From the category archives:

Uzbekistan

Economic purge in Uzbekistan

by Dafydd

A report in Asia times implies Uzbekistan has gone Mugabe-esque.
Seems that Karimov has ordered the arrest of a whole slew of Uzbekistan’s richest.
And what do you know -
“Uzbek officials are portraying this campaign as a sort of anticorruption drive”
Alternative theories are – “the crackdown could be connected to the president’s daughters. Such reports say Gulnara [...]

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Department for Propagation of Virtue and Punishment of Vice (Secular Edition)

by Nathan Hamm

RFE/RL’s Uzbek service has reported that Uzbekistan’s secular mutaween have sentenced anti-AIDS campaigner Maksim Popov to seven years in prison. The court found that a brochure he distributed is “incompatible with local traditions.”
The Russian-language booklet at issue, “HIV and AIDS Today,” gives detailed information about preventive measures to avoid the deadly disease, including the importance [...]

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Craig Murray Gets Stinged, Or Something

by Joshua Foust

The Guardian reports on faux-artist Sting holding a private concert for GooGooSha, our favorite Central Asian autocratic dictator-daughter. I’m less concerned about a quasi-celebrity being hypocritical for cash—empirical hottie Monica Bellucci did it too!—than I am about how moralistic people are being about Sting.
Our other favorite Uzbek Craig Murray is by far the most entertaining [...]

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Roghun Rage

by Asher Kohn

Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have been feuding over energy rights, gas rights, and other natural resources for a bit now. Over the weekend, though, things took another step in the direction towards weird. Shots were almost fired, reportedly, over a cow.
By its actions, the Tajik side severely violated generally accepted international norms and bilateral agreements to [...]

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Doctor Who? Craig Murray

Thumbnail image for Doctor Who? Craig Murray by Joshua Foust

(via Siberian Light) David Tennant, the British actor most famous for playing the revitalized Dr. Who (which is pretty enjoyably campy, truth be told), has apparently recorded a radio drama about Craig Murray.
Recording finished last week on the Hare adaptation of Murray’s book, Murder in Samarkand, for Radio 4. The script had originally been [...]

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Uzbek Pictures

by Dafydd

A slide show of ten picuteres from the BBC showing some scenes from Uzbek life. I rather liked them. The authorities thought differently, and the photographer (Umida Akhedova) is now awaiting trial for portraying Uzbek society in a negative light,

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Tamerlane and the sack of Baghdad

by michaelhancock

Greetings all –
it’s been too long since my last post.  My academic career is taking me further and further from contemporary Central Asia.  In any event, I hope to post more this semester, and certainly this coming summer.  In any event, I thought I could share one of my term papers from last semester, as [...]

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I want YOU to mumble a few words of Pashto

by Asher Kohn

The US Military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, or I suppose someone on that board, came up with a moderate reorganization of the military. The plan is for a corps of experts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help drive military goals and make sure that their operations won’t blow up in their faces. I really don’t [...]

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New Year’s Resolution #2: Cut Down Trees in Amir Temur Square

by Noah

While on the topic of arbitrary executive decisions in Uzbekistan (see New Year’s Resolution #1 below), you may not have noticed that the Tashkent city government has cut down all the trees in the city’s famous Amir Temur square. According to Uznews.net, the contentious but often entertaining opposition site, this one turns out to be [...]

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Making Foothills out of Footnotes

by Asher Kohn

Partway through Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field (which is fantastic and will be reviewed when I’m finished) I came across the following footnote to an article by Thomas Tuttig on Loya Paktia:
“‘Taliban release video of German who Targeted US Afghan Base’”[cited].…According to one source, it ‘appears the IJU is an umbrella [...]

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