy of these five resulting nation-states. Political wishes aside, their formation fixed ancient cultural and linguistic distinctions: between the nomads of the steppes (Kazakstan), of the desert (Turkmenistan) and of the mountains (Kyrgyzstan), and the sedentary Turkic (Uzbekistan) and Persian speakers (Tajikistan). Nevertheless, conflicts prevail. A closer look at the borders reveals the existence of points of tension. Since 1990, there has been an increase in occurrences of violence over water distribution, a vital resource in a desert environment, or over arable land. The most complex case concerns the autonomist aspirations of vn

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the Tajiks of Uzbekistan (in Bukhoro and Samarquand, two historically Persian cities). Added to such 'traditional' motives are the effects of migratory policies. Families displaced under Stalin (the 'punished' peoples of the Crimea and the Caucasus) serve as today's scapegoats. Despite their adherence to Islam, the Tatars, the 'Meshketians Turks', were the first victims of such scapegoating. It was feared too that the settlement of Russians throughout the region could have represented another source of tension. This was particularly true in Kazakstan, where Cossack movements sought the annexation to Russia of the north of the country, the richest region with its 'virgin lands' and mining centres. However, the Tajik tragedy and Caucasian conflicts appears to have played the role of an appeal to reason. With the implementation of pragmatic policies by the new authorities, the reduction of these tensions to nothing more than minor daily frictions has broadly been achieved. Nonetheless, the exodus of the Russianspeaking population increased between 1991 and 1997. Those deridingly named pieds rouges ('red feet') find themselves in the same situation of the ex-patriots of Africa. Caught unprepared by the speed of change, they find it difficult to understand the changing nature of their status, in that they must learn national languages and may be replaced in skilled employment by local people. Having felt at home for generations, they have suddenly found themselves in a foreign country, their status devaluated. Today, they cram onto trains or planes, happy to have been able to sell their apartments and their furniture at discount. In total, between 1991 and 1997, migration from the five Central Asian states has added 2.2 million to the Russian population. Migration from Kazakstan - at 200,000 to 300,000 per year - accounts for the largest contingent, and has provoked a haemorrhaging of entire sectors of the economy (industry, transport etc). Regional leaders have increased measures to try and ease these tensions, and reduce the rate of emigration. Yet, at the same time, the reassertion of identities in the aftermath of independence has rekindled nationalist fervour in each of these nascent states. Apart from the more frequent use of national languages, and the slow yet visible withdrawal of Russian, this finds expression in a systematic favouring of the indigenous population and the marginalisation of Russians, even the most well-meaning. Furthermore, the wish to disengage from versions of local history overly tainted with 'Greater Russian' historiography has caused frequent disputes amongst the newly independent states regarding 'national' appropriation of the great personas who embody the 'golden age' of regional civilisation, from Avicenna to Timur (Tamburlaine). THE PREVALENCE OF COMPETITIVE NATIONAL SOLUTIONS In such a delicate situation, the emergence of active regional co-operation would be a logical expectation. Since 1991, numerous calls have been made in favour of some sort of confederation. But on what basis could it be convened? The strength of cultural, ethnic and linguistic differences is well known. Even Islam, which appears to unite all these populations (all Sunni, including the

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Persian-speaking Tajiks), is only a fragile point of cohesion. Today's governors (nearly all ex-Soviet leaders) are deeply suspicious of any form of political islamisation, with nationalist stakes prevailing over any religious similarities. The old spiritual leadership of Muslims in Central Asia created during Soviet times in Tashkent is now split amongst the five national states. However, some attempts at creating internal alliances have been made through the regular meeting of regional presidents. Cultural co-operation aside, they strive towards the harmonisation of their political positions with respect to the CIS and Russia. But in fact, each state, relying on its own assets, attempts to devise individual solutions to the crisis. If in certain limited fields (railways and power lines) there is a development of regional co-operation, central issues (currency, customs, banking systems) have not invited consensus. The common Central Asian market, although already decided upon in 1993, and the common economic zone created in 1994 by Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan remain devoid of content. Two main factors obstruct the farthering of such co-operation. The first is structural: the economies of the five states compete against rather than complement each other. They offer more-or-less the same range of goods, and seek development in the same sectors (agro-industrial transformation, assembly and car production, textiles etc). As a result, they compete for the interest of international banks and companies. The other factor is political, and concerns regional leadership. Since they asserted their control over the region, the Russians have always favoured the Uzbeks, and the creation of Uzbekistan (it is the only republic bordering all the four others) has confirmed their pivotal role. Today, Uzbek leaders feel that their natural destiny is to control the whole Central Asian zone. But this aspiration is strongly opposed by the other states, who fear the hegemony of Tbshkent, and still remember the domination of the khans of Khiva and Kokand over the region. On the basis of its potential economic power, Kazakstan aspires also to be a regional power, while the Turkmens, relying on their sources of natural energy, would willingly go along for the ride. The demographical structure of these states is also an obstacle in the short term. Their mainly rural populations are still rising sharply. Although demographers predict a decline in both the fertility and birth rates which should reduce the population burden of these countries, the need to feed, clothe, educate and employ a very young population currently takes precedence over these slow trends. And in fact, most of these expenditures were covered until 1991 by the Soviet federal budget. They must now be undertaken by the newly independent governments. The conjunction of these two forms of tensions, ethnic and sociodemographic, is certainly the major danger in the region.

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GEOGRAPHICAL ISOLATION AS A HINDRANCE TO DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL These five states are endowed with substantial natural resources. However, access to the value of these resources is obstructed both by the negative effects of inherited Soviet choices and by the isolated location of the Central Asian region at the continent's core. In addition, these assets are unequally distributed. The three large states of the flat-lands (Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) possess a range of resources, while the two poorer mountainous states (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) have a paucity of fertile land or mineral deposits, in particular fossil fuels. These poorer states are also the most isolated, being far from the major transcontinental routes. They are faced with contradictory challenges: to reduce the amount of cultivated land in order to save the Aral Sea, to reduce the quota of cotton produced in order to develop food crops (which also need irrigating), even though cotton represents one of the few exportable goods. On the industrial level, the states initially counted on their fossil-fuel resources and on non-ferrous metals. The exploitation of some of these deposits began during Soviet times, but on-thespot processing was not undertaken to any large extent, and only direct benefits could be reaped in the region. Certain Western companies may have appeared interested in easily transportable rare metals (gold, mercury, platinum and uranium), but matters were complicated when applied to copper, iron or petrol. Given the weakness of domestic demand and the distances involved, Kazakstan can only sell its iron and coal to Russia, which still tends to dictate its own conditions. The situation is even more sensitive in the case of the oil-fields in the oriental part of the Caspian region. The Kazaks and the Turkmens seek to find a southern exportation route, via Iran or the Caucasus and Turkey, in order to escape Russian influence. Russia, however, has done everything possible to undermine these projects, and to insist that sections or the whole pipeline system remain on its territory. For those reasons, the states of Central Asia cannot yet cash in on hard currency, and investment plans have to be postponed. A NEW SILK ROUTE: MYTH OR REALITY? In their will to assert their independence, and to set themselves free from Russian hegemony, the five states seek to develop external relations in all directions, a strategy blocked during the Soviet period. The four Turkic-speaking countries naturally turned to Turkey, which envisaged the possibility of reinforcing its regional role. Taking advantage of their relative linguistic proximity (although, in reality, the Turks do not understand their distant cousins more than the Italians understand the French), Turkish bankers and industrialists tried to position themselves as intermediaries with the West. However, the initially ambitious projects have been rapidly downsized, since Turkey cannot respond to the huge needs of the region. As a result, recent projects have been more oriented toward training and cultural exchanges.

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Relations with Iran and Afghanistan have improved, but they are made fragile by the political instability of the regimes of those countries, whose expansionism is feared. With China, which borders three states in the region, exchanges have undergone dramatic improvements, to the extent that Central Asia has become one of the major entry points of Chinese goods into the CIS. However, the Kazaks and the Kyrgyz, while still unable to rid themselves of their dependence on Russia, fear that they might fall under the influence of this alternative regional power. The militarisation of Xinjiang (where the Chinese have their nuclear site) and the financial and commercial dynamism of this prominent neighbour are indeed potential threats. A visit to Urumqi does not leave any doubts: China will be ready before its northern neighbours for the reopening of this route to Russia. The competition between the young Central Asian states will be fierce. It is in this thorny context that the five states try to spread their range of external contacts as much as possible, and prefer to turn to more distant countries that may be more able to understand them, such as the United States or the European Union. Aware of the geo-strategic issues at stake, Western states are increasingly present in the region, and this influence accounts for some more recent developments. It is indeed under the impetus of the United States - which has asserted its strategic interest in the region under the Silk Road Strategy Act - and of the European Union - which has developed a new transport corridor (TRACECCA, or Transport Corridor Europe Caucasus Central Asia) - that Central Asian countries demonstrated an increasing and active interest in alternative transport and trade routes side-stepping Russia. The embryonic plan for a Central Asian union is thus used as a forum for discussions aimed at coordinating a diversification of the exchanges with Western countries, perceived as a necessary counterweight to Russia's struggle to preserve what is left of its hegemony. South Korea or Japan are also solicited in the name of an inter-Asian solidarity of interests, while the wealthiest Islamic countries are increasingly present (opening mosques, academic programmes and credit lines among other things). Nonetheless, both criticisms from Moscow and local political and legislative instability have led Western operators to adopt a cautious attitude that limits theirfinancialintervention. Added to that, the general decrease in the prices of the main export goods (petrol, cotton, non-ferrous metals) has crushed all hopes of rapid enrichment that some of the local presidents seem to have envisaged. In this difficult context, the domestic situation of Central Asian states evolves slowly. Broadly speaking, the transition to the market economy is still tentative, insofar as the leaders, trained in the Soviet school, hesitate to release their holds on the economy and, particularly, to democratise very traditional societies. In order to deal with the persistence of ethnic tensions or the fear of Islamist eruption, there is a clear tendency toward an authoritarianism that is omnipresent, even if it does not always resemble the Turkmen caricature of autocracy. In what direction will the Central Asian region drift? It emits contradictory signals, and while some assume that the divorce from Moscow has reached completion, others mention the possibility of a reactivation of Russian interest. The difficulties experienced in establishing new alphabets may be seen as metaphors for the obstacles that pave the way for Central Asia as it attempts to define its

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new position, resolutely modern and freed from the constraints of the old Russian tutelage. The Latin alphabet, which three Turkic-speaking states (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakstan) have adopted, is only unevenly applied, while successive Tajik authorities have reintroduced Arabic-Persian characters before returning to Cyrillic. At the same time, the military agreements concerning the joint surveillance of borders signed in the framework of a CIS deeply tainted by Russian interests represent an important contrast. This is evident in the strengthening of the alliance between Moscow, Tbshkent and Dushanbe which occurred during the recent advance of the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. It is, thus, very difficult to predict developments with certainty in post-Soviet space. Giampaolo R. Capisani's book, through a conjunction of historical, geographical and cultural approaches, has the merit of having analysed the fundamental arguments and clearly set down the conditions under which crucial decisions will be taken in the future. Jean Radvanyi

Acknowledgements

There are many friends and scholars to whom I should express my gratitude. Their contribution to the realisation of this book has been decisive: all have been generous with their council and prodigious with their time and certainly without them this book would not have been written. To all go my sincere thanks. Numerous parts of the book are the fruit of reflections and collective discussions; however, as is usual, the responsibility for the text, together with the omissions and the opinions contained in it, belong solely to the author. I feel that I must thank the French government for the bursary which it granted me at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. This gave me the possibility of studying with Jutta Scherrer, Marc Ferro and Pierre Vilar, in respect of whom I recognise my intellectual debt. Their courses stimulated me and determined the beginnings of my studies of the 'Soviet area'. I would like to thank again all those (and they are numerous) who procured articles, books, publications and observations of the countries which are discussed in the book, from Central Asia, the Anglo-Saxon world or other European countries. All of those who, feeling involved in my research, sent me news or publications, all of those who read the text, offering doubts and critical input, pointing out incongruities. In the phase of collecting material, I was helped in my research by Mr Foti (SNAM), Mr Orsini (Tecnimont), Mr Petazzoni (Agip-ENI Group), Mr Terzian (Petrostrategies), Mr Vallini (FIAT Group), Mr Wilkinson (Secretary of His Highness the Agha Khan). For the Italian edition of this book I must thank Marco Trasciani, for the details on some political aspects as a base and for the structure of 'oriental despotism' and Stefania Piantoni for the Italian editing. Thanks also addressed to Alex Foti (II Saggiatore Editions), Marco Philopat (Shake Editions) and to my Internet researcher, Dario Bilotta. As to the ethnographical and religious aspects, I have had the fortune to have been able to have had recourse to Ulisse Spinosi as a research assistant and my wife Coral, to whom go special thanks for the numerous encouragements, precious observations and massive work undertaken, way above family obligations. Thanks also to my two daughters Elettra and Dafhe for their understanding and patience. The English edition would not have existed without the prodigious efforts in overseeing the translation of Ethel Carte and the revision by Philip Millar (University of Durban-Westville) and the final editing of Emma Sinclair-Webb. Thanks also to Leila Cova, Nicolas Guilhot (European University Institute), Marta Bruno (University of Wolverhampton) and from the long work sessions which my cartographer Eduardo Aguilar (Studio Aguilar-Milan) gave me. xin

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Finally, I would also like to thank my Italian publishers (BEM Editions Milan), in the person of Stefano Bianchi, for having had the faith to publish my book, and also my English publishers, I.B.Tauris, for being so patient with my delays. This book is dedicated to my father and mother. Giampaolo R. Capisani

Author's Note

This text, published two years ago in Italy, is the fruit of a more than a year's research (although ideally it remains always open - see below) and has been realised thanks to observations 'in the field' and to the existing published work. Its publication corresponded to a precise need, in the sense that the existing information on the transformations that were happening in the ex-Soviet Union (with the exception of Russia) was very scarce. In Italy there was a complete lack of information on the countries of Central Asia. Whether this is the result of a lack of editorial courage or of public interest is beyond the scope of this brief note. This does not take away the fact that Central Asia, notwithstanding the general opening up which followed the dissolution of the USSR, remains one of the least known regions in the world, in spite of the fact that during this first period of independence these five countries have fully become members of the international community. It is for this reason that this text has been translated into the 'lingua franca of globalisation' (and undergone a subsequent updating for the English edition). With regards to the finishing of the manuscript and the transformations in Central Asia, there seem to be at least three points worthy of note, and which may be capable of influencing the future of the region. Geo-strategy: from the beginning of the 1990s, the problem of economic and political consolidation of the Caucasus and Central Asian states, which are particularly penalised by their geostrategic position, rendering them particularly inaccessible to international commerce, has been posed by the European Union. The proposal to provide a valid alternative to the existing Russian monopoly on the means of exportation was declared in the Transport Corridor EuropeCaucasus-Asia (Traceca), launched in 1993 by the European Union. Traceca was only engaged in normal means of transport (ports, railway and road networks) and was therefore later backed by an oil pipeline project (Inogate) and an air corridor (Southern Ring Air Route). These projects have been collectively named 'the Silk Route of the twentyfirst century', but while the Traceca project is underway numerous other projects remain only intentions. Economy: an important aspect is the Asian crisis, which raged in the Far East. It struck Russia severely too, and in a minor measure all the emerging markets of the CIS, which still represent the principle outlet for the products manufactured in Russia. Added to this are Russia's fears of losing control of the existing gas and oil pipelines. On this last point, the struggle between some of the major players in the petrol world which broke out in the 1990s was interpreted as a recapitulation xv

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of the so-called 'great game' of the past century. Given that it seems that many of its protagonists are losing interest, that interpretation should be reconsidered. In effect, the prolonged depreciation of petroleum products caused the blockage of projects underway and a drastic reduction in foreign investment. As well as the hydrocarbonsfield,other primary materials have suffered price slumps. So Central Asia, which depends on its own natural resources (Kazak petroleum, Uzbek gold and cotton, Turkmen gas) has found itself in an economic stasis which could evolve into a social and political crisis with unpredictable consequences. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), once zealous in its promotion of the transition from socialist to market economy, does not seem to be intent on, or have to means to, intervene. Politics: the authoritarian tendency of all the presidents of the five ex-Soviet republics has become more accentuated. They have verticalised and centralised their powers, depleting the powers of national parliaments and eroding the constitutional prerogatives on which these parliaments were based after independence. A good many analysts man tain that the installation of authoritarian regimes in Central Asia is inevitable, and they base their hypotheses on the fact that the emerging national identity of these states is Asian not Western. By this account, Central Asia can only eventually reach democracy through an autocracy, modelled after what Francis Fukuyama called the 'soft authoritarianism' of states like Singapore. This hypothesis is not shared by the author of this work, who maintains that the origin of the 'Asian crisis' is in fact this 'Asian model'. Finally, the recurrent crisis in Chinese Xinjiang and the by now direct influence of the Afghan troubles on Central Asia must be remembered. The Taliban control almost 90 per cent of Afghanistan, confining that which remains of the opposition in the extreme northeast of the country and controlling the areas between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The recent conquest by Mazar-i Sharif (winter 1998) provoked great apprehension in all the capitals of ex-Soviet Central Asia, and might have opened a worrying new chapter in the history of the region. Both as a result of the rapid changes of the regional landscape, and more generally in respect of observations on the work, I would like to invite readers to send both criticisms and proposals to the following e-mail address: [email protected]. G.R.C.

Note on Transliteration

It is impossible to find a system which satisfies all scholars when transliterating from the Turkic or Iranian languages of the Soviet Union, especially in the case of former Soviet Central Asian languages, including Kazak, Uzbek, Karakalpak, Turkmen, Tajik, Kyrgyz, Uyghur and a russianised vocabulary. A rigid application of the norms of the International System Organisation (ISO/R9 1968) would have weighed down the text, a problem aggravated by the rigorous transcription of the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin. Therefore, for the sake of simplicity for the non-specialist reader, we have decided to use the English spellings most generally accepted and most currently used in the international press for well-known historical and political names. We have also tried to use the most up-to-date place names in the maps, but the speed with which places and cities are renamed is impressive. We apologise for the irritation this may cause linguists. G.R.C

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Introduction

The magnificent immobility of the East Lord Curzon For all its baseness and dirt, Russian domination is a civilising element in Central Asia Friedrich Engels This book is composed of five chapters, each of which corresponds to an exSoviet Asian Republic (Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan). Together, these represent a region formerly known as Soviet Central Asia, and now simply Central Asia. It should be observed that the latter term is often used to describe generally the Asian interior, but it can also be used to denote particular areas of the continent, and discussion on the argument remains open. Every chapter in turn has been subdivided into different and repeating sections: the first describes the most recent political evolution. Through a series of visible changes, these countries, which once formed part of czarist Russia and then the Soviet system, have now reached independence, each with their own unique history and the current problems of every nation-state. The second and third sections deal with longer-term events. The second part describes the nature of the territory and the formation of the population, analysed through its principal demographic characteristics, and the regional phenomenon of de-urbanisation. The third part is dedicated to historical evolution: this is important for an understanding of the regional situation, and for an assessment of each new state and national entitiy in the light of the implications of the past. This task is complicated by the dispersal of sources, the use of different languages and alphabets, the fragmentation of the existing studies and the numerous 'stains' and 'memory blanks' which the official historiography has produced. In order to let the individual specifics of these new states emerge in greater detail, it was necessary to present their historical evolution separately, even at the risk of appearing to denigrate the long centuries of common activitity and the affinity at their origins. Lastly, in the fourth and fifth parts, the events which gave rise both to the changes and to the continuity of the past are analysed. The fourth part deals with the economic structure, with particular reference to actual transformations. The fifth part attempts, with the use of material from various sources (from language to literature, from oral tradition to cinematography to ethnography) to fill out xix

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the cultural aspects (which vary from the weight of local traditions, social and family models, to persistence and the reislamisation of society). The material which appears in each section combines to build a picture of each country and population. Within this analyticalframework,there are some indepth examinations of important themes (Religious Islam, new Kazak cinema, the drying up of the Aral Sea, the Sufi brotherhood, the art of carpets and others). At the end of every chapter there is a select bibliography relative to each country, and at the end of the book there is a bibliography of regional works and a list of the main internet sites used in the writing of this volume. A 'MULTIPLE, PLURALIST AND ANTAGONISTIC REGION' There are various literary sources of great inspiration: The Histories of Herodotus (484-425BC), the reports of great Arab travellers like Ibn Battuta (1304-77) the descriptions of Russian explorers like Nikolaj M. Przhevalski (1839-88), the work of Soviet geographers like Vladimir A. Obrucev (1863-1956). There are the notes of the visionary project of the 'colonial Asian system', set up by Count Jan Potocki (who subsequently became famous, given his literary talents, thanks to the manuscript found at Saragossa). On reading these, or listening to the symphonic melodies of Aleksander Borodin (1833-87) who composed on the Central Asian steppe, one cannot but remain fascinated by the vastness of this region, by the majesty of its mountains peaks, by the expanse of desert and steppe, by the: beauty of its historic cities, and the variety of its peoples. Central Asia is a space of both extensive nomadic activity and irrigated agriculture, undergoing, to a greater or lesser degree, the same historical-cultural cycle: Scythian, Persian, Graeco-Hellenistic, Chinese, Arab-Islamic, Turkic, Turko-Mongol, Russian and finally Soviet. One can note how the so-called Trans-Asiatic rhythms of change (the diffusion of Buddhism, the establishment: of the Mongol empire, of Islam, the forming of the USSR) are never initiated in Central Asia, and nor do they belong entirely to it, but evoke instead much larger horizons. The Islam of the Middle East, the Turkic populations of Turkey or the remote Siberian regions, the Persian culture and the October Revolution in Russia are examples. Geographically, Central Asia is characterised by factors associated with a unique territory: the impermanence of the population, the primary importance of water, and the fragility of the irrigation system, due to climate or the impact of conquest. The accented continentality of the climate makes it a region that is open to Siberia, China, India, Iran and Afghanistan. This climate has also influenced complex ethnic circumstances, in constant evolution, which has produced a Turkophone, Islamic, Sunni basis, with Iranian and Slav minorities and a mosaic of alien populations. Central Asia was an ethnic and cultural laboratory in which the beginnings of the Partic, Scythian and Persian population was rapidly overcome in a process of 'turkisation', while the Iranian cultural model was maintained more or less until

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the beginning of the twentieth century. It was already the secular birth-place of religious proselytising and a refuge for persecuted faiths (Zoroastrians, Manichaeans, Nestorians, Jewish communities), an aspect particularly emphasised by the Russian orientalist Vassily Barthold. The region then became the place for a religious and artistic accomodation between local and external beliefs (Shamanism, Buddhism, Zoroastrism),finallybecoming Islamic from the eighth century. Every empire which had ever had this region as its centre (like Tamburlaine's), or even only as a peripheral region (the Achaemenid, or those of Alexander the Great, the Chinese Tang dynasty, Genghis Kahn, Russia and the Soviet Union) was destined to disappear, more or less rapidly. Mosaics of city-states or parts of numerous independent states (in the Sogdian pre-Muslim age, the Timurid period, or that of the Uzbek khanates, or the current independent republics) have replaced the imperial forms in time. The variables which determined these historical sequences are numerous: economic causes, ethnic realities, religious struggles and motivations, territorial supremacy, the composition and evolution of local elites. Today, all of these variables seem to play a decisive role in the remodelling of the area, while in the background countries like Turkey, Iran and in a smaller measure China, Pakistan and Afghanistan attempt to participate in this redefinition with diverse interests and motivations. At the beginning of the century, while still a simple region of the Russian Empire, Central Asia already had a coherent identity. In December 1991, the year in which the five republics were to formally become independent, Russia initiated a movement of withdrawal which it halted with the onset of war in Tajikistan and the advance of the Afghan Taliban. Thus Central Asia, though formally desovietised like the rest of Russia, has returned to being as it was in the past, a multiple, pluralistic and antagonistic being. Each one of the new independent republics organises itself inside its own recent frontiers in search of its genealogy. These borders were established by both the Russian-British negotiations at the end of the nineteenth century, changed by the Soviets in 1924 and 1936, and now take their current form. THE 'END OF REAL SOCIALISM': AN AREA OF FREEDOM In Central Asia, as in the whole Soviet Union or the countries of Eastern Europe, the end of 'real socialism', or rather a 'really existing' socialism, represents a form of de-colonialisation for many populations. For them, transition has been principally an opportunity, a chance of freedom, in which their region can be remodelled. The very tangible hopes at the time of independence have been eroded through the 1990s into resistance to change. Lord Curzon called it 'the magnificent immobility of the East'. If, on the other hand, one considers the potent mixture of motives and possibilities which the Russian expansion in Central Asia (and Siberia) represented, it has been more frequently interpreted as a parallel with America's 'manifest destiny' of expanding into the 'wild West'.

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On the economic level, it seems that even in 1851, as Engels put it in a letter to Marx, Tor all its baseness and dirt, Russian domination is a civilising element in Central Asia', and that in effect for all these countries Russian domination - and above all the Soviet period and real socialism - has been nothing but a form of 'government of development'. Stalin's forced industrialisation is identical to that described by Walt W. Rostow in his 'theory of the stages of development', and moved a vast region towards the centre of the industrialised world. It imposed the priority of leaving underdevelopment behind, and has extraordinarily accelerated the construction of world markets (and the journey of these countries towards greater development).

1 KAZAKSTAN Qazaqstan Respublicasy Declaration of Sovereignty: 25 October 1990 Declaration of Independence: 16 December 1991 Area: 2,717,300 square kilometres Population: 16,847,000 (July 1998 estimate) Density: 6.2 inhabitants/square kilometre Capital: Almaty (formerly Alma Ata), 1,190,000 inhabitants (1997 estimate) but according to presidential decree, the capital is to be moved to Aqmola, renamed Astana. After the official decision to rebaptise the country Kazakstan, instead of Kazakhstan we have decided to use the new spelling, you will find it still spelt as Kazakstan throughout.

POLITICAL EVOLUTION Towards the end of the 1980s the cultural and political enthusiasm oi perestroika in the Soviet Union had also spread to Kazakstan and other former Soviet republics. In fact, it should be remembered that the first serious (and publicised) ethnic confrontations that occurred in the USSR during perestroika (which symbolised the end of the pax Sovietica) took place in Kazakstan. This was after Moscow's decision to nominate Russian Gennady Kolbin as First Secretary of the Kazak Communist Party, instead of Kazak leader Dinmukhamed Kunayev. The latter, a long-time friend of Leonid Brezhnev, had been in charge of the

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Virgin Lands Programme and remained in power from 1970 to 1986, during which time he carried out a rigid policy of 'Kazakisation' in the education system, industry, the media and within the party itself. Winter 1986: Anti-Russian Uprisings in Alma Ata Kolbin's nomination brought about the radicalisation of an already difficult domestic situation from an ethnic perspective, and led to the December 1986 anti-Russian uprisings in Alma Ata, in which confrontations ensued between Russians and Kazaks. According to official sources, 17 people lost their lives, though unofficial sources claim that there were dozens of victims. Certain retaliatory behaviour by the Kazak population during the period that followed may be deemed excusable. A huge debate concerning the structure and political importance of national sovereignty - in other words, the pre-eminence of Kazak laws over federal ones - took place in the country and stirred up Kazak politics right up to the end of the 1980s. After the Alma Ata uprisings, nationalistic aspirations underwent a process of maturation and acceleration. The people were unanimously in favour of recognition of the Kazak language in government, of environmental protection (with the request for immediate suspension of nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk 'polygon') and of the creation of true national and economic self-determination to end Moscow's management of resources. Numerous 'informal' groups and associations began to emerge between 1988 and 1989, based on these factors. Among the most active of these was the green-ecological movement, Nevada-Semipalatinsk (whose name alludes to the world's largest nuclear polygons, in the US and USSR) founded by the poet Oljas Omarovitch Sulejmenov in February 1989. At about the same time, the 'movement for the environment', Aral-Balkash, came into being under the leadership of the another writer, M. Sakhanov. In December 1988, the Atameken ('fatherland') association was formed for 'the rehabilitation of victims of Stalinism', while April 1989 saw the founding of the nationalist organisation Adilet ('justice'). In preparation for legislative elections the following March, a law was passed in January 1990 offering some form of official acknowledgement to multipartyism. The decree favoured political polarisation and the transformation of the most important associations into real political parties; in October 1991, about 120 groups and parties were registered. However, almost all the deputies elected during the legislative elections held on 25 March 1990 were from the ranks of the Kazak Communist Party, and therefore the party still remained at the helm of the state. During the course of that same year, the political parameters of the main national opposition parties were outlined and conclusively affirmed. On the one hand, given the country's disastrous environmental conditions, consensus was reached by the ecological movements. On the other, nationalist movements emerged. In July 1990, the nationalist group Azat ('liberation') was formed. During the first few months of independence, it quickly became the strongest opposition

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party. That year also saw the birth of the 'radical' nationalist parties: Jeltoqsan ('December', in remembrance of the December 1986 uprisings in Alma Alta) and Alash Orda (the name of a famous Kazak, whose name had already been assumed by a movement which had played a determining role in the formation of Kazak national sentiment, and was severely repressed by Stalin during the 1930s). Still nationalistic by nature, yet opposing Russian-Slav nationalism, pro-Russian parties regrouped in September 1990 in two formations called Interfront (Association for the Defence of Russian Interests) and Edinstvo ('unity'), consisting mainly of Russian conservatives. 'The Cossack Party' was also part of Edinstvo, and was responsible for the huge demonstrations in Uralsk during December 1991, which prompted the Kazak press to link it with Pamiat, the Russian right-wing extremist party. In Kazakstan, although religious parties are plentiful and ill-defined, they tend to be absorbed into the nationalist movement, although there is talk of a semi-clandestine Muslim League being formed. The 'Nazarbaev Phenomenon': a New Khan? On 7 February 1990, the Supreme Soviet (the parliament) of the Kazakstan Soviet Socialist Republic elected Nursultan Nazarbaev as president. After the March elections of that year, Nazarbaev led the country to proclaim national sovereignty on 25 October 1990. He had been Kazakstan's political leader since the beginning of the 1980s, and until the dissolution of the USSR was regarded as one of the 'strong men', like Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Since 1990, having perceived the imminent collapse of the Soviet system some time before it happened, Nazarbaev had been trying to promote local economic transition, although officially Kazakstan was the last of the USSR republics (with the exception of Russia) to declare independence on 16 December 1991. Five days later, the Community of Independent States was formed in Alma Ata, and the new entity Kazakstan promptly joined. Born in 1940 into a peasant family in Chelmogan, Nazarbaev studied metallurgy at the School for Higher Learning and qualified as a skilled worker. He then worked at metalworking plants of Temirtau and Karaganda (now Qaraghandy), where in 1960 he became an engineer. In 1969, he began his political career in the Kazak Communist Party as a heavy industry expert, becoming Prime Minister in 1984 and First Secretary in 1989. With the signing of the Proclamation of Sovereignty and National Independence Act, Nazarbaev went down in history as the first President of an independent Kazakstan. On 1 December 1991, Nazarbaev's presidency was ratified by universal suffrage, obtaining (under the strictest of Soviet procedures) 98.6 percent of vote. His only opponent, the leader of the nationalist Jeltoqsan Party, obtained a mere 38,000 of the 100,000 signatures required for candidature. Nazarbaev favours interventionist policies (like those of South Korea, Singapore or Turkey) in which the economy is handled exclusively through political-parliamentary debate. He has also promoted the creation of Kazak financial and industrial 'leaders', sending them abroad to improve their

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professional skills. He has also surrounded himself with advisors like Grigory Yavlinsky (who co-wrote Russia's '500 days' economic programme with Stanislav Shatalin), the South Korean economist Chan Yung Bang (who joined the Presidential Council) and Lee Kuan Yew (formerly the Prime Minister of Singapore). There have been controversies regarding the latter and Amartya Sen's Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998. Sen wrote Lee Kuan Yew in these last years has formulated a sort of 'general theory' on die relationship between liberal politics and economic prosperity. Lee Kuan Yew holds that a 'hard state' has the best possibility of promoting the economy and development... The real theorist of the 'Asian authoritarian model', which can be identified in South Korea, in China and Singapore, he sustains the essential incompatibility between political rights and economic performances (Le Monde, 28 October 1998). In many ways, Nazarbaev may be regarded as a true 'Soviet' (ironically an element of the Kazak press describes him as 'our Soviet President') despite his rigorous defence of'democrats' against attacks from the nomenklatura of which he was also a part. This defence was sustained before deputies of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Nazarbaev has on more than one occasion spoken out in favour of establishing a form of democracy in Kazakstan, well aware of the fact that such conditions are necessary for the country to achieve international recognition, and knowing it to be a requirement of the world's major banking organisations. The Domestic Political Framework On 22 August 1991, immediately after the attempted coup d'etat in Moscow, the Kazakstan Communist Party was dissolved by a motion (effected on 7 September) which was opposed by many deputies. The following November, this party assumed the new name Kazakstan Socialist Party. Nazarbaev, who had since resigned from the Politburo, refused to accept leadership, maintaining that he 'had to be president of all the Kazaks'. The Kazakstan Socialist Party retained the structure and political nucleus of the former Communist Party; at the end of 1993, it had approximately 30,000 members, many of whom were Russian. To counterbalance the Socialist Party, Nazarbaev fairly openly supported the establishment of a new party by the ecologists: in August 1991 he granted the request for the closure of the Semipalatinsk polygon. On 5 October 1991, the People's Congress of Kazakstan (NKK) in which the Nevada-Semipalatinsk and Aral-Balkash parties co-existed, officially came into being. The new party is cochaired by the founders of these two moments, the authors Sulejmenov and Sakhanov, who enjoy extreme popularity in the country. The Congress soon became Kazakstan's second largest party, overtaking the nationalists (who up until then had been the main opposition) numerically and in level of activity. It may be regarded as a centrist or moderately progressive party consisting mostly of Kazaks whose programme is based on social peace, respect for the environment and interaction between ethnic groups in the spirit of the Human Rights Declaration.

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In addition to the socialist and ecological parties, a third recognised group is the Kazakstan Republican Party, a broadly-based party of militants belonging to various nationalist movements, mostly from Azat. The great majority of supporters and sympathisers are Kazaks living in the southern regions. The Kazak republicans, led by Sabetkazi Akatayev and Kamal Omantayev (a professor at the Academy of Science who would later form the National Democratic Party), resolutely opposed the government (though not in a violent fashion), asking for the rapid 'Kazakisation' of the country and retention of the nuclear arsenal. The Kazakstan Social Democratic Party (SDPK) and the Democratic Congress are subordinate parties of lesser importance; both recruit members from the Russian population, while members of the latter are more conservative, and are supporters of the Edinstvo movement. The Slav-speaking nationalist activity initially spread among political groups whose names often included the words 'defence' and 'autonomy' (of Kazakstan, obviously) and seems lately to be converging towards the LAD (Movement for the Defence of Slav Minorities) with corresponding use of its slogans. LAD spokesperson, Mrs Alexandra Dokutchaeva, stated, 'Ethnocentrism is the main threat to Kazak independence, and may provoke an interethnic explosion between our two population groups. Our rights must be respected. Russian must be reinstated as the language of government, because it is the language most spoken in the country. We must also be granted dual nationality, Russian and Kazak. The closure in 1995 of the Russian daily newspaper, Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, and the arrest of Russian activist, B. Suproniuk, mobilised Slav political opposition (incidentally, it was in Alma Ata itself that the leader of Russian nationalism, Vladimir Zirinovski, was born in 1946). The Islamic radicalism has not posed a serious threat to Kazakstan, as religious sentiment has been absorbed into nationalist ideology. Moreover, the new rules governing the registration of political groups require that a list of members be lodged with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and this excludes all 'religious' organisations. Nevertheless, the vitality of these religious groups is evident with the registration of 230 new communities with the Mufti Ratbek Nysanbay Uli (the highest Islamic religious authority, which since February 1990, at the suggestion of local government and with the backing of Soviet authorities, has become independent and qualified to handle religious matters for the entire Kazak territory). Political disturbances by opposition parties, the nationalist and Islamic ones in particular, although inconspicuous and largely latent, remain Nazarbaev's main concern nonetheless. In October 1991, he declared apprehensively, 'The Republic's extremist element could, if unchecked, create a situation compared to which the events taking place in the Yugoslav Federation would seem insignificant'. Yet domestic tensions provoked by the bewildering rise in unemployment and worsening living conditions have created favourable conditions for massive protest actions by the population, like that of 18 June 1992 in Almaty (the new Kazak name for Alma Ata). These have not, fortunately, deteriorated into ethnic clashes, and the civil war which broke out in Tajikistan did not draw Kazakstan in.

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In January 1992, immediately after the republic was declared independent and the presidency confirmed, Nazarbaev began a large-scale reorganisation of local and administrative powers. First of all, the highest political responsibilities were assigned to men he trusted, like Vice-President Y. Asambayev, Prime Minister S. Tereshenko (of Russian origin and born in 1950 in Shymkent, southern Kazakstan). He recognised state administrative structures which had already been partly reshaped since October 1991, in order to limit the powers of politicians affiliated to the Communist Party. The local Soviet Executive Committees in the 19 administrative regions (which include 217 rural and 24 urban districts, 84 cities and 214 'working class agglomerations') were then dissolved and replaced with governors nominated by the President, whose duties were similar to French prefects. Sometimes, these governors are politically converted local figures, or men who have clan-like ties with the President, and become the reason for various strikes breaking out in trie mining regions. With regard to local administration, Nazarbaev has (like other presidents of post-Soviet republics) found himself at loggerheads with the prevailing apathy and open hostility of local nomenklatura, who contrive to slow down economic and political reforms. These reforms are passively ignored by some, while others sabotage them more openly. Meanwhile (in stark contrast to the poverty of the masses), local dignitaries accumulate excessive wealth. For the economic situation to improve, Kazakstan needs political stability. As some observers from the West agree, Kazakstan does seem to be one of the more stable of the former Soviet republics, even if internal frailties do exist. All of Nazarbaev's statements tend to emphasise the absence of ethnic conflict in the republic in order to attract (or mollify) foreign investors. Kazak cities do appear calm, even if the stability boasted by the Kazak government is only a facade. On 15 October 1992, Oskemen (the new name given to UstKamenogorsk) feared the worst when thousands gathered to protest over the assassination of three Kazak youths by some Chechens who were subsequently arrested in Russia (from Izvestiya, 19 October 1992). Authorities struggled to prevent retaliatory attacks against a neighbouring Chechen village which had been totally uninvolved. Concerns associated with the preservation of social harmony and the forging of an identity have been incorporated into a new constitution (which came into being on 28 January 1993), in which lawyers from the USA and Amnesty International were involved and consulted. This new constitution has made Kazakstan a secular republic (with the state and religion separated) with a 'presidential' political structure working (via authoritarianism) towards democracy. Great powers are vested in the republic's President, elected by direct suffrage, along with a strong Executive Committee (which for some critics is still not powerful enough). The president is the head of the executive, and below him are the Vice-President and the Council of Ministers; this vertical organisation is also evident in the judicial structure, with the Supreme Court in Kazak Zhongharghy Soty at the head, followed by the Supreme Court for Arbitration.

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The highest legislative body, although its powers are limited, remains parliament, the Zhongharghy Kengesi or simply Kenges (formerly the Supreme Soviet), which follows a single-chamber system and has been renamed the Majilis (Arabic via Turkish). A Constitutional Council ensures that laws and decrees adhere to the constitution. The Government's First Crisis The aims of Tereshenko's government were to exploit to the maximum opportunities afforded the country by its geographical position, at a crossroads between Europe and Asia. On the domestic level, it tried to promote co-existence between the various ethnic groups, as well as to privatise retail trade, immovable assets and small industry in a framework of non-radical reform. In December 1993, Nazarbaev announced, in a hotly contested move, that legislative elections would be held the following March, thus dissolving the Majilis and assuming 'full powers'. Elections held on 7 March 1994, against which the CSCE (from later that year the OSCE, or Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe) expressed strong reservations (all candidates but one should have been eliminated), re-affirmed support for the President and the same government. The opposition won only 30 of the 177 seats (four of which went to the LAD); another 42 seats were assigned to his supporters by Nazarbaev, who 'virtually elected' a 'governability list' to render the Majilis more stable. At the beginning of 1994, Nazarbaev tried enforcing a series of drastic measures modelled on those passed in Russia by Egor Gaidar in early January 1992 (the so-called shock-treatment). The objective was to cut drastically inflation and strengthen the national currency (the tenge had supplanted the rouble since November 1993), a 'compulsory policy' required by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $1.3 billion loan. However, Tereshenko's government strongly opposed the application of this programme (for reasons of private interests, but above all for fear of the inevitable social backlashes), and reverted to the policy of small-scale privatisation and the downsizing of agricultural and militaryindustrial sectors. As a result, the government experienced its first crisis: on 11 October 1994, Tereshenko resigned, and the next day, at Nazarbaev's suggestion, nomination was approved of a new Prime Minister, Akezhan Kazhegeldin, a forty-two-year-old economist who had been Vice-Prime Minister in the previous government. The background of this government crisis was a deeply-rooted political problem brewing as the result of disputes between elected deputies and the President, a situation not unlike that which occurred in Moscow during September and October 1993. Following the Constitutional Court's declaration that the elections of 7 March 1994 were unconstitutional, Nazarbaev again dissolved the Majilis on 11 March 1995, with a view to holding new elections. The majority of deputies, of various political affiliations, then barricaded themselves into the parliament building in Almaty for a few days to contest not only Nazarbaev's decisions, but also the structure of the 'list'.

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As with Yeltsin, American President Bill Clinton (through the US ambassador in Almaty, W. Courtney and later Elizabeth Jones) expressed his support for Nazarbaev, describing this as 'an act promoting democracy'. For his part, Nazarbaev imposed a referendum, held on 30 April 1995, in which he won 95.4 percent of the votes, enabling him to extend his term until the year 2000. In the following years, Nazarbaev placed an ever more pronounced emphasis on the authoritarian characteristics of his control, expanding his presidential powers by decree. He has a presidential right of decree and a veto on the laws passed by parliament, and only he can initiate constitutional amendments, appoint and dismiss ministers and government heads, or dissolve parliament. He can call referenda at his discretion and appoint administrative heads of regions and cities; he is the head of the military and controls foreign policy. Between Europe and Asia, Between Russia and China For many years, Kazakstan's economic status has been based on cereal farming, energy and mineral supplies, and the space industry (through the centre at Baikonur). This allowed it to enjoy close ties with the core of the Soviet state, as well as political and economic ties with Russia and the northern regions. Independence has offered the country a way to leave Soviet anonymity behind. Therefore Kazakstan, while reaffirming its Asian identity, aspires to become a member of the European Community and a Western-style industrialised nation. Kazakstan's geo-political existence between Russia and Asia, along with the long frontier it shares with China, made the region of particular military and strategic importance to the Soviets. For this reason, the country has been endowed with considerable military potential (further strengthened during the Gorbachev period between 1985 and 1991) which has turned it into a true nuclear stronghold. During the ten-year period during between 1980 and 1990, Kazakstan became the world's fourth-largest nuclear power, with 400 missiles (104 of which were the modern SS18 type), a total of 1410 nuclear devices, and 40 heavy bombers. The governments in power during the initial phase of independence were left a burdensome legacy to handle. From 29 August 1949 (when the first Soviet atomic bomb was detonated) until 1989, a semi-desert area 300kms from Semipalatinsk (now Semey) and Kurchatov (named after the scientist considered the father of the Soviet atomic bomb) was used for more than 500 nuclear tests, the intensity of which also caused serious damage to local population groups. Various 'atomic lakes' (characteristically round in shape) are found in this area, like Lake Shagan, which emerged in 1963 after an 'experiment'. Nuclear explosions continued until Gorbachev's 'moratorium' in 1990, and until Nazarbaev totally suspended experiments in August 1991. At first, Kazak authorities declared themselves to be in favour of the renunciation of nuclear arms, taking steps to rectify the Treaty of Nuclear NonProliferation (TNP) of 1968, appearing to want to transfer Kazak warheads t:o Russia for destruction.

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On this occasion, Nazarbaev stated, 'If we were to proclaim ourselves a nuclear power, that would be giving other countries like Iran, Pakistan, North Korea or Israel the green light to gather atomic arms. We do not want to be the country to instigate such a process. We have suffered too much at the hands of the nuclear industry near the Semipalatinsk polygon where, under the old regime, approximately 500,000 people were unknowingly exposed to radiation. This was a crime committed against the Kazak population.' Later, however, researchers at the Centre for Strategic Studies in Almaty (founded in 1992 and dependant on the republic's presidency for funds), frequently sought to remind world public opinion that in the regional context (between Russia and China; between the Christian and Islamic worlds), a 'realistic' security policy would need to take into consideration the assurance which a nuclear deterrent could offer. Nationalists stressed that a nuclear arsenal was an assurance of national independence, in that 'not even Yeltsin knows what could happen in Russia tomorrow'. Meanwhile, government authorities have, on more than one occasion, insisted that dismantling would occur, as planned, before the year 2000 but, understandably, 'on condition that the guarantee of the security, economic compensation and the financial aid (estimated at $311 million) we require, is respected'. This is an elegant way of re-evaluating Kazakstan's regional and strategic importance, and of once again stepping back from former declarations by associating them with other variables, such as the normalisation of the democratic process in Moscow. Contacts with the USA have been intense, even given the nuclear threat. In December 1991, the then US Secretary of State, James Baker, went to Almaty, where he was joined the following November by NATO Secretary General M. Woerner. On 19 May 1992, during a visit to the USA, Nazarbaev ratified the START I Treaty (which was then signed on 2 July). He also agreed to the elimination of all forms of nuclear armament from Kazak territory within seven years, after receiving substantial reassurance from China regarding the shared borders and after (apparently) being granted adequate financial aid by the USA. During the summer of 1992, the 'tactical' nuclear arsenal was dismantled. In December 1993, Kazak deputies ratified international treaties and agreed to the denuclearisation of the country. On 24 April 1995, the Russian press agency, Itar-Tass, issued the news that the dismantling of intercontinental missiles had begun. Kazakstan's great diplomatic and commercial activities, along with the desire to affirm itself in the region, have gone hand-in-hand with the adoption of a prudent attitude and a tendency to maintain links with the other member countries of the Community of Independent States (CIS), especially Russia. This policy is regarded as 'integrationist'. For other motives, Kazakstan has sought to free itself slowly and peacefully from Russia's influence. One of the objectives of government programmes was the implementation of collectively - and therefore not just Russian - controlled economic and monetary co-ordination mechanisms. This standpoint was upheld throughout the CIS summits, from the one in Minsk (December 1991) to that in Moscow (May 1993). The Collective Security Pact signed by Russia, Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan

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(on 15 May 1992 in Toshkent) is another indication of harmonious relations, as is the Pact for Greater Military Accord and Collaboration signed between Russia and Kazakstan (on 19 August 1992), a necessary measure given that 90 percent of Kazak army officials (estimated at 40,000 regular officers) are originally from Russia. The crux of the problem concerning relations with Russia stems from the attitude towards the high Russian (or in more general terms 'Slav') population (Belarussians and Ukrainians included) who live in the country's northern regions. They are more attracted by the idea of secession and unification with Russia than that of relocation. The secession bogeyman was often stirred up by various Russian political factions: not just by the nationalists, but also by first-level 'democratic' political figures like Gavril Popov, the former mayor of Moscow, and Anatoly Sobtchak, who was the mayor of Saint Petersburg. They maintained that during the 1920s regions inhabited by Russians were not incorporated into Kazakstan. This hypothesis was suggested towards the end of the 1980s by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote (in his pamphlet 'How to Reconstruct our Russia? Possible Considerations') These days, the Kazaks living in the enlarged Kazakstan make up less than half the population. Their habitat, their true country or origin, is the large arc, formed by the southern regions, that extends from the extreme east towards the west, almost to the Caspian Sea, and which is actually highly populated with Kazaks. If this is where they wish to break away to, may they go with God. Towards the end of 1991, even Yeltsin seemed intent on redefining frontier lines to incorporate Kazakstan's northern and border regions into Russia. However, Nazarbaev pre-empted him, taking a stance against Russian territorial claims within 48 hours of independence, declaring the frontiers inviolable. Kazakstan has maintained a prudent attitude concerning the definition of citizenship and linguistic identity given the population's multi-ethnic character. Kazak has been regarded as the national language since September 1989, and was confirmed by the new constitution, but Russian was awarded the status of 'language of international relations' or 'inter-ethic communication'. Nazarbaev has also tried to involve and represent the minorities in the government structure by nominating ministers of Russian, German and Korean origin, as well as by passing a law advocating civil liberties which, although not granting dual citizenship, establishes the concept of equality for all citizens including (formally, albeit discreetly) minority groups. For the most part, this is the direction in which the new constitution is taking the country. It states in one of its opening articles, The Republic of Kazakstan is a unitary, sovereign and democratic state. In as much as it is the state of an independent Kazak nation, it takes on the responsibility and assures the protection of interests pertaining to representatives of all the nationalities living in its territory. This declaration was, in principle, judged inadequate by Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Kozyrev, who proceeded to increase Russian activity in all the former

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Soviet republics, frequently requesting the granting of dual citizenship to minority groups of Russian origin. The country's foreign policy underwent a noticeable evolution, beginning with mutual collaboration with Uzbekistan (Treaty of Turkestan), which gave rise to an economic union between the two countries (4 January 1993 in Toshkent). Meetings continued, with Kyrgyzstan joining in April 1994, until the summer of 1994 when, at Nazarbaev's suggestion, the basis for a Euroasian Union was drawn up in Almaty which, given time, may become a local substitute for the CIS. The three presidents (Nazarbaev, Karimov of Uzbekistan and Akayev of Kyrgyzstan) signed about ten economic and military accords, among which was one aimed at relaxing customs controls between the three states (with a view to abolishing these), and another which targeted the fight against drug trafficking. The concluding bulletin of the summit affirmed that 'the Union is open to any country which would like to join it' and that 'the capital of the future Union could be situated on the European-Asian border, in Samara [formerly Kuybyshev] or Kazan [situated in Muslim Turkic-speaking "Tatarstan"]'. This factor, along with Kazakstan's exit from the rouble economic zone, has increased tensions with Moscow. Kazakstan has developed diplomatic ties in all directions, but many observers consider relations formed with Turkey to be the most advantageous geo-political axis. From the various communal declarations made concerning themes such as the state's secularity, and the solidarity between Turkic-speaking populations, it would seem that Kazakstan is inclining towards the Turkish model, even if recently relations between the two countries have cooled. The bilateral and co-operative agreements made with Turkey, a country to which Kazakstan feels tied by historical 'affinity', are numerous. The visit to Almaty in March 1991 of Turkish Head of State Turgut Ozal proved to be of major significance. (Ozal was keenly in favour of Turkish influence in Central Asia. He died on 17 April 1993 after returning from a mission to thefiveformer Soviet Asian republics.) Also equally important was the symbolic nomination on 7 July 1992 of 'Turkish' deputy Ibrahim (Jakir (also adviser to President Nazarbaev on energy matters) and the Friendship and Co-operation Treaty of October 1994. The decision that Cyrillic spelling was to be latinised should have important consequences not only on the economy, but also regarding the reception of Turkish television programmes in the country via satellite. Various projects, for which preliminary protocols had been signed, had to be postponed midway due to a lack of the substantial funding required. Among these was: an Almaty-Istanbul railway line (via Tehran); an Almaty-Ankara highway; various proposals for petroleum pipelines to transport Kazak petroleum to Western Europe through the Black Sea or the Turkish petroleum terminal in Ceyhan (Iskenderun). Trade with China is bound up with a historical trade route, interrupted for a few decades due to worsening Soviet-Chinese relations. These days, economic relations between China and Kazakstan are in full swing. The opening of the Almaty-Urumqi-Peking railway line (Urumqi is Xinjiang's administrative centre), other border transits, the envisaged creation of zona franca (similar to China's

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'free economic zones') in Kazak territory have brought about a strong (albeit chaotic) intensification in trade. In 1994, China become Kazakstan's first nonCIS trading partner (43 percent of imports and 15 percent of exports). In April 1994, Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng visited Kazakstan and acknowledged the legitimacy of Kazak jurisdiction over Balqash and the Irtysh regions, which had been under Chinese sovereignty since the eighteenth century. On 26 April 1996, a historical accord for regional military security was signed between Russia, China, Kazakstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in Shanghai, providing for the ongoing demilitarisation of 8000kms of common frontier. Peking saw the dissolution of the USSR as a threat, fearing the spread of democratic or Islamic ideals, especially to Xinjiang, a predominantly TurkicMuslim region, and historically turbulent (the scene of many revolts), also inhabited by about a million Kazaks. For instance, Chinese authorities refused to grant exit visas to a Kazak delegation from Xinjiang wanting to attend die Kurultai (assembly of all Kazaks) in Almaty. On their part, Kazaks fear territorial disputes and the selling of Russian arms to Peking; but most of all, they fear the activities of the Chinese nuclear polygon with its risks of radioactive pollution. Because of this, official protests and demonstrations by anti-nuclear movements have increased. The Chinese polygon is not far from Lake Lop Nor, situated in the Taklamakan Desert about lOOOkms from the Kazak border, 23OOkms from Peking. Since the first Chinese atomic bomb was detonated on 16 October 1964, at least 30 nuclear experiments have been carried out; in October 1994 Chinese authorities exploded 80 kilotons of nuclear devices. Apart from this dispute, the re-opening of relations with China has allowed Kazakstan to look towards the East. Kazak trade missions have reached India, Japan, and above all South Korea, which provides a model of semi-authoritarian governance. At the beginning of 1992, Kazakstan participated in meetings held by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OCE) which - founded in 1964 by Iran, Pakistan and Turkey - had remained inactive until 1985, when it was reactivated, although it has not yet produced any concrete achievements. The OCE, reactivated on the initiative of Pakistan and Iran, with the addition of Turkey, could eventually function as an Islamic common market. However, this does not seem likely - nor does co-operation at lower political or economic levels - while the rivalry between the founding countries overrides any desire to form an alliance. The OCE has expanded to include the five post-Soviet republics of Central Asia, Azerbaijan (February 1992) and - albeit only nominally, given the conflicts besetting it - Afghanistan (November 1992). Iran and Pakistan, thanks to their port cities along the Persian and Oman Gulfs and the Arabian Sea, could greatly reduce trade isolation not only for Kazakstan, but also for the whole of Central Asia. Relations with Iran are generally strong, to the extent that after then Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati's visit in December 1991 the conditions of a cooperation accord between the two countries were drawn up (and signed on 2 November 1992). This was a very significant move for Iran, which seeks

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to break away from international isolation and construct its own sphere of influence. In this regard, it has also attempted to initiate a 'zone of co-operation along the Caspian Sea', from which Turkey has been conspicuously excluded. Kazakstan and Nazarbaev have gained support from some Western European countries (Mitterrand visited Almaty in September 1993) and from the USA, support that he has tried to return. He paid official visits to Paris and Rome (September 1994), and negotiated with Germany for the repatriation of Volga Germans and concluding important agreements for economic co-operation, as with other European nations. The international promotion campaign launched by Kazakstan has undoubtedly earned it greater credibility than other former Soviet Asian republics. Proof of this is to be found in the foreign investment pouring into the energy sector (40 percent of the regional total), the many embassies opened in Almaty since the beginning of the 1990s, and Kazakstan's acceptance into all major international organisations. In 1992, Kazakstan was admitted to the UN (March), IMF (April), CSCE (February) and UNESCO (May). In 1993, it requested entry to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the European Union. In the first few months of 1995, Nazarbaev drew up a second constitutional paper (this time with the assistance of French jurists) which emphasised the by now explicitly authoritarian characteristics of his powers. The new constitution adopted by national referendum on 30 August 1995 protects the 'personal dignity' of the president in such a way that any criticism can be regarded as a crime. The procedure for impeachment is sufficiently restrictive as to be rendered unusable. The Constitutional Court has been dissolved, and replaced by a Supreme Court, whose powers are very limited. It is flanked by the Constitutional Council (composed of seven members chosen by the President and the Presidents of the two chambers). Furthermore, the new constitution prohibits movements for changes in the constitution, national boundaries or group status, whether racial, religious, national or tribal. The constitution is ambiguous in the sense that if strictly interpreted it could impede any form of real opposition. The role of the double-chambered parliament is thus very reduced (of the 47 seats of the Senate, seven are chosen by the President and only 13 are politically affiliated, as are 45 in the 67 seats of the lower chamber, the Majilis). During the course of 1999, the number of regions was reduced from 20 to 15, and consequently the number of seats of the Senate will be reduced from 47 to 37. The others are independent 'government supporters'; thus there are now many parties which do not carry any real weight in political life. On 1 October 1998, Kazak deputies, after a discussion of only half an hour, approved the extension of the presidential mandate from five to seven years. They also suppressed the presidential age limit and brought forward the new presidential elections by two years, from 2001 to January 1999. For the first time a real rival to Nazarbaev had appeared, the new man being ex-Prime Minister Kazhegeldin, who after his removal at the end of 1997 arrived in Switzerland officially on a 'cure'. Educated at the school for KGB executives in Moscow and President of the Union of Kazak Industrialists and Entrepreneurs,

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Kazhegeldin enjoys a certain popularity in his country and abroad, and after Switzerland he reappeared in Moscow and later Washington. A legal bar, however, prevented him from taking part in the Kazak elections. For this reason, the OSCE has deemed the election of January 1999 invalid. However, Nazarbaev was re-elected for a seven-year term. He gained 81.71 percent of the vote, while Serykbolsyn Abdildin, the Communist Party candidate, won a surprising 12 percent. Two other candidates, Gani Kassimov and Engels Gabbassov, obtained 4.72 and 0.78 percent respectively. Participation at this election ran to 86 percent of the 8.5 million registered voters. The Ecological Legacy After Russia, Kazakstan is the post-Soviet republic with the greatest ecological and environmental problems arising from aberrant economic policies. Given its semi-colonial position as a provider of raw materials, Kazakstan has endured heavy enviromental abuse. The effects of a dominant mining industry (the environmental impact of the open cast copper mines in Jezqazghan for example), heavy industry and the excessive utilisation of the river waters for irrigation has led to the drying up of the Aral Sea. Moreover, the country has been used as an 'experimentation zone' for Soviet nuclear and biological weapons. The enormous spread of pollution has contributed to the fostering of great concern for the environment among the Kazak people. Numerous Kazak towns find themselves in an alarming environmental situation. The industrial city of Oskemen in eastern Kazakstan is a tragic example. Between 1990 and 1991, a commission of experts established that, over different periods of time, the inhabitants had been exposed to radiation measuring 50 roentgens, approximately four times higher than the level which contaminated the population around Chernobyl following the 1986 nuclear accident. This radioactivity came from the Semipalatinsk Polygon. Industrial pollution has also reached alarming levels. The quality of drinking water is very poor, and high concentrations of lead and other heavy metals have been deposited in the soil. The mortality rate has tripled in the last ten years, and blood tests carried out on infants identified 25 abnormal chemical elements. The commission in charge of monitoring the city has requested that it and its surrounding territory be declared a 'disaster area'. No action had been taken in the decade until the first environmental protection measures in 1991. The situation can only be improved through an enormous investment, and according to some specialists is so far beyond the 'point of no return' that even if all disposals were to be stopped, at least two hundred years would be needed to purify the underground water reserves. In November 1994, after lengthy negotiations with the USA, 600 kgs of enriched uranium (equivalent to the power of 20 Hiroshima bombs) were removed from Oskemen. US aircraft transported the material to a base in Delaware, and from there to a centre for the treatment of radioactive elements in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

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The exhortation 'May peace reign on earth' placed on a card outside the entrance to the polygon clearly expresses the fear and anxiety felt by the population. In the midst of the chaos following the attempted coup d'etat in Moscow (29 August 1991), Nazarbaev signed a decree preventing all activity and experiments by the Semipalatinsk (now Semey) nuclear polygon, a decision which recognised the activity of the powerful ecological group Nevada-Semipalatinsk, supported by large sections of the population. Although more than 30 years have elapsed since the last nuclear explosion occurred (there were approximately 500 tests between 1949 and 1963), the polygon has continued to claim civilian and military victims. These amount to about 10,000 of the 70,000 people living in the region of the polygon at that time. The entire area will have to be converted into a research centre, but in the meantime its closure has become symbolic to anti-nuclear movements worldwide. The closure does not, however, signify the end of concerns about radioactivity. Indeed problems of nuclear waste disposal are becoming critical. The Almaty Centre for Nuclear Physics (at which it could be stored) has been declared unsuitable due to the permeable soil on which it is built. Meanwhile, the problem persists: Russia refuses to become involved in collection, while construction of a specialised centre in Astana (Aqmola), where such waste could be treated, has been stopped due to popular demonstrations. T H E TERRITORY AND POPULATION Kazakstan, you are immense, Like five Frances Without the Louvre, or Montmartre Oljas Omarovitch Sulejmenov, Transformations du feu, 1981 Soviet geographers used the term 'Middle Asia' (Sredniaia Azia) to identify the region occupied by Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzia, excluding Kazakstan. This subdivision, which reserved a specific area and uniqueness to Kazakstan, was based on the fact that a good part of the actual Kazak territory could be assimilated (more so that the other Soviet Asian Republics) into southern Russia and the Siberian steppes region. In order to avoid any ambiguity in this text, the term 'Central Asia' is used to refer to the region occupied by all the five republics. Kazakstan is immense, measuring 3000kms from east to west, and 1700 from north to south. After Russia (and if considered as a unit, also after Sakha-Jacutia), it is the largest republic of all those which comprised the USSR. Kazakstan's is made up of vast areas and a variety of landscapes and rolling terrains in which forests, steppes (wooded, grassy and arid land) and scattered salt basins are found. Kazakstan shares frontiers with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to the south. It also borders the Caspian Sea to the west, and for more than 1500kms China to the east. The Kazak republic is the only one of all the Central Asian republics to share a frontier with Russia; this northern boundary, 7000kms

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long, starts near the River Volga and extends to Siberia, ending near Mongolia. It is thus understandale, simply on the basis of geography, that Kazakstan should have maintained strong links with Russia. The physical aspect also explains its cultural and political distance from the other Asian republics and the Islamic world, which after the dissolution of the USSR received closer attention from other countries (Turkey, Iran and Pakistan). Given its size, the Kazak landscape is incredibly diverse: to the extreme west are the Caspian Lowlands (Prikaspiyskaya Nizmennost) and the Ryn Desert (Ryn Peski), with other low-lying areas falling well below sea level as far as the Caspian Sea coastline, at times having served as the beds of ancient watercourses (uzboi).

The Caspian has been isolated from the ocean since Pleistocene times. Between this great internal sea and the Aral Sea are the Ustyurt and Mangyshlak plateaux (plato) that extend to the Caspian and from the Mangyshlak and Buzachi peninsulas (poluostrov). There are the gulfs (zaliv) of Komsomolets and Kazakhskiy, the islands (pstrovd) of Tyuleni and coastal marshlands like those of Kajdak and Mertvyy Kulturk. Further north are the Mugodzhary mountain ranges, the southern outermost extensions of the Ural Mountains. The southern central area of the country is occupied by the Turanian Lowlands (Turanskaya Nizmennost) or by steppes - the most noticeable being the Kyrgyz Steppe and the Famine Steppe (Betpak Dala) - and by relatively large deserts (Peski Moyynkum, Priaralskiye Karakumi and Peski Sary Ishikotrau). The northern central area is characterised by plains and hills which, though widely spread out, are not very high, like the Kazakstan Heights (Kazakhskiy Melkosopochnik). East of these is the Turgayskaya Dolina (dolina means valley), also known as the 'Door of Tiirgay', which during ancient times was the principal route to the north. The south-eastern part of the country is mountainous, with hills stretching towards the southern border. The climate is influenced by the proximity of some long mountain ranges like the southern Tian Shan and the eastern Altay Mountains, along which lie the slopes of the country's highest peaks (the Khan Tengri or Zhenghis Shingy, reaching 6995m, and the Gora Belukha, reaching 4506m). Connected to these hills are other important smaller chains: Karatau, Narym, Ketmen, Tarbagatay. These are all referred to as khrebet, or 'mountains', while some mountains take the name alatau, a Turkic word meaning 'multicoloured mountains', like the Zailiysky Alatau (which tower over Almaty and reach 5000m) and the Jungarskiy Alatau (which separate central Asia from Chinese Xinjiang and have peaks higher than 4000m). The famous 'Door of Jungaria' (Jungarian Gate or Jungarskiye Vorota) also takes its name from these latter ranges. This is a narrow pass about 300m high which since ancient times has been the axis of trade with China. The climate is continental and extreme, characterised by hot summers and very cold winters (maximum temperatures 36-39°C, minimum -30°C), with temperatures ranging higher or lower in some areas due to the scale of the terrain. The ground is generally arid, with some areas covered by solontchak-type

tan

R U S S I A

R U S S I

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soils (solontchak is a Russian term for salty and sandy soils), characterised by saline inflorescences and halophilic vegetation growing on the surface; these are plants growing in soil with a high salt content. In some regions, the heat brings on tornadoes or sandstorms, and strong winds usually shift large amounts of dust. In 1997, strong winds fuelled rapacious fire which burnt 75,000 square kilometres of forest in the Qaraghandy and Semey regions. Precipitation is low, though higher to the north (about 400 millimetres per year) and lower (verging on dryness) to the south (250 millimetres), except on the hills and towards the southern regions where the old capital is situated, where annual rainfall is 629 millimetres. Water In addition to the Caspian Sea, whose tributaries are the Ural (Zayyq in Kazak) and the Emba Rivers, the hydrography is centred on the Aral Sea shared with Uzbekistan. This sea is rapidly drying up due in part to evaporation but largely to the excessive use of its two tributaries. The rivers Syr Darya (Kazakstan's most important watercourse) and Amu Darya (which runs further to the south, between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and separates Tajikistan and Afghanistan) are used for irrigation (in cotton cultivation). For some time now, neither of these tributaries has so much as trickled a drop of water into this large salt lake. After years of controversy, the extension of the artificial canal linking the Irtysh River to the city of Qaraghandy, which should have then led back to the city of Jezqazghan (and from there back to the Aral Sea), was stopped in 1986. Of the almost 48,000 lakes (called ozero or kot) found in this area, worthy of note is Lake Balqash (Balkhash in Russian) which, measuring 17,400 square kilometres, is Asia's second-largest fresh-water lake. Lake Balqash is fed by rivers flowing down from mountains in the south: the Aksu, Karatal and Hi, the artificial Qapshaghay basin being built on the course of the latter. Lake Zaysan is fed by the Kara Irtysh River, which flows from China (where it is called the Ertix He). Its outlet is the Irtysh River (Ertis in Kazak) which, after crossing Kazakstan and Siberia, flows into the Ob River and then northwards into the Kara Sea (a glacial Arctic sea). The Irtysh-Ob basin is one of the largest in the entire Asian continent (second only to the Yenisey basin) and is an important trade thoroughfare. On the Irtysh River, as happened on the Tobol River near Rudnyy (referred to as Rudny) where the artificial Lake Karatomarsk was built, an obstruction has created a lake which previously did not exist, Lake Buktarminsk. The hydrography is also made up of some smaller lakes: Alakol, Tenghiz, Seletyteniz and Sasykkol; and other rivers: the Chu (or Cu) and the Sarysu in the south, the Ishim and Turgay to the north.

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Regions and Cities Kazakstan's territory is divided administratively into 19 regions or oblystar (singular oblys) and one city (qala) without autonomous regions or republics. On 16 July 1994, Kazak deputies decided that within six years the capital would be changed from Almaty to Aqmola (formerly Tselinograd) in the northeast. Nazarbaev confirmed this decision (with a presidential decree in September 1995), defending it on the grounds that the present capital's development was inhibited, the surrounding mountains had serious pollution problems, and Almaty was in an area of high seismic risk. The new capital will be called Astana. Kazakstan's urban structure consists of 84 cities, but in addition to the 19 regional administrative centres there are very few which have as many as 100,000 inhabitants. They are Ekibastuz, Rudnyy, Balqash, Temirtau and Turkestan (once known as Yassy). In the following list, which is an adaptation of the one drawn up by the geographer Dvoskin, the oblys's administrative name is followed by that of the administrative centre (in italics), whose former name appears in brackets. The number of inhabitants was estimated as at the end of 1996. Northern Region: Qostanay, Qostanay (Kustanay), 232,000; Soltustik (Northern) Kazakstan, Qiziliar (Petropavl, already Petropavlosk), 239,000; Kokshetau, Kbkshetau (Kokchetav), 144,000; Pavlodar, Pavlodar (Pavlodar), 341,000; Torghay, Arqalyk (Arkalyk), 65,000; Aqmola, Aqmola (Tselinograd) 290,000 (from the year 2000 Astana). Central Region: Jezqazghan, Jezqazghan (Djezkazgan), 112,000; Qaraghandy, Qaraghandy (Karaganda), 579,000. Eastern Region: Semey, Semey (Semipalatinsk), 338,000; Shyghys (Eastern) Kazakstan, Oskemen (Ust-Kamenogorsk), 330,000. Western region: Batys (Western) Kazakstan, Oral (Uralsk), 219,000; Atyrau, Atyrau (Guryev), 147,000; Mangghystau, Aqtau (Shevchenko), 152,000; Aqtobe, Aqtbbe (Aktyubinsk), 259,000. Southern Region: Qyzylorda, Qyzylorda (Kzyl-Orda, which will become Aq-Meshet, the name it had until 1853), 162,000; Ongtustik (Southern) Kazakstan, Shymkent (Chimkent) 398,000; Zhambyl, Taraz (Dzambul, which was Aulie Ata before 1936), 310,000; Taldyqorghan, Taldyqorghan (Taldy-Kurgan), 136,000, and finally the region {oblys) of Almaty (Alma Ata), but the urban centre of the city constitutes its own district (qalasy). The old kazak capital Almaty is the second-largest city in the entire former Soviet region of Central Asia, with 1,190,000 inhabitants.

On 3 May 1997, President Nazarbaev announced that the total number of oblast would be reduced from 19 to 14, the less populated being dissolved (the ones that will definately be dissolved are Kokshetau, Jezqazghan and Semey, and the other two are still under discussion). The new capital Astana will have the status of a qalasy. Leninsk, the city of the 'cosmodrome' of Baikonur will be under Russian law.

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Ethnic Make-up Kazakstan is a multi-ethnic country: a census conducted in 1989 showed that the population was 39.7 percent Kazak, 37.8 percent Russian, 5.4 percent Ukrainian, 2 percent Tatar, 2 percent Uzbek, and 5.8 percent German (Volga German). The Volga Germans are farmers descended from colonists who migrated to this area in the eighteenth century, and are so named because they settled along the banks of the river. In August 1941 they were deported to 'special population zones' in Kazakstan and Siberia. They were rehabilitated in 1964, and their repatriation was the outcome of negotiations with Germany, where some hundred thousand of them had already settled. Others had unsuccessfully tried to create a 'national German district' in northern Kazakstan. There are also many other minority groups, like the Uyghurs (1.1 percent), Belarussians (1 percent), Koreans (about 100,000 were deported by Stalin in 1937), as well as Azeris, Poles, Moldovians, Armenians and Greeks. Groups of Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi tradition have kept their own identity despite the absence of legitimate recognition, like the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, who originate from Chinese Xinjiang and the Chinese Hui, also called Dungans (in 1979 they numbered 23,000). Kazakstan has the lowest population density in the entire CIS. The ethnic Kazak population group is found in the southern area, while the majority of Slavs have settled in the open regions of the north between the Ural River and Siberia, as well as in some of the cities. Since ancient times, the Kazak territory has been a place of migration to which populations have travelled and settled. The origins of the Kazak people remain somewhat mysterious, as they descend from the Kipchak Turkic confederation about which, even now, little is known. What is certain, however, is that they share the same ethnic origins as Uzbeks. From the eighteenth century, Russian military colonialisation radically transformed the northern population and led to the creation of a strategic fortification and administrative system oriented towards Southern Asia which was generally entrusted to the Cossacks. Towards the end of the 1930s, the so-called forced settlement policy was added, which continued throughout the Soviet era Sedentarisation, collectivisation and civil war succeeded by famine all dealt: a severe blow to the Kazak population (some sources indicate that almost two million people died, almost half the Kazak population of that time). This decrease in the population, aggravated by the emigration to Chinese Xinjiang and the relocation of industrial plants during the war years (and the corresponding transfer of Russian manpower), meant that between 1935 and the last decade Kazaks have actually been a minority group in their own territory. The 1989 census revealed that for the first time in their national history Kazak numbers had overtaken Russian. This is not the case, however, if all Slav groups are taken into consideration (Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians). In May 1992, Nazarbaev quoted figures according to which Russians represented 3 5 percent of the population and Kazaks 40 percent. In August of that

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same year, the Kazak State Committee for Statistics revealed that for that month Russians made up 37 percent of the and Kazaks 42 percent; the latter, according to another estimate, had risen to 44.4 percent by 1995. In September 1992, demographer Makach Tatimov expounded the theory that from the year 2000 autochthonous groups would become the majority, while Russians would make up less than 30 percent of the population. This forecast of the evolution of the population is based on a disparity in birth rates. The average natural increase is 0.85 percent per annum (the lowest of the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia), but that of the ethnic Kazaks is higher, and on a par with that of the area's other Asiatic populations. The possibility of a mass emigration by the Slavs alarms the government, which has tried to intervene, both physically and psychologically, in an attempt to curb a disturbing Slav exodus. (Slavs are considered a precious resource as they make up a large section of the skilled working class and competent leadership.) This is a controversial issue, as the facts are not made public. According to the Muscovite newspaper Argumenty I Fakty (no. 39, 1992), the exodus of Slavs decreased in 1991; from 1979 to 1989 about 77,500 left Kazakstan; in 1989 this figure was 44,000; in 1990, 54,000; and in 1991, 30,000. Conversely, according to the latest statistics available from Russia, the immigrants from Kazakstan numbered 200,000 in 1993 and 140,000 during the first half of 1994. On the one hand, the tendency to flee was accelerated by the 'Kazakisation' process, as well as by Slavs losing their jobs for 'linguistic reasons'. On the other hand, it has slowed down due to crisis. The cost of domestic transport in the former Soviet territory has greatly increased (halving transfers between 1989 and 1993). Russia is faced with instability. In 1992, inflation was quoted at 1300 percent, as against Kazakstan's 'mere' 730. 'Repatriates' are often resented for the privileges available to them (aid and lodging established by an Act of 19 February 1992) which are granted (although usually only theoretically) to those who obtain propiska, or the 'right of abode'. If on the one hand feelings of deep insecurity have spread among Kazakstan's Russian population (as usually happens in Russian communities living outside the Russian Federal Republic), then on the other hand the Kazaks are rediscovering their cultural roots: their language (which a quarter of Kazaks do not speak, especially in the cities), as well as the clan-like juz organisation, which could play a decisive political role in the future. In conclusion, an official government estimate in 1995 confirmed the shift in the national population balance: Kazaks 46 percent, Russian 34.7, Ukrainians 4.9 percent, Volga Germans 3.1, other minorities unchanged. Kazak minorities living abroad make up a quarter of the entire ethnic population (about 3,500,000 people). There are over two million in the CIS: about one million in Uzbekistan, 350,000 in the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan (formerly in Uzbekistan), 100,000 in Turkmenistan, about 700,000 in Russia and some of its autonomous republics, like Kalmyks (Kalmyki in Russian) on the northern bank of the Caspian, where Kazaks number about 10,000. 1.5 million are outside the CIS, the greatest number being in Chinese Xinjiang, the result of various waves of migration (calculated at 1,107,000 people

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in 1991); 42,000 are in Mongolia, 40,000 in Afghanistan and 30,000 in Turkey. About 30,0000 Kazaks who emigrated to Russia and settled in Astrakhan, Orenburg, Omsk and Mongolia have returned to their country of origin. As a result of these demographic factors, the population tends to be constant (or decreasing: the population fell by 200,000 in 1997, due to Slav emigration), and the government has intimated that in order to redress this phenomenon it is disposed to implementing a new law prohibiting abortion and a special tax for couples without children. Map 2: Population d l Kazaks A

Uzbeks

V

Uyghurs

•

H Q

Russians

Novosibirsk

Ukrainians Germans

North-South Divide Various aspects of Kazakstan, such as its infant mortality rate and the average family size, tend to reflect Russian trends more then those of the region's other countries. A range of other economic indicators confirm this, like Kazakstan's higher percentage of doctors and hospital beds per inhabitant and its wider distribution of telephones and consumer goods. The urban population, which numbers 57.6 percent of the total (in Russia it is 74 percent) is slowly increasing, while in other Asian Republics it is on the decline. This could be partly due to the life expectancy, which now seems to be undoubtedly influenced by the environmental situation; in 1997 it was among the lowest in the CIS (63.7 years). The main characteristic differentiating Kazakstan from other post-Soviet Asian republics is that it is a 'dichotomous' nation (to use an expression applied by French geographer Jean Radvanyi; another specialist, Olivier Roy, has come to use the term 'fiction' or Virtual state'); in other words, a nation in which the

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northern half is more economically and demographically developed than the southern half. Both Kazak and Soviet geographers have always taken this characteristic into account. One of these, Dvoskin, has suggested a territorial division into five regions: the first three of these (north, east and central) are 'drawn' towards the neighbouring Russian regions, while those to the south and west are assimilable into Central Asia. This is why Kazakstan has always longed for (though never found) a national identity which signifies more than mere ethnic identity. Economic efforts have emphasised, rather than smoothed out, these regional dichotomies. Many large centres of heavy industry were developed in the northeast of the republic and integrated in order to reap the advantages which this type of organisation should have derived from the Soviet industrial network along the Ural, Siberia and the European part of the USSR. The northern belt also boasts a thriving agricultural industry, made possible when this region was rendered farmable by the Virgin Lands Programme during the 1950s. The Kazaks, unwilling to involve themselves in heavy industry, remained scattered throughout the rural areas, primarily involved, as they remain today, in their traditional activity of stock farming. Russians and other nationalities, like the Volga Germans, are also well represented in the northern rural areas. The regions where the Kazaks have remained in the majority are those to the south and west. The latter, so-called 'Caspian' Kazakstan, have for many years been the least populated of the regions, on account of their inhospitable climate (in fact, they verge on total aridity, with precipitation averaging 225 millimetres per year). The 'pre-Caspian' depression, such as the rocky plateaux or sandy massifs of the interior, have always been unsuitable for human settlement. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the area, which is also semi-arid and lies between the Caspian and Aral Seas, was the last region of Kazakstan where nomadism was still predominant. The discovery of petroleum in the lower basin of the Emba River, and after the war along the Mangyshlak peninsula, gave rise to an industrial activity helped by the relative closeness of Europe. In order to make better use of this advantage, the 'new cities' of Shevchenko (now Aqtau, founded in 1959 near an artificial oasis) and Aktyubinsk (now Aqtobe) were founded, both in the central part of a region with large unexplored petroleum deposits. The country's southern region is one of transition towards Southern Asia, even though, unlike Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the mountains play a minor role. The banks of Lake Balqash are not conducive to irrigation and, as with the Aral Sea, problems caused by the increase in water salinity levels limit fish stocks. The south's 'industrial poles', usually involved with heavy or primary processing industries, are centred in the cities of Shymkent and Zhambyl (now Taraz), while the fabric industry has been more dominant in the old capital. Along the lower course of the Syr Darya River, where there are many oases, there is an important agricultural industry (rice, cotton, vegetables and fruit).

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Almaty Almaty is a new city situated far from the main trade routes that pass through Bukhara, Merv, Kokand and through Jungaria. It was founded (at the request of Czar Alexander II) in 1854 as a military fort, named Vernyi ('the faithful'), later becoming the Russian administrative centre and capital of this imperial region. In 1921, it assumed the local name of Alma Ata ('the place of apples') returning to its former Kazak name Almaty after independence. The city's economic importance became evident at a later stage than that of the other 'historical cities' in the region, and was mainly generated by Russian interests. The Russians also took charge of developing trade because, as a rule, Kazaks do not involve themselves in commercial matters, regarding them as 'undignified'. Lev Trotsky was detained here in December 1927, after his expulsion from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, until February 1929, when he was exiled from the entire Soviet territory. Situated only about 30kms from the Kyrgyz border, near the Hi basin (which is a tributary of the Balqash Lake) and spread out over the Zailiysky Alatau range (a peak of which towers 5000m over the city), Almaty may be structurally defined as a 'Russian city'. Little remains of the former czarist military fort, hit by the earthquakes of 1877 and 1911. The actual city centre is made up of two sections. The 'old' quarters have been restored over time, and follow on from each other like the squares on a chessboard. The streets are lined with trees and occupied by two- or three-storey buildings. Seen in its entirety, the city appears like a huge park. One is struck by the great number, and conspicuously good maintenance, of public parks and gardens, which contrast with the region's dryness. Also in this part of the city, around the marketplace and Zenkov Orthodox Cathedral (which takes its name from the architect who built it in 1904, without the use of a single nail) is the bustling and vibrant business district. Since the 1970s, a new administrative centre has been built along the slopes towering over the city centre, and to which the majority of ministries and offices were then transferred, as were the university and museums. This centre is modern in design and is impressive architecturally, some buildings rising between ten and 15 storeys. Yet it remains somewhat cold and lifeless. Industrial activity is more to the north, in the 'lower' areas of the city, near the station and working-class quarters, where individual, isbas (traditional, simple Russian rural house) can still be found scattered around. These areas are severely lacking in municipal services (some do not even have running water) and are often divided according to ethnicity (Tatar, Uyghur, or Korean quarters, for example). Various industrial responsibilities flank the city's administrative and scientific offices (university, research centres, Science Academy headquarters). These range from textile industry to leatherworks, to mechanical construction, electronics and cement. However, the real embodiment of modernisation is still the 'Medeo', a large complex for winter sports, just 16kms from the city centre,

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which houses the world's largest speed skating rink - the city's pride and joy. Not far from this, and within easy reach, lies the Shimbulaq ski resort, with lifts reaching heights of 3160m. The re-opening of the Peking-Moscow railway line, via Almaty and Urumqi, will reinforce the city's economic importance in the region. In 1877, Almaty had 12,000 inhabitants, thereafter quickly becoming the second largest city, after Tbshkent, in Soviet Central Asia. Today it has almost 1,200,000 inhabitants, the population greatly increasing (by more than 24 percent) over the ten-year period 1979-1989. Kazaks still remain in the minority, even today, having only slightly overtaken the 16 percent recorded in 1989. During the last ten years, however, they have gradually become the majority in the fields of public administration, education and science, while the majority of skilled labourers and technicians are Slavs. The December 1986 mob uprisings were indicative of the existence and dangers of ethnic tensions. In order to mitigate these, so-called 'active negotiation' policies have since been put into effect in the capital, as well as in the rest of the country. By the year 2000, under the decree approved by the Kazak government in July 1994, the capital will change from Almaty (capital since 1929) to Aqmola, renamed Astana. Astana: The New Capital On 10 December 1997, Nazarbaev officially inaugurated the new capital of the country: Aqmola, which will take the name 'Astana', meaning simply 'capital' in Kazak. The ceremony was postponed five times because of work delays, partly caused by the severe climate (40°C in summer, -30°C in winter). Transferring a capital thousands of kilometres is unique, not only in the CIS but also in the rest of the world, a decision which now seems to embody and underline the 'grandiose' characteristics of the Kazak tradition. In the winter of 1997 a large demonstration of workers who had not been paid for months was dispersed by the police in Almaty; meanwhile in Astana the new luxury presidential palace was being inaugurated (constructed by the French company Bouygues). Many other grand buildings being built, among them the Intercontinental Hotel and the 'business centre' (the first constructed by a Turkish company, the second by the Italian Arenco) in the attempt to give the appearance of a capital to what in reality is still only a provincial city. In the meantime, the council chambers have been repainted. The first wave of transferred ministers have found lodgings in communal apartments. Lots on the desert steppes have been given to around 40 ambassadors who were accredited in the old capital, and big construction corporations have been asked to contribute generously to the building of new diplomatic missions in exchange for tax breaks. Aqmola means 'white tomb'; in the past it was a Cossack fort, becoming a Russian colonial city in the nineteenth century. In the 1950s it became the city of the 'virgin lands' chosen by Khrushchev as the centre of the campaign to clean

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up the surrounding steppes. The majority of its 300,000 inhabitants today are unemployed Russian labourers. According to Nazarbaev, moving the capital was necessary because, 'In this period of transition changing the vital centre of our state is indispensable and Aqmola responds to the 32 criteria for the choice of a capital'. What these criteria are remains a mystery. Though some have seen an echo of the nomadic tradition in this decision, it also has its rational aspects. Almaty's seismic dangers are well known. Strategically, having the capital lOOOkms further north represents a guarantee against the secession favoured among the dominant Slav community Finally, there is growing official concern over increasing importance in society of the traditional division of the Kazak people into juz, or clan-like structures (Nazarbaev comes from the Great Juz and Aqmola is situated in the territory of the Middle Juz). The transfer to Astana will help to overcome internal ethnic and tribal antagonisms. Kazakstan is a Eurasian country, and therefore, according to Nazarbaev, 'it should have Astana as its capital; the geographic centre of Eurasia, the future major pole of communication of this supercontinent, in which economic flux and technological and information sciences will encounter each other in the twenty-first century'. HISTORICAL OUTLINE The sparsely populated Kazak territory had for a long time been considered a no-man's-land. From the second millenium BC onwards, it became an area favoured by pastoral nomads. Since then, it has been continuously involved in the rise and fall of the so-called 'empires of the steppes9 and with the proto-Turkic and proto-Mongol populations: the Sakas, the Scythian confederations between the eighth and third centuries BC; between first and sixth centuries AD the Huns, a nomadic group of tribes never united into a single population group; the Turkic khaganate (from khagan, a title bestowed to princes of some nomadic Turkic tribes) 552-704; and the Qarluq, 766-940. Around the tenth century, a confederation of large Turkic tribes known as the Tokuz Oghuz (the 'nine tribes') descended into the region from the east. Arab historians refer to this area as the Oghuz steppes, renamed the Kipchak steppes or Qipcaq at the start of the eleventh century when the confederation of tribes bearing that name drove the Oghuz westwards, towards the Middle East and the Mediterranean coast, where it formed the Seljuk Sultanate. The Oghuz occupation, followed by that of the Kipchak, conclusively led to the linguistic 'turkisation' of the steppes, while in the surrounding areas great empires were being formed, like the Tang Dynasty in China, the Abbasid Caliphate and the Rus' of Kiev. These empires curbed the migration of nomads coming from Eurasia and transformed present-day Kazakstan into one of their settlement areas. Between the eighth and eleventh centuries, the nomadic Turkic-speaking populations of the region were converted to Islam, a process that gradually progressed southwards.

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The Genghiskhanids and the Uzbeks In the thirteenth century, the Kipchaks, a sprawling group of peoples who united and separated depending on the alliances and enmities of the time, along with an element of the Oghuz population, became integrated into the vastest steppe empire of all, that of Genghis Khan. After the death of the great Mongolian conqueror in 1227, the empire was divided amongst his four siblings. The territories west of the Irtysh River, including present-day Kazakstan and western Siberia, were given to Jochi (or Djochi) the eldest son. Dying in the same year as his father, Jochi left his lands to his five children, the start of the Jochid Dynasty. From then until the Russian colonialisation in the mid-nineteenth century, every sovereign of Kazakstan was a Genghiskhanid. Yet subsequent conflicts within the dynasty, for example those between Jochids and the rival Shaybanids, dominated political life, as did wars against neighbouring population groups and sovereigns, especially the Oyrats and the Chaghatay khanate, and to a lesser extent against Tamburlaine (1336-1405) and his descendants, the Timurids. The most energetic descendant of the great leader was Abul Khair (1412-68), who succeeded in unifying the tribes of the territories over which he governed (called the Uzbek khanate at the time), and attempted to conquer the southern region. Two princes, Karai and Jani Bek, were unwilling to submit to his rule. Defeated, they sought refuge eastwards, taking with them a very large number of clans, migrating past the Balkhash and the steppes between Orenburg and Semipalantinsk. This clan of so-called 'dissidents' was referred to as 'Kazaks'. Abul Khair, weakened by the raiding of the Oyrats, was defeated in a great battle north of the Syr Darya by the Kazak clans led by Karai and Jani Bek; in 1468 he was assassinated on their orders. The Uzbek clans fled south, past the Syr Darya, leaving an open territory that was rapidly claimed by the Kazak clans, who then redeployed themselves in the territory. From that point onwards, the term 'Uzbek' was used to refer to the tribe south of the Syr Darya, while the 'Kazak' identified the population to the north. The Three Kazak 'Hordes' and Oyrat Raids Kazaks later flooded into parts of Abul Khair's kingdom. These were ruled by Karai's son, Burunduk Khan (1488-1509), and Kasym Khan (1509-18), son of Jani Bek (and considered by some historians as the founder of the Kazak nation). For about a century, they enjoyed relative peace. The Kazak khanate was a feudal and nomadic state, also called the Kazak Horde, like the Mongolian Golden or White Hordes. The term 'horde' is used to identify a particular type of nomadic group of itinerant hunters and predators specific to Central Asia. Entailing a more elementary form of organisation, and preceding the clans, a horde did not have afixedhome. The historical formation process of Kazak national entity has always sparked long debates and historiographical controversy, centring around the balance

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between tie military power of invading groups and the intrinsic weakness of state power. What is known for certain is that the Kazak name was confirmed from the end of the fifteenth century, and that national feeling is based on myth, especially on the legend according to which a Kazak forefather bestowed on his three children equal shares of land which later developed into the three hordes. The Kazak khanate, while remaining in that form until the arrival of the Russians, had always been very weak. The khan's rule was hereditary, but political authority gradually became vested in the hands of the more important tribal leaders, who were theoretically the khan's vassals but always remained autonomous in practice. In turn, the clans and tribes were led by the lower nobility,

beys and batyrs.

Central power thus always remained weak. After Kasym Khan's death, the system was reorganised into three large, separate hordes (juz or zhuz): the Little Horde (Kishi Juz) in the western region, east of the Ural River, the Middle Horde (Orta Juz) in the northern central steppe region, and finally the Great Horde (Ulu Juz) south of present-day Kazakstan, near the Hi River basin. Even today, the history of how the hordes came into being remains vague. It involves a complex succession of domestic territorial wars and external conflicts, mainly in the southern regions. Between the seventeenth an eighteenth centuries the Kazaks fought even bloodier wars against the Oyrats (Western Mongols) when the latter crossed the steppe in 1602, between 1710 and 1713 and between 1722 and 1723. The present post-Soviet Kalmycks (or Volga Oyrats) are descendants of Oyrats who crossed the Volga on one of their raids and remained in the territory. Their name derives from the Turkish word kalmak ('to remain', 'those who remained'). Today they number about 320,000 and live in an autonomous republic founded in 1936, then abolished in 1943 when some Kalmycks sided with the Germans against the Red Army. Punishment was most severe, even for those who had fought the Nazis, and all were deported. These 'punished people' were able to return to their own republic, which regained its status as an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation (Kalmyckaja), only in 1958. Today renamed Hal'mg Tangc, it is 76,000 square kilometres in size, with administrative headquarters in Elitsa (with around 90,000 inhabitants). The Kalmycks have preserved their own Mongolian language, as have the Buryats (another population group of Mongol origin living in the autonomous republic bearing their name). The Buddhist Lamaist religious cult has been preserved to a lesser extent, while the Buryats have passed down a form of Buddhism tinged with shamanism. The Oyrat raids brought looting and massacre, and led to a great exodus of Kazaks and other populations. Kazak historians call this era aktaban shubrundy, the 'great disaster', because of the indelible mark it left on the collective memory of the Kazak people. The wars against the Oyrats played a decisive role in the increasingly direct demands made by some Kazak khans to Russia for military aid. Tiavka, who was among the khans who sought help from Czar Peter the Great, declared himself a subject of Russia in 1718, and similar requests continued to be made up until the reign of Czarina Anna Ivanovna (1738-55). Towards the end of the eighteenth

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century, the western part of the Kazak territory (wedged between Russia, China and Uzbek khanates) was transformed into a type of Russian protectorate, while the eastern part fell under the Chinese protection of the Manchu Dynasty, to whose emperor the Kazak leader Ablai Khan had to swear allegiance in 1771. The Kazak Steppes Under Russian Domination The 1667 'Cossack Uprising' led by Stepan 'Stenka' Razin (1630-71), to whom the composer Aleksandr Glazunov dedicated a 1885 symphonic poem, was a bloody jacquerie against the Boyars and land-owning classes which ravaged the regions along the Volga and Caspian Sea, and it conformed in Russia to the idea of an Asian expansion campaign. This expansion was carried out in two phases. The first, involving the actual conquest between 1731 and 1850, saw the submission of the Little Horde in 1731, the Medium Horde in 1740 and the Great Horde in 1781. A type of protectorate was established in the territories of the Kazak khans who had sought help from the Czars. The Russians moved forwards relentlessly, maintaining a fortified line (tcherta) which extended right into the heart of the steppes. The main forts were those built at Omsk in 1716, Semipalatinsk (or 'seven palaces'), to which Fyodor Dostoevsky was exiled for five years, in 1718, UstKamenogorsk in 1719, Orenburg in 1740, Petropavlosk (now Qiziliar) in 1743, and much later Kokchetav in 1824, and those on the Caspian, such as Novo Aleksandrovnoe (1839). Even though this was a solid line of defence, it was never totally secure, and the Kazaks, though nominally subjects, frequently carried out raids against caravans and colonial settlements. The Russians were thus obliged to assume direct control of the region, in which they subsequently carried out long and bloody 'pacification campaigns'. The second phase, from 1850 onwards, was concerned with economic colonialisation. After signing a treaty with China (the Treaty of Tchuguchak, now Tacheng, in 1864), which assured non-intervention (and which China denounced as unequal during the post-war period), Russia declared these territories 'state property' in 1868. Rural colonialisation was given a substantial boost by the ukaz (an absolute decree and symbol of czarist despotism) in 1889 following that passed in 1861 abolishing serfdom - authorising the free settlement of Russian peasants in Kazak territories. From the time of the decree until the outbreak of World War I, about one million Russian peasants relocated, mainly to an area to the north of present-day Kazakstan. The Russians never conceded authority to the Kazaks who had remained inorodtsy (of foreign extraction); they were exempted from military service but deprived of various rights. Some feudal laws were abolished, but the institution (although revised) of the waqf (Muslim religious endowments), customary laws, as well as the local forms of self-government founded on 'ancestral advice', remained intact. The Russians, through links with Kazaks and administrative mechanisms, exploited the Tatars. Their influence - apart from sowing the seeds of the Islamic

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faith among the tribes to the north and east, which had remained semi-animistic - also helped spread pan-Turkic and pan-Islamic ideals. This influence also gave rise to the formation of a more local intelligentsia and the establishment of a press, as well as to literary and national political awareness. From this period emerged various generations of intellectuals, some of whom were greatly influenced by the 'Russian model'. US historians have suggested an interesting parallel between the wars fought by the cavalry against the native American Indians in the American West and those fought by the Cossacks (under Russian service) against Kazak nomads in the Asian steppes, calling these the Russian 'Indian Wars'. This is not based on mere historical analogy, but a sound evaluation. Many historians and Kazak political figures now make use explicitly of the term 'genocide' (also used in connection with native Americans). Former Minister of Defence, M. Nurmagambetov, said, 'Cossacks participated in the genocide of the Kazak population'. The parallel between the two countries is also interesting on another level: the symbol of Nevada-Semipalatinsk's anti-nuclear campaign depicts an Indian Shoshone smoking a peace calumet with a Kazak shepherd. Moreover, Russian agricultural settlements multiplied to such an extent that a marked reduction in available pasture (essential to the livestock of the nomads) resulted, as had occurred in the destruction of the 'bison economy' on the prairies of the American West. The construction of great railway lines to promote economic and military expansion (the Transcaspian line in 1896, the Transaralian in 1904 and the Map 3: Russian Expansion in Kazakstan 1

Occupied Russians 1871-1882

Russian Empire at the death of Peter the Great in 1725

Russian expansion — 1725-1825

••1825-1864

11865-1876 1877-1914

China Emirate of Bukhara i l l Khanate of Khiva Khanate of Kokand

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Trans-siberian between 1891 and 1914) is another feature the two histories have in common; railway lines played an important role in the 'civilisation' process in America. The same may be said of the discovery of copper mines in Jezqazghan (in 1711, but developed from 1850) or of silver in Ridder (from 1784). Kazakstan's mines, while not provoking the 'gold rush' of California, were also an important factor in migration. The military strategy of both the American West and Kazakstan's steppes centred around the use of cavalry. While artillery was not widely deployed at the time, firearms constituted the main technological advantage over the indigenous peoples, be they Indians or Kazaks. More far-reaching similarities may be traced in the development of cottongrowing regions in the south of both countries, as well as in the nomadic lifestyles of the local populations (with tents: yurts and tepees), their management of trade caravans or in their looting. Parallels can be drawn between the biographies of protagonists: of General Custer, General Perovski or General von Kaufman, who subsequently became the Russian governor of the region. The pacification of the Kazaks proved to be a difficult and protracted affair, as was its American counterpart, though much less publicised. In little under a century, between 1783 and 1870, eight major revolts and dozens of lesser ones took place. In 1783, there began a revolt, led by Srym Datov, a batyr (a member of the lower nobility) of the Little Horde. It was a 'guerrilla' campaign against forts near the Ural Mountains, and was defeated and disbanded only in 1797. In 1825, the suppression of the khanate of the Middle Horde gave rise to a vast movement led by deposed sovereigns like Sarzhan Kasymov and Ubaidullah Valikhanov (grandson of Ablai Khan). Defeated a few months later, they were pushed by the Cossacks right into the heart of the steppes. Between 1831 and 1834, Kasymov and Valikhanov attempted a new foray southwards, but were finally defeated. In 1837, the battle was resumed by Kenesary (another grandson of Ablai Khan), who in approximately a decade of wars punctuated by brief truces (1838-46), managed to reassert control over the Middle Horde and part of the Great by means of various raids to the north of Kazakstan. In order to put an end to his incursions, the Russians constructed forts in Turgay and Irgiz (completed in 1845). He was only finally defeated in 1846 when he was driven south along the Tian Shan Mountains, and eventually killed by the Kyrgyz. Meanwhile in the Little Horde, clans of the Adaev Horde were breaking away from those of the Bukey Horde. The latter, who grazed their herds between the Volga and Ural rivers, formed an anti-Russian movement led by Bey Isatai Taimanov, and by the popular bard Mahambet Utemisov. Both were defeated and killed, the former in 1837, the latter in 1846. Other revolts occurred in 1855 among the Shekli populations east of the Aral Sea, led by Batyr Gjankhodja Nurmuhammedov who, joining forces with the Kazaks to the south, opposed the Russian colonies settled along the banks of the Syr Darya with relentless persistence. This revolt was crushed three years later. The final insurrections occurred between 1877 and 1878 in the regions of the Uralsk and Turgay. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the country finally seemed 'pacified'.

Map 4: Russian Expansion in Kazakstan 2

SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA IN 1920

AT THE END OF 1926

Tajiks Nagorno Badakhshan

AT THE END OF 1936

Nagorno Badakhshan FGHANISTANX INDIA

State boundaries — People's Republics boundaries Socialist Soviet Republics' boundaries Autonomous Republics' and Autonomous Regions' boundaries

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The 1916 Uprising and the 'Alash Orda' During the first few years of the twentieth century, tensions provoked by agricultural reform and economic difficulties experienced by the population led to a large-scale uprising. The immediate cause was the promulgation of a decree (of 25 June 1916) under which Kazaks, and other Asian populations, were mobilised to form 'labour battalions' employed for military purposes in zones behind the front. Riots initially broke out in Uzbek regions, but quickly spread to Kazakstan, taking on the form of a national insurrection. Thousands of Russian colonists were massacred and tens of thousands of Kazaks died, while more than 300,000 nomads (mostly Kazaks) sought refuge in China to escape the repression. The revolt was stifled everywhere, except in the 'black lands' regions of Turgay, where the rebels and their leaders Amangeldy Imanov and Alibiy Gjanghildin were based, it persisted until February 1917. With the fall of the czarist monarchy, the surviving Kazak leaders joined the Alash Orda nationalist movement. It had been formed in 1905, and after the October Revolution allied itself with the anti-Bolshevic Cossacks of Orenburg and the Urals. The Alash Orda, whose political orientation evolved from the nationalist through the liberal and finally to the Menshevik, formed a short-lived government over a vast region, which was declared autonomous in December 1917, with Semipalatinsk as its capital. The systematic opposition of the 'Whites' to Kazak aspirations for independence then drove the Alash Orda to unite with the Bolsheviks, with whom an accord was signed to safeguard the interests of the 'Kazak nation'. Soviet Kazakstan Between 1919 and 1920, the Red Army defeated the White troops occupying this vast region. In August 1920, the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic came into being (thus reuniting the Turgay, Ural, Aqmola and Semipalatinsk provinces), and was integrated with the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, with Orenburg as its capital. The republic was named Kyrgyz because the Russians had always referred to the Central Asian Kazaks as 'Kyrgyz-Kazaks' or 'Kazaks-Kyrgyz'. They were distinct from the true Kyrgyz, whom the Russians instead referred to as 'KaraKyrgyz' ('Black Kyrgyz'). The term 'Kazakstan' was only adopted in 1925, when the two so-called 'Kazak' and 'Kyrgyz' populations (who were very close genealogically) were awarded their present national territories. Qyzylorda was named capital of Kazakstan until 1929, when Alma Ata replaced it. Initially political leaders came from the Alash Orda, which played a more significant role in government than the Bolshevik Party. These remained in power until 1928, and attempted to preserve the original Kazak social structure, while at the same time pursuing a 'reformist' political direction. Gradually, however, differences with the Bolsheviks over the problem of the settlement of

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nomads and the destruction of the 'land-owning classes' - which the Kazak leaders tried partly to protect - intensified. The Alash Orda considered Bolsheviks motives a pretence, in that the idea of 'class struggle' was artificial, class distinctions not really existing in Kazak society. In April 1928, the political leaders of Alash Orda were denounced as 'bourgeois nationalists' and liquidated, while the Communist Party secretariat was initially entrusted to a Russian, Goloscokin, and then an Armenian, Mirzojan. On 5 December 1936, the Kazakstan Soviet Socialist Republic was founded, with Alma Ata as its capital, comprising the entire southern region, excluding the autonomous Karakalpakstan Republic (Kazak from May 1929 until March 1932, then Russian, andfinallyintegrated into Uzbekistan from December 1936). The Orenburg district remained under Russian jurisdiction. During the Second World War, industries that had been withdrawn from western USSR were relocated in Kazakstan (about 430,000 workers and miners were transferred only in 1941). Some of Stalin's 'punished peoples' were also banished to the Kazak territory between 1941 and 1944 (the Volga Germans, Koreans, Chechens and others), a factor which accentuated the republic's multiethnic nature. Between the Second World War and the 1970s, Slav-speaking peoples flowed into Kazakstan, and the process of industrialisation as part of the Soviet Union's planned economy continued. These phenomena had various negative effects, such as keeping the Kazak population in the minority, intensifying internal and regional differences, and creating close links between the Russian and the local economy. Conversely, Kazakstan also became a regional and nuclear power, with a considerable number of nuclear warheads on its territory and the major space-launch centre at Baikonur. Sultan Galiev and 'Islamic National Communism' Islamic intellectuals of Central Asia were usually of Tatar extraction, thus belonging to the more educated and progressive Muslim community during the czarist empire. Although not Bolsheviks, many had been in support of the reformist and modernist elite (known as Jadidism) since the beginning of the century. Moreover, after the October Revolution in 1917, many also joined the Russian Communist Party. The main ideologist and leader of 'Islamic national Communism' was Mirza Sultan Galiev (1880-1938?). After the Tatar Autonomous Socialist Republic was formed on 27 May 1920, he fought on the side of 'Communist Tatars' for the creation of a greater Turkic state (Turan), opposing the division of Turkestan into national republics. These would have included the Islamic Volga-Ural (Bashkiria and Tatarstan), the Kazakstan, Kyrgyz and Turkestan regions. Yet in 1920, the Milli Firqa (Tatar National Party) merged with the Tatar Communist Party founded by Galiev and the writer Galimdjan Ibragimov. 'Islamic national communism' was based on the concept of national liberation, the formation of a republic of Turkestan in which the Muslim populations of the

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Russian empire would be united under the aegis of a democraticised form of Islam. In other words, according to Galiev, the class struggle among the colonial populations of the 'proletarian nations' was to be subjected to national liberation. This project was part of the plan to build an ensemble of institutions, as well as an army and an Islamic Communist Party with which to spread the revolution (to Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan). As far as the Soviet leadership were concerned, the political action of Mirza Sultan Galiev and the so-called 'national communists' (one of whom was the important figure Kazak, Turar Ryskulov, 1894—38) soon came to be regarded as 'deviationism', and was condemned (without reference to the Muslim population) during the First Congress of Eastern Populations (hosted in Baku in September 1920 by the Comintern). Labelled 'Sultangalievism' or Sultangalievshchina, it was again condemned in 1923 and ultimately in 1928. Repression led to the defeat of Sultan Galiev and his followers. He apparently died in 1938 after ten years forced labour. Meanwhile the entire Tatar intelligentsia was virtually eradicated. 'Oriental Despotism' and Karl August Wittfogel The term 'despotism' has a long history. Its revival in historiography is ascribed to Franco Venturi. Covering the period from ancient times until the dawning of the nineteenth century, Venturi explains how it is 'closely affiliated to the relationship existing between a master and slave and to Eastern forms of political organisation'. Niccolo Machiavelli, again applying the classic theme of limitless and unrestrained power characterised by the arbitrary nature of the sovereign, stated that 'the entire Turkish monarchy is governed by a master, while the others are his servants. Montesquieu, for his part, stressed the fact that 'a spirit of servitude, which has never been abandoned, reigns in Asia'. During the 1700s, in the wake of travellers' accounts, and opinions expressed by Montesquieu, author of The Spirit of the Laws, the association between despotic regimes and Asia (or the Orient) became an unquestioned assumption. Anquetil Duperron was opposed to such views, and after having lived in India between 1755 and 1761, he concluded, 'the concept of despotism serves only to justify European violence in Asia... Greed reasons in such a fashion: it rests on reasons that need to be eradicated.' Political passions and problems associated with the use and elaboration of the concept are well demonstrated by Franco Venturi. Eighteenth-century opinions on the matter are taken into account, as well as Western philosophy ranging from Hegel to radical Englishmen, from John Stuart Mill to Marx and Engels, and concluding with the work of Lenin and Plekhanov. A study published in 1957 once again revived the debate. Its author, Karl August Wittfogel, was a prominent former Communist (towards the end of the 1920s, he was the Comintern's expert on Far Eastern affairs) and a Sinologist with a profound knowledge of the work of Weber and Marx. In 1933, he was sent by the Nazis to a concentration camp. When he was freed, he migrated to

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the USA, where in the late 1940s he became a high-level member of the antiCommunist political groups associated with Senator John McCarthy.

In the essay Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, Wittfogel

describes Asian regimes based on a 'hydraulics society in terms of agricultural management'. Asia is seen as the cradle of water management systems and administration. WittfogePs monolithic and reductive thesis expounds the notion that the imperatives of a climate characterised by little or no precipitation which depends on mass labour for the agricultural exploitation of large quantities of water - determines the political framework. With no differentiation, Wittfogel uses the terms 'hydraulics society', 'Asiatic', 'Oriental' 'Eastern', 'agricultural management' and 'agricultural bureaucracy' to refer not only to China but also to India, Iran, Central Asia (the Zeravshan Valley and Merv region), to pharaonic Egypt, to Mesopotamia, to some areas of sub-Saharan Africa, to Hawaii, to the American pre-Colombian empires, to historic Greece, to the Roman empire, to the Byzantine empire and to post-Mongolian Russia. The different areas are then divided into 'central' zones (compact or non-compact) which are 'marginal' or 'sub-marginal'. The water supply to arid or semi-arid zones requires the application of mass labour and afirmcontrol over it. The hydraulic economy derived from it is characterised by a particular division of labour, large-scale and intensive cultivation, and by the importance of co-operation. A hydraulic economy involves 'extensive and complex organisational planning' which requires numerous operations (excavation and cleaning of canals, embankment building and reinforcing, irrigation, military defence) vital to agriculture but not involved with actual cultivation. This type of labour is managed through leadership, both workplace overseers and organisers or central planners. Those in charge of this organisational network are better equipped than anyone else to hold supreme political power. To Wittfogel, it makes no difference whether leaders emerge from among civilian officials, military conquerors, priests, religious leaders or hydraulic functionaries. Wittfogel farther emphasises the importance of precise astronomical observations and the drafting of calendars in the monitoring of high river levels. In support of this theory, he quotes Herodotus's observations on the use of geometry in Egypt to measure flooded land, and also considers mathematical applications important; sciences shrouded in an aura of magic were used to enforce the prestige and power of the water managers. Of fundamental importance is the monitoring of the mobilisation of large groups of individuals, and the ability to extend organisational powers beyond the agricultural sphere, in order to construct and maintain roads and fortifications, and monumental buildings such as palaces, tombs, temples and pyramids, constructed to the eternal glory of the sovereign. The 'great constructors', in other words the sovereign and his bureaucracy, become the absolute masters of a 'state which is more powerful than the society', a state without limits or balancing powers, with an apparatus to prevent the consolidation of any group other than itself. It reveals, in fact, a tendency to extend the functions and tasks of the state to include commerce, control of information, a good part of mining, industry and

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transport. In order to survive, the sovereign and members of the state apparatus resort to imposing on subjects compulsory service, taxes or payments in kind. In attempting to consolidate power and derive maximum benefit from their situation (which Wittfogel defines as 'the ultimate rationale of the ruler'), sovereigns should, however, exercise minimal tolerance in their collection of taxes and compulsory service. In the 'hydraulic' regimes, autonomous religious power was forbidden, as was independent leadership (be it military or landed). The hydraulic state was generally a hierarchical regime, and used violence and terror to the benefit of the sovereign and his body of functionaries. Despotism does not necessarily imply the absence of a constitution: this was created, upheld and modified 'from above' by the sovereign. There was no authority independent of the ruler and capable of limiting his powers, and no legal means with which to resist him. In such political systems, if power was absolute, then submission had also to be absolute (after all, fear is routine in managerial, fiscal and judicial procedures). Terror is integral to the instilling of obedience, symbolised most overtly by the act of prostration before the ruler. Those in power were unpredictable, because they did not need to be accountable for their actions, and this generated in the people mistrust, fear of commitment and inhibition. The division of society into classes was not so much based on property, as on the relationship of the individual to the state apparatus. Both bureaucrats and the governed are subordinate to the sovereign. The fundamental trait of this type of society is that it is stagnant and incapable of evolution and development, although Wittfogel does outline the dynamic effects of internal struggles in state machinery, peasant revolts, conquests and the existence of domestic slavery. The final section of Wittfogel's work is dedicated to the treatment of oriental or eastern despotism by Marx and Marxists. Using the Marxist analysis, he attempts to illustrate what he sees as a departure from Marx's theories in Marxist ideology regarding Asia. Marxists are said to have distorted Marx's findings in order to conceal the degree of similarity between 'Eastern despotism' and the social and political structures of Soviet Russia and the People's Republic of China. THE ECONOMY In 1991, Kazakstan supplied 5.3 percent of the Soviet national income, and was the third most affluent republic after Russia and the Ukraine. But in the economy of USSR, Kazakstan also found itself amidst contradictory pressures and centrifugal influences. Kazakstan is representative of a vast transitional zone lacking a stable identity; efforts to bring this about through accelerated development during the last decade have only intensified regional variations and internal tensions. This is because the northern part of the country is a continuation of Russia's 'black lands', while the southern half is economically and physically similar to Central Asia; the two regions are separated by desert.

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From an economic point of view, Kazakstan is midway between the developed areas of Russia and western Siberia and Central Asia's southern 'peripheiy'. Its national income structure is entirely different to the latter: industry represented 30 percent in 1995 and services 58 percent, while agriculture, dominant in the other former Soviet Asian republics, contributed only 12 percent. Economic diversification through the country's regions, as well as the tendency towards the integration of certain northern areas with neighbouring regions (the Volga, Urals or Siberia) has given a centrifugal aspect to the development of Kazakstan, weakening national cohesion. During the 1960s, proposals for territorial restructuring, such as the integration of iron deposits in Kustanay with Russia's economic region along the Ural Mountains, were pushed through so as to 'increase the economic effectiveness thereof. However, Russian-oriented patterns of trade with Kazakstan have remained dominant during the last decade, at between 70 and 80 percent, as trade with the other Asian republics have only accounted for 12-15 percent. Kazakstan has various economic strengths based on its natural resources (energy and mining), agriculture and a strong industrial system (excavation industry, metallurgy, chemicals, petrochemicals and heavy industry) which still remain a revenue service to Russia. However, the Kazak industrial network is unbalanced and lacking in internal specialisation, to such an extent that Kazakstan is obliged to import half the finished products consumed, while more than three quarters of its exports consist of raw and partly-manufactured materials. After gaining independence, the Kazak government attempted to correct this situation, with the economic problems typical of a 'decolonialisation' phase, by adopting measures aimed at the reorientation of the entire economic system and the attraction of foreign investors. Kazakstan has great potential which goes some way to justify its view of itself as a new 'Eldorado'. But reality, not merely from an economic point of view, uncovers several anomalies. Western analysts have identified four problems that hindered the Kazak economy during the Soviet era: chronic trade deficits, high unemployment, the economic predominance of strong industrial regions, andfinally'intersected' transport with Russia, the only aspect to have improved. In 1997, the scene changed as the Russian financial crisis had an immediate impact on the Kazak economy, demonstrating Russia's continuing importance to Kazakstan. In 1999, the effects of the rouble devaluation are still reverberating, causing a contraction of Kazak national wealth. The poor prospect for oil prices in the winter of 1998, in which the cost fell to US$10 a barrel, the lowest price of the last ten years, seemed to negate any chance of the economy staging a recovery, and the tenge seemed likely to continue its slide. However, in the autumn of 1999 the cost per barrel was more than US$24, determining better prospects for the Kazak economy. Notwithstanding the incredible recovery of the cost of oil, the country still has serious economic problems and President Nazarbaev will do his best to distance himself from the government's economic failure, but with little success. As conditions worsen throughout the country he will have to rely ever more heavily on the security services to retain control. There are two possible outcomes. The optimistic one sees Kazakstan as the leading

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beneficiary by a long way among the CIS countries of foreign investment (calculated at $180 per capita between 1992 and 1996). Three quarters of such investments are concentrated in hydrocarbons, a long-term and therefore 'non volatile' sector, giving stability to the country. The second view is pessimistic, and sees Kazakstan's structural problems as the same as those of Russia (corruption, crumbling plants, foreign debt etc). It sees Kazakstan as nothing other than a backward Russia and forsees an inevitable devaluation of the tenge. Mining and Energy Resources Kazakstan has been termed the 'Second Kuwait' on the basis of its petrol reserves. The evaluation of their extent is complicated by the speed at which new deposits are discovered. Petroleum supports the entire mining sector, which is concentrated in the western region and along the southern slopes of the Ural Mountains. In the CIS, Kazakstan is the second-largest petroleum producer after Russia (5 percent of the total); in 1996 460,000 barrels per day were extracted, with 40 percent of this sold on the international market. Total production increased from 26.6 million tonnes in 1991 to about 36 million in 1996. Its share of world production (1 percent) is on a par with that of countries like Syria and Brazil. During the 1990s, drilling increased gradually but consistently, involving the development of deposits north of the Caspian such as Shubarkuduk, or those of Emba, which have been extracted since 1911. Prospects are excellent, thanks to the discovery of the world's largest petroleum deposit along the Caspian coastline near Tengiz in 1979. It is twice the size of the Prudhoe Bay deposit in Alaska, until then the largest known, with reserves estimated at tens of thousands of tonnes, comparable to those in the whole of Algeria. In 1987, Kazakstan, through the USSR and Gorbachev, began searching for an international partner in the exploitation of this extremely rich deposit, and finally opted for the US multinational Chevron. After years of difficult negotiations and the intercession by the then Russian Prime Minister Gaidar, a joint venture was initiated in May 1992 (called Tengizchevroil, or TCO) of which Chevron and the Kazak state-owned company Tengineftegaz, each own around 50 percent. The agreement, which reduced the US company's expected profit margin, envisages the exploitation of this deposit over the next 40 years, allows farther prospecting over an area of 4000 square kilometres (instead of the 23,000 initially agreed upon) and requires an investment of $20 billion. One fifth of production will be assigned to Chevron, while four fifths will go to the Kazak state. The exploitation of Tengiz's deposits began in April 1991, and about twenty wells were already in use during the first few months of 1992. However, this petroleum has a high sulphur content, and the desulphurisation plants can only manage 7000 tonnes of crude oil daily. Furthermore, gases formed as a result of sulphur in the petroleum, which at times makes up 2 5 percent of the extracted product, are corrosive, and thus require the use of tubes and valves made from special alloys. The immensity of such technical problems causes additional

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THE HANDBOOK OF CENTRAL ASIA

expense, which in turn limits the extraction process. Intensive development is planned for the immediate future: it is believed that the figure for the year 2000 will reach four million tonnes. The major source of the country's hydrocarbons is found to the west, and studies carried out by the Soviets during the 1970s have also confirmed the availability of other large petroleum, and methane deposits in this area. The extraction plants, which towards the end of the 1980s were producing an annual total of about one million tonnes of crude oil, are northeast of the Caspian, in the Atyrau region. In February 1992, in an attempt to encourage prospecting, the Kazak government concluded an agreement with the French Company Elf-Aquitaine (from which emerged the joint company Elf-Neftegaz) for research into the presence of hydrocarbons over an area of 20,000 square kilometres, in the Aqtobe region. This collaboration, however, ended in 1998. Between 1990 and 1991 the expansion of the Kumkol deposit in the Qyzylorda region, which produced one million tonnes annually, was completed. Given the opening of new wells and moves to modernise the technology, this plant reached an extraction level equivalent to two million tonnes annually. Finally, three new deposits have been discovered in the Bayqongyr region, the most important of which is in Yujno-Tbrgay. The Caspian Sea has seen a vast campaign of petrol research that brought the discovery of the Kashagan offshore deposit. Nazarbaev signed the first deal for its exploitation in Washington in November 1997. Being off the coast, Kashagan was at the centre of a territorial dispute over the Caspian Sea. In the summer of 1998, laws came into force based on the new principle of 'national delimitation' on the seabed while the water between thefivecoastal countries is 'common property'. In June 1998, an agreement to build a 2822km oil pipeline was signed in Almaty. This will link the Atyrau field (in west Kazakstan) to the Xinjiang region of Western China. The principle investor is the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and the estimated cost will be 3.2 billion dollars. The production of natural gas has developed slowly, and reached a level of 7.9 million cubic metres in 1991. Subsequent production has not been consistent, varying from 11.2 million cubic metres in 1993 to 7.66 in 1996, an average of a mere 1 percent of the CIS total. The Kazak government has grouped the sector's ten largest companies together to form the company Kazakgazprom, which has its head-office in Oral and co-ordinates prospecting, extraction, treatment and transport. In addition to various wells in the west of the country, the most significant deposit is that found in Karachaganak (meaning 'black hole'), situated in the Oral region near the northern border with Russia, which alone generates a good part of the national production (three million cubic metres per annum). As with petroleum, the gas extracted at Karachaganak contains a high percentage of hydrogen sulphates and liquid paraffin which require specialised treatment. Three pipelines, two for gas and one for the condensates, link the main deposits with Orenburg in Russia, where the gas is processed and either returned to Kazakstan or sold via Russia's methane pipeline network.

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After an initial agreement for the development of the supergiant deposit at Karachaganak with the Italian Agip (now ENI) and British Gas, the Kazak government then signed a 40-year accord in 1993, renewable for another 20 years. Karachaganak's great potential, which involves reserves estimated at 570 billion cubic metres of gas and 260 million tonnes of petroleum and condensates (although Western sources indicate this to be 1300 and 820 respectively) could satisfy consumption of a major European country such as Italy (using figures quoted for 1993 as a guide) for eleven years. Difficulties associated with the research into and exploitation of hydrocarbon deposits, not to mention the problems associated with their transportation, have forced Kazakstan to search for international trade partners to whom to entrust the exploration and exploitation of deposits along the Caspian. Reserves assessed along the Kazak section of the Caspian are enormous (about 300 million tonnes of petroleum and two billion cubic metres of gas). An international tender was put out, and 38 petroleum companies responded. Admission requirements were based on three parameters: technical capacity for production in difficult environments (similar to maritime offshore drilling), presence in the European market, andfinancialreliability. The contract to operate jointly with the state-owned company Kazakstan Kaspy Shelf (KKS) was awarded in May 1993 to seven leading companies in the sector (British Gas and British Petroleum, Italy's Agip (ENI) - a company able to make use of technical methods tested out in the Adriatic, a sea similar to the Caspian in certain respects France's Total, the Anglo-Dutch Shell, the Norwegian state-owned public corporation Statoil and the US's Mobil). From the beginning of the 1990s, prospecting carried out by Chevron led to the discovery of one of the most important natural gas deposits worldwide, at Korolev. Its exploitation has not yet been considered. Coal production is decreasing: 130 million tonnes in 1991 amounted to 20 percent of Soviet production, but the figure has fallen to 112 million in 1993, 83 million in 1995 and 76.6 million in 1996. Decreases have been due to miners' strikes for higher pay at the main deposit in Qaraghandy. This deposit produces about one third of Kazakstan's coal, and has reached record levels of 53 million tonnes (in 1987); moreover, it produces the entire country's coke supply (32 million tonnes, 15 percent of the Soviet total in 1991). Estimates of the reserves vary greatly, from between 7.5 to around 50 billion tonnes. The second most important coal deposits are in Ekibastuz, from which lignite is extracted, as well second-grade and low-energy-content bituminous coal. Given the substantial reserves (8.3 billion tonnes) and favourable conditions for open-air extraction, production could reach annual levels of 90 million tonnes. In the first half in the 1990s, extraction remained stable when international demand declined. Deposits at Qaraghandy and Ekibastuz alone furnish most of the republic's coal supply, and after independence these were placed under the joint management of the company Kazakstanugol. Other important deposits, with reserves estimated at ten billion tonnes, are Qusmuryn (formerly Kouchmourousk) in the Qostanay region and the mines along the Tbrghay basin.

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THE HANDBOOK OF CENTRAL ASIA

Other mining resources are numerous and inexhaustible: of all the countries of the CIS, 70 percent of its copper and a substantial amount of iron, tungsten, manganese and nickel is extracted and treated by Kazakstan. These high quality minerals fare well on the international market. There is a discrepancy between international statistics for chrome and those issued in 1992 by Nazarbaev's financial adviser, the South-Korean economist Chan Yung Bang. The former states a production level equal to 40 percent of Soviet production in 1991, the latter nearly 90 percent (3.2 million tonnes annually), more than half the world's production. If the government's optimism seems misleading, this is nonetheless based on the fact that the world's largest chrome deposit is at Khromtau, as well as the fact that Kazakstan is the world's leading producer (ahead of South Africa) of this metal. With the exception of Karazal, the mining centres where ferrous minerals are extracted are generally all found in the Qostanay region (approximately 85 percent of Kazak reserves). The mineral content of deposits at Rudnyy and Solokov-Sarbai is high - between 36 and 38 percent - and the proximity of the large iron and steel centres along the Ural Mountains has accelerated extraction. In 1991, Kazakstan was producing 10 percent of Soviet minerals, which were then transported to Orsk and Magnitogorsk, about lOkms across the border. The exploitation of the copper deposits in Jezqazghan, begun over a century ago, intensified during the 1920s and greatly increased following the transformation of numerous factories to military uses. Due to the exhaustion of reserves at the Balqash deposit, copper is now also mined in Sayak and its buttresses west of the Altay Mountains, where large quantities of lead-zinc and other strategic minerals (titanium, cadmium, lithium, tantalum and magnesium) are also found. The mining industry in this region is centred at Oskemen. Nickel is extracted mainly at Nikeltau, in the Mugodzhary Mountains. The extraction of bauxite (the mineral from which aluminium is obtained) and amianthus (or asbestos) is on a smaller scale: international measures have brought about a drastic reduction in mining the latter due to toxicity. Many phosphorous deposits are also found in the south, along the Karatau mountain ranges, which in 1991 established Kazakstan as the Soviet's leading phosphorous producer and secondary producer of phosphate derivants and sulphate (Aralsul'fat). Surveys conducted by satellite have shown that new reserves of mineral salts (magnesium, iodine salts, boron and potassium) are to be found along the Caspian depression, but the funds required for their exploitation are lacking. Silver deposits (almost half the Soviet total) and gold deposits (at Qiziliar, Bestobe and Akzhar) remain substantial. The first gold bars were made from the national reserve and issued to the National Bank in September 1992. Industrial factories have been opened at Almaty and Stepnogorsk in order to commercialise the modest diamond production. Considered as a separate issue, the extraction of uranium has declined due to the closure of the Chagly and Tasbulak mines at the end of 1991, as well as the drastic decrease in production at the main deposit in Prikaspiski along the Mangyshlak peninsula. This is as a consequence not only of the decline in military demand, but also of intense popular anti-nuclear pressure.

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Energy production has decreased during the last few years: in 1990 it equalled 87.4 billion kWh, in 1993 76.1 billion, in 1995 65.7 billion, and in 1997 58.7 billion. This decline resulted from a series of serious incidents in power stations, and from miners' strikes. Electricity is supplied by a network of thermal and, to a lesser degree, hydro-electric centres (along the Irtysh, Syr Darya, Hi and Tbbol rivers). The last power station to open was Ekibastuz N2, which began operating in 1991 and which alone produces 1.6 billion kWh per annum. The only nuclear centre (not only in Kazakstan but in the whole of Central Asia) is situated at Aqtau (previously Shevchenko) on the Caspian Sea coast. This plant is the 'fast neutron' type (using neutrons that do not lose energy after being produced by fission). It has a capacity of 35OMW, and about half the energy produced supplies a large centre specialising in the desalination of seawater. Despite the thriving petroleum industry in Kazakstan, there is also great interest in alternative energy sources (aeolian, geothermic and biothermic). An optimistic study claims that the exploitation of aeolian sources in the Southeast (in the Alakul depression) could produce up to five billion kWh of electrical energy per annum. The energy balance seems to lack equilibrium: even though Kazakstan's resources exceed domestic demand by 30 percent, the country is forced to import petroleum, coal, gas and electricity from neighbouring Russian regions. The southern and western areas (in Aqtobe) show a high energy deficit due to the bad organisation of the electrical distribution network, the restructuring of which would be costly. These regions are able to meet their own requirements only by the use of hydrocarbons imported from Siberia, coal from the Kuznetsk basin and electricity from Russia's Ural and the Volga regions. As a result, the building of an electricity centre has been envisaged for Aqtobe, construction of which was entrusted to a Turkish company at an expected cost of $1.7 billion. With the establishment of independence, Kazakstan was obliged to revise its energy policies and curb imports of resources that cost more than its own. Paradoxically, this economic imperative would force the country to discontinue supplying power stations with natural gas or mazout (a Russian word referring to the residue formed by the distillation of crude oil, used as fuel). Rather, Kazakstan will be forced to supply these with coal, probably that mined at Ekibastuz and not in great demand on the international market. The procedure is extremely expensive, whether it involves reconversion or anti-pollution measures (essential given the country's environmental state). The Industrial System The large industrial centres developed mostly in the northeast are heavily dependent on mining deposits, but above all on consumers along the Ural river, in Siberia and in the CIS's European regions. Over the ten-year period 1940-50, a time of decisive industrial development, a few primary processing industries were established (metallurgy, basic chemistry

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THE HANDBOOK OF CENTRAL ASIA

and energy production). The Qaraghandy basin was the first to be used, and in the midst of the First World War a large steel plant was installed in the vicinity of the Temirtau. Large metallurgy plants were set up in the mining centres of Kazakstan's central region. The copper production plant at Jezqazghan, situated in a semi-arid area (with an average annual rainfall of 208mm), was linked to a canal bringing water from Siberia's Irtysh River via Qaraghandy. These plants were more accessible - and extraction conditions were more favourable - than their counterparts along the Urals and in Siberia. As the deposits lie close to the surface, open-cast mining is possible, and this is much cheaper than the alternative, although it has detrimental effects on the environment. Map 5: The Kazakstan Economy >• R "NT* \,

/r.,...,

w

o

u/' S

S

WesfS/iberJA /

—'

I

A

i

^UZBEKISTAN

pX TURKMENISTAN Main cities

Coal

O from 100.000 to 150.000 inhabitants

Iron Ore

© from 150.000 to 250.000 inhabitants ®

from 250.000 to 500.000 inhabitants

(§) over 500.000 inhabitants

( M ) Non-Ferrous Metals

Predominantly Heavy industries r\ w

Predominantly Light industries

( ? ) Phosphate

Other conditions also favour these locations: there is an abundance of deposits, and the climate is better than that in Siberia. Conversely, the exploitation of southern deposits was hindered by the scarcity of water, a problem prevalent in the whole of Central Asia. At the end of 1994, Kazakstan had about 19,000 industrial complexes, factories and mines, employing about 1.5 million people. The availability of energy, from petroleum and hydro-electricity has made the country the most industrially developed in Central Asia. Iron and steel, non-ferrous metallurgy, chemistry and petrochemistry (manure, rubber, plastic and pneumatic materials), heavy industry (mining and metallurgy machinery) and machines for livestock made up about six percent

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of the Soviet total for 1991. At present, these are the industrial sectors that are forging ahead, but the contributions of the spinning and textiles industries are particularly important, especially with respect to wool, cotton (four percent of the CIS total in 1992) and cloth, although the latter dropped from 188 million square metres in 1993 to 28 million in 1996. While most of the plants are situated in the north and east, exceptions to this include Shymkent, the 'city of ammunition' (it hosts one of the biggest former Soviet factories), the large industrial and railways centre, Zhambyl (now Taraz), which is now the main chemical centre, and Almaty, which boasts a large textile industry. The processing industries have remained small-scale and have not experienced much development. Kazakstan has been forced to accelerate the development of this sector, as well as the consumer goods sector, because it is also believed that the restructuring of the military factories (about one hundred companies) will farther increase unemployment. The Metallurgy Kombinat of Temirtau, or Karmet Kombinat, in the Qaraghandy area, is the only iron and steel factory in Kazakstan, but is colossal, the largest white iron producing unit in the entire CIS (producing on average 5.5 million tonnes of steel per annum, or 10 percent of the Kazak national product). Production dropped to two million tonnes in 1996. Two other large enterprises produce iron alloys, one situated in Aqtobe (making iron-chrome alloys) and integrated into the local chome-mining industry, the other at Yermak, producing a third of the former USSR's iron-silicon alloys. These two factories produce a total of approximately one million tonnes per year. Non-ferrous metallurgy is Kazakstan's strong point. In addition to the many centres involved in the enrichment of the minerals extracted, lead is processed by the Lead Kombinat at Zyrian (formerly Zyrianovsk) and Shymkent, where it is also used in the massive ammunition manufacturing industry. Lead is often produced along with zinc, as at the Kombinat in Oskemen, Zhayrem (Jezqazghan Oblysy) and Tekeli (Taldyqorghan). Various metals are manufactured by other enterprises, independently or jointly. Examples are the Kombinat in Karagayly (processing lead-zinc, baryta, silver and rare metals), those in Leninogor (processing zinc, lead, copper, antimony and rare elements such as tellurium, selenium, thallium, gold and silver), that along the Irtysh at Glubokoye (eastern Kazakstan) and Achpolymetall at Ashchysay (processing lead, zinc and baryta). Copper metallurgy is also very important. Three large enterprises dedicate themselves exclusively to the refining of copper. These are Balqashmed in Balqash, which because of the exhaustion of neighbouring mines now refines imported copper, Jezqazghantsvetmet in Jezqazghan (the most important), and the Copper Chemical Kombinat of Eastern Kazakstan at Ust-Talovka, integrated into the Irtysh 'poly-metallic' complex. Chrome is extracted and processed at Khromtau in the Aqtobe region by a company called Donski. This large plant, where chromite (chrome and iron oxide) and sodium bichromate are manufactured, was the largest of the few centres specialised in chrome processing in the whole of the Comecon (Council of Mutual Economic Assistance).

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THE HANDBOOK OF CENTRAL ASIA

Other minerals manufactured include molybdenum, mined and treated in the kombinat at Aqtau (Qaranghandy region), tin in Belogorsk (in eastern Kazakstan), and titanium-magnesium in Oskemen. In 1987, a kombinat was also formed in Jezqazghan for the manufacture of tungsten. Pavlodar's alumina factory (producing 600,000 tonnes annually from lowstandard bauxite extracted in Kazakstan) also has a chemical sector for the extraction of base products from rock salt. In conclusion, enterprises involved with auriferous extraction are Altai'zoloto in Bakyrtchik (near Semey) and Maykain (in the Pavlodar region). The stateowned company Kazzoloto administers all activity related to gold mining. Kazakstan's chemical industry makes use of local mining resources, mainly phosphorous and its derivative phosphates. Karatau is a factory in Zhanatas with approximately 20,000 employees which mines and manufactures phosphates from the Karatau basin. This is the secondlargest mining and processing centre (after the Kola Peninsula basin) in CIS, and produces 20 percent of its phosphates. Phosphor in Shymkent extracts salts from this mineral, which when partially processed are used as a base for phosphate fertilisers. Yellow phosphate and phosphoric acid are manufactured in Novozhambyl. In Oktyabr'sk (Aqtobe Oblysy) the centre involved in the mining and enrichment of phosphorite is about to undergo modernisation. Phosphate manufacturing is one of the most important industries. Used in agriculture, it is produced by various plants, in addition to the Chemical Kombinat of Alga (in the Aqtobe Oblysy), but the most important is Khimprom in Taraz, which also specialises in the use of phosphate by-products in zootechnics (livestock industry). Kazakstan has three petroleum refineries supplied by crude oil from Siberia by the Omsk-Pavlodar-Shymkent pipeline. The oldest is situated in Atyrau, and was opened in 1945 and built with US funding. It refines petroleum, and also produces polyethylene and coke. The refinery at Pavlodar first operated in 1975 (it is now run by the American company CCL Oil), and that in Shymkent (now run by the British company Vitol) opened in 1985; the latter is the more modern, but this is not to say that it produces less air pollution. The Kazakstan Factory for the Treatment of Gas in Novyy Uzen (Mangghystau Oblysy) desulphurises and treats the gas extracted from the surrounding region, and manufactures propane, butane etc. The resulting material is sent to a plastic materials factory in Aqtau to be made into polystyrene. There are other enterprises also involved in the chemical sector, associated with petrochemical production. Karbid, situated in Temirtau, specialises in the manufacture of synthetic rubber and calcium carbide. Khimvolokno in Qostanay produces artificial fibres, as well as polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Chimkentchina is one of the more technologically advanced producers of pneumatic material in the former Soviet territories. There is a large plant in Atyrau, producing polypropylene, founded in 1977 by the Italian company Tecnimont (Montedison Group), and this has a production capacity of 30,000 tonnes per year. Other important chemical manufacturing is undertaken by the Stroiplastmass Kombinat in Qaraghandy, which specialises in construction applications of plastics,

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the large detergents factory in Chakhtinsk, and the big and old pharmaceutical factory Farmatsia in Shymkent. The manufacturing industry does not appear developed when compared with the mining-metallurgical and the chemical-petrochemical industries, but nonetheless there are a few large enterprises engaged in it. Kazakstan has only two electrical component companies: Kazakkumuliator in Taldyqorghan, making batteries, and a factory manufacturing high-power condensers in Oskemen, the leading producer in the former Soviet republics. Major heavy manufacturing concerns include a mechanical press and forge factory in Shymkent; AZTM in Almaty, which produces equipment for iron and steel plants (extrusion and rolling mills). There is also Gormash in Qaraghandy which, along with Vostokmachzavod in Oskemen, produces equipment and machinery used in the coal industry. A factory in Kentau manufactures shovels and hydraulic shovels. Machine tools are mainly produced in the region around the old capital city, while factories in Oral produce industrial taps and fittings (a wide range of specialised accessories for piping), especially Kaztiajpromarmatura in Oskemen. The transport sector is well represented. The most important factories are the transmission suspension shafts factory in Shymkent (producing about 1.5 million parts per year), GPZ 16 in Stepnogorsk (in the Aqmola Oblysy), which produces carriage components, Porchen in Almaty (making engine components) and the factory in Petropavl which manufactures low-powered engine blocks. Two large factories are responsible for the manufacture of farming machinery: the tractor factory in Pavlodar (with about 23,000 employees and an output of 5600 tractors in 1993 but only 2500 in 1996) and Tselinogradselmash in Aqmola, which specialises in the production of anti-erosion equipment. A factory in Oskemen produces the majority of pneumatic automation systems. Instruments and measuring apparatus (thermometers, manometers etc) are produced by Omega in Oral and by Aktyubrentgen in Aqtobe. They also specialise in the medical field, manufacturing radiographic X-ray apparatus and machines used in the treatment of tumours and the measurement of radioactivity. In the realm of the mining and metallurgical industries, the existence of certain plants involved in strategic activities (for example the extraction and manufacture of uranium and other materials relevant to military use) were kept secret until a few years ago. Sometimes it was only industrial restructuring and changes to civilian manufacture that revealed their existence. The main factory is the Tseliny Chemical-Mining Kombinat in Stepnogorsk. It has approximately 20,000 employees, three uranium mines and a centre for uranium processing, as well as an involvement in other activities. Poly-Metallic Kombinat of the South also extracted uranium in Taraz (formerly Zhambyl), as did the Caspian Mining-Metallurgical Kombinat in Aqtau, along the Caspian Sea shore. In Aqtau's centre, uranium extraction was on a par with the manufacture of nitrogenous and phosphate fertilisers, as well as various other forms of manufacturing converted from military to civil production, among which is the largest toothpaste factory in the world.

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Oskemen, one of the most polluted cities in the whole CIS, is home to Oulbinski, a factory which became internationally known in 1991 after press reports on an accident there. Beryllium, tantalum and nuclear fuels were manufactured there. In the chemical sector, there is a factory in Rudnyy that remained shrouded in secrecy and produces, among other products, carbon fibres for military use. The Agricultural and Food Processing Sector In March 1954, when Khrushchev launched the so-called Virgin Lands Programme for agriculture which endured for the remainder of the 1950s and part of the 1960s, a young leader named Leonid Brezhnev, having distinguished himself in the agricultural management of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Moldova, was elected to power. Kazakstan, along with Siberia, became 'the new frontier' for Soviet development, and an immense area of land (estimated at 23 million hectares) was brought under the plough, while in the south of the country, important irrigation canals were built on the Syr Darya. As was often the case with large-scale Soviet projects, there was a great deal of over-optimistic enthusiasm, but also some real improvement. Thousands of workers from western USSR were sent to northern Kazakstan, south of the Ural River, and western Siberia. During the first few years, they endured extremely difficult conditions, living in pitiful tent cities and deprived of even the basics. But it was not a complete failure: the main objective - to provide Kazakstan with a base for cereal production - was achieved (in 1990 25 million tonnes of cereal were produced, 11-12 percent of Soviet production, approximately one percent of the world total). To this day, the country's principal agricultural produce remains cereals, 70 percent of which is grown in the northern 'virgin lands'. However, harvest yields always remain below expectation, despite the efforts to improve productivity through mechanisation. The cereal sector's main problem is caused by the irregularity of harvesting: not even the gradual movement of the cereal production zones eastwards has helped to decrease the extreme annual variations in the way that the planners had hoped. Nonetheless, the average yield is generally satisfactory. During the period 1986-90, production stood at about 23 million tonnes per year, but the 1991, 1995, 1996 harvests were a disaster. The 1992 harvest was considered good, at 28 million tonnes, but 1995, at 9.5 million, and 1996, at 11.5 million, created economic problems. The exploitation of Kazakstan's 'black lands' was logical; the area's agricultural and climatic conditions are reasonable. The average usable temperature (over 10°C) is conducive to vegetable farming, even though the off-season is severe (with temperatures averaging around -15°C) and does not allow for sowing to take place in winter. The rainfall is, nevertheless, able to ensure 'dry cultivation' (bogar), even if for everyfive-yearperiod there are one or two arid years, one of which will be a disaster. Soils are generally fertile, though fragile, because of a thin loess or topsoil layer, and the use of normal ploughing and tillage systems weakens the soil's

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structure. Especially during the spring, the driest period, the wind blows away a substantial proportion of this topsoil. To combat this aeolian erosion, 'softer' tilling methods were devised and different soil protection schemes introduced. A large proportion, about a fifth of arable land, was left fallow (necessary for the maintenance of herds); agricultural rotation alternated cereals and plants with 'grasping' properties (like mustard); the stubble was left in the ground to assist the adhesion of snow and moisture during winter; rows of trees were planted as windbreaks. However, these practices became less prevalent, and by the end of the 1960s hundreds of thousands of hectares were lost. The Virgin Lands Programme promoted the establishment of hundreds of villages and gigantic sovchoz (between 15,000 and 20,000 hectares), which were later scaled down, an example of a prevalent 'gigantomania'. The activity of these sovchoz was divided almost equally between agriculture and stock farming (bovine to the north and ovine-goat to the south). Most of the land acquired through the Virgin Lands Programme is still sown with cereals during spring, especially the type of durum wheat of which Kazakstan is the Soviet's main producer (12 percent of the total in 1990). Yields have an unrealised potential, but progress towards extensive mechanised farming is slow, involving the substitution of an intensive method that makes use of manure and selected seeds while attempting to adhere strictly to crop rotation. Russian workers, coming from regions of the Volga and Urals, often collaborated in the harvesting, as did the Ukrainians and Belorussians, who were specialised in the operating of large threshing machines (these workers were known as 'traktoristy'). After relations with the other former Soviet republics had cooled, Kazakstan had recourse to companies (usually Israeli and French) which specialised in grain harvesting, where payment was in kind. The great difference between the amount harvested and the amount which is usable each year is attributable to severe inadequacies in silos and stockage system. Irrigation remains exceptional, supplied by the Irtysh-Qaraghandy canal or artificial wells. In various cities, like Kazakstan's future capital Astana, previously Tselinograd ('city of the virgin lands') or Semey, there is a concentration of different industries manufacturing tillage machinery that serves these rural regions. Agriculture, once a marginal activity, has become an essential component of Kazakstan's economy: it involves 22 percent of the active population and constitutes more than a third of the national income. In December 1993 there were about 2500 farms, 80 percent of which were sovchoz. 'Private' farms numbered 610 in April 1991; about a year later this figure had risen to 7000, but this number appears to have been on the decline over the last few years. About 1,200,000 families own a vegetable garden, the average size of which is 0.08 hectares. Although a negligible portion of the country's total arable territory (12 percent), these lands still produce a large quantity of foodstuffs which in times of crisis are the population's only means of survival. Most of the farmland (estimated at about 222 million hectares) is given over to pasture. The cultivated area is about 35 million hectares (almost one fifth of the CIS's total arable territory). Twenty-three million hectares of this total are found in the northern region and reserved for the cultivation of cereal.

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In the south, almost the entire lower course of the Syr Darya River has been put to use, which has sharply increased the total of the country's arable and irrigated surface. Near Shymkent are the planet's most northern cotton fields (Kazakstan produces four percent of the CIS's cotton fibre, about 183,000 tonnes in 1996), while the extreme southern part is increasingly specialising in rice. In 1991, Kazakstan was the second-biggest Soviet rice grower after Russia, rendering good yields (5000kgs per hectare) and a production of about 650,000 tonnes (about a quarter of the Soviet total). According to various experts, the widespread cultivation of rice and cotton, which requires a great deal of water, is the cause of the increase in salinity in the soil. Since 1985, this factor has lead to a shift towards vegetables, cucurbits (melons and cucumbers) and fodder. Agriculture production is also based on other cereals (oats, millet, barley, maize and rye) and on certainfloraused in industry, like sunflower, hemp, tobacco and mustard (used in pharmacology or as a popular remedy). The cultivation of sugar beet is also prevalent (in 1992, the surface cultivated was extended to 42,000 hectares, due to the scarcity of sugar) but has diminished by two thirds, from 925,000 tonnes in 1993 to 341,000 in 1996. Not as widespread, but important to the southern regions, is the growing of fruit (grapes) and potatoes. Up until the 1950s, Kazakstan's agriculture hinged on the pastoral economy, in spite of the enormous restructuring which had occurred during the 1930s. In 1994, Kazakstan's livestock resources had remained consistent, with 9.3 million head of cattle (around 8 percent of the CIS total). This was made up of 34.2 million sheep and goats (a quarter of the CIS total, including a high quota of Karakul rams, known as 'Volga lambs', which supply the Astrakhan pelts), about 1.4 million horses, and camels. In 1991, Kazakstan was the Soviet Union's second-largest wool producer (at 24 percent), third-largest meat producer (at 9 percent) and fourth largest milk producer (at 5.8 percent). Yet the agricultural and industrial sector remained very weak, with insignificant production of woollen cloth, processed meats, dairy products and footwear. The government decided to invest in the food-processing sector, the canned food industry, and in livestock technology and cattle breeding systems, as well as food storage and cereal processing. The objective was to process the raw materials available in the country (cereals, cotton, wool, meat and milk) and export the end-product (flour, woollen and cotton textiles, processed meat products, meat extracts and dairy products). Nevertheless, this plan is not only capital-intensive but also suffers from transport difficulties and the absence of indispensable parallel industries such as packaging or glass manufacturing. One of the more interesting projects is the extraction of glucose syrup from maize to reduce sugar imports.

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Map 6: Agriculture in Kazakstan

1

Large cereal cultivations of the Virgin Lands1

1 Intensive and varied I cultivations of hills and irrigated plains

I i

' j Extensive stock ! farming with son cultivated lands

i f 1 1 1 Intensive stock farming I I I i l in desert and semi-desert

V" ~1 Stock farming [ J on mountains

Canal -----

existing Proposed/ under construction

The Aral Sea: a 'Silent Chernobyl' In real socialism's native country there is an already unreal sea. The boats of the fishermen are mere carcasses abandoned on the stony beds. The memory of the cool waves No longer caresses the earth Dried, cracked, sterilised, poisoned. Christin-Bilal, Partie de chasse, Geneva, 1990 Sea levels are never constant; climatic alterations in the Earth's crust cause them to change. This should also be the case for the Aral and Caspian Seas, but for the past 40 years these natural factors no longer apply. Variations here depend exclusively on human factors. Half a century ago, nobody could have predicted what has come to be known as the 'silent Chernobyl': the virtual disappearance of the Aral Sea. From an altitude 53m above sea level in 1957, that surface fell to 51.6m in 1970, 49.4m in 1975, and 39m in 1989, a 14m drop in 35 years. This decline has brought about a spectacular shrinkage in the Aral's surface area (of over 30 percent), from 60,085 to 40,400 square kilometres. Maps have had to be withdrawn, and some show the coastline as it appeared in 1961. In the 26,000 square kilometres no longer covered by water, the wind lifts the salt, seaweed and sand to form barkhane, mobile dunes whose contents

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become solontchaks, a type of soil with a high salt content. The wind has gradually formed barkhane which now cover the abandonedfishermen'shouses along what was once the coastline. Some fishing villages are now situated lOOkms from the water's edge. The two large former ports of AraPsk in the north (in Kazakstan) and Muynak in the south (in Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan) are now more than 30kms from the water's edge. The unusable hulks of fishing boats and transport vessels now clutter the dusty basins that were once harbours. Almost no fish survive, victims of the gradual increase in salt content, from 9.25 to 30.3 grams per litre, similar to water in the open sea. The problem is that this is not marine salt, but calcium carbonates and sulphates, chlorides and magnesium sulphates and other residues from the biodegradation of defoliants, from the manure and pesticides running off the cotton into what remains of the Aral Sea. The disappearance offishingand other marine activities was a grave loss; the fish canning factory in Muynak must now obtain its fish from distant ports like Murmansk at great extra cost. The sturgeons, pike, sea bream and chub {leuciscus cephalus, the last examples of which are on display in local museums) for which this sea was famous no longer exist. At one time it produced 40,000 tonnes offish per year and 10 percent of the Soviet Union's caviar. Attempts were made to develop fish cultivation in some of the neighbouring lakes, such as Lake Kamyslybas to the northeast and Lake Sudotche to the north, but the experiment was unremarkable because the salt content of these lakes too is on the rise. The region's paradox is that while the Aral Sea is gradually disappearing many adjacent depressions are being filled with drainage water which is then gradually evaporated by the sun. While houses are being covered by sand, the water table is rising to such an extent that in some villages the people are unable to bury their dead underground as a small amount of digging reveals water. The soil salt content and the prevalence of saline solontchaks have changed the vegetation; the traditional flora of the area has been replaced by a halophilic one, characteristic of saline terrain. Dozens of villages have to be supplied with drinking water by tanker, while the salt and the sand deposits that now cover dozens of square kilometres seriously threaten the inhabitants' agricultural activities. The region's climate has also changed: as well as winds laden with sand and salt, the climate's continental nature is becoming accentuated, with torrid summers, colder winters and shorter farming seasons. A proportion of the region's inhabitants has migrated, and the first to leave were from AraPsk and Muynak, urban centres which quickly showed marked migration. The population's high birth rate, however, has caused an increase in population which aggravates the problem of water and fresh food supply. The infant mortality rate has increased dramatically (with a 30 percent increase in premature births and frequent cases of malformation). Typhoid is widespread (incidence is 23 times the CIS average), as is diarrhoea (27 times higher) and nephritis. In 1990, even a small epidemic of a contagious disease originating among animals caused many deaths. Children, whose health is weakened farther by the use of polluted water, are the most vulnerable. The region issued records indicating that infant deaths

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(especially high among the Karakalpaks) vary between 90 and 100 deaths per thousand children, a rate equal to that of Haiti, Sudan or Bolivia. The causes of this catastrophe are linked to the ever-intensifying development of cotton cultivation, the origins of which date back to the start of the nineteenth century and relate to the conflict between Russia and Britain for control over Turkestan. In fact, in retaliation for Russian conquests in Afghanistan and in Pamir, Britain forbade Russian buyers access to its markets. In order to allow its textile industry, situated around Moscow (in the cities of Ivanovo, 'the Russian Manchester', and Yaroslavl) to develop rapidly, the czarist government began a policy of systematic aid to cotton production in its new colonies in Central Asia. At the start of the century, the arable and irrigated area reserved for cotton cultivation had already been expanded, a fact that made some far-sighted geographers speculate about possible lowering of Aral water levels. Since 1917, cotton production has been consistently encouraged by way of increased prices, technical assistance and the use of manure and specialised machinery. Further enlargement of the irrigated areas led to a transformation of the region and the exposing of the economic and ideological myth of'white gold' (cotton), which became synonymous with regional prosperity. The political careers of local leaders had become increasingly dependent on the successes of 'cotton projects'. The area under cotton in the whole of Central Asia increased from 0.7 million hectares in 1916 to 1.6 million in 1953, and to more than three million in 1989. Similarly, cotton output increased from 0.6 million tonnes in 1913 to more than ten million in 1989 (Uzbekistan 66 percent, Turkmenistan 17 percent, Tajikistan 11 percent, Kazakstan 5 percent). In total, the irrigated area expanded from 2.2 million hectares in 1913 to 7.1 million hectares in 1987. Following projects nurtured during the second half of the nineteenth century by various czarist governors, some major works were initiated during the 1930s (like the construction of canals in the Fergana basin or the use of the Zeravshan River for irrigation). Projects continued during the post-war period (for example the building of the Great Turkmen Canal, Kara Kum Canal and Amu DaryaBukhara Canal). The single-crop farming system was adopted for cotton throughout the area, to the detriment of the food crops that were indispensable for the feeding of the local population. Crop rotation fell into disuse, land became exhausted and harvest records were falsified. Studies conducted by various geographers during the 1980s indicate, through the use of satellite photography, that local authorities systematically under-reported the size of the area under cotton, explaining the yields per hectare, which were merely accounting tricks. The discovery of the 'cotton scandal' had important political consequences in each of the former Soviet Asian republics. A description of the formation and activities of the 'cotton lobby' is not feasible here, but it will suffice to point out that it remains one of the best examples of the powerful pressure groups in existence during the Brezhnev era. On the one hand, such groups were involved with the

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main federal ministries responsible for overall agricultural production, particularly of cotton (those concerned with drainage and hydraulic works which managed a good part of total agricultural investment). On the other hand, they were involved with the authorities of all the regions and Central Asian republics, with ramifications extending to industries involved in agricultural machinery and the army. The total population of Central Asia grew from 17 million during the 1950s to 39 million in 1990s to about 55 million in 1997. Industry remains everpresent, especially in water-intensive sectors like chemicals and metallurgy. Together with the construction of dams for hydro-electrical purposes, this has caused a drastic decrease in water levels. Nevertheless, it has been estimated that agriculture accounts for 70 percent of water consumption: usually this water consumption is in fact lost because it finds its way into the water table or into canals. The water that sometimes manages to reach the Aral Sea is, however, laden with chemical products and salts. Up until about the end of the 1950s, the Aral Sea received between 50 and 60 cubic kilometres of water annually (about 40 from the Amu Darya and 18 from the Syr Darya) which stabilised the levels. In 1975, the water contribution was reduced to 10 cubic kilometres (only supplied by the Amu Darya), and by the 1980s had reached zero. Between 1978 and 1998 the Aral Sea received no water from these rivers, and the Syr Darya delta completely dried up. Yet the cotton crop lobbyists managed to mask the reality, deflecting the attention to the socalled 'Sibaral project' (a term formed from 'Siberia' and 'Aral'). The leaders of the Soviet central Asian republics had raised the problem of the lack of water since the start of the 1970s, only to obtain more consistent credit in order to increase cotton production. As the Aral lacked water, they reasoned that water should be obtained from elsewhere, and thus the 1947 Davidov Project was relaunched. Inspired by a project started in 1868, it envisaged the diversion of a section of the Ob and Irtysh rivers from Siberia to the Aral Sea. All the Central Asian republics vigorously supported the project, which involved the transfer of 35 cubic kilometres of water via a 120-metre-wide navigable canal. For between ten and fifteen years this was regarded as the bestsolution, and construction began, but opposition began gradually to spread among the Siberian population, scientists and many journalists. Atfirst,the project's detractors did not concentrate on the Aral situation, and instead denounced the systematic squandering of water in the Central Asian region. In place of the 3500-4500 cubic metres per hectare envisaged, on average between 7500 and 12,000 cubic metres were being used. This was due to disregard for water-saving schemes (like the 'drop-by-drop' irrigation system) and the refusal to water at night so as to limit diurnal evaporation. They tried to demonstrate that the mere conservation of existing supplies would have meant a water saving of between 10 and 20 cubic kilometres of water, which in total could have meant a saving of between 40 and 70 cubic kilometres, enough to 'save' the Aral Sea. The objectors used the Ministry of Drainage's two massive aborted projects, as their platform. The first was the Irtysh-Qaraghandy Canal (the first section of

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the Sibaral) started in 1962 and still incomplete by 1985. The press became aware of the absence of reliable data regarding conditions and building costs, as well as of the heavy financial losses incurred by the ministry. The second project was the closure of the Kara Bogaz Kol Gulf (in Turkmenistan), another total failure. In 1986, after the 'cotton scandal' had been exposed, the Politburo, with Gorbachev at its head, decided to block the project and re-evaluate its prospects, implying a revision of the regional development strategy's reliance on massive water transfer from Siberia. Before the dissolution of the USSR, a study was undertaken into the possibility of building a much shorter (450kms) canal or highpressure pipeline between the Aral and Caspian Seas. Contrary to expectations, the Caspian's water level has risen over the last few years, and according to a study carried out by Kazak scientists there could be a correlation between the Aral's contraction and the Caspian's expansion. Towards the end of the 1980s, international public opinion became aware of the Aral catastrophe, and international scientific bodies took action. In 1990, within the framework of a UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) mission, a centre for Aral research was opened in Moscow and Western experts spent a few months on site. It was decided that conditions for the region's population should be improved: the supply of drinking water should be increased by the construction of an aqueduct and purification stations; the local sanitation system should be modernised and improved; the use of defoliants and chemical products should be prohibited, and the production of food crops encouraged. Water-saving schemes were entrusted to local authorities, which had the responsibility of ensuring that the area irrigated was not increased, and reducing the area used for the cultivation of water-intensive rice and cotton. But to produce, transport and market fruit and vegetables, more perishable than cotton and rice, large investments were needed for infrastructure, packaging and refrigeration, a problem common across the entire former Soviet Central Asian region. The other two measures introduced by the UN involve an emphasis on water conservation and modern irrigation practices. The Russian press has a tendency to blame Central Asian populations for regional water and land malpractice, and for their supposed past propensity to live on subsidies from Moscow (in the Soviet period), and that Russia would do better to withdraw from its commitments in these areas (a view shared by Solzhenitsyn). For their part, Central Asian leaders feel that the Aral disaster was caused by central policy and the imposition of the unnatural development of a colonial-type single-crop system. Refuting Russian press criticism, they pointed out that the Soviets had installed a biological warfare experimentation base on the island of Vozrozhdeniya - the largest in the Aral Sea, shared by Kazaks and Uzbeks - the environmental effects of which are now under evaluation. In December 1991, the presidents of the five former Soviet Central Asian republics defended their stand on the matter: one of the protocols signed by the new states forming the CIS envisaged the communal regulation of the former Soviet Union's two main ecological tragedies, Chernobyl and the Aral Sea. This is a positive measure, but it is worth remembering that the diversion of 'scarce' water resources also carries the risk of increased and renewed political and ethnic

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tensions. Some indications of this were already evident by the latter half of the 1980s, with serious clashes in Fergana between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, the latter and the Tajiks, and the Kazaks and the Uzbeks over the Syr Darya. A price for water usage has been established in all the republics, which until 1991 was free to the kolkhoz and sovchoz, and meetings between republic presidents has revealed a general desire concerted action on water distribution. The Communications Sector Having concluded numerous trade accords with neighbouring countries so as to gain access to trade outlets other than Russia, it remains of vital importance for the future of Kazakstan's economy - given the country's vastness - to develop transport and communications networks. The railway network is moderately well developed, and about 14,000kms in length (with a low density of 5.4kms of railway per 1000 square kilometres), of which only 3000kms are electrified, and the system has the disadvantage of being of Soviet gauge. There are three main lines, thefirstof which is along the Southeast axis of the country (Shymkent, Almaty, Semey), effectively a section of the Turksib (Turkestan-Siberia) line which joins Novosibirsk in Siberia with Tbshkent in Uzbekistan. The second, the Transaralian line, runs towards the southeast, linking Shymkent, Aqtobe and Oral. At Shymkent it joins the TransCaspian line, which runs between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan via the Caspian. Shymkent is one of the most important railway junctions not only of southern Kazakstan, but also of the entire former Soviet Central Asian region. The third main line crosses the country from north to south: from Qiziliar, it passes through Aqmola (Astana), Qaraghandy, by Lake Balqash and Chu on its way to Almaty. The northern part of the country is served by lines branching off the Trans-Siberian line, which in the extreme north of the country passes through Qiziliar, Omsk and Novosibirsk on its Sredna-Sib ('central Siberian') route from Kokshetau. Its Yuzhny-Sib ('southern Siberian') line passes through Aqmola and Pavlodar. Of the accords concluded with neighbouring countries, the most important is the one with China reopening in June 1992 of the Peking-Almaty line which stopped functioning during the 1950s following the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries. It now connects Almaty to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, and then continues to China's capital city. The Kazak press made much of the opening of this new line, heralding it as the 'new silk route'. Two new railway lines are at present being built: the first will join Kazakstan to Iran via Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and the section connecting Mashad (capital of Iranian Khorasan) and Dushak (in Turkmenistan) is already complete. The second will connect Kazakstan with Turkey, via Azerbaijan and Georgia and - with a coastal line bordering the Caspian - will transport passengers from Aqtau to Baki (Baku), and from there to Turkey. The railway system remains the principal means of transport, but passengers also have access to roads and airlines. The road network is about 158,000kms in length, of which 108,000kms are tarred. The system, which is extremely inadequate, barely practical and overused, receives very little maintenance. It

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remains the transport and distributive system's main bottleneck. There are proposals for an Ankara-Almaty highway and a Trans-Asian highway to cross Iran to the Persian Gulf. Besides Almaty, other cities with international airports include Qaraghandy, Qostanay and Aqtobe; those found in Semey, Aqmola (Astana), Shymkent and Qyzlorda of are lesser importance. There are new air routes to Teheran and Peking, while Turkish Airlines flies to Istanbul and CAAC (Chinese Airlines) to Urumqi. In June 1992, through an agreement between Lufthansa and Kazakstan Airlines, the Almaty-Hannover route was inaugurated, the first direct link to Western Europe. The Kazak airlines (Qazaqstan Aue Zholy and Kazair), in addition to its Soviet-manufactured fleet, have bought a Boeing 747-SP and have considered the purchase of some Boeing 767s. Petroleum and methane pipeline networks are efficient and well-distributed. They are more numerous in the west of the country because they supply the southern part of Russia. Navigable waterways (around 4000kms) include the Syr Darya, but the most imortant is the Irtysh (renamed Ertis Darya), with its ports at Oskemen, Semey and Pavlodar, the Ural and a section of the Irtysh-Qaraghandy canal. The contribution of water transport to the total handling of goods is, however, negligible (about one percent). The main ports of the Caspian - both transport and fishing - are Atyrau and Aqtau. Favourable natural conditions led to the establishment of a space centre, or 'cosmodrome' at Baikonur. Activity stopped in 1992 (after which the Russians had to use Plesetsk in the north of Russia) but was partly re-opened, with many accompanying difficulties, in the months which followed. The Kazak government tried to promote Baikonur as a comercial satellite launch centre, but without the required funds or the necessary technology the idea was abandoned. By an agreement in May 1994, Russia leased for $115 million not only the launch centre but also the neighbouring city of Leninsk (Tyuratam) for a period of 20 years (with the option of a ten-year renewal). The city and the surrounding area of 6000 square kilometres is under the jurisdiction of Russia's military authorities. The Kazak government has been active in the expansion and modernisation of telecommunications. The telephone sector had 2,200,000 subscribers at the end of 1995. For both national and international communications networks, the state-owned Kazak National Telephone Company (Kazaktelecom) has formed Dekatel, a joint-venture with Deutsche Telekom, which seems keen to invest heavily. In 1997, the South Korean Daewoo Electronics bought 40 percent of Kazaktelecom for $1.37 billion. The international system has been entrusted to the Australian company Telstra, and mobile telephones to Petersburg LongDistance (in a partnership from which they receive 50 percent, the British Cable and Wireless 25.1 percent). Data transmissions are the responsibility of US Sprint (in which GTE, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom are partners), satellite communications of a joint venture with the Israeli state-owned Bezeq. Telecommunications networks are developing throughout former Soviet Central Asia, and Internet use is on the increase. Almaty and Tbshkent are the major telecommunications nodes.

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The Financial Sector Kazakstan's banking system is underdeveloped. In 1990, the Kazakstan division of the Soviet Gosbank became independent from Moscow, and in 1991 another 66 banks followed suit, of which some are: Kazkommertsbank, KazVEB (Foreign Trade Bank), Kazdorbank, Krestsotbank, Turanbank, Tecnopolice Bank and Al Baraka International Bank. The Kazagroprombank has 240 branches and should, in theory, supply credit to farmers, but is unable to function because the government has imposed an interest rate limit of 10 percent on loans. The accord signed with Chevron and its results accelerated the process of developing a national currency, and this was considered imminent in June 1992. But Ukrainian difficulties over the use of kupons and karbovanets and the country's unfavourable financial situation obliged Kazakstan to postpone introduction of the currency until November 1993. Almaty broke off negotiations to enter the 'new rouble zone', declaring Russian demands unacceptable, and proceeded to launch the tenge (subdivided into 100 tiyn). The new currency slid, and its value against the dollar halved in a few years: there were 35.54 tenges to the dollar in 1994, 60.95 in 1995, 67.30 in 1996, 74.70 in 1997 and 76.4 in 1998. Economic Policy Since the declaration of national sovereignty in October 1990, Kazak authorities have been adopting measures to ease the country towards a mixed economy. Over a few years, about 150 laws were passed, and Nazarbaev showed himself to have great ambitions, albeit in stark contrast to the reality. On 16 May 1992, on the eve of an official visit to the USA, Nazarbaev published an important article in Kazakhstanskaya Pravda entitled 'A Development and Renewal Strategy for Kazakstan as a Sovereign State'. Projected policies were mentioned: the creation of a market economy, economic liberty for all citizens, the introduction of a national currency, entry into world markets, involvement in the production of consumer goods and the attraction of foreign investment, with monitoring of its effectiveness. The programme envisaged three stages. The first, to be completed between the end of 1991 and 1995, was to involve the privatisation of state-owned industry and the creation of a demand-driven consumer economy. The second stage, to take effect between 1996 and 2005, envisaged a gradual move away from Kazakstan's traditional reliance on raw materials, running alongside a programme of transport and communications development and the creation of capital goods and a job market. The third and final stage, over a period of seven or more years (from 2005 onwards), envisaged the development of an open economy, the consolidation of international commerce, and recognition as an industrialised country. The 'destatisation' phase was launched in September 1991 with large-scale privatisation, although some sectors were excluded: education, health, energy, broadcasting, newspapers, mining. Foreign capital was sought for telecommunications and air transport. Privatisation did not affect land ownership: in

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fact, it was decided that land should remain the property of the state, and should not be sold, but could be leased or ceded through inheritance to the new privatised peasant co-operatives. Not being in a position to rely on bank credit, however, they struggled to get started and develop, and directors of the kolkhoz and sovchoz are intent on slowing the process down. As in other former Soviet republics, although a quarter of the shares placed on the market were theoretically reserved for employees and pensioners of the companies concerned, problems soon emerged. The Russian and Kazak press frequently uses the word prikvatizatsia, a contraction of the words for 'privatisation' and 'buying up'. What has developed is a process of acquisition under conditions favourable to former leaders of the Communist Party, a type of privatisation which favours the nomenklatura. The fact that Slavs are well represented in the leadership bodies of businesses - and therefore among those in a position to take advantage of conditions - has made obstacles for an Anticorruption Committee, which has had to tread carefully to avoid re-igniting ethnic tensions. In addition, monopolies tend to recreate themselves under other guises, as in the case of the KRAMDS Corporation. A type of association of industrialists created in 1988 (but today bankrupt) by a group of former managers of Kazakstan's Gosplan, KRAMDS temporarily became the country's most powerful industrial and financial group. In an attempt to avoid the side-effects of privatisation, agencies have been created - the Economic Council, the State Economic Committee, the Antimonopoly Committee, the Committee for Property - but their objectives are never clear and their decisions are often overbearing. This has produced a plethora of laws and decrees, and great legislative confusion. One of Kazakstan's characteristics (as throughout the CIS) is confusion between government intention and the economic reality, a condition in which many forms of resistance to change exist. In addition, aspects of the old system persist - like obstruction of change - and are referred to in the press as 'white collar crime'. Faced with the poor economic results of 1992,1993 and 1994, other measures were introduced. Kazakstan was obliged to align itself with Russia's policy of liberalisation, but kept rents and the price of certain essential commodities unchanged, although their actual cost had risen between three and five times. Sharp increases in the cost of kerosene, coal and fuel have occurred, while the price of bread, milk and gas have remained more stable. Nevertheless, strikes by miners and the dissatisfaction caused by the sharp decline in buying power (which decreased, according to one economist, by 1000 percent), have forced the government to back down, withdrawing its increases on the price of bread and milk. VAT was introduced in 1992 and fixed at 28 percent, while other indirect taxation was applied to alcohol, tobacco, tea and petrol. The social security system was modified in 1991 with the creation of a 'pension fund' (for old age pensions and family maintenance) and a 'state insurance fund' (for illness and maternity), both funded by businesses (37 percent) and wage-earners (1 percent) the balance being covered by state funds.

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New labour legislation, adopted in July 1991, created a 'job fund' to come to terms with unemployment, which is running high and is not expected to be curbed for a number of years. It is financed by businesses, which pay 3 percent of their wage bill. In spite of hopes for a good cereal harvest and economic potential, Kazakstan faced a difficult period immediately after independence. On 15 May 1992, Kazakhstankaya Pravda ran the following headline: 'The situation is not improving. It will remain this way but above all we must survive'. The headline paraphrased the Vice-Prime Minister and Industry Minister O. Soskovets's bleak assessment during a government meeting on the economic situation. In 1991, industrial production dropped by 11 percent, in 1992 by 13 percent, in 1993 by 16 percent and in 1994 by 25 per cent, with a financial deficit of $1.5 billion in 1992 and $1 billion dollars in 1993 and 1994. Recession hit all sectors, the energy and building sectors in particular. In 1992, public investment decreased by 41 percent for schools, by 59 percent for nursery schools and by 25 percent for hospitals. Residential building increased by a mere 25 percent. The situation is particularly serious in the Aral region, declared a 'disaster area', where none of the urgent projects planned (pipes for water supply, clinics, hospitals and schools) have been carried out. The same has occurred in agriculture: the 1995 cereal harvest was 57.9 percent lower than that of 1993, with rice, cotton, sugar beet and other foodstuffs also experiencing sharp declines in yield. Total cattle numbers continue to decrease, as does average productivity due to the scarcity of fodder and the epizootic aphtha epidemics. The transportation of goods has also declined heavily, while transport costs have risen by almost four times. Airline passenger numbers have decreased by 27 percent, the number of road users by 14 percent and urban commuters by 12 percent. Various reasons may be put forward to explain these poor, even serious, economic results - the persistently unfavourable conditions, or international economic trends towards recession - but the main reason lies in the break-up of the USSR or, more accurately, the break in economic relations between the former republics. This has had very serious consequences for Kazakstan, which is a supplier of raw materials, and dependent on other states for almost all its end-products. The liberalisation of prices in Russia has put Kazak leaders in a difficult situation, one for which they were unprepared. At the beginning of 1992, agreements with Russia guaranteed the preservation of 70 percent of reciprocal trade. Russian companies - with their government's approval - found it preferable to export to other countries for more valuable currency, breaking those agreements. Of the numerous laws passed governing economic activity, some deal with national investment issues - businesses, rural areas and agriculture, comestibles, destatisation, privatisation, limitation of monopolies etc - while others relate to the facilitation of foreign investment and the basic principles of 'external' economic activity. In December 1992, there were 138 joint-venture companies in Kazakstan, of which only a dozen were operative, and half of their income was gained from the textile machine sector. Lagging some way behind is the IT sector, followed

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by services. Exports involved mainly about a dozen products (ferrous and nonferrous metals, chemicals, astrakhan furs, agricultural products among others). In May 1992, joint-venture companies numbered 170, but only 17 achieved any real industrial output. According to the Kazak State Committee for Statistics, in February 1992 registered joint-ventures were as follows: 23 with the United States (14 percent of foreign investment capital), 19 with Germany (11.7 percent), 17 with Turkey (10.5 percent), 11 with South Korea (6.7 percent), 10 with China (6.1 percent), 7 with Italy (4.3 percent), 6 with Poland (3.7 percent); after these came Great Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Austria, Argentina, Sweden, Israel and Venezuela. The nature of the commodities handled by these companies is quite varied, among them disposable syringes (Germany), motor-vehicle batteries (Austria), additives for fodder, software and leather-work (France), wood-working (Switzerland) and syntheticfibres(Japan). The Italian project with FIAT to convert a section of Pavlodar's tractor factory to the manufacture of 150,000-200,000 utilitarian low-budget cars destined for the Central-Asian market has fallen through. The scarcity of merchandise, price increases and unemployment has sharply raised the proportion of the population living below the poverty line. Pauperisation affects mostly the urban classes. During the month of August 1993, about 1,600,000 of Kazakstan's inhabitants were living below the poverty line set at 725 roubles (in itself a lowfigure);this included an extraordinary large numbers of pensioners, invalids, students, the unemployed and large families. Nevertheless, the low-income group was much larger: according to the Kazak State Committee for Statistics, this group numbered 12 million individuals, the equivalent of 70 percent of the population. The 'new paupers' were unable to buy clothes and shoes, not to mention consumer goods such as fridges and televisions, even though the government has adopted measures to favour popular consumerism, such as the lowering of the VAT rate introduced in 1992, the opening of department stores at preferential prices and the creation of 'communal soup-kitchens'. A semi-public agency, the Charity Foundation, was also founded to deal with the destitute. It collects funds, distributes free meals and used clothing, and also offers medical assistance. At the end of 1996, of a total of 6,900,000 people of working age, about 20 percent were unemployed (but only 2.6 officially registered), mostly because of the lack of job opportunities. The suffering of the unemployed is heightened by the fact that even a few years ago such conditions were virtually unheard of. Within the technical and industrial sectors, the threat of unemployment is exacerbated since they are specialised, not very flexible or adaptable to the country's new industrial requirements. Social disintegration has brought with it a significant increase in crime. In March 1992, a presidential decree was issued on the intensification of the fight against organised crime and corruption. The decree stressed that 'the reform of the economic system, the contradictions and difficulties existing in all sectors of society, along with weakened discipline and sense of responsibility all translate into an increase in the crime level'. Every form of crime is on the increase (bag-snatching, robbery, extortion, homicide); in 1991,

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the total number of offences increased by 21.8 percent on 1990 levels (17,000 more reported). According to the police, unlawful activity is concentrated in the industrialised zones, where crime has doubled, or at times trebled. The Mafia phenomenon is on the increase, based on drug traffic and a local drug production: opium in the Oblysy of Qyzylorda, cannabis in the Chu valley and ephedra vulgaris (from which ephedrine, a potent amphetamine, is extracted) in the Tian Shan valleys. In 1997, 31.5 tonnes of drugs were seized, an increase of 150 percent on 1996 (according to figures quoted in Le Depeche Internationales des Drogues, Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues, Paris, N° 67 and N° 86, Decembre 1998). In the last five years, drug-related offences have increased by 400 percent. Drug trafficking is punishable by the death penalty, and in 1995 there were 101 convictions and 63 executions. Some social conventions seem to be related to the rise in crime, like the return to bigamy (abolished in 1920 together with the kalym, or 'bride price'): for some newly rich bisnizmeni (businessmen) and kazanovi, having a second wife is a sign of status. Local sections of the former KGB (the secret service) have also been mobilised in the fight against crime. Specialised Investigations Divisions (for dealing with corruption, smuggling and financial regulation) have been created. Financial and banking activities have been placed under the spotlight, with functionaries being obliged to declare the source of personal assets. CULTURE All the Turkic languages spoken in former Soviet Central Asia belong to the Altaic family of languages, a linguistic group also referred to as Ural-Altaic to indicate origins shared with the Mongol and Tunguses languages. This common derivation is actually more assumed than scientifically proven. Specialists are unable to agree as to the further classification of Turkic languages, at times sub-dividing these into eight or (more often) intofivesub-groups. Of these, two are the most important. The Oghuz (or the southwestern) comprises the Azeri language, Turkmen and Turkish in the form that it is spoken in Turkey. The Central Asian group comprises the Kazak language, other languages very similar to it, like Kyrgyz and Karakalpak (at times simply regarded as dialects of Kazak), as well as more differentiated languages such as Uzbek or the Uyghur spoken in Chinese Xinjiang. The latter, in its most ancient and literary form, has influenced the other Turkic languages spoken in the Central Asian region. Uzbek and Kazak, while sharing a common origin, have become differentiated from each other. Uzbek differs in that it is based on Chaghatayan literature, written between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, while Kazak has developed from literature originating in the nineteenth century. Influences from Persian, Russian and other Turkic languages and elsewhere have changed the phonetic and morphological structures. According to some sources, Kazak, Kyrgyz, Karakalpak and the Nogaj dialects are grouped with the Kipchak languages, a group which derives its name from the Turkic tribes which migrated into the

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southern Russian steppes during the eleventh century and drove the other large Turkic tribal confederation, the Oghuz, westwards. The Kipchak population, however, never achieved political unity, and the arrival of the Mongols led to its fragmentation and later integration with the conquerors. The Kazaks constitute the world's third-largest Turkic linguistic group (after the Turks and Uzbeks); the Kazak language is spoken by more than 8,000,000 people living in the republic and by the Kazak minorities living abroad (about 3,500,000). Kazak was first transcribed in the Arabic script, and the composition of major literary works from the second half of the nineteenth century were composed in this alphabet. In 1930, a modified version of the Latin alphabet (as in Turkey) was adopted, andfinally,from 1940 onwards, Cyrillic replaced this. Kazak is the official language, but Russian having being awarded the status of language of international relations (or 'inter-ethnic communication'), the situation seems to be evolving towards permanent bilingualism. This is due to the large Russian segment of the population, and the fact that Russian was the linguafranca,spoken by two-thirds of populations and used in everyday business. The Volga German community speaks a form of German that has a slight Slav influence; only in 1967 was the scholastic instruction of this language reinstated as a recognised right. Nomadic Life The term 'Kazak' derives from the Turkic word Kazak or Qazaq (or even Kaysak) meaning 'nomad', Vagabond' or 'horseman'. This term has generated controversy between historians and ethnographers. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, in the southern regions of Russia, it was also used to refer to the peasants of Russian and Ukrainian extraction who had fled serfdom and survived by hunting, fishing and plundering from the semi-nomadic populations with whom they interacted. They later became known as 'Cossacks', soldiers accorded particular norms and privileges. For centuries, the Kazak steppes have been a hard place to live, due to the scarcity of water, and a basic survival economy has been the norm. Adaptation to this hostile environment determined a particular social structure. This placed great emphasis on advice from elders, the seasonal relocation of herds by traditional routes, the participation of women and children in family and collective work, the communal ownership of cultivated land, the sub-division of pastoral zones and the conquest of new areas from the other tribes. The precarious nature of these living conditions and the need to relocate in order to maintain the livestock led neighbouring fixed populations to regard their civilisation as superior. Apart from the obvious military superiority derived from their mobility, the nomadic Kazaks also developed material and spiritual culture norms (judicial, artistic and literary), some of which have been handed down to present-day society. The process of conversion to Islam was superficial and long, except among the southern oases, where the Sufi fraternities at times adopted local shamanistic practices. Individual behaviour has long been influenced by gety zhargy, the code

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of written laws promulgated by Tauke, sovereign of the last unified Kazak khanate (1680-1718) regulating nomadic customs. The adat (customary law) perpetuating codes of honour, traditional vendettas, the bonds of solidarity between clans, as well as family and social structures was never definitively replaced by the sharia (Islamic law). This ensured the continuation of Kazaks pastoral society, reflected in the oral literary tradition of myths, legends, tales and lyric compositions, which has retained its importance and is handed down by groups of bards known as the akyn and olongci. One of the most famous of these was Dzhababayev Dzhambul, born during the mid-nineteenth century, after whom the town of Aulie Ata (now Taraz) was named in 1936. Even in contemporary poetry competitions, poets compete by improvising adaptations of the most popular folksongs. Poems are often accompanied by traditional musical instruments, such as the dombira (a type of three-string balalaika), the kobsa (a balalaika with an oval-shaped body and a pivot at the base, like a cello) and the zurna (a long, wooden horn). The typical dwelling of the Kazaks and other nomadic turkophone populations before their forced settlement was the yurt, a circular tent with a cone-shaped top and a collapsible wooden framework covered with felt cloth (kosma). According to some ethnographers, the yurt was a representation of the cosmological order. The main social grouping was the aul, a collection of patriarchal families, each comprising of a maximum of 200 kibitka family nuclei. The horse is an integral part of the nomadic culture. It is the centre of much attention in the community, horses often determining a family's affluence and capacity for work. In addition to supplying leather and horsehair, horses also provide some traditional food, such as kumiss (fermented horse-milk), a Mongol influence. Tea was also drunk. Other traditional foods included ajran (curdled cow's milk); kurt (sheep's cheese), ieremcichi (curdled cow's cheese); mutton was only eaten during winter with millet, which was peeled and then roasted, or prepared as kascia (a thick porridge). The main domestic utensils found in every yurt included copper pitchers (kumgan) and a small cast-iron cauldron (kazan), which in affluent families was replaced by a samovar. The yurt, the horse and the traditional Kazak nomadic life were gradually destabilised by Russian colonisation, which created ca little Russia' to the north of modern-day Kazakstan. From the nineteenth century, a rudimentary form of Kazak literature began to develop through the initiative of the westernised intelligentsia which, while affirming the importance of a unique national identity, saw collaboration with Russia as the only route to progress. The author most representative of this literary rebirth, and considered the founder of Kazak literature, was Abay Ibrahim Kunanbayev (1845-1904), a humanist philosopher with a liberal outlook. He was also a poet and translator. Another prominent intellectual was Shokan Valikhanov (1835-65), an officer in the Russian army and an orientalist. Between 1860 and 1870, the ethnographer-pedagogue Ibrahim Altynsaryn (1841-89), along with another educationalist, Ilminski, developed and implemented an education programme, opening schools among the Kazak auls and teaching in the Kazak language as well as Russian. The education system's development was slow and uncertain, with the greatest effort being made in Turgay

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Oblast, where Altynsaryn had worked as a school inspector between 1879 and 1889 (the year in which he died) under Russian functionaries who shared his views. About 2000 Kazaks a year benefited from the education system, but very few of them continued their studies beyond the primary level. The intellectual legacy left by Altynsaryn was enormous: Ismail Bey Gasprinsky (1851-1914), a Crimean Tatar and contemporary of Altynsaryn, laid the fundamental principles for the formulation of a new education system: Jadidism. The Jadidists regarded educational reform as the most important precondition for competition with European civilisation. Starting as a method of instruction, it soon became a political faction, which promoted the modernisation of the entire Muslim community. Towards the end of the century, various other Kazak intellectuals - like Alikhan Bukeykhanov (1870-1937), Ahmed Baytursun (1873-1937) and Miryakub Dulatov 1885-1937) - became aware of the enormous gap between their country and the rest of the world. They turned to Jadidism and sought to establish an ideology similar to that of the 'Young Turks' in Turkey, whose nationalist outlook was very close to their own. Between 1913 and 1918 the newspaper Qazaq was established in Orenburg. It criticised the Russian government for its settlement policy and criticised Islamic factions and their pan-Islamic demands, among which was that military service be available to Kazaks and Kyrgyz. The newspaper called for a more efficient educational system for the whole population and in general for the transformation from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle, regarding this as indispensable to emancipation. The Kazaks, due to their rustic lifestyle and imperfect practice of Islam, were open to 'Russianisation'. The Kazak culture prevalent during the Soviet era, which originated from the nineteenth-century intellectual elite, could not escape Russia's strong influence. Kazakstan paid a very high price in national identity, but in exchange progressed socio-economically and won a certain international strategic standing. Jadidism and Islamic Modernism in Central Asia From the point of view of the history of political thought, the Jadidism movement is considered one of the major reformist secular and progressive contributions of the modern era to have originated among Muslim circles. Arguably, it was more significant than similar movements begun in Egypt, India, Syria, Turkey and Iran, and was an undocumented phenomenon which took place during the cultural rebirth of the Tatars who, no longer subjected to religious persecution after 1800 (when they were granted a spiritual assembly in Orenburg), obtained permission to settle in Kazan and trade with the empire's Central Asian regions. The Tatar intellectual elite, although deeply immersed in Russian culture, remained faithful to their own Turkic and Muslim origins. From the second half of the nineteenth century, they became the most advanced Turkic-speaking group. At the end of that century the Tatar community had reached a literacy rate equivalent to that of Russia (and so it remained: the figure was 33.6 in 1926),

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farthering the development of a bourgeoisie and merchant class. The Tatar 'rebirth' expressed itself in many ways, but gained expression mainly through Jadidism. The name Jadid was applied to proponents of the new phonetic method (usul-ul-jadid) of teaching Arabic and later Tatar and other Turkic languages. Gasprinsky first introduced this method in the Tatar primary school (maktab) in his home village in the Crimea in 1884. The advocates of preservation of the old syllabic method of teaching were called Kadimist (from kadim, or 'old'). Jadidism evolved straight away into a wider field than education, and became a political movement with centres in Turkestan and Bukhara. Jadidism tried to promote a 'renewed' form of religious education involving rigorous instruction in other disciplines in an attempt to bring about the emancipation of the Muslim community through contact with 'modern' ideas. Gasprinsky maintained that respect for religious tradition had to exist in harmony with innovation. He stayed in Istanbul and Paris, where he met Ziya Gokalp (1876-1924), one of the future ideologues of the Young Turks. On his return in 1877, he attempted to start his own education programme, starting with the madrasa model in Bakhchisaray, former capital of the Crimean khanate, where the first edition of the magazine Tercuman {Interpreter) was published in 1883; it was to continue 35 years after his death. The Jadidists founded hundreds of schools, and through a complex set of influences there emerged secular political movements (like the 'Young Khiva' and 'Young Bukhara'). Jadidist schools introduced secular subjects like arithmetic, geography, history and the Russian language into the school curriculum. The political movements that emerged in their wake gave priority to linguistic unity as a premise for political unity. Many followed a pan-Turkic orientation, calling for the foundation of a single Turkic nation, the union of all the Turkic populations in Russia and the restoration of their historical links with the rest of the Turkic world. These movements were inspired by the Young Turk movement, whose 'central committee' welcomed Gasprinsky in 1906. Jadidism developed significantly in Central Asia, but in this region always had to assert itself not only against Kadimism, but above all against the widespread Sufi mysticism and asceticism. Many Jadidist intellectuals came from Turkestan (Behbudi, Fitrat, Khujayev, Qadiri, Ayni), and they all later became Bolsheviks and members of government in the Soviet Union's Central Asian republics. Kazak Cinema Kazakstan's film industry played an important role in Central Asian cinematography, and even today shows great strength in overcoming obstacles brought about by the revolutionising of the political structure. Fifty cinemas have been privatised since independence (and transformed into stores) while the remaining 400 only function in summer as the heating costs too much. But a new generation of directors have made a name for themselves with a series of historicalfilms.As the secretary of the Kazak Union of Film Directors, Oraz Rymshanov, said, 'The

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Kazaks were like the American Indians of Russia; before 1917 we were savages without a history, and after 1991 we have only made films about our past'. Amongst the newcomers is Alexander Bahanov, who made Shanghai, in which families of Kazaks, Ukrainians, Jews, Koreans and Germans live in a poor district of Almaty, but after independence the district becomes deserted as everyone returns to their 'home countries'. There are also Ermek Shinarbaev and Abai Karpikov, who directed The Most Tender, a film which follows a search for gold ingots hidden by a Kazak in the 1930s before the enforced settlement of nomads. In Edygue Bolysbayev's film Ultugan, a boat is shipwrecked on the banks of the Aral Sea and encircled by camels. An old sailor, more or less conscious of the situation, insistently asks that the crimes of the past not be forgotten, and so asks that the ship's name be restored to Molotov. During an interview conducted in 1992, Bolysbayev said, 'The film was prescient. The situation of impasse created during filming in 1989, the hammer and sickle, the red paint peeling off a ship, which would never again be sea-worthy; everything came true in 1992.' But above all many Kazak films produced over the last few years evoke the lacerations and violent fracture of a cornered and bewildered society. Ainalayin, directed by Bolat Kalymbetov, tells the story of the few moments of happiness in the ordinary life of a young villager. There is a general sense of uneasiness: standing in front of a crumpled map of the USSR, the schoolteacher - an alcoholic - speaks absentmindedly about the importance of national culture. Military installations, most probably nuclear, tower over the village. The film closes with a huge explosion, whilst a voice over a loudspeaker outside the installation announces the evacuation of the village. In another film by Talgat Temenov, the title of which could be translated as Moving Target, the opening scene shows images of December 1986 demonstrations in Almaty. The protagonist, wanted by the police, finds refuge with a border guard of German origin and who was deported to the Kolyma (a detention gulag) in 1937. Instead of leaving the country 'while he still has time to do so', the protagonist accepts the lesson in courage afforded him by the guard's life. The film tries to convey that survival after deportation is possible, although it is best not to fall into the hands of the police at all. Temenov also attempts to show the underworld of outlaws and traffickers, a 'state within a state' with the same violence. At the Twenty-third Rotterdam Film Festival, held in February 1994, the thirty-six-year-old Kazak film-maker Timur Sulejmenov presented the film Stranger, as well as the short, TetfmaVcika (The Shadow of a Child). The film tells the story of the night of revelry a working-class Kazak spends with a young American doctor who is in the country on business. The film is full of references to amnesia: the worker finds himself on the mortuary table, but his death occurs before his friendship with the American doctor has begun. The film is reminiscent of 'frontier' films, similar to those of Georgian directors, and uses imagery previously unseen in Kazak cinematography as it shifts from surrealism to black comedy. The major exponent of the Kazak nouvelle vague is definitely Darejan Omirbaev, born in 1958. His first film was Kairat (a prize-winner at the Festival of Locarno in 1992), but a journalist who wanted to see the film had to buy tickets

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for four complete strangers, as the cinema would not screen the film to an audience of fewer than four. Kardiogramma (1995) generated much interest at the fifty-second Venice Film Festival. The autobiographical protagonist is Zalusan, a Kazak boy recuperating in a clinic near Almaty. Unable to speak Russian, he is unable to adjust to his surroundings: 'I stopped speaking entirely. When one keeps quiet everything passes before one's eyes; I think that in that moment I became a director.' Omirbaev's last film was Killer (1998), a sad reflection on Kazak society, a victim of moral and material degradation.

Television Independence brought a new wave of Kazak television programmes dealing with important topical issues. Some of their themes were the new idea of private property or independence of thought and expression, contrasting these with the value system and social conduct of the old regime. Sitcoms are expounding die new values through scenes of daily life for young people in Almaty. A parliamentary debate preceded the broadcasts. Had the time come to offer the people (and principally women) new ideas after ten years of coming to terms with the difficulties of capitalism, and to help launch them into the world of business? The response from the government was positive, and thus the British coproduction Crossroads {Kavusagi in Kazak, Perikryostak in Russian) went on air. This series is in direct competition with the Russian feuilletton (sitcom) and above all with the American Santa Barbara, probably the most viewed transmission and increasingly a model to imitate, not only in behaviour but even in the architecture of new buildings. Villas are being built in Almaty which directly copy those of Santa Barbara, and they have become the new status symbol, as V Buchli pointed out in a recent conference ('Building Kazakstan: The Process of Globalisation and the Construction of a New Kazakstani Architecture and Identity, VIESCAS, European Society for Central Asian Studies, Seminar, Venice, 8-10 October 1998). The Kazak director and assistant director of Crossroads, used to working in the world of cinema, were amazed that T V video cameras were being used, while the scriptwriters had difficulty inserting the sponsor's products in the right places. The protagonists are young men in sunglasses and young women, often in bikinis, who drink champagne and want to dress 'chic': 'It is the money which adds to the fascination... if you wear a dress by Christian Dior you attract a lot of attention'. The heroes of Crossroads have a taste for risk, and to earn money they open advertising agencies or small businesses. In one episode, a husband who is economically ruined tells his wife, 'Here we are without money when we have worked so hard: you will never forgive me'. She smiles sadly and says, 'Good, lets start again from zero'. According to Dariga Nazarbaev, director of TVHabar (Kazak TV) and daughter of the president, 'The great strength of this series is that it works on a subconscious level; there is not one news programme or propaganda programme that could do it so well. Kavusagi must help those who are disoriented to understand the type of society that we are constructing.'

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RELIGION In Kazakstan, the emergence of a politicised Islamic movement of real strength is less likely than in the other former Soviet Central Asian republics. While Islam is deeply rooted in Tajik and Uzbek society, which have always been settled, and has always been a real political force, this is not the case in traditionally nomadic Kazak society, the mobility of which made it less susceptible to religious proselytising. Muslim radicalism has to date never gained ground in Kazakstan. Being Muslim does not necessarily imply faith, but is rather a basic element of national culture, contributing to the affirmation of Kazak identity. The country did, however, undergo a process of Islamic conversion along with the other territories of the former Mongol empire. This began between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but only truly gained ground at the beginning of the nineteenth century and in the extreme southern strip of the country where religious feeling is stronger. At present, religious politics are at the centre of a great cultural battle in which three protagonists fight for supremacy: the official religious hierarchy, a parallel one, and some nationalist movements, strongest of which are Jeltoqsan and the Alash Orda. The official Islamic authorities have always enjoyed the respect of local power structures. They also contribute to the publication of a daily newspaper, and during the perestroika era sought to encourage an era of openness. In 1985, there were only 25 'legal' mosques throughout Kazakstan, but by 1990 the number had risen to 60. From 1943 (the year in which Soviet Islam was officially recognised) until 1990, the religious protection of the entire Soviet Central Asia was entrusted to the Spiritual Administration of Religious Affairs of Central Asia and Kazakstan, whose headquarters were in Tbshkent. In January 1990 (before independence and with the permission of the Soviet authorities), a new Mufti, Ratbek Nysanbay Uli (or Nissan-bay Oglu), was installed to preside over the office in Almaty. He was relatively young, and received his religious instruction in Libya, and was, like most Kazaks, a Sunni of Hanafi school. He opposes politicised understandings of Islam - 'Allah preaches to never harm others!' - and was the coordinator of about 600 mosques by the end of 1995. Religious 'patronage' is also increasing: Egypt is financing the construction of an enormous mosque in Almaty, and Turkey is funding a large Islamic Centre, while young imams are also receiving their instruction in Pakistan. Official Islam has met with opposition from popular versions which have run on a parallel track and have developed mainly in the south of the country, where they assume different forms, some mystical, others hybrids incorporating shamanism. The powerful Yasaviya Dervish fraternity, founded in the fourteenth century in Yassy (now renamed Turkestan) by Shaykh Ahmad Yasavi, who died there in 1166 enjoys a popular following. His tomb, built in 1397 on Tamburlaine's orders, has been venerated ever since as one of the most important holy places (mazar) of Central Asia, and is the destination of popular pilgrimages. The restoration of the mausoleum has begun, with Turkish funding. Various historical traditions among the nomadic Turkic populations who have rarely followed orthodox

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Islamic practice emerge, for example, when there is illness a baksi, or shaman, is called upon to provide a cure. These parallel versions of Islam remained clandestine and illegal throughout the Soviet period, but emerged into the open towards the end of perestroika, represented by a network of self-proclaimed hereditary mullahs. Kazakstan's north-south divide is also reflected in religion. In the south, or more precisely in its rural areas, both official or popular forms of Islam predominate. Orthodox Christianity is the most common religion among the Slavs of the northern, central and eastern regions and the urban areas (the old capital cities included), and is going through a period of renewal. There are small Catholic communities (the Uniate), while the reinstatement of the Lutheran faith in 1964 has assured the Volga Germans, concentrated to the north of the country, of the right to Lutheran Protestant worship. In the main cities, many missionaries, protestant or from other Christian denominations, have appeared. However, a new force is attempting to take charge of the Muslim community: the nationalist political opposition. The symbiosis between religious and national elements has produced contradictory results. The political group Alash Orda, which consists of mainly young, unemployed rural people, and not recognised by the government, has shown its opposition to Nazarbaev, and has on more than one occasion denounced the servility of the Mufti of Almaty towards those in power. In December 1991, the movement held a demonstration in Almaty to try and bring about the removal of the Mufti, a protest which degenerated into a riot. According to local newspapers, some activists broke the Mufti's arms, and Ka2:ak authorities, in a show of strength, instituted legal proceedings against seven members of the Alash Orda. The desire of the Kazaks to belong to a clan (juz), an ethnic group and an independent republic may be used to fuel a desire for pan-Turkism, or in a more general sense the desire for pan-Islamic solidarity. An emphasis on the transnational nature of the Islamic community is espoused by the Jeltoqsan party, which has managed to find an echo in political groups in neighboring republics, for example in the Uzbek movement called Turkestan. The two movements have tried to co-ordinate, and have started to 'mobilise' for the recruitment of 'Muslim troops' which were to have fought in Nagorno-Karabakh with the Azeris against the Armenians. The government also initiated a somewhat vague, sweetened and institutionalised version of pan-Turkism, at a conference held in Almaty in December 1991. It is possible to trace the great influence the Tatar elite had on the Kazakstan intellectuals in the spread of this political attitude, which is reminiscent of both Jadidism and Sultan Galiev's 'national Muslim Communism', which converged in the project to form a sole Islamic nation, a recurring (rhetorical) theme of twentieth-century century political thought manifested in Africa and Asia. In reality, such hypotheses appear rather remote, but the recent spread of political Islam in countries previously considered immune (at different ends of the spectrum, Algeria and Turkey) means that unexpected developments cannot be ruled out. In Kazakstan today, the secular state prevails, with its separation of

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state and religion. However, the deterioration of the economic situation may well cause this to change. The Kazak national flag currently makes no references to Islam: a sky blue background represents the endless sky, a golden sun with 32 rays and a golden steppe eagle appear in the centre; on the hoist side, a piece a national ornamentation appears in yellow. Islam Islam (a word which means 'abandonment', 'submission', 'dedication to God') is the religion of Muslims. In Arabic, Muslim means 'he who submits'. The term Islam refers to all the people practicing the religion, both the majority Sunni Muslims, and the Shiia and many other minority groups. Muhammad and the 'Khalifa' Muhammad founded the Islamic religion in Arabia at the beginning of seventh century AD. He was born in Mecca in 570 a Qurayshite, or member of the large Quraysh tribe. Already a place of worship during the pre-Islamic era with the veneration of the Ka'Ba ('black stone'), Mecca subsequently became the most important Islamic centre. The divine word was communicated between 610 and 632 to Muhammad, the Prophet, by means of successive and fragmented revelations through the archangel Gabriel (Jibrayil). The revelations commanded him to tell all men of Allah's wishes. The essential characteristics of Islam are absolute monotheism and the importance of theology (kalam), and the observance of the religious law (sharid). God being the sole legislator, the Sharia provides for all aspects of life. There is thus, in theory though never in practice, no real distinction between the religious and the political: sacraments are replaced by legal precepts, and there is no priesthood. After going into exile (hijrri) in Yathrib (then Madinat al-Nabi, 'city of the Prophet', simply know as Medina) in 622, the date taken as the start of the Islamic calendar, Muhammad founded the embryonic Muslim community (ummd). This was followed by a military expansion across the entire Arabian Peninsula. The umma, the whole of the Muslim population without ethnic or cultural distinction, assumed an universalist nature over the ensuing centuries. Today Arabs represent only a fifth of all followers of Islam. Following Muhammad's death in 632, Abu Bakr (who died in 634) was elected Caliph (khalifa, 'successor'). Under his successor Omar (634-644), Islamism underwent great expansion, spreading to Persia, Egypt and Syria. The Caliphate was then passed on to Othman, who was assassinated in 656, and finally to Ali, cousin of the Prophet and husband of his daughter Fatima. Ali had to fight A'ishah, Mohammed's favourite wife, and Mu'awiya, a confidant of Othman and governor of Syria, who after Ali's assassination in 661 by a Kharigite appointed himself Caliph. Ali's followers considered the first three Caliphs to have been

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usurpers, and thus formed a Shiia ('faction' or 'party'), but were defeated at the battle of Karbala in 680, during which one of Ali's two sons, Husain, was also killed (today this place is an important site of pilgrimage for Shiites). Mu'awiya then founded the Umayyad Dynasty (661-750) and transferred the Caliph's headquarters from Medina to Damascus, from where he expanded his influence to the River Indus, Central Asia, the Atlantic Ocean and the whole of the southern Mediterranean coastline. The office of Caliph was altered from an elective to a hereditary status, and remained so under successive Abbasid Caliphs who, after relocating to Baghdad, acquired territories until 1258, when they were overthrown by the Mongols. The Caliphate of the Ottomans (1517-1924) - abolished by Mustapha Kemal, alias Ataturk, first president of the Turkish Republic - is regarded by many as a fake, because Turkish-Ottoman (from the house of Osman) sovereigns are not members of the Qurayshite. The Koran The revelations made to Muhammad, recorded in the form of points and notes written in Arabic, were collected towards the middle of the seventh century by the Prophet's followers. Othman was responsible for their updating, and from that time, these constituted the Koran (qur'an means 'to recite in a high voice', 'to read', 'to tell'). The Koran is subdivided into 114 chapters (surah), and opens with the surah fatiha ('opening'), which contains only seven short verses and is the most well-known and recited passage. The surah are arranged according to length in descending order. The Koran is the basis of Islamic doctrine, and consists of long discourses in which various propositions and issues are discussed, accepted or refuted. The main tenets expressed in the Koran are: there is only one omnipotent, eternal and invisible God who may not be represented by statues or images; God is the creator of the universe and of all human actions, both legislator and judge, but is compassionate towards those who repent; submission to the divine wish is essential; God has angels for messengers, and sends prophets among men, the last of whom was Muhammad; there is life after death, and when universal judgement takes place and the dead are resurrected, the good will be rewarded (Paradise) and the wicked will be punished (Hell); there is a demonic spirit (Iblis, the devil). Islam recognises Abraham, Moses and Jesus as prophets sent by God. With Muhammad, the most recent prohet, the one who 'seals' the series ('the seal of the Prophets'), God closed the cycle of revelation. The Koran thus supersedes the scriptures of other 'revelations': the Torah and the Gospels. There are five main religious obligations for all followers, the fundamental acts of worship, the so-called 'pillars of Islam' (Arkan al-Islam). The first is the profession of faith (shahada), the act of conversion to Islam, which is recited during grave situations and on the brink of death: 'There is no God other but God and Muhammad is His messenger (La ilahaHlla Allah wa Muhammad rasul

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Allah). The second is prayer (salat), an essential part of worship, a ritual of words and gestures repeated five times during the course of the day (at dawn, immediately after midday, between 3 and 5 o'clock in the afternoon, before sunset and during the night) and communally at the mosque on Fridays. All prayer is preceded by ablution rituals and is recited facing in the direction of Mecca. The third is fasting (sawm) during the month of ramadan (or ramazan) with total abstinence from food, drink, tobacco and pleasures from dawn until dusk. The fourth is pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) at least once during a lifetime, if health and finances permit; the obligation may also be performed by proxy. The fifth is alms (zakat) for the poor, given privately or by way of religious taxation on assets. Islam is a religion of the possible which bestows the responsibility of obligation on the individual conscience. In addition to the five fundamental obligations, some sects have also added jihad (literally 'effort', but also translated as 'holy war'). Neither the muezzin, the 'preacher of prayer' who calls followers from the minaret, nor the imam who leads prayer in the mosque (any Muslim who knows the ritual may function as an imam) nor the khatib, the 'preacher' who conducts the homily (khutba) during communal prayer on Fridays, is a priest. Principles of Islamic law, other than the Koran, include: the tradition (Sunna), or rather the whole collection of sayings (qawl), facts (fi'l) and silences (sukut) given by Muhammad; the tales and anecdotes (hadith) about events which took place in his presence and established his behaviour; the Igma, the settling between scholars of controversial issues or issues not contained within the Koran or the hadith; the Qiyas, the deduction of norms through analogy from preceding tenets. Sunni Islam The Sunnis are the followers of the Sunna, the 'orthodox' Muslims. The term 'orthodox' is arbitrary because even other sects recognise the regulatory value of Muhammad's life. The Sunnis, however, recognise the legitimacy of the first four Caliphs and the Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties. The Shiites recognise only Ali and the imams who succeeded him. Sunnism, to which nine-tenths of Muslims adhere, occupies itself primarily with the preservation of the unity of the umma. It is inspired by principles followed by Muhammad during his lifetime, and from which the importance of the Sunna is derived. The codification of this principle occurred in Baghdad at the beginning of the eleventh century, under the authority of the Abbasid Caliph Qadir, but the varied and controversial material impeded the formation of a single judicial-theological system, so that various systems resulted, and these survived until the thirteenth century. Contemporary Sunni Islam has only four main schools of law (mazhahib): Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali. Each has its own doctrinal corpus and interpretation of tradition, but while all are orthodox, they differ on specific issues. Of these, that which returns the most often to qiyas (analogous reasoning) is the Hanafi teaching, which also places great importance on the personal worth of the jurist in the establishment of legal norms. The Hanbali school, the most traditional and rigorous, restricts reference to the qiyas, and has inspired the Wahhabi doctrine.

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Given that the divine wish is allowed to manifest itself in various forms, and that the law is adapted to time and place, each Sunni is allowed to pursue the school of their choice, and may shift from one to another, making use of more favorable norms. Those not in a position to do this may request a 'legal opinion' (fatwa)froma jurist, or mufti, who explains and applies the legal precedents to particular individual cases. One of the main differences between Sunnism and the Shiism is the absence of any organisation in the former, because particularly important religious issues relating to the life of individuals (family laws, succession etc) are resolved by a Qadi (Qazi), a judge ('he who decides') following Islamic law. The mullahs or ulemas, are the 'doctors of law' or 'men bestowed with religious science', and enjoy great prestige, but do not have specific roles. The Shiites Shiism is the name given to some of the Muslims belonging to various sects, and who account for 10 percent of the total number of followers. The Shiites are considered 'schismatic' and 'heretical' by the Sunni, who regard them as having caused an irreparable division over time in the religious community. Shiites derive their name from Shiia, (the 'party' of AH, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad), and are those who believe that the first three Caliphs were usurpers, recognising only Ali as the legitimate successor of Muhammad and the first imam of the entire Muslim community. According to the Shiites, it was through divine will that Ali, through Mohammed, inherited 'the mantle of die Prophet', which was in turn transmitted to his descendants. Shiites believe that Ali and then the 11 imams that followed him (his descendants) were the supreme religious leaders of the entire community. All 12 imams (or according to some Shiite sects a smaller number) are regarded as having been almost divine. The variety of sects which can be described as close to Shiism (but which deviate from 'Twelver Shiism', for instance) can be attributed to disputes over the succession of imams and over which were (or were not) the rightful descendents of Imam Ali. In Twelver Shiism (practised in Iran, Lebanon and Southern Iraq) there are reagrarded as having been twelve imams. The last was Muhammad Abul Kasim (Mahdi), who disappeared while still a child. According to the interpretation in Twelver Shiism, he is not dead but 'hidden', and will return one day to establish a reign of justice and peace. In Iran since the beginning of the sixteenth centuiy, Shiism has been the state religion. Jihad and martyrdom take on a specific meaning for Twelver Shiites. The 'holy war' is a community obligation, and considered fulfilled when a sufficient number of members observe its precept. Martyrdom, however, originates from the battle of Karbala in 680, during which Ali's son, Hussein, was killed. Heterodox groups that are closer to Shiism than Sunnism include the Alawis in Syria, the Alevis in Turkey and the Druze of Lebanon (who separated from the Ismailis). The Ismailis recognise only seven 'visible' imams, and their choice of the seventh imam, whom they recognise as be Ismail, is different from that of the

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Twelvers. The Ismailis today (scattered in several countries) played an important political and religious role between the eighth and thirteenth century with the Qarmat Dynasty in Arabia, and then the Fatimid Dynasty in Egypt. In Central Asia today there are Ismailis among the Tajiks of Pamir, who acknowledge the Agha Khan as their spiritual leader. Finally, there are the Zaidis, who recognize Zaid as the fifth and final imam, and live mainly in the southern parts of Yemen. Sufism Important too is the mystical orientation in Islam: Sufism. The search for intimate and direct union with God takes many forms: penitence, poverty, meditation and sometimes chastity, communal rituals and prayers (the zikr, a short prayer repeated as a litany, is a basic practice), an emphasis on the worship of awliya ('saints', or 'friends of God'), requiring pilgrimages and special rituals at their sepulchres. From the eleventh century, various 'brotherhoods' or 'orders' developed within Sufism which became know as tariqah with their own monasteries, spiritual leaders, aspirant followers and common ritual. The orders differed from each other in matters of initiation rituals, the forms of zikr or the ascetic exercises prescribed by the founders. In northern Africa, the marabutic (from marabut, 'soldier of a frontier garrison') practice has also spread. This involves a retreat to monastic forts to dedicate one's life to prayer and military activity. Members of the orders, also known as Dervishes (from the Persian darwish, or 'mendicant', synonymous with the Arabic faqir), practice rituals which create a state of ecstasy, at times reaching trance-like states. The popularity and influence of these orders was often regarded as a threat to centralised state rule, and sometimes they were persecuted. Such orders had, and still have, great importance, and continue to play an important role to play in Egypt, Turkey, India, the Caucasus and Central Asia. KAZAKSTAN BIBLIOGRAPHY Akiner, Shirin, The Formation of Kazakh Identity, London, 1995, Royal Institute for Foreign Affairs Bajirov Din-Muhammed, Kconomie Kazakhe: mode d'emploi in Catherine Poujol and Pierre Gentelle (eds), Asie centrale: Aux confins des Empires, reveil et tumulte, 'Serie Monde' N° 64, Paris, 1992, Editions Autrement Beaucourt, Chantal, Henry Chambre and C. Miklasz, Tiers monde sovietiques? Le Kazakhstan, Paris, 1963, Institut des sciences economiques appliquees Bouvard, Georges, Au Kazakhstan sovietique, chez Us conquerants des terres vierges et les pionniers de Vespace, Moscow, 1985, Progress Editions Bradley, Catherine, he Kazakhstan, Montreal, 1993, Gamma Calabuig, Erlands, 'Fragilites d'une "autocratie eclairee" au Kazakhstan', Le Monde Diplomatique N° 480, Paris, March 1994 Dressier, Wanda and Claude Liscia, 'Le Kazakhstan sur le fil: Regards d'artistes et d'intellectuels' in Esprit N° 8-9, Paris, August-September 1995

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Feduschak, Natalia, 'With Kazakh Venture, Chevron Gets Access To Huge Tengiz Field. Kazakhstan Hopes Reservoir, Twice Size of Prudhoe Bay, Will Make it Next Kuwait' in Wall Street Journal Europe Vol. 11, N° 47, 6 April 1993 Giroux, Alain, 'Kazakhstan: potentiel et modele economique du geant asiatique de la CEP in he courrier des pays de VEst N° 372, September 1992, La documentation Franchise, Paris Gresh, Alain, 'Les Republiques d'Asie centrale choisissent des chemins divergents' in Le Monde Diplomatique N° 465, Paris, December 1992 Halbach, Uwe, Perestrojka und Nationalitdtenproblematik: der Schock von Alma Ata und Moskaus gespanntes Verhdltnis zu Mittelasien, Koln, 1987, Bundesinstitut fur Ostwissensachaftliche und Internationale Studien Kaiser, Michael, The Economics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, London, 1997, Royal Institute of International Affairs Khazanov, Anatoly M., 'The ethnic problems of contemporary Kazakhstan' in Central Asian Survey Vol. 14, N° 2, Abingdon (UK), June 1995 Lepingwell, John W.R., 'Kazakhstan and Nuclear Weapons', RFE/RL Research Report Vol. 2, N° 8, 19 February 1993 Nazarbaev, Nursultan, Sans droites ni gauches, Lausanne, 1993, L'Age d'Homme Nazarbaev, Nursultan, interview in Le Monde, 27 September 1992 Olcott, Martha Brill, The Kazakhs, Stanford University, 1987, Hoover Institutions Press Olcott, Martha Brill, 'Perestroyka in Kazakhstan' in Problems of Communism Vol. 3, N° 4, Washington DC, 1990 Radvanyi, Jean, 'La voie etroite du Kazakhstan' in Le Monde Diplomatique N° 467, Paris, February 1993 Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr, Kak vam obustroit Rossiu ('how to rebuild Russia': Italian translation of Russian text), Milano, 1990, Rizzoli Villain, Jacques (ed.), Baikonur, laporte des etoiles, Paris, 1994, Armand Colin

Geography and Environment

Dvoskin, Beniamin I., Ekonomiko-geograficheskoe raionirovanie Kazakhstana, Alma Ata, 1986, Nauka Ellis, William S., 'The Aral: A Soviet Sea Lies Dying' in National Geographic, February 1990 Lettolle, Rene and Monique Mainguet, Aral, Paris, 1993, Axel Springer Verlag McAulay, Mary, Khrushchev and the Development of Soviet Agriculture: The Virgin Land Programme 1953-1964, London, 1976, Macmillan Radvanyi, Jean, 'La mer d'Aral: une agonie programmed' in Catherine Poujol and Pierre Gentelle (eds), Asie centrale: Aux confins des Empires, reveil et tumulte, 'Serie Monde' N° 64, Paris, 1992, Editions Autrement Rustambekova, Tamilla, La Mer d'Aral, Paris, 1995, Institut National Langues Civilisation Orientales (INALCO), unpublished Information on the Aral Sea Region: Union for. the Defence of the Aral Sea and Amu Darya River, Jusup J. Kamalov, Tupik Lineiny 1, Ulitsa Gogolia, 742000 Nukus, Karakalpakstan, tel. 007-36122-72309 Information on antinuclear and ecological activity: Nevada-Semipalatinsk, Ulitsa Vinogradova 85, 480117 Almaty, tel. 007-3272-630464/634902 Information on radioactive impact on the local population: Doctor Urazaliv Marat (local representative of Nevada-Semipalatinsk), Medinstitut of Semey, tel. 007-3222627349

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Kazak Demography and Society

Buckley, Cynthia, 'Suicide in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, role stress, age and gender' in Central Asian Survey Vol. 16, N° 1, March 1997, Abingdon (UK) Tatimov, Makach, Sotsialnaia obouslovlennost* demografitcheskikh protsessov, Alma Ata, 1989, Nauka

Volga Germans

Sheehy, Ann and Bohdan Nahaylo, The Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, and Meshketians: Soviet Treatment of Some National Minorities, London, 1980, Minority Rights Group Smirnova, Natalie, 'Les Allemands de la Volga: vers la restauration d'une entite allemande en Russie?' in Le courrier des pays de PEst N° 370, June 1992, La documentation Franchise, Paris

History

Kendirbay, Gulnar, 'The national liberation movement of the Kazakh intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century' in Central Asian Survey Vol. 16, N° 4, December 1997, Abingdon (UK) Majerkzac, R., 'Reinsegnements historiques sur les Kazaks ou Kirghizes-Kazaks depuis la fondation de la Horde Kazake jusqu'a la fin du XlXeme siecle', in Revue du Monde Musulman, 1921, Paris

Karl August Wittfogel and the Oriental Despotism

Landucci, Sergio, Montesquieu e Vorigine della scienza sociale ('Montesquieu and the origin of social science'), Firenze, 1973, Sansoni Machiavelli, Niccolo, II Principe, Milano, 1976, Garzanti Venturi, Franco, 'Dispotismo orientale', in Rivista storica italiana, LXXII, 1960 Wittfogel, Karl August, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power, Yale, 1957, Yale University Press

'Jadidism* and 'Sultangalievism'

Bennigsen, Alexandre and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Sultan Galiev, lepere de la revolution tiers-mondiste, Paris, 1986, Fayard Dudoignon, Stephane A., 'Djadidisme, Mirasisme, Islamisme', in Cahier du Monde Russe Vol. 37, N° 1-2, 1996, Paris Lazzerini, Edward J., The Jadid Response to Pressure for Change in the Modern World Muslims in Central Asia, Durham (North Carolina), 1992, Duke University Press

Cinema, Music and Literature

Dancie, Christiane, 'Un cinema a hauteur d'homme' in Le Monde Diplomatique N° 467, Fevrier 1993, Paris Desjacques, Alain and Koksal Sabire (eds), Mongolie: Chants Kazakh et tradition epique de Pouest, Compact Disc C58OO51, Ocora-Radio France, 'Harmonia Mundi', Aries Donmez-Colin, Gonul, 'Kazakh "new wave": post-perestroika, post Soviet Union', Central Asian Survey Vol. 16, N° 1, March 1997, Abingdon (UK) Omirbaev, Darejean, interview in Le Monde, 7 January 1999 Sulemenov, Oljas Omarovitch, Transformation dufeu, Paris, 1991, Gallimard Idem., Le livre de glaise, Paris, 1977, POF Voix de Vorient sovietique ('Termeh' from Kazakhstan and others traditional music), Compact Disc W260008-AD090, Inedit, Maison des Cultures du Monde, Paris Winner, Thomas G., The Oral Art and Literature of the Kazakhs of Russian Central Asia, Durham (North Carolina), 1958, Duke University Press Information on the Kazak film production: Kazachfilm Studio, 16, Al Farabi, 480117 Almaty, tel. 007-3272-482211, fax 480909 Gosudarstvennaja Kino-Kompanija Kazachstana, Kazbekbi 50, 480117 Almaty, tel. 0073272-692552, fax 637795

2 UZBEKISTAN Uzbekistan Respublikasi Declaration of Sovereignty: 20 June 1989 Declaration of Independence: 31 August 1991 Area: 447,400 square kilometres Population: 23,784,000 (July 1998 estimate) Density: 53.1 inhabitants/square kilometres Capital: Toshkent (formerly Tashkent), with 2,200,000 inhabitants (1997 estimate)

POLITICAL EVOLUTION Uzbekistan always played a fundamental role in Soviet Central Asia, even if many Westerners only come to know of the country's existence thanks to the sporting prowess of cyclist Abdujaparov. In 1969, Leonid Brezhnev, who for the previousfiveyears had substituted for Khrushchev as leader of the CPSU, began the 'new direction' of Soviet-Islamic politics with a speech-manifesto entitled 'Central Asia must be a showcase for Muslim countries'. In Brezhnev's vision, Uzbekistan was to be first among the Central Asian republics. Because of its economic-demographic characteristics, as well as its historical and cultural ones, Uzbekistan was entrusted with a critical task: to become the region's leading country. It was in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, a few years after this speech and a few months before his death in 1982, that Brezhnev declared himself in favour of 78

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normalising relations with China. These relations had been in crisis since 1963, when Peking broke off diplomatic relations with Moscow in reaction to the Soviet 'destalinisation' process. At the end of the 1970s, serious international events had an intense impact on the whole of Central Asia, especially Uzbekistan. In February 1979, the Islamic revolution' was affirmed in Iran, and in December, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, where a large Uzbek community was already established. In 1983, the Uzbekistan Communist Party's First Secretary, Sharaf Rashidov (who died that same year), was obliged to resign due to involvement in the 'cotton scandal'. Rashidov had led the party since 1958, the year in which he was elected - through Khrushchev's influence - into the 'destalinisation' framework. The economic and political structure of Uzbekistan (which some have described as a 'cotton republic') dangerously predisposed it to a system of patronage and corruption. In 1983, almost all the politicians were ousted from power, and Inamdjan Usmankhodjaev was nominated as the Party's First Secretary in place of Rashidov. He immediately began a morality and anti-corruption campaign, very like a complete political 'purge'. When Gorbachev came into power in 1985 and commenced with perestroika (reconstruction) and glasnost (transparency), the entire 'Brezhnev government' of the Uzbek Communist Party was considered untrustworthy, and it was therefore purged and replaced by a 'Gorbachev government' (eg Rafik Nichanov), which was considered to be relatively above suspicion. The new government aimed first to show the importance of their planned changes by promoting a new, large-scale campaign to definitively eradicate the 'cotton mafia', identified tout court by the entire Soviet press as the 'Uzbek mafia'. New investigations began, and these led to the widespread purging of the Uzbek Communist Party. About 4000 legal cases were initiated against local leaders, most of whom were Uzbek, but also against some of other nationalities (including Russian), who held important federal positions. The campaign against the cotton mafia halted, but a few years later the Uzbek Communist Party managed to use it to its own advantage, obtaining an overwhelming majority in the legislative elections of 18 February 1990, in which the party was supported by virtually all of the Supreme Soviet's 500 deputies. On 24 March 1990, this Supreme Soviet elected Islam Karimov to substitute Nichanov as president of the republic. Karimov had been first secretary of the party since 1989; he was an aparatchik, orthodox Communist and conservative, who nonetheless declared himself in favour of national sovereignty. The New Political Movement During the second half of the 1980s, Moscow's attitude gave the Uzbek population the impression that they were living at a historic time. The atmosphere of tolerance assured by perestroika favoured the emergence of numerous and varied associations and informal groups (including anti-nuclear ones). Publications acted as a stimulus in the growth of Uzbek public opinion (Mustum, a satirical magazine lashing out at bureaucratic excesses, sold 175,000 copies in 1991).

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In 1988, a group of 18 Uzbek intellectuals, led by Abdurahim Pulatov, began Birlik (meaning 'unity') People's Movement (BPM). This was a confederation of secular and nationalist movements whose initial policy was based on the 'protection of Uzbekistan's natural, material and spiritual riches'. Birlik went through a process of radicalisation until February 1990, when a 'moderate' splinter group, led by the intellectual Muhammad Salih, broke away to form a new party called Erk (meaning 'freedom'). During the months that followed, Erk's moderate nationalists evolved towards a more 'democratic' and pan-Turkic policy line, and the party was the only one allowed to participate in elections held at the end of 1991 other than the People's Democratic Party, founded by former 'conservative' Communists during autumn 1991, and to which about 320 of the 500 deputies belonged. The Islamic Renaissance Party, founded in Astrakhan (in Russia) in June 1990, was also new to the political scene. Uzbek authorities never formally recognised the party, whose support is drawn largely from rural areas. A minority faction, it believes that the former Communist and Muslim traditions are politically compatible. The militant majority has instead brought about a type of religious reawakening that has spread through the population. The nebulousness of Uzbekistan's political Islamism has also given birth to the Turkestan Islamic Party, which has pan-Islamic tendencies and is directed towards 'all Muslims of Turkestan's historical region'. On 20 June 1989, against the backdrop of a domestic climate still marked by hostility towards Moscow for its moves against the 'mafiosi', Uzbekistan declared national sovereignty. These same moves had decisively contributed to silencing the Uzbek Communist Party's propaganda machine, which was founded on the prosperity derived from the country's main source of wealth, cotton. The declaration of sovereignty was preceded by disturbing episodes of inter-ethnic violence: in June 1989 in the Fergana Valley (a strip of land less than 25,000 square kilometres in size, in which about a quarter of the Uzbek population has settled), the Uzbek and Meskhetian communities fought. The Meskhetian, Sunni Muslims, are the so-called 'Georgia Turks', a group of abut 70,000 people orginating from 220 villages in the Akhaltsikhe district, a mountainous region of Georgia, deported in November 1944. At the end of the trouble (which took place in Kuva, Margilan, Tashlak, Fergana, Kokand, Yaypan, Besharyk and Namangan), according to statistics published in the magazine Sobesednik (N° 29, July 1989) a total of 99 people had died: 69 Meskhetians, 20 Uzbeks, 10 of unspecified nationally, and over a 1000 were injured (of which 483 were Meskhetians and 366 Uzbeks). A year later, in June 1990, farther ethnic conflicts erupted in the Fergana Valley over the apportionment of two ever scarce and precious resources: water and fertile soil. The confrontations were between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks who form the majority in the city of Osh, which is under Kyrgyz jurisdiction. The large Tajik (Persian-speaking) community living in Uzbekistan also took part, reacting to ongoing repression and the adoption of Uzbek as the official language. After a series a large-scale demonstrations, the Tajiks were granted the permission to officially use their own language in the cities of Bukhoro (Bukhara) and Samarqand, where they constitute the majority.

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Just before independence was declared in mid-1991, Uzbekistan was more like a country 'on the way to underdevelopment', than the Soviet Islamic 'showcase' for the Middle and Near East. The country is a victim of inter-ethnic violence, economic crisis and ecological disaster, features which define it as Third World.

Independence Despite the deterioration in its domestic situation, Uzbekistan was the first of the Central Asian republics (along with Kyrgyzstan) - for the first time in its history - to declare independence, on 31 August 1991. Uzbekistan, however, attained this objective merely by taking advantage of Moscow's failed coup d'etat in August 1991, and not due to local political demands. In fact, independence seemed more like an inevitable evolution, not needing to be Von', or even perhaps desired. Even if Uzbekistan, like the other Central Asian republics, was a somewhat artificial creation of the Soviet era, it did project a more unified historical identity, and had characteristics more similar to those of a nation-state. In modern day Uzbekistan, which has an intellectual elite educated at the University of Toshkent, government is still staffed by former members of the local Communist Party. The Communist Party's structure is based on familial or clan-like solidarity, and it has shown evidence of a great capacity for survival in the former Soviet Central Asian region (especially in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan). In Russia, on the other hand, the remnants of the CPSU, which practically dissolved after the 1991 failed coup, needed years to reform itself. The first few months of independence brought to light all the difficulties that awaited Uzbekistan. The most serious of these was the inadequacy of political management measures to cope with the new national status. This led to the exacerbation of political, economic and social tensions, and leaders tried to promote an intensive nationalist ideology to keep these tensions under control. References to 'the building of a great country' appeared more frequently in official speeches, and new events were created to foster a nationalistic atmosphere and celebrate Uzbek history, such as the celebration of the anniversary of independence (1 September). To this end, in 1996 the six-hundred-and-sixtieth anniversary of the 'father of the nation', Tamburlaine (Amir Timur) was commemorated. A monument to Tamburlaine has been erected in the place of the bust of Marx in Revolution Square (now Amir lemur Maydoni), while a second has replaced the statue of Lenin (the biggest in the USSR, its foot measuring one metre) in Tashkent's former Lenin Square, now Independence Square, Mustaqillik Maydoni. The President of the Republic, Islam Karimov, was a key figure during the years after independence. In addition to having been the party's first secretary in 1989, he had already functioned as President of Uzbekistan's Gosplan (Gosudarstvenny Planovyikomitet, or State Planning Committee) between 1966 and 1983. After being among the creators of sovereignty and national independence, he then called elections by universal suffrage. Immediately setting the date, he began an electoral campaign under the banner of moderate nationalism, an ideology adopted by all Uzbek leaders.

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This orientation was only partly new, as Karimov claimed to have been increasingly opposed to Moscow's decisions during a television interview broadcast on 29 May 1991. He said that he had worked to bring about the reduction of land allocated for cotton cultivation, thus reducing dependence on other countries. He maintained that he had obtained the transfer of gold extraction activities (according to Karimov, valued at about one third of all Soviet gold) from central to Uzbek authorities. His final claim was that he had promoted Uzbek as the official language. During the short period that preceded the electoral campaign, Karimov, who had established very tight control over the entire media (something he placed great emphasis on), also managed to win many votes in the opposing camp. Moreover, and more importantly, he assumed the image of a guarantor of political stability and defender of national traditions, including even those most remote from him, like religion. In conclusion, Karimov, stigmatising the country's 'Soviet' past, declared, 'Religion was persecuted, mosques were closed, everything that was national, profoundly national, was repressed. National sentiments must be respected, each individual's ethnic identity must be accepted'. On 29 December 1991, independent Uzbekistan's first presidential elections by universal suffrage (of those over eighteen) took place, with a 95 percent turnout. Karimov was elected to the presidency (with 86 percent of the votes). Erk's Muhammad Salih, the only opposition candidate allowed to stand, polled a mere 12.3 percent. Election results were emphasised by the results of the referendum held concurrently, which showed a unanimous outcome in favour of independence. Strengthened by the electoral results, Karimov immediately set about increasing his own power. According to the new President, a presidential and authoritarian style of leadership was the best, if not only, means of overcoming instability and social and ethnic conflict. One of the principles of his reform programme involved the restructuring of the administrative machinery, with the creation of a newfigure,the hokim (a governor with the power to nominate the presidents of the kolkhoz), placed directly under presidential authority. Another key event was the approval on 8 December 1992 of a new, seemingly pluralist, constitution which masked the authoritarian style of the presidential form of government, and saw multiple forms of power concentrated in Karimov's hands. On the domestic level, Karimov's activity was entirely concentrated on trying to contain the influence, on the one hand, of the more conspicuously nationalist intellectuals, on the other, of radical Islamists. To this end, he effected a policy of concessions and compromises, alternated with campaigns of repression which finally prevailed. Among the first repressive measures were those of August 1992, under which the Tajik People's Forum, an expression of the views of a minority in Uzbekistan, was dissolved. During that same summer, a political campaign 'against repression' - organised by Erk and Birlik, increasingly becoming the targets of restrictions - was unable to mobilise the population, and ended a few months later with the banning of both parties. On 18 and 19 January 1993, after the hasty trial, in camera, of some Birlik militants, the Uzbekistan Supreme Court suspended the party for three months on the grounds that it had unjustly criticised the

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President. The suspension of Birlik's public activity was total, and shortly afterwards Erk met with the same fate. In August 1993, six of the Erk's members were sentenced to between five and six years for 'incitement to subversion'. On 25 October 1994 in Tbshkent, the trial (again held in camera) took place to prosecute seven 'clandestine' Erk militants, amongst whom was the poetess Diloram Iskhakova, for 'conspiracy against the state'. On 31 March 1995, six dissidents were sentenced to up 12 years for 'conspiracy with intent to seize power'. The banishment of opposition parties led to a switch to semi-clandestine operation and the exile of main leaders, such as Abdurahim Pulatov (recently authorised to return to the country) and Muhammad Salih of Erk, who sought refuge in Turkey. Turkey refused to extradite him, and in retaliation Uzbekistan refused to open Turkish schools. In attempt to beat the nationalist movements at their own game, the government tried to present a revised view of the deceased leader Sharaf Rashidov. He was portrayed as having been in favour of a policy that encouraged national sentiment by placing autochthonous leaders in the party in preference to Russians and representatives of minority parties. The national 're-evaluation' of Rashidov wasfirstformulated by semi-official government declarations issued by anonymous under-secretaries: 'Rashidov is a controversial figure; we have interpreted the unilateral criticism issued by Moscow and the dispatch of judges sent to investigate the 'cotton mafia'. During the time Rashidov was President, our country developed. Moreover his human dimension broke with the party's restrictive framework: he was a writer, a strong man who could, within certain limits, impose his point of view on Moscow'. Later Karimov assumed the role of promoter of the revision of history. He commented on the government's decision to erect a statue to the memory of the dead leader on the 16 June 1992, 'Future generations will be proud to have had a leader like Rashidov'. However, as far as the press and CIS public opinion were concerned, Rashidov continued to be the symbol of 'Uzbek corruption'. On the religious level, Karimov tolerated some forms of're-islamisation' in daily life, and in January 1992 he publicly defended the official Islam and the Mufti of Tbshkent, Muhammad Yussuf (Mamayussupov), against radical Islamists who called for his dismissal. He surprised people by pledging his oath of presidential responsibility on 4 January 1992 not only on the former constitution but also on the Koran, an unexpected gesture from an exCommunist conservative. Nevertheless, presidential reforms tried to revitalise religious groups in urban, but especially rural, life. In April 1993, Karimov approved the replacement of Muhammad Yussuf (he was considered too independent) by Haji Muktar Abdullah. As in the past, radicalism also spread to the Fergana Valley, where a large proportion of these religious groups exist, their extremism held in check by the government. In this cradle of radical Islam, the tensions have never entirely been resolved. The police sift the bazaars for bearded men (an external sign of religious zeal) and force them to submit to public and communal 'shaving'. In December 1997, after the assassination of four policemen, 1000 people were arrested without a warrant. 'Undesirable' mosques were closed, and the use of loudspeakers was prohibited for all the others. Finally, a state of emergency was

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declared in Andijan and Namangan, and lifted only in February 1998. It was not by chance that Karimov took a very hard line against radical Islam, or' Wahhabis' (Islamic extremists). In a radio speech of 1 May 1998, he declared that 'such people must be shot in the forehead. If necessary I will shoot them myself.' As a consequence of the Taliban military victories in Afghanistan, Karimov signed a pact with the Russian and Tajik presidents designed to counter Islamic radicalism. On the economic level, Karimov particularly tried to maintain social peace, the fragility of which could have threatened the country's stability. In the Soviet past, the population's standard of living was guaranteed by state subsidies, a system which, however, proved too costly for the young Uzbek state. For this reason, Karimov, although having at times promised to find a 'way to the market economy', then showed himself to be a champion of continuity. Contrary to the planned privatisation of land, during the spring of 1993 he declared himself in favour of remaining in the rouble economic zone, maintaining the economy's centralised planning 'to favour exports'. In 1994, Karimov supported the formation of a new party, the Vatan Tarakiyoti (Fatherland Progress Party, or VTP), which recruited supporters from all political orientations. Presenting themselves for legislative elections on 25 December 1994, they gained, however, only 12 seats. The party formed by ex-Communists, the People's Democratic Party (PDT) obtained 207. The final electoral run-off was held on 22 January 1995 - and again did not permit the participation of the PRI, Erk or Birlik parties - and saw the PDT gain power with 69 seats to the VTP's 14. Many new deputies (120) were from noteworthy local government, while the percentage of ethnic Uzbeks elected increased (from 77 to 86 percent). In 1994, the Socialist Democratic Party was also formed: according to its leader, Anvar Jorabayev, 47 deputies joined. All parties in the single-chamber parliament, Oliy Majlis (Supreme Assembly), and all the 250 deputies support President Karimov. On 26 March 1995, a popular referendum for the extension of Karimov's presidential mandate until the year 2000 was held, and 99.6 percent voted in favour. Foreign Policy During the summer of 1990, Karimov promoted the idea of a Central Asian Confederation, which would unite all the former Soviet Central Asian republics. Given its demographic strength, Uzbekistan would have probably held a position of supremacy, and that sense maintaining its Soviet role as leading country in the region. This idea temporarily eclipsed, Karimov enthusiastically encouraged Gorbachev's plan for a Treaty of Renewed Union, to be voted on in a March 1991 referendum in all the USSR's fifteen republics. The referendum, however, was boycotted by some (such as Moldova and the Baltic republics) and altered by others (as in the Ukraine). Gorbachev's fall from power led to an initial 'union project' in Minsk for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus to form a 'Slav bloc'. A few days later (on 13 December

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1991), the five Asian republics met at Ashkhabad and expressed their regret at not having been consulted and invited to participate. On that occasion, Karimov brought to light the complications of membership of the CIS, which was nevertheless initiated on 21 December 1991. No longer able to count on the state subsidies which were vital to its economy, Uzbekistan had to hastily increase its income by relying on its primary resource, cotton. This objective, however, ran contrary to the other, equally vital, need to increase agricultural food production in order to satisfy domestic requirements and limit foreign dependence. The dilemma was difficult to resolve: Uzbek leaders chose to exploit the country's own resources as much as possible, initiating a very severe economic dispute with Russia, culminating in the suspension of supply after a failure to agree a price. This issue led Uzbek leaders to search for new trade partners outside the CIS. The dispute with Russia highlighted Uzbekistan's commercial isolation, and its need to increase output in order to open new outlets, re-orientate the flow of trade and obtain new foreign investment to break away from dependence on Russia and consolidate independence. Various bilateral meetings were organised to establish new relations with Vietnam, India, some European countries (notably France after Mitterrand's visit, 25-27 April 1994) and the US. The US began pressing Toshkent for greater emphasis on human rights and domestic political democracy, with very disappointing results. Agreements with Israel were conducted, however, to bring about new irrigation systems and improve those already in existence, a gesture which was interpreted by some analysts as a clear message to the Arab world. Moreover, Karimov, on 13 August 1992, went to Islamabad, Pakistan, where he discussed plans for a new railway linking Toshkent to Pakistan's port Karachi, the development of which, however, is subject to there being stability in Afghanistan. The Uzbek government often praises the 'Chinese model' and its form of economic management. China is an important supplier to the country, and in 1993 about 70 Uzbek-Chinese joint-ventures were already underway. Finally, Saudi Arabia has offered to finance the construction of hundreds of mosques. In 1992, after civil war had broken out in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan rekindled ties with Russia. A decisive move in this direction was the signing of the Treaty for Collective Security, which was followed by the decision to set up a CIS military intervention force to resolve local conflicts. This became operative in July 1993. Thereafter, Karimov acknowledged Russia as the only guarantor of regional security, even though in March 1993 he had refused to grant Uzbekistan's Russian population 'dual citizenship'. He signed several accords with Yeltsin for 'the intensification of economic integration between the two countries' because, he said, quoting the words of a famous 1960s love-song, 'one can't live without the other'. In exchange, Karimov supported Yeltsin more frequently during CIS summits. As relations with Russia improved, so did those with Kazakstan. On 2 5 June 1992, a bilateral co-operation treaty was signed in Turkestan (the town in Kazakstan). The undertaking to create a 'common market' (signed in Toshkent on 4 January 1993) followed this initial accord. During the course of other meetings, foundations were laid for a Eurasian Union similar to that which Karimov had

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had in mind in the now distant past of 1990, which had aimed to abolish border customs. The protocols signed provide for an attempt to resolve the conflict in Tajikistan, co-ordination in the fight against drug trafficking, the abolition of border customs, the creation of a communal bank, and an international television broadcasting station to transmit from Toshkent, as well as the creation of a newspaper (with its editorial office in Almaty). Relations with Turkey are more controversial. When Karimov visited Ankara a few days after Uzbek independence was declared, there seemed to be great potential for cultural and trade links between the two countries. However, these expectations remained unfulfilled, and relations cooled. The two countries share an historical, linguistic and cultural affinity, but are also profoundly different. Uzbekistan expected some form of political support from Turkey: Uzbek politicians found the 'Turkish model' for a secular state attractive. At the beginning of the 1990s, both a minor military pact and an important accord regarding radio and television broadcasting was concluded between the two countries. This provided for the distribution of Turkish television programmes throughout Uzbekistan (in 1994, this amounted to 83 hours per week of shows and cultural programmes). It encompassed the cinema industry and publishing. It is significant that communications should be the very sector that Turkey chose to initiate its exploitation of the 'basin of former Soviet, Turkophone license holders', estimated at over 65 million people (including the Azerbaijanis and the Chinese Uyghurs), of which Uzbekistan has the largest proportion. This was followed by Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel's visit in April 1992 and the adoption of the Latin script in the writing of the Uzbek language. Nevertheless, it was on the linguistic level that relations deteriorated: Uzbek authorities refused to use Turkish to substitute Russian terms which had been absorbed into the Uzbek language, preferring to make use of nineteenth-century Arabic-Persian vocabulary, known as 'old Uzbek'. Thereafter, the desire 'to go it alone' was affirmed among Uzbek leaders, who perceived Turkey, also accused of supporting anti-government opposition, as a competitor rather than a sister country. Conversely, the Uzbek government's nationalist ideology tends more towards the fostering of a pan-Uzbekism which is exportable to the many Uzbek minorities abroad than towards pan-Turkism or pan-Islamism. Definite stands have also been taken regarding Iran, culminating in Uzbekistan's support for the US embargo in May 1995 and condemnation of Russia's project to sell nuclear reactors to Iran. In this context, Uzbekistan's reason for joining, in November 1992, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OCE), whose founding members are Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, seems mainly associated with the desire to maintain maximum freedom of international movement, as well as the desire to confirm itself as a regional power. During the course of 1992, Uzbekistan was also admitted to the UN, OSCE and to the movement of non-aligned countries.

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Intervention in Tajikistan Only ten months after achieving independence, Uzbekistan's foreign policy took an unexpected turn: the worsening of internal conflict in Tajikistan resulted in a temporary resolution of differences existing between Uzbekistan and Russia. Uzbekistan regards such reconciliation as necessary until 'all of Central Asia may benefit from Russia's protection'. For Uzbekistan, the civil war in Tajikistan had many consequences. From spring 1992, air and land borders were closed between the two countries, following which, during the course of the civil war (summer and autumn 1992 and the first few months of 1993), a massive influx of refugees reached the Uzbek-Tajik border. At first, Uzbek authorities tried to drive them back, but in the end were obliged to accommodate some 10,000, along with refugees who had also crossed the Afghan border to escape another civil war. On 9 December 1992, Uzbek deputies approved (on Karimov's suggestion) the mobilisation of a battalion of soldiers (it had been decided to form a national army on 23 January 1992). It was sent to Dushanbe to aid Tajik governors linked to the Communist Party to regain control, which it did on 14 December. It appears that Uzbek military intervention in Tajikistan was much more intense than was publicly declared, and it seems almost certain that armoured tanks and fighter aircraft were used. According to some observers, Uzbekistan's intervention took the form of a proper military campaign, initially conducted with the support of Russia (through the 'second Afghan campaign'), in reaction to the threat of Islamic radicalism. It seems legitimate at this stage to have considered contemporary Tajikistan as a type of 'Uzbek protectorate', the first stage in the formation of a 'Greater Uzbekistan', an over-ambitious project that caused a resurgence of competition with Russia. Uzbekistan's aspirations to become Central Asia's regional power are nowadays more than merely hypothetical. This is evidenced by both the burning nationalism which dominates official speeches and by pan-Uzbekism, the desire to support all Uzbek minorities abroad. An example is Toshkent's consistent military and economic support of 'Uzbek militia' under General Rashid Dostom in Afghanistan. On 17 March 1993, Uzbekistan raised the issue of refugees with the UN and protested about the 'violation of its territorial integrity', requesting the liberation of Tajik and Uzbek prisoners 'held hostage by Islamic guerrillas' and taken to Afghanistan. Uzbekistan also tried to involve UNHCR, and was granted the role of 'observer country' at the peace negotiations in Tajikistan under the auspices of the UN. A Pillar of Regional Stability The Western diplomatic corps were originally suspicious of Tbshkent (above all because of the worrying problem of human rights violations), and moved closer to Kazakstan (and its hydrocarbons), in the process eulogising the democratic virtues of Nazarbaev. But since even Nazarbaev has progressively built an ever-more

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authoritarian regime, Western attitudes are changing. In order to seduce Washington, Uzbekistan has always supported US foreign policies. Karimov was the only president of all the Central Asian countries to approve the embargo on Iran and Iraq and to declare himself in favour of Nato's Peace Partnership. In preparation for his visit to the United States, Karimov released 85 political prisoners. The crusade against radical Islam displeases neither the White House nor the Kremlin. Meanwhile, its proximity to the Afghan crisis has earned Uzbekistan influence in the United States, and in June 1996 President Clinton deemed the country 'commercially most favoured nation'. The authority, Frederick Starr {Foreign Affairs, vol. 75, N° 1 Jan.-Feb. 1996), sees a future regional development in which Toshkent represents the pillar of stability in Central Asia. Recent events, however, may throw into question Uzbekistan's stability. On 16 February 1999 at 11.50am, as President Karimov was arriving at the government offices in Toshkent, four car bombs went off simultaneously. A fifth and sixth blast were heard in another part of the city, and it was reported that an apartment block was.destroyed, 15 people died and 150 were injured. This assassination attempt on Karimov came as no surprise: his authoritarian government has long been preoccupied with the possibility that it might be targeted by Islamic militants in the region. Religion and Political Power The Amu Darya has at times represented not only the historical demarcation between Turkic and Persian-speaking populations, but also a religious border separating Sunni and Shiia Muslims. At the start of the sixteenth century, religious differences (masking a struggle for political power) added an element of brutality to an already extremely deep-rooted rivalry. The Persian Shah Ismail's new-found zeal for Shiism clashed with the Sunni orthodoxy of the Uzbek conqueror Muhammad Shaybani Khan. In 1510, during a great battle near Merv (now Mary in Turkmenistan), the Persians killed Muhammad Shaybani Khan, and Shah Ismail ordered his skull to be gold-plated and made into a goblet. The Shah's victory was celebrated with a pyramids of skulls outside the city gates. Religious differences between Shiites and Sunnis, as well as the long period of conflict between the Shah and the Ottomans, were the main causes of the Uzbek-Safavid wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The many testimonies of the atrocities of these wars indicate the intense emotions with which they were fought. In celebration of an Uzbek victory, Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, to whom was attributed the writing of Tarikh-i Rashidi (one of the most important historical sources on Chaghatay khanate), wrote, 'The clutches of Islam have twisted the hands of heresy and disbelief, and true faith was the victor. The victorious winds of Islam have turned the Shiite banner inside out'. During the Soviet period, Tashkent was the main religious cultural centre, home to the region's highest religious authority (the Spiritual Administration of

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Religious Affairs of Central Asia and Kazakstan or Muftiya of Transoxiana). This authority's crisis and subsequent dissolution into independent muftiya covering each republic separately brought to light the ancient schism between official mullahs and the confraternity of shaykhs. While the mullahs are more traditionalistic, the shaykhs derive their legitimacy from having remained in the Islamic faith during the Soviet era. They are strongly impregnated by Sufism, as well as by Persian philosophy and culture, due to their manual, the Charar Kitab, found in every mosque, and often inherited from a father or an uncle. Other versions of Islam include those inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, who favour political action and charitable works, the mullahs who have been educated in Pakistan (in the centres of the Jamaat u Tablighi movement), and the Wahhabis (influenced by the Saudis). Tablighis and Wahhabis have defined themselves on the basis of interpretations of Sunnism, and reject the Charar Kitab as non-Islamic. The Mufti, Muhammad Yussuf, who took up office in Tashkent in 1989 is opposed to Islamic radicalism and to the Islamic Renaissance Party, whose legitimacy he contests. The party's membership, made up of various types of mullah and followers belong, is inspired by the Wahhabi Sunni sect. This was founded in the eighteenth century by Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and his son-in-law, Ibn Saud, and became dominant (definitively in 1902) in Saudi Arabia. Even today, the Saudis (of the Saud dynasty) are absolute hereditary monarchs (there are no parliaments or elections), and the founder's rigid religious principles are the basis of state law. The Wahhabi Islamic community has also been described as 'puritan' because it suggests the restoration of 'the purity of old Islam', refuting the worship of saints, pilgrimages to their tombs, and the construction of minarets and ornaments in mosques. In addition to alcohol, Wahhabi puritanism also prohibits non-religious music, coffee and tobacco, prayer beads and shaving. Religious doctrines are inspired by the teachings of the neo-Hanbali juridicaltheological school (a revision of the principles of the Hanbali school founded by Ibn Hanbal, who died in 855, was carried out by Ibn Taymiyya, who died in 1328). They reject all post-Koranic additions, including those of Sufism which upset the 'stable and orthodox' form of Islam, as well as the 'parallel and heterodox' forms. The Wahhabi may be considered champions of the most rigorous form of Sunni Islamism, and of a strict form of traditionalism rather than of radicalism. Wahhabism may nonetheless pave the way for new forms of radicalism and new alliances (like the unexpected Taliban) as well as unpredictable developments acceptable even in Uzbekistan and the Central Asian region, where the intermingling of economic, ethnic and religious issues is extremely complicated. A study of the possible relationship between Wahhabism and Shiite radicalism, which generally involves contemporary situations in the Islamic world, reveals some very complex issues. The former Soviet Muslims tend to regard religious faith as a cultural reference, while radical Islamists elsewhere see it in more ideological terms. Radical Islam (incorrectly referred to as 'fundamentalist'), which favours the concept ofjihad and martyrdom, was constituted in Iran in 1979. As B. Etienne states, its chief characteristic is to 'reintroduce the questioning of the world economic order and domination by the West, proposing a return to Islamic routes'. Radical Islam therefore represents the affirmation of a political

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Islam which has profoundly challenged the 'modernist' attitudes (reformist, socialist and pan-Arabist) of the government elites of the main Islamic countries, and has been able to spread to Sunni countries like Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia and Turkey. Muslim Modernism These elites were influenced by Muslim Modernism, a movement which appeared last century as a reaction to the influence of Western culture and the shock provoked by colonialism. Two schools of thought are distinguished here, an Indian and an Egyptian. The Indian school dates back to the time of Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-68) from Delhi, who denied any irreconcilability between science and Islam, and Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), perhaps the most original modernist Muslim intellectual, who opposed the vitalist, almost Nietzsche-like, idea of rationalism which prevailed among the other modernists. This author's work is often associated with that of Abu Al-Ala Mawdudi (1903-76), an ideologist who influenced the 1956 Pakistan constitution in which the application of Islamic law (sharia) is sanctioned because acceptance of any other power is regarded as 'ignorance of God' (jahiliya), which characterises deviant societies (inhiraf). The organisation founded in Pakistan by Mawdudi, the Jamaat-e Island, assures the education of many mullahs, while the Jamaat u Tablighi strongly favours the 're-islamisation' of popular customs in Central Asia. The Egyptian school was been profoundly influenced by a philosopher of Persian origins, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1879), who declared the political revolution against European domination and absolutism to be legitimate and supported ideals of pan-Islamic unification. The school was founded by the prominent Egyptian religious reformer, Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), who joined the independence movement's rebellions in 1881. His work also inspired the leaders and ideologists of the Muslim Brotherhood (who in 1981 avenged the assassination of Egyptian President Sadat), Hasan al Banna (1906-44) and Sayyid Qutb. The latter is responsible for one of modern radicalism's basic texts, Milestones, written during the 1960s. The Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al Muslimun), founded at al-Banna in 1928 and widespread throughout various Arab countries (such as Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Iraq), accepts Islam as a doctrine of individual behaviour and community life. The translation of radical Islam into the political arena, over the last few decades, is dependent on its ability to replace weakened states unable to offer social welfare with ones which guarantee free medical treatment, education and solidarity with the destitute. The reason that its doctrines were accepted by millions of Egyptians and Algerians was less connected with a desire for an Islamic state than with the hope of greater social justice and liberty. As Ghassan Salame emphasises (in Foreign Policy, N° 90, 1993), 'Islamic radicals have gained popularity by attempting to apply programmes which nationalist regimes had formulated, but which they were subsequently totally incapable of putting into

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practice'. All this is of relevance to contemporary Uzbekistan because, as Olivier Roy maintains, 'the mosques havefilledto the extent that they are now places of mobilisation, compared to the state which is perceived as biased, repressive and patronising'. THE TERRITORY AND POPULATION Uzbekistan is the only Central Asian republic that shares a border with all the other five republics: with Kazakstan to the north and west, with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to the east and with Turkmenistan to the south. The Amu Darya forms a natural border with Afghanistan to the south, one which stretches for lOOkms. It then flows northwest and wends along the Turkmenistan border for quite some distance, separating Turkmenistan's Kara Kum ('black sands') desert from Uzbekistan's Kyzyl Kum ('red sands') desert. Uzbekistan is the only country in the world except Liechtenstein to be separated from the sea by two states, a fact which highlights its economic isolation. In the western section of Uzbekistan, to the west and south of the Aral Sea, lies the autonomous Karakalpakstan Republic, (now autonomous Qoraqalpoghiston Respublikasi) whose surface area (164,900 square kilometres) is more than one third larger than that of Uzbekistan. Karakalpakstan had 1,274,000 inhabitants in 1991 (180,000 of them in the capital city, Nukus, Nokis, in Karakalpak) and faces, or more accurately used to face, Aral Sea's southern coastline. There are also two enclaves of Uzbek population (Sokh and Shakhimardan) situated over the Kyrgyz border in the southern part of the Fergana Valley. Another small valley situated to the north is a Tajik enclave. The region consists of topological contrasts: level to the west with elevations to the south and east, mostly arid and desert areas (about 70 percent of the territory). To the east, between the Caspian and Aral Seas, and in Karakalpakstan, past the Caspian depression, lies the Ustyurt desert plateau (plato), while the Kyzyl Kum desert region extends towards the east. Some high mountain ranges stretch out across the Southeastern part of Uzbekistan. These consist of a series of long chains constituted by the Tian Shan and Pamir Mountains. Other elevations, which mostly pertain to Kyrgyzstan, surround the lower section of the Fergana basin in Uzbekistan. These pertain to the Ferganskiy, Chatkal, Kuramin and Alay Mountains. All these mountain ranges, whose heights vary between 3000 and 5000m, slope down towards the western plains and deserts. The Nuratau Mountains in the central part of the country, along the Kugitangtau to the south, are Uzbekistan's only isolated mountain ranges. Uzbekistan usually enjoys a warm and dry continental climate, with temperatures reaching a maximum of 45°C during summer. Winters are short and mild, becoming very severe in the mountainous regions (minimum temperatures may drop to as low as -30°C). The country's range of precipitation is the most varied of the entire central Asian region. Areas experience marked differences: on average, the rainfall in the Kyzyl Kum desert area and the Khorazm valley (the Amu

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Darya's lower valley, also known as Kharezm or Corasmia) receives less than 100 millimetres of rain per annum. Regions situated at the foot of mountains and river valleys receive about 300, while the massifs in the mountainous areas receive more than 1000. Other than the Amu Darya, which originates from the Pamir glaciers, Uzbekistan is also home to the Syr Darya, whose source is the Tian Shan Mountains. Its upper course is known as the Naryn; it then becomes the Syr Darya, after which it flows into the Qara Darya and forms the Fergana Valley. Other watercourses are either the Amu Darya's minor tributaries, like the Serabad, Surkhan Darya (Termiz's oasis), Qashqa Darya (Qarshi's oasis) or the Syr Darya's larger tributaries, like the Angren and Chirchik. The Zeravshan, which flows in the country's central area, was used to join the two rivers by canals (called the Jeskianhor Kanal and Amu-Bukhara), completed in 1968. The sources of the major rivers are beyond the Uzbek borders, a fact which highlights the strategic importance of the so-called water issue. Furthermore, until the 1960s the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya had high water levels. However, their use for intensive irrigation has increased the threat of depletion. Various artificial basins function as water supply reserves. The only major lake is Lake Aydarkul, near the capital. Uzbekistan underwent frequent sub-division in the course of the last century, after its incorporation into the Russian empire in 1867. The country's present-day borders were only officially defined in 1936, and this process involved the inclusion of Karakalpakstan, previously under Kazak and then Russian jurisdiction. Uzbekistan's administrative sub-divisions remained unchanged after independence, with 12 regions called wiloyatlar (singular wiloyat), the capital city of Tashkent (shahrt) plus the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan. Three wiloyatlar are situated in the Fergana Valley (where a third of the population is settled). The provincial capital cities are also referred to as wiloyat (the new name is given, with the old name and number of ihabitants, estimated in 1996, in brackets): Farghona Wiloyati (Fergana, 230,000 inhabitants), Namangan Wiloyati (Namangan, 360,000) and Andijon Wiloyati (Andijan, 313,000). Over 600kms to the west is the Bukhoro Wiloyati (Bukhara, 250,000). Bukhoro is an ancient city, and gives its name to carpets manufactured east of the Caspian Sea and in central Turkmenistan. The ancient city of Bukhara, known as 'the noble' was built around an oasis along the Zeravshan's lower course. It came into being in the fifth century BC, and was named Vihara (meaning 'monastery' in Sanskrit) after an altar dedicated to Buddha which was located there. In the past, this city became one of the region's main trade centres on the principal caravan routes. It also became Central Asia's main centre of culture and Islamic doctrine, with 364 mosques and 109 madrasa (schools of higher learning for Koran studies). Bukhara was a fairly prosperous city in the ninth and tenth centuries under the Samanid dynasty, with its construction of splendid buildings such as the Mausoleum of Ismail Samani (attributed to the sovereign Ismail Ibn Ahmad, 849-907), and architectual masterpiece of pre-Islamic and Central Asian Zoroastrian design. Ruled from the medieval citadel of Registan, where the emirs settled in the sixteenth century, Bukhara has also preserved many other

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great monuments, and has been named a UNESCO 'city of arts of international value'. These include the Ark (the royal town-within-a-town) and buildings such as Mir-i Arab (1535) and the Ulug Bek (1417) madrasa and the Kalyam mosque (twelfth century), with its large portals (called pishtaq), its dome covered with blue tiles and its 47-metre minaret, the Tower of Death, from which those sentenced to death were thrown. The wiloyati situated to the extreme west is Khorazm, whose administration is centred in the city of Urganch (135,000), along the right-hand bank of the Amu Darya. The ancient city of Khiva is also situated here, though it is not very accessible due to the absence of railway lines. Nevertheless, it remains a popular tourist spot. The other seven wiloyatlar are, from west to east: Nawoiy Wiloyati (Nawoiy, 115,000 inhabitants), Samarqand Wiloyati (Samarqand, capital of Tamburlaine's empire, and the country's second largest city, 370,000 inhabitants), Qashqadaryo Wiloyati (Qarshi, 177,000 inhabitants), Surkhondaryo Wiloyati (Termiz, 90,000 inhabitants), Jizzakh Wiloyati (Jizzakh, 116,000 inhabitants), Syrdaryo Wiloyati (Guliston, 57,000 inhabitants), and Toshkent Wiloyati. In the last of these regions, the city of Tbshkent (shahri)wzs administratively independent. It was the Soviet Union's fourth-largest urban centre after Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, as well as Soviet Central Asia's main cultural and economic hub (and this entire part of Central Asia as well). In 1997, almost 10 percent (2,200,000 inhabitants) of the country's population lived there. The city's oldest centre, originally Iranian, dates back to the seventh century, and is named in sources as Shash. It was an ancient trading-post on the Silk Route, and was captured by the nomadic Turkic tribes between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They named it Tash-kent ('city of stone'). It then fell under the Arabs (in 751), the Mongols (in 1221), the Tatars (in 1361), the Uzbeks (in 1503) and the Kalmyks (in 1733), until in 1865 when it was decisively conquered by the Russians, who built the 'new city' to the northeast. It was a colonial city built according to a specific urban city plan. In 1867, it became the headquarters of the Turkestan General Governorate, and in 1930 the capital of the Uzbekistan SSR. Having evolved into a first-rate administrative, cultural and scientific metropolis, it was then chosen to accommodate the Commission for Coordination of Middle Asia and Kazakhstan, the region's most important economic and administrative body. In 1966, Tashkent hosted an important conference held between India and Pakistan to resolve the 'Kashmir issue', but during April of that same year the city was hit by a violent earthquake and partially destroyed. Following hasty reconstruction, the city now has a modern appearance, with wide streets, daring architectual designs and facades reminiscent of traditional mosaics. Its underground railway rivals that of Moscow, but with the construction of individual houses begun a few years ago the city has been extended in a disorderly fashion. The severe rise in unemployment, which appears to affect at least 500,000 inhabitants, has caused many slums to spring up along the city's periphery.

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The Population In 1860, the slave trade was still practiced in Bukhara, although formally abolished by Russia. These days, however, Uzbekistan is comparable to a developing country. Some demographic characteristics, common to the rest of the region, aptly describe the situation: sharp population increase, high infant mortality rate, a population which is, on average, still very young, largely rural and not very mobile. Uzbekistan is the most populated and densely inhabited nation in the whole of Central Asia: in 1999, the Uzbeks were the world's second-largest Turkic-speaking group. The Uzbeks became the third-largest ethnic group in the USSR in 1970, after the Russians and the Ukrainians, due to strong population growth. Between 1959 and 1989, the population increased by 244 percent. The marked population increase (an average of 2.74 percent per year between 1980 and 1990) is today declining, averaging 2.06 percent between 1990 and 1995. But the rate is still only lower than Tajikistan among Central Asian countries, due to the high birth rate (well over 30 births per 1000 inhabitants). A birth control campaign has accounted for some of the reduction. According to one estimate, by the year 2000 Uzbeks should be the largest population group in the whole of Central Asia. The infant mortality rate, which was extremely high at the end of the last world war, declined towards the end of the 1970s. It then stabilised to a level which nonetheless remains high: in 1994, 34 deaths were recorded for each 1000 births, but the average for 1980-90 was 42.3 deaths per 1000 births. Life expectancy has also been extended, thanks to improvements in the health system which have wiped out diseases like Filaria Medinensis or Guinea Worm, a parasite attacking vertebrates and humans. The increase in the population's average age has not influenced the population's high percentage of juveniles: in 1996, more than half the population were under twenty years of age. Some natural regions (Khorazm, the Zeravshan Valley and the Fergana basin) are among the most ancient hubs of agricultural and urban settler development. A large proportion of the rural population is still found there today. There has also been expansion into areas improved by artificial irrigation, as well as into intensive agricultural and pastoral areas. Most of the primary sector (which generates more than 44 percent of the national income using less than 40 percent of the workforce) comprises the vast rural population. Only 38 percent of the population is urbanised, an unusual phenomenon in the former Soviet republics generally but common in its Central Asian regions. Furthermore, urbanisation continues to decrease slowly but surely. On the 242 conurbations and the 123 urban centres in Uzbekistan, very few (administrative centres excluded) number more than 100,000 inhabitants: among these are Almalyk, Angren, Bekabad, Chirchik, Margilan and Quqon (formerly Kokand). By a 1996 estimate, the population consisted 80 percent of Uzbeks and 5.5 of Russians, with Tajik and Kazak minorities (5 and 3 percent respectively). There were also other smaller groups of Koreans, Kyrgyz, Ukrainians, Turkmens, Tatars, Meskhetians, Volga Germans - about 50,000 - and Bukhariot

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and Askenazi Jewish communities, although large segments of the Jewish community left the country to emigrate to Israel). The composition of the population illustrates Transoxiana's history, with Uzbeks the majority in all the regions, except in Toshkent Wiloyati (where thay account for 47 percent) and Qoraqalpoghiston Respublikasi (Karakalpakstan) (33 percent). The Turkmens are found to the north, along the Khorazm border, while the Tajiks are found in the Zeravshan Valley, particularly in the cities of Bukhoro and Samarqand. The Slavophone population (Russians and Ukrainians) is concentrated in the cities. A slow repatriation began towards the end of the 1970s, and accelerated during the early 1990s. In 1970, this group accounted for 10.8 percent of the population, in 1989 8.3 percent, and by the start of 1998 5 percent. In 1989, there were also approximately 800,000 Tatars and Uyghurs who, not ever having been officially recognised, did not have administrative and cultural constitutions of their own. Uzbek Minorities Abroad The modern Uzbek population is not very mobile, but is well represented in some of the neighbouring countries. Uzbeks constitute about 24 percent of the population of Tajikistan, 13 percent of that of Kyrgyzstan, and 10 percent of the population of Turkmenistan. Of minor significance, however, is the 2 percent minority that this group represents in Kazakstan and in Chinese Xinjiang, where they were once known as Tarancis. Nevertheless, the largest and most dense Map 2: Population

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Uzbek minority is in Afghanistan. Between 1920 and 1936, a large migration to Afghanistan took place, starting with those fleeing forced collectivisation. They were followed by Turkmens, who had been able to resist the Soviets for a great length of time. Nowadays, Afghan Uzbeks (about 2,000,000) are mainly found to the north, and constitute the majority in the cities of Dowshi and Mazar-i Sharif. The Afghan Uzbek community gained important recognition when the son of a rich merchant who had emigrated from Tashkent, Muhammad Khan Jallalar, became the finance minister and later minister of trade. He held office between 1971 and April 1992, until the fall of Najibullah's government. Afghan Uzbeks were supporters of pro-Russian governments, and became its militia. This has now grown into a small army under General Rashid Dostum in the north of the country. After the Red Army's retreat, in February 1989, and the fall of Najibullah, in which Dostom's decreasing support played a decisive role, Uzbekistan began supplying funds and arms (somewhat secretly) to 'the brothers of the south'. Their core reason for intervening was the dream of creating a single state from Toshkent to Mazar-i Sharif. However, the city of Mazar-i Sharif fell to the Taliban on 10 August 1998. The importance of the Uzbek minorities in the neighbouring countries (mainly Afghanistan) also rest on the extent to which these minorities influence Uzbek foreign policy. This provokes tensions and remains the favourite subject for nationalist speeches.

In his book Kitab al-masalek vcflmamalek ('books of roads and countries7) written in 844, the Persian geographer, Ibn Khordadhbeh, refers to a poet who mourns Samarqand's sad existence (Shash is the old name for Tbshkent): O prosperous Samarqand, Who threw you into this state? You are better than Shash Ever beautiful you remain! Look round thee now on Samarcand! Is she not queen of Earth? her pride Above all cities? In her hand Their destinies? In all beside Of glory which the world hath known, Stands she not nobly and alone? Edgar Allan Poe, from Tamburlaine and Other Poems, 1827

Set in an oasis 7kms from the banks of the Zeravshan, the ancient city of Afrasiab, later named Marakanda, was conquered by Alexander the Great in 329BC. It was then renamed Samarqand, and became the ancient capital of the historical Sogdian and Bactria regions. It became a trading-post on the silk route, and in 712 was conquered by the Arabs, who built the first paper factory there. Later, in 751, a Chinese prisoner revealed the secret of its manufacture. Samarqand enjoyed a period of great splendour when under the rule of the Samanid Dynasty (874-999), and was thereafter conquered by the Qarakhanids and the Seljuks. In 1220, the city was wrecked and looted by Genghis Khan's Mongolian troops, before rising again in importance in 1370 to become the capital during

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the reign of Tamburlaine (Timur-i Lang, or Timur the Lame). This time marked the city's finest, and the great ruler virtually filled it with monuments. Tamburlaine died and was buried there in 1405 while planning an attack on the Chinese empire. About a century later, his remains were transferred to Gur-i Mir ('tomb of the emir'), a mausoleum dedicated to him, with a massive tower, octagonal base and tent-like roof. Hans Schiltberger, a German who served at Tamburlaine's court, recalls the events following the death of conqueror: 'After he was buried the priests that served the temple heard Timur howl every night for a year. Finally, they went to his son and begged that he set free the prisoners taken by his father in other countries, especially those craftsmen that he had brought to his capital to work. He let them go, and as soon as they were free Timur did not howl anymore.' Once he lay at peace, he was not to be disturbed. Legend had it that, engraved on the underside of his tombstone was the epitaph, 'If I am roused from my tomb, the earth will tremble'. For almost five-and-a-half centuries he was not disturbed, until a Russian anthropologist, Mikhail Gerasimov, received permission to exhume what remained of the corpse. Gerasimov entered the crypt during the night of 22 June 1941, and opened the sarcophagus at 3 am the following morning. Shortly after, an assistant rushed into the crypt with the news that Hitler's troops were invading the Soviet Union. Gerasimov's research, carried out over a period of two years, confirmed that Tamburlaine was genuinely lame in his right leg due to an injury. In the days following the reburial of the skeleton, the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad after having lost more than a million men. Virtually none of the buildings built by Tamburlaine have survived, except for the ruins of the Bibi Khanym mosque (1404) and the necropolis group of monuments or 'roads of sepulchres' of Shah-i Zindeh (which means tombs of the living king). There is a legend that Muhammad's cousin, Kassim Ibn Abbas, who had come to proclaim Islam to the inhabitants of the city, was subsequently decapitated there in 667. He allegedly picked up his own head and went into eternal hiding in a well. A mausoleum and a mosque were later built around this well. Tamburlaine chose this place to build the large Shah-i Zindeh monument complex, which originally consisted of 16 buildings built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, where the members of the royal family were to be buried. His wet nurse, sisters and other relations were buried in various mausoleums. After Tamburlaine, his grandson, Ulugh Beg, governed the city between 1409 and 1449. Ulugh Beg was an astronomer, mathematician, theologian, poet and musician. In 1428, he founded the famous astronomy observatory, now destroyed, and compiled the equally famous 'tables'. Between 1417 and 1420, Ulugh Beg commissioned the building of the madrasa which bears his name to this day. This has an enormous portal and four minarets that look onto the famous 'sand square' or Registan. On the same square, there are another two madrasa, the Tilla Kari ('gold-covered', 1646-60) and the Sher Dor ('Tiger', 1619-36).

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Overshadowed by the political supremacy of the emirate of Bukhara, Samarqand regained importance only after being captured and annexed by Russia in May 1868. It became the provincial administrative headquarters of the Turkestan General Governorate. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Russia transferred many regional administrative functions to Samarkand (its Russian name), and in 1888 built the 'Transcaspian' railway line. Thereafter, Samarkand, due to this rail link, developed as a cotton centre, and to a lesser extent an industrial one. After the October Revolution, the city became Uzbekistan's administrative capital. It remained so until substituted by Tashkent at the end of 1930. From an urban perspective, Samarkand is typical of the development which took place in the former USSR's Central Asian cities. Its traditional quarters, with their low houses built from clay bricks and packed closely together along the road, with numerous Islamic monuments, stand in contrast to the colonial city and the fortress completed by the Russians in 1882. The Russians built a new, European-style city next to old city, with wide tree-lined streets, modern buildings and an Orthodox church. It is planned in the shape of an open fan, to the west of the old city (some roads run radially outward from one point, others are concentric). Vast areas destined for alternative development of working-class residential and industrial zones surround both cities. They resemble in every respect those of the other Soviet 'new cities'. Samarqand's old buildings do not derive their beauty merely from their structure, but also from their ceramic decoration, in 'majolica mosaic' with turquoise-green tiles (called kashikari, the main form of decoration). The turquoise domes are beautiful, and built on a grand scale, similar to the Persian buildings of the Mongol era. In general, the beauty of Samarqand's monuments also highlights the other artworks developed there: the miniatures, ceramics and paintings. These bear witness to the important influence of Persian culture to which the city is linked by tradition. Still today, the Tajik Persian-speaking community constitutes the majority, and considers Samarqand its 'real' and only capital. At the foot of the Bibi Khanym mosque is the large city bazaar, where the city's various ethnic groups co-exist. The choyhona (Tajik for 'tea houses') function as taverns, and are frequented by Uzbeks, Tajiks, Tatars and Uyghurs. They sit on large rugs (karavat) drinking green tea and eating manty (a type of ravioli filled with meat), shashlyk (Persian for 'six pieces', lamb shish kebab) or plov (a traditional dish of pilaf rice prepared with carrots, garlic and mutton). Russians are identifiable as they fill their peola with black tea. In the crowded city square, women often wear trousers under their dresses, and married ladies are distinguishable by their white-heeled shoes. Men chew nash (greenish tobacco), while some aksakal ('white beards', or old men), wearing turbans and chapan (traditional cloaks made from silk and cotton), stop at vendors selling malosol (pickled cucumbers) and white and yellow honey. The white honey comes from cotton blossoms, while the yellow comes from the mountains. Here, as in every eastern suk (market), all the merchandise has a specific place. Perishables are in the centre: Kara Kum melons, berries from the Fergana

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Valley, and the small lemons grown in Tajikistan. On the sides, the Koreans (who number 8000 in Samarqand) sell vegetables and 'marinated' products with the Turkmens who sell their gilim (kilim, or woven carpets). Artisans belonging to the Jewish community have small shops and work as shoemakers, hairdressers, photographers, booksellers, knife-sharpeners and clock makers. Samarqand is home to an eastern Jewish community. In 1167, during the time of Benjamin of Trudelia, it already numbered 50,000, and expanded over the centuries, especially in Bukhara, which is why in the nineteenth century the Russians named all 'Eastern Jews' living in the region, Bukharski. This community had also settled in the cities of Tashkent, Kokand, Andijan, Margilan, Namangan, Khujand (in Tadjikistan). The 1989 census shows that 37,000 Bukhariot Jews lived in the whole of Soviet Central Asia, and were present in most of Uzbekistan's cities and the capitals of the neighbouring republics. Also forming part of the Jewish community are the thousands of Askenazi Jews. They fled from Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus during and immediately after the Second World War. The language spoken by Bukhariots is Jewish-Tajik, a variant of Persian written in Cyrillic characters which has preserved many Hebrew terms and and etymologies. Until the arrival of a Moroccan rabbi during the eighteenth century, the Bukhariots had affiliated themselves to the Sephardic faith. After visiting Palestine, the rabbi revived the community's religious awareness and had them abandon their Persian rituals. The Bukhariots have shown great cultural tenacity. Central Asia, before its conquest by Arab Muslims during the eighth century, had been a place of refuge for many people fleeing religious persecution. These included the Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Nestorian Christians (led by the Bishop of Samarkand), followers of Manichaeists, shamans of the nomadic population, Ismaili Muslims in Pamir and finally Jews from Persia and Baghdad. Of all these religions mentioned, the Jewish faith is the one to have most successfully resisted the islamisation of the region, and Jewish communities were usually well tolerated and valued in the fields of medicine, talisman manufacture and silk dyeing, as well as for musical performance and composition. Musicians were often hired to perform during family festivities. This meant that they were seldom made slaves, a fate that befell all the Persian Shiites. Jews were pushed to single-minded dedication to their artisan trade (where they still predominate today), and to becoming more active in economic and social life by a number of factors, among them the Russian colonialisation, the development of cotton cultivation and the opening of large spinning factories in Tashkent, Samarkand and Kokand, along with the increased tax burden of the Bukhara emirate. Up until the 1980s, the Bukhariots enjoyed relative religiousfreedom,at least as far as their Russian 'coreligionists' were concerned. A 'community president' chosen by the political authorities was assigned the task of monitoring the performance of their functions with 'discretion'. For example, the synagogue could only be opened during prayer hours and the yochua, the annual ceremonies of funeral commemoration, had to take place inside private homes, and not in the

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presence of tourists or foreigners. Conversely, however, as proof of the government's tolerance, the mezuzah, containing Biblical inscriptions, were publicly displayed on the right-hand door jambs of the main entrances to Bukhariot homes. Community life is characterised by great festivities, for example the Pesah (Jewish Easter), Purim (Feast of Salvation) or Succoth (Feast of the Tabernacles). Ceremonies such as circumcision, marriage, the feast of the newborn, the annual commemoration of the dead are major parts of community life. As religious ceremonies are prohibited during working hours, circumcisions take place at dawn in the synagogue. Funerals involve processions of several hundred people. The processions have to include at least one male member of each family. The processions leave the Jewish quarter, formed in 1842 near the large Bibi Khanym mosque, and proceed to the Jewish section of the large cemetery surrounding the Shah-i Zindeh. In Bukhara, the Jewish section has a special location in the cemetery, beyond the oldest of the three Jewish quarters, the mahala-i kohne or 'old mahala'. If, as many of the aged claim, perestroika did 'reopen the road to the Holy Land', it also follows that the Bukhariots felt deprived of Russia's protection after the USSR was dissolved. They attempted to gain recognition and protection for their culture and religion. The new situation was regarded as 'a return to the past', when the khans and Uzbek emirs had absolute power over them. The interethnic conflicts of 1989 and 1990 led to widespread fear and the desire to flee the country: hundreds of families, unable to sell, left all they possessed and emigrated to Israel. Midway through 1995, this migration stopped, due to reassurances from the Uzbek authorities, and to the difficult conditions experienced by former Soviet emigrants in Israel. HISTORICAL OUTLINE From the most ancient times, the history of eastern Central Asia's population and civilisation has been linked to the control over water and the utilisation of rivers for irrigation. Various archaeological excavations have allowed experts to date the beginning of irrigated farming in the region to between the second and third millennium BC. They have also been able to identify precisely the areas involved: the Fergana Valley, the Khorazm and the Zeravshan Valleys (called Polimetus, or 'Gold Sower', in ancient times), along whose courses in bygone times there already existed up to 120 populated oases. Based on archaeological findings, it has also been established that during various periods at least seven or eight million hectares of land were part of a hydraulic system. At the same time, it was also possible to define the differences between, and/or complementary nature of, the cultivated areas and mountains on the one hand, and the flat and arid areas used for stock farming on the other. In Western historiography, the civilisations of Central Asia have been studied with recourse to the themes of nomadism, trade and conquest. This rather static paradigm has made it difficult to trace the process of historical change in Central Asia. Common to the entire region was the experience of Mongolian domination,

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the spread of Buddhism, the politically unifying role played by the 'GraecoBactrian' states, and the impact of the Achaemenid Persian and Chinese empires. Scholars are in unanimous agreement that the raison d'etre of the imperialism which took root in Central Asia was the struggle for control of the caravan trade. This emphasised the great importance of the pax Mongolica, under which men and goods could travel in relative safety from Crimea to Korea. Then sea trade began, and caravan traffic inevitably dwindled. It remains possible to distinguish a number of ethnic populations in this vast geographical area who then moved away due to local factors which, from the fifteenth century, began to play an increasingly important role. These groups began to diverge from each other politically, culturally and religiously. The overlaying of these factors on the region's physical characteristics re-shaped the collective identity of the various populations. Central Asia's western areas became home to the 'Uzbek confederation' from the sixteenth century. This area, crossed by the region's main rivers (the Amu Darya, Syr Darya and Zeravshan), was at the centre of agricultural development, and for this reason the people became settled rather than nomadic. Cities like Khiva, Samarkand and Bukhara formed along the riverbanks. In Transoxiana, the area of Central Asia compressed between these rivers and the Aral Sea, irrigation systems and models of urban life gradually became established. The oases situated along the river courses changed from agricultural areas into commercial areas, and from these into urban centres, becoming the essential points of passage for any attempts at conquest. After the Achaemenids (between the sixth and fourth centuries BC), the 'Graeco-Bactrian' civilisation was established in the region as a result of Alexander the Great's conquests. Many archaeological findings from this civilisation, which along with the Seleucids (between the fourth and third centuries BC), partly survived the empire's disintegration, remain today. This dynasty derived the main aspects of its political cohesion through Hellenism, and favoured interaction between Greek and Eastern religions, and specifically the meeting of East and West. From 250BC, these empires were superseded by that of the Parthians (followers of Zoroastrism), and in the first century AD by that of the Buddhist Kushans. Later this was substituted by the nomad empire (khaganate) founded in Siberia by the Turkic-speaking population. This empire then expanded to Transoxiana and the edge of the Amu Darya, forming a historical threshold between the sedentary Iranian empires and the nomad empires of Central Asia. The Islamic conquest, begun in the eighth century, led to the defeat of the Chinese by the Arabs on the banks of the Talas in 751, the hasty conversion of the local urban elites, the rule of the Abbasid caliphate, and later that of the Iranian Samanid dynasty (874-999). This dynasty, founded by Saman Khudat (a prominent inhabitant of Saman, in the Balkh district), who converted from Zoroastrianism to Islam, made Bukhara the realm's capital, transforming it into the main cultural centre of the time. The fall of the Samanids was brought about by the islamised Turkic populations, subjects of Mahmud of Ghazna and his Ghaznavid dynasty (999-1030), or, further east, of the Qarakhanids (Karakhanids in Turkish sources

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and al-Afrasiyah in Persian ones) led by the Ilek Khan Nasr. Muslim Turkish domination extended to the north, under the Shahs of the Khorazm or Khorazmshah (915-1220), the first of whom was a Turkish slave, and in other regions by the Seljuks (in the eleventh century). These were interrupted by the Mongolian conquest but subsequently re-established in the centuries that followed. The Rise of the Uzbek Nation The formation of the Uzbek states, or khanates, began in 1500 in the regions now comprising Uzbekistan and part of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. This took place when the tribal confederation (there were originally 92 tribes), collectively know as Uzbeks, undertook a migration-conquest led by its own aristocracy and headed by Prince Muhammad Shaybani Khan (1451-1510). The tribe's collective name is sometimes associated, not without controversy, to the Mongolian khan of the Golden Horde, Uzbek (who ruled 1313-40), and also to the close alliance resulting from his sister's marriage to the Great Prince of Moscow, Ivan I Danilovic (or Kalita, 'money bags'), which enabled him to collect taxes imposed on the Russian princes by the Mongols. In 1206, after taking the title Great Khan, Genghis invaded Central Asia's Turko-Iranian and Muslim regions. After his death in 1227, the empire was divided up among his siblings: Transoxiana, part of Afghanistan and Chinese Turkestan became the domain of his second son, Chaghatay (or Chagatai). In 1343, the conversion to Islam by some Mongol princes caused a split in the eastern section of Chaghatay's khanate (Mogholistan, near Lake Issyk Kul), as well as in the western section, which retained the name Transoxiana. This is where Timur-i Lang (later latinised as Tamburlaine, 1336-1405) was born and became established (in Kesh, near Shar-i Seba, now Shakhrisabz, the 'green town', south of Samarqand). This Sunni Turko-Mongol conqueror made Samarqand his capital and reigned from there over a vast empire which stretched to India from Azerbaijan and incorporated Syria and Mesopotamia, having also defeated the Ottomans in 1402. After his death, the Timurid dynasty was unable to control the empire's rapid disintegration, which ended with the capture of the capital by the Uzbeks under the leadership of Muhammad Shaybani Khan in 1506-7. The Timurids survived in a collateral branch established by Baber ('tiger') who, driven by the Uzbeks towards Afghanistan, was able to restore the family's wealth by conquering India and founding the Mogul (or Mughal) dynasty in 1526. He died four years later in Delhi. At the time, the Islamic landmass was mainly split between four empires, three of them Sunni (Ottoman, Uzbeks and Mogul), separated by an Iranian Shiia enclave (the Safavid). During the fifteenth century, Abul Khair (1412-68) a descendent of Jochi (Genghis Khan's firstborn), and Muhammad Shaybani Khan's grandfather, attempted to form an Uzbek state in Transoxiana. He successfully united many of the region's nomadic tribes and conquered a section of the Khorazm Valley (including the capital city, Urganch, formerly Gurgandi) for the Timurids. The area contains part of the Syr Darya, and was flourishing at that time. At the

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height of its glory, Abul Khair's dominion extended from Transoxiana to the Siberian forest. He attempted to create an actual state whose forms of government would be totally unlike those of feudal nomadism. Yet the initiation of such a project inevitably required limitations in the autonomy of the other princes, who, though formally vassals, were in truth virtually independent. It proved practically impossible to implement in a nomadic society, with the result that the other Jochid princes, Karai and Jani Bek, with their nomadic and semi-nomadic Turkic-speaking community, opposed Abul Khair's initiative. They waged war on him and migrated eastward, to between the Syr Darya and Lake Balkhash. These dissident clans developed an identity, becoming known as 'Kazaks'. Abdul Khair's reign was weakened by the powerful incursions of the Buddhist Oyrats, or Kalmyks (the western Mongols), who invaded and ravaged the entire region. Once the Oyrats had left, the Kazaks returned to the region and killed Abul Khair in a great battle north of the Syr Darya. Shortly after, they also killed his son, Shaykh Haidar, which meant that Muhammad Shaybani Khan was the only survivor of the Shaybani lineage. Muhammad Shaybani Khan thus undertook the migration-conquest, originating in the southeastern part of contemporary Kazakstan, which came to be regarded as the definitive division between the Kazak and Uzbek clans. At the time, Transoxiana, after being the political centre of Tamburlaine's empire, was subdivided among his descendents. Between 1500 and 1507, the Timurids suffered many defeats by Shaybani Khan, who occupied the region and initiated the so-called Uzbek khanates of Transoxiana. These were initially governed by his descendants (the Shaybanids), but disintegrated three centuries later with their submission to czarist Russia between 1868 and 1873. The Uzbeks settled in this area, which remained theirs for more than 300 years, and whose urban centres and four-fifths of the territory belonged to Transoxiana. The nomadic pastoral community gradually became a settled agricultural population. The assertion of Uzbek rule was followed by the capture of Bukhara, which replaced Samarqand as the capital, and the Khorazm and Fergana Valley regions, the realm stretching north to Afghanistan. The Uzbeks' political and military achievements were studiously deliberate: Muhammad Shaybani Khan never intended to restructure administratively or politically the area he had conquered; he only intended to assert himself territorially. As a Sunni Muslim, his religious vision was rigorous and orthodox by nature, although he had received his instruction from the Sufi fraternity. He spoke a Turkic-based language, but used Persian in his writings, having also studied at the Bukhara madrasa. The Uzbeks' settlement in a specific political territory is due to the fact that after the fourteenth century, the silk route's deterioration, caused by geographical developments, determined changes in the caravan flow and large-scale population migrations. This led to enormous territorial reconfigurations, also determined by religion and culture, of which of the Uzbek confederation was only a part. In fact, thinning trade set in motion a series of changes and the formation of vast ethno-political territories, the two main ones being those occupied by the Kazaks and Uzbeks.

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From 1500 until the end of the nineteenth century, the realm established by Muhammad Shaybani Khan was subdivided into various other areas (khanates). Following the decline of the Shaybanids, one of their secondary branches, already established in 1512, continued to reign in the Khorazm region. In 1610, the capital moved from Urganch, which had deteriorated due to the draining of the Amu Darya tributary on which it was built, to Khiva. The Janid dynasty, which had fled from Astrakhan (for this reason also known as Astrakhanids), rose to power in the Bukhara khanate in 1599, and reigned until 1785. Finally, at the start of the eighteenth century, one of Shaybani's remote descendants formed an independent khanate in Kokand, in the Fergana Valley. Despite territorial fragmentation, which often caused disputes between the Uzbek khanates, and despite frequent Turkmen raids against the khanates of Khiva and Bukhara, a communal national identity was able to emerge on an ethnic, linguistic and literary level. At the end of the eighteenth century, the outline of a true and proper cultural rebirth was also discernable. However, in 1750 Turkestan's Afghan region broke away from Bukhara and came under the influence of an embryonic rulership based in Kandahar and Kabul, eventually to develop into Afghanistan. This proved to be a serious crisis for the Janid dynasty, which in 1785 was overthrown by the Mangit dynasty (descendants of the Nogaj Mongols) who also assumed the title 'emir' (from the Arabic amir, 'he who commands'). This dynasty reorganised state institutions and transferred waqf goods to Mecca and Medina. The dynasty's funds were used to build the Saint Petersburg mosque and on the Crimean coast in Yalta the palace which later became the 'Uzbekistan' sanatorium. The Kungrat dynasty was also established in Khiva in 1804, introducing substantial improvements to the irrigation systems, from which the whole region benefited, and which also led to improvements in trade and urban life. Subjugation of the Uzbek Khanates by Russia The shifting of Russian's border from the northern Siberian forest to the desert of Central Asia was gradual. It was only through the conquest of Central Asia that the Russian state's expansionist ambitions were satisfied. The expansion began when the great princes of Moscow, especially Ivan III (1462-1505), a contemporary of Muhammad Shaybani Khan, gathered enough troops to defeat the long-time Genghiskhanid sovereigns in Kazan, the capital of contemporary Tatarstan. Russia's progress halted along the banks of the Amu Darya, and the peaks of the Pamir mountain range, where between 1870 and 1880 the Russians clashed with Britain for influence over the area. The 'vassalisation' of the Kazaks, initiated by Czar Peter the Great, came to an end in around 1825, and within a few decades the Russians had to confront the Uzbek khanates. In 1855, a Russian military column left Vernyi ('the faithful', now Almaty) and occupied Turkestan (formerly Yassy), Chimkent and Kazakstan's southern region. After winning the battle fought along the hills of Zerabulak (near Kattakurgan), the Russians conquered the Bukhara emirate in

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1868. Shortly after, the Kokand khanate was also occupied, along with the Fergana Valley. With Tashkent already taken, in 1865, the Khiva khanate was finally subjugated in the summer of 1873. In 1875, the czarist administration imposed protectorate status on the three Uzbek states, thereby confirming their loss of political and economic sovereignty. In 1886, after endemic rebellions, the Kokand khanate and a section of the Bukhara emirate (including Tashkent, the Fergana Valley and Samarqand) were incorporated into the Turkestan General Governorate (Gubernjia). This fell directly under the administrative control of Russia. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, various revolts broke out, and the czarist army repressed them all. Serious uprisings took place in 1885 in the Fergana Valley, led by Dervish Khan Tore, and in 1891 in Namangan and Tashkent. But the most serious was the revolt organised by the Naqshbandiyya Sufi brotherhood in 1898, led by Ishan (or Ichan, the spiritual leader of a confraternity) Madali who, after proclaiming the ghorzavat (the local name for holy war, or jihad), attacked the Russian garrison in Andijan. The sections of the Bukhara Emirate which had still remained autonomous, and the Khiva khanate, however, were suppressed in September and February 1920 respectively, when the Red Army entered these cities under the leadership of Mikhail Frunze. The last emir of Bukhara, Alim Khan, fled to Kabul, while Khiva's last khan, Sayyd Abdallah, was arrested and taken to Moscow, where he died shortly after. These regions, therefore, enjoyed partial autonomy and local power, generally exercised by the traditional religious and administrative hierarchy, for a long periods. This differentiates the region in a way still felt today, Russia's influence here being less intense than in regions annexed before 1886. Nevertheless, Russia's arrival led to the creation and consolidation of a bourgeosie and an intelligentsia in favour of absorbing the Jadidist movement's innovative ideas. These were being introduced by the Tartar merchants in cities like Tashkent and Bukhara, and this led to the formation of movements such as the Young Bukhariots and the Young Khivans. In 1905, a state of emergency was declared throughout the entire Central Asian region, whilst in 1908 various militants started mustering behind a revolutionary by the name of Abd al-Rauf Fitrat, a leader of the local reform movement whose objectives were anti-Russian and pan-Islamic. In April 1917, czarist officials were arrested and new political leaders came onto the scene. Some of these were Muslims, such as General Dalevtcin, Sadri Maksudov and Bukeykhanov, who founded a provisional government in Tashkent presided over by the famous orientalist Nalivkin. Various local leaders were, nonetheless excluded and, together with many other militants, formed a Muslim Council (Shura-i Islamiyeh) which a large number of the population supported. A minority faction, consisting mainly of landowners and members of the 'conservative' or 'reactionary' religious hierarchy, unwilling to relinquish the waqf (land or property endowments), formed a reactionary political group and established an assembly of mullahs known as the Ulama Jamii. The two main organisations met between 16 and 23 April 1917 at a congress in Tashkent in which many Tatars also participated. The consensus was in favour of an alliance with Russians and against the conservative Muslim

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hierarchy. During the course of negotiations, a project was launched for the formation of an Islamic state within a Russian federation. A National Centre (Milli Merkez) was founded, while in the meantime the first Muslim socialist organisations began to emerge. The most effective of these was the Ittihad ('unity') in Samarkand. The Formation of Soviet Uzbekistan In October 1917, a Soviet was elected in Tashkent, and almost immediately put under Bolshevik control (presided over by Brojdo, one of the most representative Bolsheviks). This attempted to exclude the Muslim intelligentsia. The following month, the National Centre proclaimed in Kokand an autonomous Islamic state whose characteristics included the preservation of private property, of Islamic law (sharid) and the seclusion of women. The Tashkent Soviet, however, sent troops (mainly Russian factory and railway workers), and took control of the city on 19 February 1918 after a bombardment. In April 1918, the autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkestan was formed (linked to the Russian Soviet Federation), excluding the Bukhara and Khiva territories, which had a different fate in store. In 1917, Young Bukhariot Muslims asked the emir to permit the introduction of a series of reforms, and he refused. When Red Army troops arrived in February 1920, the more determined among them deposed the emir and formed a People's Soviet Republic, with the intention of respecting the precepts of Islam. The gradual expulsion of nationalist Muslims, the state's weakness, and the ever-increasing presence of Russian and Tatar Communist political leaders led to incorporation of the new entity into the USSR in 1924. A similar situation occurred in Khiva: the People's Soviet Republic of Khorazm was declared in April 1920, and was annexed in 1924. Russian Turkestan was greatly weakened by civil war, and isolated from Europe as a result of rebellion of the Orenburg Cossacks led by Ataman Dutov. Not being able to import grain from Russia for two consecutive years, the population suffered famine and hunger. Moreover, various indications of Russian chauvinism became apparent. In 1919, the great basmachi (a derogatory term translated as 'brigands') revolt broke out in the Fergana Valley and spread to Turkmenistan and the Pamir Mountains. In 1922, Enver Pasha (born in Turkey in 1882), who had placed himself in charge of the basmachi, was killed. The revolt was quelled as a result of internal divisions and concessions made by the Soviet government (such as the partial restoration of Islamic law). Since 1924, campaigns to promote literacy, the 'liberation of women' and collectivisation (during the 1930s) caused there to be a resurgence of basmachi activity in the Pamir Mountains, but this faded a few months later. On various occasions, Russian intellectuals protested against what they saw as the colonialism of the Bolshevik revolution in Central Asia. These protests, and the basmachi revolt, drove the new Soviet authorities to grant political concessions. The main Jadidist leaders and reformers then decided to join the Bukhara Communist Party, affiliated to its Russian counterpart from 1922.

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The Soviet authorities tried to sidetrack aspirations for union through a policy which kept nationalists divided. This gave rise to what became known as the national-territorial delimitation of Turkestan. On 29 October 1924, the USSR's Central Committee voted for the creation of two Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR): Uzbekistan (formed by the central part of the former People's Soviet Republic of Bukhara, the southern part of the People's Soviet Republic of Khiva, the Fergana Valley and the Samarkand region) and Turkmenistan. Two Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics (ASSR) were also formed, Tajikistan and Kazakstan, as well as two autonomous regions, Kyrgyzstan and Karakalpakstan. In 1929, Tajikistan, previously part of Uzbekistan, also became a federated SSR. The Karakalpak territory was from 1925 an autonomous region of Kazakstan, from 1932 an ASSR, still within Kazakstan, and from 1936 within Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan's borders are indicative of the great difficulties of territorial delimitation, a process which in this case attempted to define a territory by reference to settled populations and nomads. Compromise proved necessary, and borders of irrigated farmlands were used in an attempt to accommodate both nomadic and non-migratory populations, who tended to interact with each other. The lower section of the Fergana Valley was given to Uzbekistan, while the surrounding slopes and mountains and the city of Osh were incorporated into the Republic of the Kyrgyz, which had a population of mountain shepherds. Two Uzbek enclaves remained in Kyrgyz territory, and a Tajik one in Uzbekistan. The same occurred with the Khorazm Valley, where the area comprising the citadel of Tashauz (now Dashkhovuz) was given to Turkmenistan. Map 3: The Fergana Valley Main cities

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Tracing borders between non-migratory and nomadic populations which had interacted with each other for many centuries proved difficult. The solution adopted involved allocating entire districts according to whether their populations were mainly Persian-speaking (in which case they joined Tajikistan) or Turkicspeaking (in which case they joined Uzbekistan). For example, the Khujand district, at the entrance to the Fergana Valley, was assigned to Tajikistan, which explains the winding shape of this part of the border. These demarcations caused almost as many problems as they were intended to solve. A constant source of dispute was the division of the region's most precious commodity, water. However, one of the consequences of such decisions was also the fact that each republic found itself obliged to accommodate many conspicuous groups of other ethnic minorities. This was most in evidence where the concentrations were highest, as in the cities of Samarqand and Bukhoro, both in Uzbekistan but with large Tajik populations. In the 1920s, the Uzbek Bolshevik leader, Faizullah Khujayev (a former Jadidist and Young Bukhariot activist, and first president of the Uzbek Socialist Soviet Republic) realised the impossibility of trying to protect the region's cultural unity. In 1938, after having functioned as president of the USSR's Central Executive Committee, he was accused, along with Akmal Ikramov, first secretary of the Uzbek Communist Party, of sympathising with the Trotskyite right. After hasty, if not summary, proceedings, the two were executed on 13 March 1938, and this signalled the end of the Soviet policy of collaboration with indigenous elites which had begun during the 1920s. During the 1930s, all the intellectuals who had supported the October Revolution to defend national culture were liquidated. After another wave of repression during the 1950s, survivors were ousted from their positions and accused of 'ambiguity' (as in the case of Aybek, secretary of the Uzbekistan Writers' Union) in deference to the principle that culture had to be 'nationalist in form, but socialist in substance'. After the war, Uzbekistan became, in the Soviet planning, the lead country of Soviet Islam, a centre for the spreading and encouragement of ideology and culture, and the headquarters of regionally important administrative and religious bodies. On the economic-administrative front, the Tashkent Commission for Co-ordination in Central Asia and Kazakstan played an important role in investment decisions. On the religious level, Tashkent was always the headquarters chosen for the Spiritual Administration of Religious Affairs of Central Asia and Kazakstan (or Muslim Religious Board) for Central Asia and Kazakhstan. During the Khrushev era, Uzbekistan attempted to use its position as an administrative and religious centre to channel Muslim traditions into support for central power, and to obtain maximum autonomy. Most of all, the country tried to use its position to assume political leadership in the Central Asian region. Turkestan The term 'Turkestan', used up until the beginning of the First World War, was used to refer to a vast region extending from Mongolia to the Caspian Sea. There was an eastern section designated Chinese Turkestan which was already

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called Xinjiang by the Chinese (or Sinkiang by the Europeans) as well as a Northwestern section called Russian Turkestan. Since 1929, the region's territorial restructuring into various republics linked to the USSR led to the disappearance of the designation, and the Russian section became known as Middle Soviet Asia. Turkestan, which literally means 'country of the Turks', boasts a grand history, having in ancient times been part of vast and important empires like those of Genghis Khan and Tamburlaine. Its geography is divided into imposing mountain ranges (Tian Shan) and vast deserts (Taklamakan, Kizyl Kum and Kara Kum). The immense Siberian steppes are situated further to the north. This type of geography accommodates two population types. One is a very ancient sedentary agricultural group settled along the oases formed by the river courses flowing into internal lakes or emptying into the desert sands. The other is a more recently developed nomadic pastoral one. With the exception of the Iranian groups of Tajik, Turkestan's population was originally Turkic and spoke languages which, although different, shared the same Turkic origin. The subsequent division into various states was a political issue reflecting local rivalry rather than actual ethnic differences, but administrative convenience also played a determining role. THE ECONOMY Before the discovery of natural gas, petrol, coal and copper deposits, and prior to the completion of major canal works on rivers to increase the country's irrigated territory, Uzbekistan was the USSR's poorest republic. However, in 1991, along with Kazakstan, it was the most advanced CIS Central Asian territory, even if a good proportion of its population still lived on the verge of poverty. Shaken by the unemployment level among the young, and weakened by socio-economic imbalances caused by the influx of refugees, Uzbekistan also no longer received funds from Russia, which in 1989 financed about 20 percent of the state budget. Uzbek leaders, who often allude to China's economic model and practices adopted to regulate the population's food supply problems, seemed reluctant to bring about radical changes. Following independence, the government sought to prop up its Soviet-style command economy with subsidies and tight controls on production and prices. Faced with high rates of inflation, howewer, the government stepped up the pace of reform in the first half of 1994 by expanding privatisation, slightly reducing the role of the state in the economy, and improving the environment for foreign investors. Nevertheless, the state continues to be a dominating influence in the economy, and reforms have so far failed to bring about much-needed structural change. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) suspended a $185 million standby arrangement in late 1996 because of governmental steps that made fulfilment of the fund's conditions impossible. Notwithstanding the fact that 1996 was a year of positive growth (production growth 6 percent, GDP 2 percent) after a series of negative results, the fear of an expansion of the Asian crisis is widespread.

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Mineral resources Energy sources, especially hydrocarbons, are Uzbekistan's primary mineral resource. Natural gas is extracted from many deposits: in Gazli and near Bukhoro, in the extreme east of Karakalpakstan, and in the south, near the Turkmen border, where extraction of Shurtan's enormous deposits began recently. In 1996, with an extraction equivalent to 49 billion cubic metres, Uzbekistan was the CIS's third-largest producer of natural gas (7 percent of the total) and among the world's top ten producers (2 percent of the total). Petroleum extraction occurs in the Fergana Valley, in Qarshi, and near the city of Termiz (in the south, near the Afghan border). Even if crude oil extraction only amounted to 0.5 percent of the CIS total in 1996, it was, and continues to be, of strategic importance to Uzbekistan, as it reduces dependence on other countries for energy. The same is true for coal extracted from the Angren basin or near Osh. In 1993, Uzbekistan was the CIS's fourth largest coal producer (6.2 million tonnes), even if production amounted only to 1 percent of the total. In 1996, however, it fell to 2.8 million tonnes. Official reports claim that Uzbekistan extracts gold to the tune of a quarter of the CIS total, from the mines in Uchkuduk, Zeravshan and above all in Murantau. Verified levels of extraction are (70.000kgs in 1991). The 1996 estimate is between 80.000 and HO.OOOkgs. The importance of Uzbek gold is confirmed by the continued investments of the Canadian company Newmont Gold, which preferred to close unprofitable gold mines elsewhere when the price of gold fell. Production of copper (extracted in the Almalyk region) and iron minerals is high, but is lower for zinc, lead, tungsten, uranium and molybdenum. Agriculture Since the most ancient times, farming has been practised near oases, often in areas such as the Syr Darya basin, around its tributary the Chirchik, in the Fergana basin. It has also taken place along the lower valleys of the Zeravshan and Amu Darya. Improvements to the irrigation systems only began after the October Revolution, and occurred in two distinct phases. The 1930s saw the resurrection of a project to build a canal network between the Zeravshan and the canal joining Andijan, Fergana and Quqon to Leninabad (now Khujand, in Tajikistan). During a second phase, between 1955 and 1970, the extension of the irrigation network west of the Zeravshan to the Amu-Bukhara canal was completed. This network thus extended towards the 'steppe of hunger' (Betpak Dala, in Kazakstan) and more importantly linked into the Great Turkmen Canal (or Kara Kum Canal). The attitude of the local and Russian press to all these works was one of'pioneer' triumphalism. The imposing network of basins and artificial canals (tens of thousands of kilometres long) had more than tripled Uzbekistan's arable territory (today 90 percent irrigated) from 1,339,000 hectares in 1913 to 4,409,000 hectares in 1993.

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In 1996, the farming sector employed 41 percent of the active population, and was based on an intensive system of single-crop cotton cultivation. For decades, this remained the primary activity of Uzbekistan and the entire region (and remains so): cotton accounts for 84 percent of Uzbekistan's exports. However, the enormous output of cotton has led to serious desertification. It is difficult to establish cotton outputfigures,as harvestfigureswere falsified, but according to unreliable official statistics Uzbekistan produced an average of four million tonnes per annum between 1980 and 1990. This equals 60-70 percent of the USSR's total production. According to this same data, in 1990 Uzbekistan produced 10 percent of the world's total production and was the third-largest producer after China and the United States. Figures issued in the 1990s confirmed these results, despite the drop in production in the last few years: 4,646,000 tonnes in 1991 (an 8 percent drop from 1990), 4,234,000 in 1993, 3,934,000 in 1995 and 3.3 million in 1996. Between 1987 and 1996, Uzbekistan also tripled its cereal production, from about 1100 tonnes to 3 549 tonnes, becoming the CIS's second-largest Central Asian producer after Kazakstan. Rice production is also important: in 1987, Uzbekistan produced 20 percent of the Soviet total (and has been as high as 40 percent). The agricultural reconversion from cotton to food (vegetables, fruit, vines and fodder), initiated towards the beginning of the 1986, produced tangible results and established a greater degree of food self-sufficiency. In 1995, fruit crops in Uzbekistan (grapes,figs,melons, watermelons, apricots and cucumbers) constituted 10 percent of the CIS yield. Amongst the more recent agricultural outputs is tobacco (160 tonnes in 1994), a product of which Uzbeks are enthusiastic smokers. The complete absence of regulations has led British American Tobacco to invest in this emerging market. According to reliable international sources, the minor cultivation of opium poppies, used in pharmaceuticals prior to the 1990s, has now expanded with the loosening of government controls. It appears that production is exploited by local and Russian mafia networks, who have it refined and transported to Russia for the European market. In 1998, Tbshkent triumphantly announced that a fungus, leoftora papaveracea, had been cultivated which killed opium poppies, but nothing is known of its efficiency. Pasture occupies about four-fifths of the usable land. There were approximately five million head of cattle - one of Central Asia's highest figures - and over nine million sheep in 1996: stock farming is the second most important activity in the agricultural sector. There are rich pastures along the foot of the mountains in the southern and eastern regions. Rotation of pasture and cotton lands is also favoured. Camel and horse breeding is sporadic (about 150,000 head), the latter being celebrated heirs of a famous past. The Fergana Valley was the home of the celebrated 'celestial horse' much coveted by Chinese emperors for use in their own cavalry to combat the small, agile horses of the nomads who raided from regions north of the Great Wall. Also very important is the traditional breeding of the highly-prized karakul ram, which accounts for almost half of all sheep-rearing, and about a third of the CIS total.

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According to M.R. Stiglich (in Pellicce moda, Milan, N° 5, 1994), archaeological excavations carried out in Turkmenistan reveal the existence of a very similar breed of sheep a few centuries before the time of Christ. Bred in various Central Asian regions, Karakuls ('black lake' in Uzbek) most probably derived their name and origin from the town of the same name about 60kms south of Bukhara. However, there is also an urban centre in Kyrgyzstan and a lake in Tajikistan which share the name. The prized Astrakhan far comes from Karakuls, and was once used to make hats for numerous sovereigns. In 1902, US President Roosevelt managed to obtain some animals from the Emir of Bukhoro, who held the monopoly. Attempts were made to inure these animals to conditions in the USA, Canada and Poland, and even to cross them with other breeds. All experiments failed, except those of a fur trader in German South West Africa, now Namibia. Some animals found the climatic conditions there suitable and began to reproduce, thus starting a production that for decades has provided 'swakara' furs which are considered superior to the original. Map 4: Regional Agriculture (excluding Kazakstan)

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Industry Uzbekistan's industry benefits from the country's natural gas deposits, which allow energy self-sufficiency. The industrial structure improved during the 1930s, following the starting up of energy, mining and mechanical construction sectors. The majority of factories (about 55 percent) are concerned with the processing of agricultural

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raw material, and this predominance is one of the problems facing potential restructuring. The chemical sector is important, with a certain number of industrial plants, symbolic of the development of basic industries during the 1950s and 1960s. Various 'new chemical cities' developed during this time, such as Nawoiy and Superfosfatny, and the industrial zones of Quqon and Samarqand were created. The production of nitrous and phosphate fertilisers is widespread in Quqon and Samarqand: 1.5 million tonnes were produced in 1993, 6 percent of the CIS total. This type of production involves the use of some local minerals as well as phosphate from Kazakstan. The construction of a new refinery by the French companies Technip and Elf-Aquitaine is expected to take place on the outskirts of Bukhoro. In 1980, a new chemical plant was opened in Fergana. Constructed by the Italian company Tecnimont (Montedison group), it is expected to deliver a cellulose triacetate production of 42,000 tonnes per year. This substance is used to produce photographic and cinematographic film, varnish and yarn. The plant is strategically important because it involves the use of local raw materials (inferior cotton for cellulose and sulphuric acid, of which Uzbekistan was the CIS's fourthlargest producer in 1995, with 1,060,000 tonnes). It involves the production of products which are very exportable. Near the Fergana petroleum deposits, there is a large complex comprising a crude-oil refinery (which feeds a group of thermal power plants) and other chemical plants specialising in the manufacture of plastics (in 1993, about 3 percent of the CIS total) and synthetic fibres (4.2 percent). The entire region's most important iron and steel plant, built towards the end of the 1930s, is situated in Bekabad. The main raw material used is scrap iron. In the 1950s, in order to promote the expansion of cotton cultivation, industry moved to produce farming machinery (shovels and bulldozers to till irrigated areas, seed drills and harvesters). In 1990, these constituted the entire Soviet output of these products. Manufacture of machinery for the treatment of fibres (spinning machines and textiles) was also established. Nevertheless, sectors for the processing of agricultural raw materials remain dependent on Russia, and are obsolete. The canning industry is important, its main production being vegetable oil obtained from cotton seeds. Uzbekistan was the third-largest producer of this product in the CIS in 1995. Cotton fibre is only partially processed in the area. Most of the output is sent to large textile plants north of Moscow, although the world's largest cotton mill is situated in Toshkent. This, together with its other types of production, establishes Uzbekistan as the CIS's main, and the world's third-largest, cottonfibre producer overall. The imbalance between the intensive production of agricultural raw materials like cotton, and the scarcity offinishedproducts is also evident in animal fibres, wool and silk. There is also heavy manufacturing, of products for irrigation and the construction of roads, as well as for industrial vehicle assembly. Notwithstanding the Asianfinancialcrisis, the South Korean company Daewoo has installed a factory in Andijan for the construction of motor vehicles, and has invested $1 billion. The future of this factory is uncertain given the grave difficulty in which Daewoo finds itself.

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Map 5: Regional Industry (excluding Kazakstan)

Uzbekistan was responsible for a quarter of the USSR's total production of electrical industrial cranes (an odd outcome of the division of labour and Soviet planning). The Soviet Strategy for Economic Growth, implemented in Uzbekistan due to the abundance of agricultural and energy raw materials and manpower, has now been criticised for not having taken into consideration the fact that the industrial sectors chosen required hearty consumption of water. Since 1989, a process of industrial restructuring, into sectors with low water and high labour requirements (given the population's high proportion of young people of working age and worsening unemployment) has begun. This process has sought to favour the textile and agricultural-food industries, and to introduce electronic industries. Light industries have very little impact on the economy. Clothing, shoe and printing industries have a solely regional role. Hundreds of products for everyday use need to be imported from Russia. As medical consignments from Russia became scarcer, a pharmaceutical laboratory was opened in Toshkent in October 1993, in collaboration with the Turkish companies Eczacibasi and Sifar. Toshkent is at the centre of a large, multi-sector industrial region: coal and thermal energy come from Angren, copper from Almalyk, chemicals and electrical power from Chirchik, whilst mechanical construction and spinning factories are found in its suburbs. The Coca-Cola Company has formed a joint-venture through a subsidiary company with state-owned Uzpishrom - known as Cocaola Bottlers Toshkent Limited, with a share capital of $5.5 million - to produce

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the well-known drink close to the city. Various offices, study and research institutes are located in the city centre. However, some administrative and vocational schools and colleges have been transferred to Samarqand. Cotton Although evident throughout Central Asia, the northern limit of cotton cultivation runs across north-central Uzbekistan and southern Kazakstan. Since ancient times, the cotton cultivated was a local variety of poor quality. It was the Russian governor, Konstantin Kaufman, who introduced the American short-fibre variety {Gossypium hirsutum or Upland Cotton) and imported processing machines from the US. The greatest advances in cotton cultivation came during the second half of the nineteenth century when Russia went to war against Great Britain and Russian merchants were excluded from the London market. In addition to military and strategic factors between 1881 and 1889, there were also economic reasons to begin construction of the Transcaspian railway (which joins Baku to Tbshkent, crossing the Caspian Sea by ship and then via Krasnovodsk, Ashkhabad, Merv, Bukhara and Samarkand). The Bolsheviks, from Lenin's first decrees, also favoured this intensive cotton cultivation, perceiving it to be of strategic value. Cotton and cereals were among the few agricultural products which consistently benefited from important aid, either through investments, technical measures or favourable purchase prices. After construction of the Trans-Aral railway linking Orenburg to Toshkent, begun in 1899 and completed in 1905, the famous Turksib (its name an abbreviation of Turkestan and Siberia) was completed in 1931. This was built as a link to the Siberian region and as a means of supplying grain to Central Asia. The French geographer Jean Radvanyi asserts that cotton growing was the 'leading sector' of Central Asia's (and especially Uzbekistan's) entire economic development from the 1920s until and throughout the 1970s, despite the severe problems arising from it. During the course of these decades, the central authorities' tendency to exert pressure on local powers to increase production of 'white gold' were consolidated, without consideration of the physical possibilities and environmental consequences. This attitude was confirmed at the end of the great economic debate of the 1920s, and came to be defined as the Voluntarism of planning' because it did not recognise the 'development's objective limits' (these objectives were defended by Nikolaj Bucharin). Only many decades later was the programme acknowledged as having been excessive, the result of political interference in the economy. Local authorities, nevertheless, voluntarily adhered to central pressures, as they reaped the benefits of power, financial rewards and personal prestige. Unfortunately, this attitude threatened the region's entire agricultural structure for years to come. Cotton rapidly became the sole crop, replacing all other types of cultivation. Its predominance led to a form of neo-colonial 'trade imbalance', as 90 percent of cotton produced was destined for the Soviet Union's other regions and 'administered' by Moscow.

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In the climate of Central Asia the cotton fields freeze every year. Sowing could thus only take place in spring, immediately after the last frosts had melted. Shrubs had to be well, though not excessively, irrigated, while the use of nitrogen and phosphate fertilisers was advised. Adherence to crop rotation was most important, allocating about two thirds to cotton and one third to fodder which would 'fix' the nitrogen in the soil. The most efficient crop for the purpose is lucerne (Medicago sativa), which originated in Central Asia and was brought to Europe by Alexander the Great. Cotton growing is compatible with stock farming, and also complements other foodstuff cultivation and related activities, such as honey production and silkworm breeding. In fact, Uzbekistan's agricultural landscape is sometimes divided into groups of cotton fields surrounded by hedges of mulberry trees (whose leaves feed the silkworms). Irrigation canals flow nearby, alternating with vineyards and lucerne fields. The smaller, irregular-shaped fields consist of land which has been cultivated for decades, while the larger, regular-shaped fields have been more recently turned over to cultivation. The most important irrigation canals and waterways are lined with long rows of trees which function as windbreaks. Cotton production is severely constrained by the harshness of the climate, which does not allow for the improvement of the poor quality of fibre produced. This limitation is only partly due to rainfall shortage, rather more so to the length of the plant's growing cycle and temperature averages. A minimum of 150 days a year with a temperature above 14°C are needed for the most sought-after variety of cotton - a long-fibre, slender one (more than 32 millimetres) such as the Egyptian or American type - to reach maturation. Only at great risk and often with costly damage or the loss of crops is it possible to cultivate this variety of cotton in regions other than in Uzbekistan's extreme south and the southernlying mountains of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Given these risks, the more resistant short-fibre variety (less than 25 millimetres) is often planted, although it is less productive and much less profitable. Crop rotation has been abandoned over time due to the severe harsh production requirements imposed by economic planning. In an attempt to increase harvests at all costs, local authorities extended cotton production to fields due to grow fodder, ushering in a one-crop system on 90 percent of all arable land. This was also brought about by the increased use of chemical products (fertiliser and pesticides) and water, which created the risk of polluting the water-table. Evidence of soil exhaustion became evident immediately. This was because at the same time that areas under cotton were increased, the harvest totals/cotton fibre ratios continued to decrease. In other words, cotton crops deteriorated and yet were sold at ever-increasing prices. But most importantly, this caused complete environmental deterioration, the result of pollution from pesticides (also DDT) and the salinisation and desertification of the soils. From 1975, average cotton production yields decreased to 30 quintals per hectare. This decreased further to 23 in 1987, and eventually to 10. This was due to the poor condition of the soil (the cultivation of new lands only partly compensated for the drop in productivity) and the development of abnormal

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diseases characteristic of single-crop farming systems (cotton weevils and various lepidoptera). Uzbekistan has approached the American biotechnology giant Monsanto, increasingly a specialist in cotton after mergers with DeKalb Genetics and Delta Pine Land. Three years ago, Monsanto invented Bollgard, the first transgenetic cotton capable of synthesising its own insecticide (the bacteria bacillus thuringiensis). Even though the efficient Bollgard does not immunise the plants from all parasites, it paid Texan farmers handsomely in 1997, with a great reduction in the use of pesticides (half of those used in the USA go on cotton). Uzbekistan, the world's third-largest cotton producer in 1997, and regular supplier of high-profile groups like Benetton, is very interested in Bollgard. In a country with a monoculture, avoiding widespread loss of crops through pests (as happened in Turkmenistan in 1996) with transgenetic cotton is the equivalent of avoiding a national catastrophe. Transgenic cotton holds great possibilities for a country like Ukbekistan. In Uzbekistan, cotton's expansion has occurred to the detriment of other food crops (with resulting fodder shortages), which in turn led to an increased dependency on imports for the feeding of the population. Foreign dependency not only put great pressure on transport networks, but also increased the prices and deceased the availability of numerous products. This led to the disappearance of certain foodstuffs from the Uzbek diet, highlighting the country's increasing pauperisation. According to some analysts, the country's low level of agricultural mechanisation could mean a massive return to black-market work by women and children, a trend with a direct bearing on the high infant mortality rate and the education process. It was noted that during the period of cotton harvesting, from September to November, when the work must be done quickly so as not to waste any of the crop, a record number of students stay away from classes. It appears that Rashidov and the nomenklatura with whom he held power for 26 years are responsible, along with Muscovite complicity (Brezhnev's son-inlaw, Yury Churbanov), for the establishment of a proper mafia in the country. They are also to blame for having imposed the artificial boom, and for reaping the immediate benefits without sparing a thought for the consequences. In 1986, the newly-elected Secretary to the Uzbekistan Communist Party, Inamdjan Usmankhodjaev, admitted that one fifth of cotton production was nonexistent. In keeping with the spirit of perestroika, all politicians belonging to the Uzbek mafia were removed from their positions and subjected to a legal investigation, while decisions were taken to move agriculture towards an intensive multi-crop system. Cotton would remain the dominant crop, but preference was to be given to the better-quality fibres, and plantations were to be moved south. Thefinancialrewards system was revised, and great efforts were made to convert much of the territory to vegetable, fruit, cereal and fodder cultivation, in order to make the country self-sufficient in at least the last two of these. Generally, about 33O-35Okgs of fibre and 600-62Okgs of seed is obtained from one tonne of raw cotton. From the latter, 12 Okgs of good quality oil, which is also edible, is extracted. This oil is also used in the canning industry and in the production of various by-products, such as oils for special uses, soaps and plastic

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materials. In addition, the oil cakes remaining after the oil has been extracted make excellent cattle-feed. Only one primary manufacturing procedure occurs in cotton production areas: raw cotton is shelled, to separate cotton wadding from which the fibre is obtained from the seeds and the capsule. All grease is then removed and the fibre cleaned. These processes must occur on-site, and there are 150 cleaning workshops in former Soviet Central Asia, scattered throughout cotton-growing areas, standing out in the agricultural landscape. Despite being numerous, the cleaning workshops are overloaded, and do not allow all the cotton to be treated immediately, which leads to great production losses. Spinning mills are relatively scarce, textile factories even more so. The exceptions in this regard are the facilities of Fergana and Toshkent, Qizil Tong (formerly Krasnai'a Zarya, or 'red dawn'), recently re-equipped with machinery from France but still far from able to meet domestic demand. In Uzbekistan, as in all the Central Asian republics, there is a great imbalance between the production of textile raw materials (cotton, wool, silk and, where it is grown, hemp and jute) and local manufacture of finished products. Cotton is an illuminating example. In 1990, Central Asia produced 80 percent of the Soviet Union's raw cotton, Uzbekistan alone producing 60. Figures are similar for cotton fibre, with Central Asia producing 87 percent of the Soviet total, Uzbekistan alone 61.3. The entire region processed 7.7 percent of the Soviet total of cotton fabric, to Russia's 72.9. The same applies to silk (Uzbekistan produced 54.8 percent of the raw silk, Russia 51.8 percent of silk cloth) and to a lesser extent wool. In the past, Soviet economists long debated the nature of the problems associated with the decentralisation of textile production. Most of the official data published tended to show the effective impossibility of redistributing the textile sector in Central Asia. Apart from drought and the poor quality of water, the scarcity of textile factories is also due to the difficulty of finding the necessary labour in the area. In fact, the local population is mostly employed in the cleaning workshops in the rural areas. However, Uzbek workers constitute a small minority in the spinning factories and small textile works, where technicians, skilled labour and management are mostly Slav-speaking. During the 1970s, Toshkent's textiles factory, one of the region's largest, used only 5 percent Uzbek labour. Furthermore, due to the lack of qualifications among workers, local productivity is low, as is the quality of products manufactured, so general production is inferior to that of Russian factories. In fact, the 'decreasing quality of the manpower' was the Soviet central authorities' main excuse for refusing to decentralise the textile industry. Communications The communications network in Uzbekistan rests on two main ancient and overburdened railway axes. The first runs in a northwesterly direction from Samarqand to Bukhoro, Urganch, Dashkhovuz (in Turkmenistan), Nukus (in Karakalpakstan) and then on to Kazakstan and Russia. The second leaves Samarqand and travels in a northeasterly direction to Toshkent. From there, it

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crosses the border and joins the Kyrgyz capital (Bishkek) with Almaty. A secondary line runs through the Fergana Valley, where the road network is denser than in the rest of the country and transportation of goods is facilitated by the various navigable waterways. The railway network (about 3400kms of the standard Soviet gauge, 1.52m), the road network (about 81,600kms) and the system of navigable canals (more than HOOkms) do not form a proper 'network'. Access to many parts of the country is difficult, and eased only by using a domestic airline which flies old Antonov AN-2 aircraft inherited from Aeroflot. The only international airport to which the French company Thomson sold a modern air traffic control system in 1994 - is Toshkent. Uzbekistan Airlines' new direct routes (using Boeing 767s) include London, Frankfurt, Istanbul and Athens. The telephone network, with 1,458,000 subscribers at the end of 1995 (a density of 6.2 percent) is state-owned. In order to manage mobile telephones, the state-owned operator has instituted a joint-venture with American International Communications. Tbshkent's telephone exchange equipment was supplied by the Turkish company Telefas. As far as the media is concerned, a national press agency, UzA, was opened, as was a regional television broadcasting station in Bukhoro (which broadcasts in Russian, Uzbek and Tajik). Finance The provisional som-kupon was introduced 10 November 1993, parallel to the Russian rouble. A loan obtained from Turkey in May 1992 (apparently for $295 million) was used to support the project. However, fierce economic tensions with Russia during December 1993, exacerbated by disagreements over the 'Tajik crisis', led to Uzbekistan's estrangement from the rouble's economic zone, and shortly after, the som-kupon became the sole legal currency, to be officially replaced by the som (UKS) in July 1994. The som depreciated, and galloping inflation increased the price of a bottle of vodka to the equivalent of the minimum monthly wage. In the summer of 1994, the official exchange rate was 25 soms to the US dollar, in December 1995 it was 35.8, in January 1997 51.1 and in December 1997 75.8. In 1992, the main buyers of Uzbekistan's exports, apart from the CIS, were Great Britain (13.5 percent), Belgium (12.9 percent), Germany (10.8 percent) and Turkey (8.9 percent). Imports come mainly from Switzerland (21.8 percent), China (7.3 percent) and Turkey (3.8 percent). CULTURE The Uzbeks constitute the world's second largest Turkic linguistic group, and the Uzbek language is spoken by almost 17,500,000 Uzbeks from the republic itself as well as Uzbek minorities in other parts of the region. The language's origins and derivations may be traced back to the Chaghatay literature, which

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developed between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Northern and southern dialects of the language are distinguishable through phonetics and vocabulary, and through the degree of Persian influence. The northern dialect is spoken in the area near the Kazak border, in Urganch and Khiva. The Karakalpak language, a variant of Kazak, is also spoken in this region. The dialects of the south and southeast, like Andijoni (from the city of Andijan) and those spoken in Bukhoro, Tbshkent and Samarqand, have been influenced by a modernised form of Dari, the Iranian language presently spoken by the Tajiks. For a decade (1930-40), Uzbek was transcribed using a modified form of the Latin alphabet (as was Turkish in 1938). Before the Second World War, the Cyrillic alphabet replaced it, and remained in use until Uzbekistan gained independence. Uzbek became the official language in 1990 (under Article 4 of the new constitution), and the Latin alphabet was subsequently re-adopted for its transcription although the implementation of this reform has been postponed until 2005. The change will simplify publishing and television agreements, as well as communication with Turkey. A few years ago, Uzbekistan's Tajik population, living in Bukhoro and Samarqand, officially obtained permission to use their own language, have their own schools and publish a newspaper (Awaz-i Tadjik). Nevertheless, apart from this concession, the government did not hesitate to promote linguistic homogeneity, and though this was not yet an actual part of an actual 'uzbekisation' process, the exodus of minorities followed. Uzbekistan is at a junction between the Turkic and Iranian cultures. Inhabited by Tajiks, Persian-speaking and non-migratory populations, it was subsequently invaded by Uzbek and Turkmen nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples who, over the centuries, became integrated with the original population. The citystates, which in ancient times used to govern the region, were walled oases with a specific urban structure. The city quarters (mahalld) were divided according to ethnic group, and the houses had an inner courtyard with a garden and a vegetable patch, and were divided into a section reserved for men, another for women. With the start of islamisation in the eighth century, these centres were enhanced with monuments and buildings typical of Islamic cities: mosques, madrasa (schools of higher learning dedicated to theology and Islamic law), maktab (primary schools advocating the teachings of the Koran), bazaars and caravanserai (enclosures for housing the caravans). From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the wealthiest families living in Bukhara, Samarkand and Merv (now in Turkmenistan) decorated their banqueting halls (mehmonkhane) with arabesque murals andfinely-sculptedwooden beams. Parties were held in these halls, and the favourite entertainment included bachas (dances) and performances by a maskarabaz (juggler). In these city centres, the changing of seasons was, and still is, an occasion for great feasts which poorer families hold in the street, raising canvases between the street walls. From a certain point of view, this resembles the traditions of non-migratory populations, in which community customs and a hospitality culture are firmly rooted, due to their stability. Interaction with non-migratory Persian culture contributed to the development of a 'courtly' culture. This manifested itself in more sophisticated

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tastes in carpeting, and in the development of pictorial art: miniatures, paintings, calligraphy, binding and ceramic works. Musicians, chroniclers and panegyric poets (one who praises a sovereign or saint) animated court life. Following the dissolution of the emirate and Uzbek khanates, some characteristics of courtly life were transferred into the oral culture (a characteristic of nomadic populations) performed by ballad singers, poets-musicians and acrobats. Between 1920 and 1940, this patriarchal culture began to be absorbed into the proletarian one, thus becoming localised. The artistic tradition of poetic and musical improvisation (the latter thanks to musicians of the Bukhariot Jewish community) has succeeded in preserving a unique medium of expression, still in existence and full of vitality today. The originality of the popular feasts and market days has also been preserved, and these see wrestling, tightrope-walking and performances of popular theatre. In the area of music, the maquam, very similar to the Indian raga, is the traditional musical motif of the Fergana region, and it extended its influence to the rest of the country. It is borrowed from the Sufi culture, and often draws inspiration from the desert landscape. One of the most famous maquam artists is Monajat Yultchieva (monajat is Uzbek for 'plead', or 'implore'). Born in 1960 into a cotton kolkhoz, where her father worked as a truck driver, she learnt to sing from listening to the radio and television. She went on to train as a classical singer under Shawqat Mirzaev (son of composer Jan Mirzaev, who introduced the rabab, a lute with an extended neck, into Uzbekistan). Yultchieva, who never wanted to be regarded officially as an artist, became famous in her own country and in Europe. She made use of an orchestra, directed by her teacher, which included the rabab and other traditional instruments like the ghijak (or viella, an arc-shaped instrument that was played also in Europe during the Middle Ages),

santur, dotar lute, ney flute, chang cymbal and dayera drum.

On a literary level, the nomadic oral tradition is shared with Central Asia's other Turkic-speaking populations. This complements a strong Chaghatay literature, considered fundamental to the development of all Turkic literature, which in Muslim Central Asia replaced the literature of the ancient Uyghur language. Although it flourished only between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries in the Khorazm region and into Russian and Chinese Turkestan, the vividness of the language confounds the idea held by some specialists that the Uzbek contribution to Islamic civilisation is negligible and of little value. The term Chaghatay also refers to Eastern Turkish, as opposed to the Western Turkish, or Osmanli, spoken in contemporary Turkey. Chaghatay was greatly influenced by Persian and Arabic, and is a basis of contemporary Uzbek, and of most of Chinese Xinjiang's Turkic dialects (such as modern Uyghur). The name derives from Chaghatay, Genghis Khan's second son, who after his father's death inherited the Central Asian ulus (fief). There is substantial evidence that Chaghatay was the Mongol sovereign most opposed to Islamic authority. He always enforced rigid applications of the yasa (or yassaq, the code of Mongolian law) and bilik (sentences based on the yasa) in opposition to the Islamic sharia, but allowed writers great freedom. Chaghatay thus became a form of expression for aflourishingliterary world. Of many writers,

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the most famous were Qadi Nasir, known as Rubghuzi, who in 1311 presented his Qisas-i Enbiya to a prince (one of Chaghatay's descendants), Shaykh Sharaf, who wrote the mystical Muin al-murid, and Muhammad Khwarizmi, who in 1360 wrote Nagh al-Faradis ('the road to paradise'). At about the same time, Qutub translated a great work of a famous Persian poet from Ganjeh (Gandzha, in contemporary Azerbaijan, 1141-1204), Nizami's Khusrav ve Shirin ('the love of Khusrav and Shirin'). It is a long poem (stylistically known as masnavi) which relates the legend of the love story of the Sasanid King Chosroes and the Armenian Princess Shirin. A stone-breaker named Farhad was also in love with Princess Shirin, and committed suicide upon hearing false news of her death. Hasan Katib's translations of some Persian works by Farid al-Din Attar {attar means 'the chemist', a name applied because of his medical and pharmaceutical studies) are also important. These include the Bakhtiyar nameh, translated from Persian, and the translation of the Indian novels of Sindbad (or the seven viziers) which are also included in The Arabian Nights. Towards the beginning of the fifteenth century, when the region became part of the domain ruled by Tamburlaine's descendants, Chaghatay literature, while not able to displace Persian, continued to spread. It also became more erudite, using ghazal (a type of versification) and diwan ('song books', collections of ghazals) as a means of expression. These tend to associate earthly love with divine mysticism, and pain with lost love. The success of Chaghatay literature in its ghazal form is mostly attributable to Mir Alisher Navoi (or Ali Sher Nawai, 1441-1501), known as 'the melodious', and to poets Sakkaki and Lutfi. Navoi was an essayist as well as a poet; in a ponderous essay 'Muhakamat al-Lughatain' ('comparison between the two languages'), attempted to convey Chaghatay's expressive superiority over Persian. Regarded as Chaghatay literature's greatest exponent, the role of founder of the Uzbek language is directly attributed to him. Literary works also belonging to this period are those by the Turco-Mongol sovereign King Babur (or Baber, 'Tiger'), nickname of Muhammad Zahiruddin (1483-1530). Gaining control of Dehli, Lahore and Agra in 1526, he went down in history as being the founder of the Mogul empire in India. He is also credited with providing much information on contemporary Turkic and Persian scholars in his biography Babur nameh ('Babur's book'), considered the literary culmination of the language. However, Chaghatay's evolution was mostly the work of political and military undertakings, particularly the forming of the Uzbek realm by Muhammad Shaybani Khan, who also wrote wonderful poetry. Many other Shaybanid sovereigns used Chaghatay for their writings, such as Ubaidullah or the sovereign of Khiva, Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Khan (1605-63). He wrote Shagarat al-Turk ('history of the Turks') and the unfinished History of the Shaybanids, with an introduction about Genghis Khan, considered the last literary works in the language. The Janid and Mangit dynasties developed their own historiographical tradition, which in subsequent centuries might have been active. Instead, its development was limited by to the country's cultural isolation, which historians attribute to the influence of Persian writers.

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Uzbekistan, assigned the role of cultural centre for the region by central authorities soon after the October Revolution, was the Soviet Central Asia republic in which most books were published (2088 in 1990, 1200 in 1995). Furthermore, for many years it was the only republic with its own international journal, Soviet Uzbekistan, a monthly published in many languages (Uzbek, French, English, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Dari, Persian, Urdu and Hindi). Uzbekistan's active cultural life extends to research institutes, high quality university education and publishing activity, and Tbshkent now has no intention of relinquishing its position as the cultural centre of the whole region. RELIGION The population of Uzbekistan is predominantly Muslim. Pre-Islamic practices are less prevalent in this country than elsewhere, though religious practices have assumed conflicting forms, at times corresponding to the republic's linguistic map. Education, strongly encouraged during the Soviet era, produced a certain religious disaffection. However, the objectives pursued by 'russification' and 'sovietisation', along with education programmes, involved only sections of the Uzbek elite. For the majority of the population, this process did not penetrate into daily behaviour, still governed by religious practices (circumcision, matrimony and funeral ceremonies) considered part of a cultural heritage. This reality was highlighted in 1972 by some Soviet researchers: 'In certain customs and traditions there exists a close correlation between the national and the religious. To limit the role of one or the other is a delicate and complex task' (Nauka I Religiia, Moscow, N° 9, 1972). Interaction between the two became clear during the phase of religious revival at the beginning of the 1990s. In 1988, glasnost permitted more than 1800 clandestine mosques in Soviet Central Asia to surface, joining the 365 officially recognised mosques. At the beginning of 1992, M. Abdulla Ismailov (in charge of international relations at the Spiritual Administration of Religious Affairs of Central Asia and Kazakstan) enthusiastically declared, 'Three years ago Uzbekistan had eighty mosques. Today there are 1000 in the Namangan region alone (Namangan is one of the most religious regions). We had only two madrasa in the whole of the Soviet Union for the instruction of religious leaders. Today there are twelve. During the past year, 5000 citizens took part in the haj (pilgrimage to Mecca), compared with an average of 25 during the 1980s'. The significant return to Islamic teachings is therefore not out of keeping with the country's traditions, and was manifested in the opening of many new maktab and madrasa. Generally, the maktab had all been closed down towards die end of the 1920s, and replaced by secular schools. The only two madrasa in the whole Soviet Union were in Bukhara (opened in 1945) and Tashkent (opened in 1971). It is worth mentioning that in the Fergana Valley, which has always been the country's most religious region, radical Islamic elements are on the increase, and have transformed radical Islam into a stronghold for the Islamic Renaissance

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Party. This is also due to the influence exerted by the members of the Muslim Brotherhood repatriated from other Islamic countries, where they had emigrated (such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan). In the centres of some cities in the Fergana Valley, such as in Namangan, men and woman are separated on buses. More women are seen with their heads covered when walking along the streets, even though the observance of ramadan is little practised. When faced with radical Islam, Karimov has shown himself inflexible, but he has at the same time initiated the creation of an official religious body called the Mufriyat of Mawarannahr (Ma Wara al-Nahr is the Arabic for 'northern bank of the Amu Darya', synonymous with the Greek name Transoxiana), formerly the Muftiyat of Tashkent, led by Muhammad Yussuf. With this institution, Karimov hopes to promote religious feeling (and further his own role as social mediator) in order to counteract the increasing delinquency, drug trafficking and prostitution since the break-up of the USSR. The re-islamisation of society and daily life is an echo of the early 1980s, when war in Afghanistan caused an upsurge of local religious fervour not seen before. The link between a sense of nation or clan loyalty and religion has proved very important in Uzbekistan. Here Islamism has played, and continues to play, a more important role than it has, for example, in Kazakstan or Kyrgyzstan. In the process of establishing an Uzbek national identity, the orthodox Muslim religion (of Sunni of the Hanafi school), also predominant among former Soviet Central Asia's other Turkic populations, has been of major importance. Given the initial intermingling between non-migratory and nomadic populations, the activity of Sufi confraternities is less important here than elsewhere. Nevertheless, we should not forget Sufism's popularity in Samarqand, spread by the great mystic Ubaydallah Khogja Akhrar. Born in Tashkent in 1404, he became a member of the Naqshbandiya confraternity (distinguishable by their characteristic pointed hats, tunics made from raw wool, and the use of a calabash for water). He died in 1489 near Samarqand. The group, founded by the mystic Shaykh Bahauddin Naqshband (1317-89), spread mainly to the Fergana Valley and the region surrounding Bukhara. The founder's tomb is 12kms from the city, and has been venerated as a holy place (mazar) by pilgrims. In October 1993, the Uzbek government attempted to win the support of popular religious elements by organising a solemn celebration for the six-hundred-and-seventy-fifth anniversary of the founder's birth. In 1996, the Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church in Toshkent celebrated its hundred-and-twenty-fifth anniversary, while some US missionaries have succeeded in converting some Uzbeks to Protestantism. Among many minority religions - Bahaj, Yezidis and Shiia Muslims - is a very active branch of the Jehovah's Witnesses. All existing religions must be authorised by the new structure founded by the Uzbek government, the Council of Religious Affairs, on the condition that they practise 'non-interference in the political sphere'.

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Spiritual Administration in the Soviet Era The USSR regarded Islam, like all other religions, as a private concern, independent of the state. Nevertheless, during the 1920s the Soviet government used propaganda and administrative repression to oppose Islam. However, in 1945, in an attempt to reduce the inevitable alienation of the Soviet Muslim population (the Crimean and Kazan Tatars, Bashkirs, Balkars, Chechens and others), Stalin gave Muslims their own religious administration. The model adopted was inspired by the religious reforms of Catherine II in 1783, when she created the Muftiyat of Orenburg. All the Soviet Union's Muslims were thus placed under the authority offivespiritual administrations (of religious affairs), or Muslim Religious Boards, also known as nazarat or muftiya. This is because each is presided over by a mufti, an expert authorised to offer advice (fatwa) on controversial theological or legal-religious matters. (The Great Mufti, based in Istanbul, represented the highest religious authority in the Ottoman empire.) In the Soviet Union, a First Mufti presided over each province. As 75 percent of Soviet Muslims were concentrated in Central Asia's five republics, the most important and prestigious of the five muftiyat was the Muftiyat for Central Asia and Kazakstan based in Tashkent in Uzbekistan. For decades, this had as its propaganda organ the illustrated magazine Eastern Soviet Muslims, which at one stage was also a daily newspaper. It published religious and theological documents, articles on the life of the Muslim community, and also answered questions posed by readers. It was published in summary every trimester and distributed nationally. It was translated into English, French, Uzbek, Arabic, Dari and Persian. In 1991, it was replaced by Islam Noori ('light of Islam'), a bimonthly. With regard to the remaining four muftiyat, the second was established at Ufa (headquarters of the Bashkir ASSR, now Bashkortostan) for 'Muslims from Russia and Siberia', about 10 percent of the total number, concentrated in Bashkortostan, Chuvash and Tatarstan. The third was based in Makhachkala, capital of Daghestan, ASSR for 'Muslims from the North Caucasus', those in the ASSR of Adyghe, Karachay-Cherkess, Kabardino-Balkaria, ChechenoIngushetia and Daghestan. The fourth was established in Baku, Azerbaijan, for 'Muslims from Transcaucasia'. The latter two together covered around 15 percent of Soviet Muslims. Muslims of the former Soviet republics (as in Turkey) are generally Sunni of the Hanafi school of law. Exceptions to this are Tajikistan's Ismaili Muslims, Daghestani who belong to the Shafi school and the minor groups (such as the Yezidis). Beyond this there are also varieties of popular Islamic practices and mystical forms of Islam established by the Sufi brotherhoods. Azeri Muslims mostly follow Twelver Shiism, the Iranian state religion. A special fifth spiritual administration has also been established for them; its leader is known as the Cheyk-ul-islam ('leader of Islam'). The Soviet government often manipulated all five religious authorities, as demonstrated when Shamsuddin Babakhanov, the Mufti of Tashkent who succeeded his father in 1982, was dramatically expelled by 'popular demand' in

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1989, to be replaced by Muhammad Yussuf, who was substituted in 1993 by Haji Muktar Abdullah. In 1991, with the independence of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, each also established religious independence. From 1990, Kazakstan instituted its own muftiyat. Uzbekistan did likewise a few months after independence, renaming the old Soviet authority the Muftiyat of Mawarannahr. The Muftiyat of Turkmenistan was established in April 1994, headed by a qadi ('he who decides', a judge who applies Islamic law), NasruUah Ibadullah. The Spiritual Direction of the Muslims of Kyrgyzstan was set up in Bishkek. The new mufti, Qadi Kimsan Bay Abdurrahman, was born in Uzbekistan. Tajikistan is a different case: the local qadi, Akbar Turajanzade, led the religious opposition, the Islamic Renaissance Party, against the official mufti in 1992. In 1993, the country's former Communists, after regaining power, founded the Spiritual Direction of the Muslims in Tajikistan, and put Mufti Amanullah Nejmatzade as its head in June 1996. The four former spiritual administrations of Ufa, Makhachkala and the two of Baku are undergoing a process of fragmentation and have given birth to at least ten self-nominated muftiyat. UZBEKISTAN BIBLIOGRAPHY Allworth, Edward, Uzbek Literary Politics, The Hague, 1964, Mouton Idem., The Modern Uzbeks from the Fourteenth Century to the Present, a Cultural History, Stanford University, 1990, Hoover Institutions Press Cheterian, Vicken, 'Les ambitions contrariees de POuzbekistan' in Le Monde Diplomatique N° 520, July 1997, Paris Critchlow, James, Nationalism in Uzbekistan: A Soviet Republics Road to Independence, Boulder (CO), 1992, Westview Press Karimov, Islam, interview of 29 May 1991, reproduced in 'Service of World Broadcast' of 3 June 1991, BBC, London Idem., Uzbekistan: The Road ofIndependence and Progress, Tbshkent, 1992, Uzbekiston Editions Idem., UOuzbekistan a la veille du XXIe siecle, Tbshkent, 1994, Uzbekiston Editions Kirimly, Meryem, 'Uzbekistan in the new world order', Central Asian Survey Vol. 16, N° 1, March 1997, Abingdon (UK) Roy, Olivier, 'Un Ouzbekistan afghan?' in Catherine Poujol and Pierre Gentelle (eds), Asie centrale: Aux confins des Empires, reveil et tumulte, 'Serie Monde' N° 64, Paris, 1992, Editions Autrement Rossin, Maurice, 'Le coton en Uzbekistan', in Coton et Developpement N° 12, December 1994, Paris 'Uzbekistan seeking foreign partners for E&P projects', Oil and Gas Journal Vol. 94, N° 32, 5 August 1996, Tulsa (OK) Information: France-Ouzbekistan 6, rue de Bourbon-le-Chateau, 75006, Paris, tel. 0033-1-43265911.

History and ethnic conflicts

Baldauf, Ingeborg, 'The making of the Uzbek Nation', Cahiers du Monde Russe et Sovietique Vol. 32, January-March 1991, Paris Bensidoun, Sylvain, Samarcande et la vallee du Zerafchan, Paris, 1979, Anthropos Fourniau, Vincent, 'Genese de la nation ouzbeke' in Catherine Poujol and Pierre Gentelle (eds), Asie centrale: Aux confins des Empires, reveil et tumulte, 'Serie Monde' N° 64, Paris, 1992, Editions Autrement

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Idem., Samarcande timouride, Paris, 1994, Editions Autrement Lubin, Nancy, 'Assimilation and retention of ethnic identity in Uzbekistan', Asian Affairs Vol. 1 2 , N ° 3 , 1981 Nalivkin, V.P., Histoire du Khanat de Kokand, Paris, 1889 Olufsen, Ole, The Emir of Bokhara and his Country, London, 1911, Heinemann Urjewicz, Charles, 'Pogroms en Ouzbekistan', Herodote-Revue de geographie et de geopolitique N° 54—55, July-December 1989, La Decouverte, Paris

Art, architecture, literature and traditional music

Babur-Nama ('the book of Babur') translated from 'Chaghatay' by Jean Louis BacqueGrammont, Paris, 1985, Imprimerie Nationale; English version edited in 1921 by Sir Lucas King Balpe, Jean Peirre and Khamid Ismailov, 'Le ghazal ouzbek', in ANKA-Revue d'art et de litterature de Turquie, special issue 'Les litteratures d'Asie centrale', Remy Dor (ed.), N° 22-23, May 1994, Paris Fierman, William, 'Uzbek feelings of ethnicity: a study of attitudes expressed in recent Uzbek literature', Cahiers du Monde Russe et Sovietique Vol. 22, N° 2-3, 1981, Paris Ismailov, Khamid and Malherbe, Michel (eds), Parlons Vouzbek, Paris, 1995, LHarmattan Knobloch, Edgar and Milos Hrbas, The Art of Central Asia, London, 1965, Hamlyn Mongait, Alexandr, Archaeology in the USSR, London, 1959 Rempel, Lazar I., Architektumyi ornament Uzbekistana, Tashkent, 1961 Schimmel, Annemarie, 'Some notes on the cultural activity of the first Uzbek rulers' Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society, July 1960, Karachi and Chicago Waterson, Nathalie, Uzbek-English Dictionary, Oxford (UK), 1980, Oxford University Press Yultchieva, Monajat, Chants d?Ouzbekistan, compact disc C560060, Ocora-Radio France, 'Harmonia Mundi', Aries

3

TURKMENISTAN Turkmenistan Respublikasy Declaration of Sovereignty: 22 August 1990 Declaration of Independence: 27 October 1991 Area: 488,100 square kilometres Population: 4,298,000 Quly 1998 estimate) Density: 8.8 inhabitants/square kilometres Capital: Ashgabat (formerly Ashkhabad), 521,000 inhabitants (1997 estimate), with about 1,500,000 more in the greater metropolitan area.

POLITICAL EVOLUTION Turkmenistan is known for the weakness of the reforms implemented there towards the end of the 1980s, its geographical isolation, its low level of development of the institution of civil society and of infrastructure, and the rigidness of its local leaders. Its prevailing deep-rooted conservatism, shared by much of the population, dates back to the period of Russian colonialisation, when the Turkmens were divided into various tribes. These divisions still exist today, but are less marked. Some tribes have ceased to exist, and there are now only five main groupings. Nevertheless, the absence of a shared sense of national history, and of a nationalist or opposition political movement with a popular following (even during the perestroika period) can be attributed in part to the tribally arranged structure of Turkmen society. The Communist Party has remained the cohesive element in Turkmen society, and is recognised as such by the majority of the population. This was 129

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evident during the 1989 Congress of People's Deputies elections, and those held in January 1990 for the supreme and local Soviets, even though, predictably, only the Communist Party was allowed to field candidates. Voter participation was, nonetheless, high when compared to statistics for other former Soviet republics, where popular demands led to the creation of alternative political groups, or voters expressed dissatisfaction by boycotting elections. A few isolated groups of intellectuals attempted to form an opposition movement during the first few months of the 1990s. In January 1990, Agzybirlik ('unity') was formed, a minor party which unsuccessfully attempted to lay the foundations for an alternative policy, and called for greater economic, linguistic and cultural autonomy for the Turkmen. Tolerated for a few months by the government, Agzybirlik soon found itself short of funds and with negligible public support. The government was able to ban it without any dissent or protest. In February 1992, prior to US Secretary of State James Baker's visit to the country, Muhammedmurad Salamatov, leader of Agzybirlik and editor of the newspaper Dayanch, was detained and forced to flee to Bald (formerly Baku) in Azerbaijan, where he lives in exile, having founded another newspaper. In Turkmenistan, as in Uzbekistan, Communist Party members have succeeded in maintaining power without great difficulty. However, even if there is an ideological similarity between the Uzbek and Turkmen regimes in that both are structured on the basis of nomenklatura and continuity with the past, it is unwise to draw any further conclusions. Separmurad Nyazov, the civic committee secretary of the party in the capital city from 1980, and first secretary of the Turkmen Communist Party from 1985, was elected the same year as President of the Supreme Soviet. In this position, he began a policy of minor liberalisation, similar to that already adopted in the other republics some time earlier. In May 1990, Turkmen became the official language of state, and on 22 August 1990 the republic's sovereignty was proclaimed, important given Russia's declaration of sovereignty the previous June. Conservatism held its ground even during the attempted coup dyetat in August 1991, when Nyazov's attitude was ambiguous, but appeared cautiously in favour of the insurgents. During this time, opposition activists were arrested; a new national flag incorporating traditional local carpet patterns was adopted; some place names were altered and the Communist Party was renamed die Turkmenistan Democratic Party. These were superficial changes which endorsed rather than challenged existing structures. Only when the coup d'etat failed did the government announce its intentions, among them that independence would be declared soon. The government was thus catapulted to the leadership of a new sovereign republic having neither desired nor expected it. It was the first time in history that an independent Republic of Turkmenistan had existed, and it only did so as a result of external events. On 27 October 1991, independence and Nyazov's presidency (elected with 94.1 percent of the vote) were declared. A few months later, on 21 June 1992, after a parliamentary decision to fill the state's highest office through universal suffrage, Nyazov was re-elected for a five-year period with 98.3 percent of the vote. According to Reuters, however, in the city of Mary at least one quarter of

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the votes should have been rendered void. On 15 January 1994, Nyazov was reelected to the presidency until 2002, polling 99 percent of the vote. His comment on these results was, 'The population has decided. Nyazov initiated the reforms and he must be the one to see them through to completion.' The Personality Cult of Nyazov During this period, Nyazov developed a type of personality cult. He instructed his aides to refer to him as serdan ('commander'), while the Turkmen used his official name, Turkmenbashi ('Head of all Turkmens'), a name approved by parliament in October 1993. This is also the new name given to the city of Krasnovodsk. Nyazov's birth date, 19 November, was given a national holiday, 'flag day', which has now been moved to 19 February. The flag is a green field, with a vertical stripe on the hoist side and a claret vertical in between containing five different carpet guls (asymmetrical designs used in rugs) associated with the five tribes of the country. A white crescent is a reference to Islam, and five white stars in the upper left-hand corner represent the five regions. Nyazov's image dominates walls and city squares, appears on the new currency, and is woven into carpets. There is a variety of dahlia named after him, yoghurt jars have his image on them, and he has a personalised luxury after-shave directly imported from Paris selling at about $40 (four months of an average salary). It is also easy to become disorientated in the capital city, as many squares and streets, including the main street (prospekt) have been renamed 'Nyazov', as have many buildings, schools and hospitals. A mausoleum waits to receive him as a monarch after his death. In the meantime, a 70-metre tower is being completed, and will support a 12-metre rotating statue of Turkmenbashi. During the last few years, in which relief measures have been adopted, there has been no sign of any opposition party. Between 1990 and the present, the office of prime minister has been entrusted to Khan Ahmedov, and the government has experienced no crisis or reorganisation. Nyazov's domestic policy was developed under the banner of continuity, and hinged on the maintenance of social harmony. In speeches made prior to the declaration of independence, this continuity and social peace was presented as an essential political foundation, one to be preserved at all costs - even the cost of democracy - through authoritarian power. Towards the end of 1994, Nyazov declared, 'Democracy as a slogan artificially transplanted into unprepared ground, ineluctably generates ochlocracy ["government of the multitude", meaning in this case uncontrollable mob rule] with which we do not wish to replace stability'. He then remarked, yet more explicity, 'Perhaps you think that in Europe, because there is more opposition, there is more democracy, but in the east this is not so. Here we need a strong government and efficient laws.' In strict adherence to this design, Nyazov instituted an authoritarian policy which was often defined as 'necessary, but provisional'. It could be roughly characterised as against the multi-party system, the rules of the market and the creation of political associations, particularly those based on ethnic ties, and in

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favour of censorship of the mass media and hierarchical decision-making. Within this political framework, an artificial 'peasants party' was formed in order to court intellectuals previously regarded as 'dissidents'. The director Kakadjan Ashyrov, whose work concerns Turkmen traditions, was given a theatre by Nyazov. He is an example of one such intellectual, and is a national celebrity. In July 1992, the borders, which had generally been easy to cross due to 'unwelcome foreign influences' were closed, and the smuggling of weapons, drugs and other merchandise, in the past often tolerated, was prohibited, punishable by heavy penalties. In 1998, there were almost 700 death sentences passed; a greater part of these were related to drug trafficking. In January 1999, Nyazov reprieved these sentences, and they remain suspended. The Turkmen government openly draws inspiration from authoritarian Gulf monarchies (like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain), wealthy countries whose populations enjoy a high standard of living, but above all where there is a complete absence of internal opposition and no alternative leadership. Such countries are socially static, and a lack internal democracy. In Turkmenistan, as in these other monarchies, authoritarianism has to appear benevolent and magnanimous, and often has to make great economic concessions, and although the government has had to adopt 'populist' measures, an increase in the price of consumer goods in January 1992 caused general dissatisfaction. This did not culminate in protest, but was nevertheless noted and acted on by the government, with the announcement of a decision to provide, from the beginning of 1993, free water, gas, electricity and salt, and from the beginning of 1995, bread. It was only through these measures that the government managed to maintain internal stability and prevent the formation of opposition and the possibility, albeit slight, of the rise of Islamic radicalism. Religious feeling in Turkmenistan has its roots in a strong popular Islam, that is the Dervish orders, and in the Turkmen tribes' traditional anti-Shiite (and thus anti-Iranian) feeling. The long frontier shared with Iran (about 990kms) and with Afghanistan (about 75Okms) is patrolled by the joint forces of the CIS. From January 1994, command of the troops stationed along the rest of the country's territory was, theoretically, handed over to Turkmenistan by virtue of a bilateral agreement signed with Russia on 2 September 1993. Such an accord permitted the non-participation of Turkmenistan's own contingent (the only exemption among former Soviet Central Asian republics) in the CIS's 'unified intervention force' stationed along Tajikistan's southern border. In the new constitution, adopted on 18 May 1992, Turkmenistan is described as 'a democratic and secular state', taking the form of a presidential republic with a two-chamber parliament. This should, at least in theory, guarantee greater liberty to citizens and reassure the Slav minorities who have obtained dual nationality (only conceded in Turkmenistan and Armenia). The first house is the Halk Maslahaty ('The People's Council'), and is made up of 100 members, comprising the president of the republic, a deputy for each etrap (the Soviet raion or 'district'), and other figures (the President of the Supreme Court and Financial Court, the Attorney General, cabinet members and regional prefects and hakims). The second house is the Majlis ('Assembly'), and is made up of 50 deputies who

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remain in office for five years and who are elected by popular vote (but subject to presidential approval). It is no accident that 45 of these deputies are from Democratic Party of Turkmenistan (formerly the Communist Party). A certain degree of autonomy in debating and approving laws is allowed the hakims, but subject to presidential agreement. Territorial division into welayatlar (regions, singular welayat), shakmery (cities) and etrapy also involves the local administrative councils (gengeshy).

The Export Imperative After independence, the Turkmen government saw the possibility of using the new status to develop fresh relations with neighbouring states which had not been possible previously. It attempted to do this on a simple economic-political principle: to exploit the country's vast natural resources to profit its small population. The Turkmen economy relies heavily on other countries for imports (mainly of foodstuffs) and exports. Turkmenistan is one of the world's leading producers of natural gas, with enormous deposits, partly unexploited, and produces good quality cotton. These two items account for a large portion of the national income, so the export and international dynamics of these markets are the key factors in the country's development. It was thus important for Turkmenistan to break out of isolation as quickly as possible by seeking new trading partners while maintaining links with Russia. In order to avoid interference, it developed a policy of 'positive neutrality'. The country had been the USSR's third largest petroleum producer, and tried to preserve its hydrocarbon reserves and place these in the rouble economic zone. By signing various bilateral accords, and refusing 'global agreement policies' with the other former Soviet republics, it guaranteed itself maximum freedom of choice. In its efforts to gain international recognition, the Turkmen government showed interest in the USA (which Nyazov visited in March 1993 and April 1998), seeking advice from former Secretary of State Alexander Haig on how to attract American investment. Accords were also signed with France (in mining with Elf-Aquitaine, in electronics with Thomson and in construction with Bouygues), Japan and Israel (in agricultural technology and health products). President Mitterrand, on an official visit, received the gift of a seven-year-old Akhal Tekke stallion. The breed is highly prized and ancient, and always does well in the Olympics. British Prime Minister John Major and Russia's President Boris Yeltsin received similar gifts. Turkmenistan's foreign policy evolved out of the difficult search for equidistance between Russia (and with it the CIS, which Turkmenistan, though continually critising, joined on 21 December 1991), Uzbekistan, Turkey and Iran. In the CIS, Turkmenistan is regarded as a 'sceptic', along with the Ukraine, Moldova and Azerbaijan. Realising the strategic importance of its location, the Turkmen government has attempted to carve out a specific role for itself, clashing with the 'Uzbek hegemony' over the region. However, between the Islamic radicalism of Iran,

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Uzbek ascendancy and Russian liberalism, the Turkmen government's greatest fear lies in the spread of Russian liberalism, an influence which could challenge its own authoritarian foundations, a fear which has led it towards other Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Turkmenistan has participated in various meetings with its neighbours in order to resolve problems of regional instability that could hinder its development. During the Second Summit of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OCE), held on 10 May 1992 in Ashgabat, discussions took place on possible accords between the member countries on disputed issues, such as the export of hydrocarbons and the distribution of water reserves. Turkmenistan has tried to strengthen relations with the Persian Gulfs authoritarian monarchies, especially that of Saudi Arabia. Some analysts tend to emphasise religious links (Sunni Islam) between Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia, even though religious authority is weak in the former and very powerful in the latter. Others, however, stress that membership of the OCE and approaches to the Saudis were dictated by the need to optimise trade in hydrocarbons, the country's principal resource. According to unofficial sources, Turkmenistan has applied for membership of OPEC with the support of Saudi Arabia, which would like to control the natural gas market, which is complementary to, but also in competition with, the petroleum market. Since independence, there has been great interest from, and the possibility of accords with, Turkey, which in 1992 loaned Turkmenistan and the other former Soviet Central Asian republics hundreds of millions of dollars. This process was facilitated by historical and cultural ties. The Turkmen language shares many similarities with Turkish, and has been influenced by it. Like Turkey, Turkmenistan is predominantly Sunni of the Hanafi school. Finally, Turkmen leaders, like their Turkish counterparts, are in favour of preserving the state's secular nature. Other factors created optimism about the links, such as the replacement of the Cyrillic alphabet by the Latin one, theoretically from 1 January 1996. The choice of script remains an historical area of dispute between conservative and modernist bodies. Nayzov's official visit to Ankara at the end of 1991, and Siileyman Demirel's visit to Ashgabat in May 1992, led to the signing of a series of minor co-operation accords, which brought the latent Turko-Iranian rivalry in the region to light for the first time. To counterbalance Russian and Uzbek foreign policy (and restore equilibrium to its own foreign policy), Turkmenistan chose to initiate privileged relations with Iran. The Turkmen government believed that, for historical reasons, radical Islamism as practised in Iran could never assert itself in Turkmenistan, considering the country immune to such influences. Some countries have accused Turkmenistan of assuming an excessively pro-Asiatic orientation. In March, 1992 Iran opened a consulate (which later became an embassy) and a chamber of commerce in the Turkmen capital, in response to the Turkmen government's decision to build a railway between the two countries, which is in use today. Furthermore, the Iranian President, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (who went on an official visit to Turkmenistan in October 1993), declared himself ready to open schools in Turkmenistan with teachers trained in Iran. Iran

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also offered to become a transit point for goods travelling between South Asia and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus. After a visit in spring 1995 to New Delhi, Rafsanjani signed an accord which has brought a considerable volume of merchandise from India to the Turkmen market, and on to the other markets of the region. Relations with Iran are extremely well developed, and Nyazov, who visited Teheran in August 1994, seems convinced of their benefits. In fact, he chose to sell part of the country's natural gas through Iran, while the link across the two countries to the port of Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf is in the final stages of completion. In 1992, Turkmenistan was given a seat in the UN, joined the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the IMF and the World Bank. THE TERRITORY AND POPULATION Turkmenistan is in the southwestern part of Central Asia. The territory is almost completely desert, with few oases. The country faces the Caspian Sea to the west, and borders Kazakstan and the autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan (incorporated into Uzbekistan) to the north. Turkmenistan's eastern border runs almost parallel to the Amu Darya, and only diverges from it near the river's lower course. To the south, Turkmenistan borders Iran and Afghanistan, along the former boundary of the USSR. The climate is arid, with temperatures ranging from one extreme to the other, with very little moderate weather. Summers are extremely hot (July-August averages exceed 45°C), winters are glacial (minimum temperatures can reach -30°C). Rain is scarce, and concentrated on mountain peaks and hills in the country's southern area, where annual rainfall may be over 200 millimetres. Vast regions do not receive rain from June to October, and violent winds often create sandstorms in the desert areas and blizzards in the mountains. Much of the Caspian coastline (except the Daghestan, Russian and Iranian sections) is below sea level. The Turkmen coastline is flat between the Iranian border and the Gulf of Turkmenbashi, more uneven and interspersed with cliffs farther north. The whole coastline is unsuitable for human settlement. The Caspian is the world's largest salt lake (at 371,000 square kilometres). Its level is slowly but constantly on the decrease due to natural causes (such as the high rate of evaporation) and artificial ones (such as the reduction in inward flow from tributary rivers). These phenomena are altering the coastline's shape, although there is no evidence in the Caspian of the ecological catastrophe which struck the Aral Sea. The problem has been perceptible since the 1960s, and has been tackled in various ways. Towards the end of the 1970s, the Gulf of Kara Bogaz was dammed, which created large salt marshes in some areas, now marked on some maps as the Kara Bogaz Gol or Kol (gbl is Turkish for 'lake'). With greater effectiveness, a river canal was constructed which, other than facilitating river transportation, diverted water from the Don into the Volga, the Caspian's main tributary (the other is the Ural). This helped redress the balance between water coming into and leaving, enabling water levels to be controlled, thus protecting

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the very important caviar industry among other things. With this aim, and in the expectation of reaching an agreement on the use of the Caspian's petroleum reserves, two conferences were held in 1995 (in Baki and Almaty) to define the legal position. Should the body of water be classified as marine, then division would be regulated according to international law; if classified as a lake, then borders would be set by agreement between the interested parties. The mountainous areas are to the country's south. The Nebit Dag ('many mountains'), whose highest peak Bolshoj Balkhan reaches 1880 meters, are a small, bleak chain about lOkms from the coast. The Turanic Lowlands (Turanskaya Nizmennost in Russian) are closer to the northern-central area, and extend into Uzbekistan and Kazakstan. This is a desert region, and is also quite low-lying (2OO-3OOm). The Kara Kum or Karakumy ('black sands') desert is in the eastern central area. Given its size, areas of this desert have also been given specific names, such as Yugo-Vostochnye and Zaunguzskyie. This desert, also known as the 'Turkmen ditch', is situated in a hollow basin, and consists of dunes, barkhane (shifting dunes), takyr and chior, large basins and depressions in which after the spring rains poppies and other flowers spring up. They die soon after, leaving space for salsolacae (plants which grow in sandy soil) which are capable of absorbing great quantities of mineral elements. Since the sixteenth century, a tributary of the Amu Darya has run through one of these takyr, which is 30kms long and 8 or lOkms wide, and goes down to 50m below sea level. To the extreme south, along the Iranian border, lie the Kopet Dag, which reach over 3000m in height. The highest peak is Ayrybaba (3139m). Also to the south, along the Afghan border, is the Karabil plateau (known as Vozvyshennost Karabil in Russian). The Amu Darya is the most important river, as a section of its course flows through Turkmenistan. Secondary rivers flow from the Kopet Dag mountains, while the Atrak River, a tributary of the Caspian, runs along the Iranian border. The only other rivers are the Tejen and Murghab, originating in Afghanistan. The waters of the Murghab River, once they have reached the ancient oasis-city of Mary (formerly Merv), are then conducted along the Kara Kum Canal across the Kara Kum desert. The Kara Kum Canal, or Great Turkmen Canal, llOOkms long and 20-100m wide, is part of the Amu Darya, and flows through Mary to Ashgabat, where it rises near an oasis bordering the desert. Construction having begun in 1954, this canal (know as Canal Lenin in the past) was criticised for its enormous size (the result of Soviet 'gigantism'), which permits excessive evaporation from its large surface, high costs and heavy maintenance burden. Further development of the project, which envisaged an extension to the Caspian Sea, is now abandonned. The canal is navigable for about 55Okms, and irrigates approximately 600,000 hectares of land, which have been transformed into pasture and arable land on which much cotton and rice is grown. Numerous artificial basins function as water reserves. The vegetation is richer near these lakes, along the watercourses and close to the oases, and consists of poplar, alder and willow. There are numerous salt lakes, but wind and sun often alter their positions and surface areas, which makes surveying difficult. Many of these lakes are dried

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Map 1: Turkmenistan V