This will be my last piece on Uzbekistan. I just wanted to give a brief picture of what is going on there now, since I have spent so much time back in the dark ages with Genghis Khan and Tamerlane.
Islam Karimov is the president of Uzbekistan, and has been so since 1990, when he was elected by the still-in-power Supreme Soviet. It says a lot about who the people of Uzbekistan are that Karimov, emblematic of the old regime, a symbol of the Communist state which wrecked their country, continues to be elected as their leader. Other countries, Eastern European countries, (the Czech Republic is a perfect example) had purges of their entire government. Anyone connected with Communism at all had to GO.
Uzbekistan is not really a country yet, not really a nation. They don't know what it really feels like to be free citizens, to participate in the government of their country ... there is a disconnect between the leadership and the citizenry, which, of course, existed during Communism, but it continues today.
The regime in Uzbekistan is run by former Soviet-Brezhnev-style bosses, and Karimov heads up a sterile dictatorship which, so far, has kept the country from fracturing. Democracy would be useless here, at the moment, since there is no infrastructure, nothing set up to support and uphold democratic institutions.
Karimov is a very isolated leader. He came up through the ranks of the bureacracy, very much insulated within the Communist hierarchy. He is a Communist, for God's sake. What that means, in a practical sense, is that he doesn't understand economics AT ALL. He has been unable to help the country modernize, or integrate into world markets. He doesn't get it.
On the flipside, however, he is not averse to allowing businessmen come from all over the world to set up businesses here, to get things going. Some of the other "stans" take a "we can do it on our own" attitude (Turkmenistan), and because of that, their people are starving and ignorant. Uzbekistan at least has interaction with other cultures in this way. Karimov is also very authoritarian, very uncompromising. He doesn't really behave like a Western leader. His regime is very tribal. He looks out for his tribe. He sees the Uzbeks as his tribe, he is responsible for them. They need a strong hand.
Uzbekistan also has the worst human rights record of any of the former Soviet republics.
The police are completely corrupt. The mafia is everywhere. It is a completely unsafe place for Westerners to travel. Westerners have to shack up in the local fleabag hotel, and must carry all their money on them at all times, and never leave anything of value in the room, because it will not be there when they return. A Westerner coming to town is still a relatively rare thing, and word is out on the street in a matter of moments. The Westerner is prey, here. The criminal element is highly visible. Everyone is broke, poor, with no prospects, and many people are raging alcoholics. This is a powder-keg.
In the early 1990s, as I mentioned in another post, there was a mass exodus of Russians from Uzbekistan. The Uzbeks had harassed them into leaving. However, this had a result which could have been foreseen if the Uzbeks had thought about it at all: the Russians leaving decimated the ranks of professionals in the republic, and institutions and businesses were left empty, with nobody there who could train the Uzbeks, nobody knew how to do anything.
From their history, the people of Uzbekistan assume that the government is not there to serve them. They have no experience with representative government. They were not ready for nationhood.
Karimov's dictatorship became less severe throughout the 1990s ... but at all times it is a modern-day version of Genghis Khan's and Stalin's regimes of absolute power.
Some of the issues for present-day Uzbekistan:
Chaos is breaking out all around them. In Afghanistan, in Tajikstan. There is a worry in regards to Tajikstan, which has a massive Uzbek population. (Tajikstan is an ally of Iran, due to ethnic similarities, and Iran is a mortal enemy of Uzbekistan from way back when, when the Persian empire conquered them. People have very long memories here) The fear is that Tajikstan could become a base for Iranian influence in Central Asia. And Uzbeks fear that Iran is trying to promote a "Greater Tajikstan", which would include the millions of Tajiks in southeast Uzbekistan and 4 million in Afghanistan.
I've said this before and I will say it again: anytime any leader talks about wanting to create a "greater" anything, know that what that basically means is war and ethnic cleansing.
Uzbekistan is a bit of an expansionist threat itself. There are millions and millions of Uzbeks who live outside the borders. Uzbekistan covets territory in Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan.
Karimov, a secular man, uses the "Islamist threat" from Afghanistan as his rationale for authoritarianism. He refuses to countenance any organized Muslim piety, and persecutes Muslims. Which could end up being a big ol' boomerang, eventually, dressed up like a suicide bomber. In 1998, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was formed, and they stated as their aim the overthrow of the Karimov government. So far this has not occurred, but it is a potentially very dangerous situation. Karimov becomes more authoritarian, the Islamic Movement becomes more vocal, there are more despotic crackdowns ... it is very bad and could easily get much much worse.
The whole place is chaotic, enigmatic, contradictory. The Communist rulers persist in power here, only they are under another name, the regime pays lip service to Islam and yet cracks down on militants, the economy has continued to loosen up, which is good, but there is absolutely no promise of democracy here. At least not yet.
I'll close with an anecdote from Colin Thubron's book The Lost Heart of Asia. Thubron visits the tomb of Tamerlane (the terrifying warrior of long ago who conquered the entire area, and made his capital in Samarqand). He has an encounter with a caretaker.
...from the emperor's skull the Soviet scientist Gerasimov painstakingly reconstructed a bronze portrait-head, before sealing Tamerlane back in the tomb. Under the sculptor's hands there emerged a face of hardened power, compassionless, bitter and suble. Perhaps some Slavic prejudice heightened the epicanthic cruelty of the eyes; perhaps not ..."He was a hero," said a voice behind me. I jumped. The caretaker had entered noiselessly and was looking down at the tumult of calligraphy on the slab. "What a history!"
"Perhaps he should have done less," I said.
"Less? No. Timur [Tamerlane] turned us into one country." He seemed light-hearted, but a reticent evangelism tinged him. "Yes, he was cruel, I know. People come to this grave from Iran and Afghanistan and they hate him. They say, 'He destroyed our land, he enslaved us!' And of course it's true. He smashed Isfahan and Baghdad." He smiled charmingly. "He was ruthless."
I said, "Ulug Beg might be a better hero for your nation."..
The caretaker laughed ... "He was only a teacher ... But Timur was world-class! If I was an Iranian, I'd hate him too!" He was laughing at himself a little ... "But Timur was not a savage. He knew about Alexander of Macedon, and the slave leader Spartacus and ... "
"Spartacus?" This was a Soviet cult leftover. "Did he?"
"...and he'd read the great Persian poet Firdausi, who claimed that the Iranians were natural rulers and the Turks were natural slaves ... Our two worlds have always been at war. And when Timur overran Persia and came to Firdausi's tomb he shouted: 'Stand up! Look at me! A Turk in the heart of your empire! You said we were slaves, but look now!'" ...
He glowed with vicarious triumph. Tamerlane for him was the unifier and recreator of his national fatherland, of the Pan-Turkic dream. He said, "The Persians were here once, you see. You've been to Afrasiab? You've seen those Sogdian paintings, Persian things? They were our conquerors."
"Those paintings are extraordinary..."
"So Timur avenged us. He created a Turkish empire ... He's our hero."
I said: "But he was a Mongol."
"No, Timur was not a Mongol, he was a Turk."
I stayed silent. Everyone was claiming Tamerlane now. Uzbeks and even Tajiks whom I met would debonairly enroll him in their nations. In fact Tamerlane had been a pure Mongol of the Barlas clan, infected by Turkic customs. But this pedantry could not staunch the caretaker's sense of ownership or belonging.
"I may be an Uzbek," he said, "but above all I am a Turk. Most people have forgotten their tribes now, but I know my father was a Kungrat, my mother a Mangit -- these are Turkic tribes."
"They're Uzbek tribes too."
"But you can't feel Uzbek." He was losing the infant Uzbek nation in a Turkic sea. "Look at our ancesors! We have Navoi, we have Mirkhwand, we have ... " His list spilt into the unknown for me. In fact his people were ethnically too complex to shelter under any name. Even his Turkic umbrella was full of Persian holes.
The hero of Uzbek literature, the 15th century Timurid poet Navoi, had written of Uzbeks only to disparage them. Yet his name and image were ... ubiquitous in Uzbekistan ... Young in their state, Uzbeks and Tajiks were suddenly annexing poets or scientists out of the past, steeping their nation in the magic of great men. The Tajiks were even appropriating Saadi and Omar Khayyam, any Persian at all. To challenge such claims was to wander an ethnic labyrinth until the concept of a country became meaninigless.
The caretaker got to his feet, still reeling off names ... "And we have Timur!"
He switched off the sad bulb and locked the narrow door behind us. In the sanity of daylight he relented a little. "Well," he said, "occasionally somebody does feel quite strongly 'I'm an Uzbek' " -- he feebly thumped his chest -- "but you don't hear it much."
We walked around the mausoleum in the sun. Some ease and lightness had returned to us. Uzbek independence had freed him into pride, he said, instead of condemning him to some Slavic sub-species. "Of course I'm pleased by it. Everyone I know is pleased. You've found some not? Well, those are the uneducated ... Some people don't know what to feel. They can't see beyond their faces. They just know that things are bad now. But I'm thinking of my children, and the world they'll grow into. I want it to be their own."
...I was gazing into the crypt. it was a vent for whispered prayers. I straightened and moved away, shaking off the notion that some dreadful authority lingered in those shreds of gristle and calcium under the stone.
The man went on eagerly. "How can anyone regret the Soviet Union falling to bits? They bled us. In the old days they gave us five kopeks for a kilo of cotton. Just five kopeks. One factory in Russia used to make two shirts out of a kilo and sell them for forty roubles each. Moscow said we were partners, but what kind of partnership is that?" He clasped my hand in illustration. "Partnership should mean friendship, shouldn't it?"
We had circled the building now,and the handclasp turned into farewell. As I walked back across the courtyard, his shouted optimisms followed me to the gate. "Enjoy our country! Everything will get better!"
Above him the great dome made a lonely tumor above the ogre-king.
There are two things I absolutely have to mention.
1) Karimov actually is an economist and the man is very smart. His unwillingness to reform the economy significantly speaks both to his lust for unrivalled power in his hands (and those of the Samarkand clans at the expense of Ferghana clans) and his knowledge that economic reform leads to upheavals that threaten him. He gets it, but he just doesn't care.
2) Uzbekistan is safer for Westerners than many other places I can think of. People are friendly there and the police are starting to get the "don't mess with foreigners" message. It's also one of those countries where you certainly can stay sequestered from the locals should you choose to do so. There are fabulous hotels in Tashkent, great restaurants, and fairly good nightlife (better than Philadelphia, in my opinion).
Posted by: nathan at January 3, 2004 1:41 AMNathan - I just checked out your blog and am very excited to read more. Central Asia (along with James Joyce and Kurt Cobain) is a huge passion of mine - but I have never been there.
I love the comments - it is why I posted these essays. My readers continuously amaze me.
I WILL go to Uzbekistan someday!
Posted by: red at January 3, 2004 8:05 AMWait, here's another good way to see the country besides tour operators (this one's cheaper). Get in with Peace Corps Volunteers and visit them. They love it. I was always happy to see a new English speaker. Dee leaves in 10 days! They are leaving from Philadelphia, so I'm going to go see her and the rest of the new group off.
Posted by: nathan at January 3, 2004 8:49 PMDear Sheila,
Hello. Please excuse my long message, but I have much to say about a very large (and emotionally powerful) collection of essays. I found your websites while looking for information about Samarqand and Bukhoro. And I wasn't disappointed, since you had obviously done a large amount of research. Thank you for that. However, my joy turned to sadness and then to rage when I read the last page, “Uzbekistan Today”. I honestly felt sick when I read the anecdote from Thubron’s book, which described the ignorant, warped, historically inaccurate views of caretaker of Timur’s mausoleum. For him (and for millions of other Uzbeks) to glorify Timur’s reign of terror—even as they admit the suffering he inflicted upon the peoples of Iran and Afghanistan—is like Germans endorsing Adolf Hitler as a real upstanding gentleman and great leader who formed a great state. I don’t mean to exaggerate and realize it is difficult for Westerners to understand how events that occurred centuries ago can still have such a powerful influence over people “over there”, but Timur was a monster—an egomaniacal, ruthless psychopath who used the very same Iranians and Afghans (artists from the cities of Heart and Esfahan) whom he conquered to build his sparkling capital.
Imagine for a second that some imaginary force invaded the U.S. (or Britain or Canada or France), and destroyed nearly EVERY major city they came across (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington…the collected knowledge and achievements of centuries, all destroyed). Tus, Rey, Neyshabur, Marv, Herat…these names mean little to modern Americans or Brits but they were huge cities, as important then as London or Paris are now. That is what the Mongols did to Iran and Afghanistan and Central Asia in the 13th and 14th centuries. Many cities were never even rebuilt, such as Marv and Neyshabur, even though they were just as amazing as Samarqand and Bukhoro—the cities in modern Uzbekistan that Western travelers always praise. And following the bloody footprints of his Mongol predecessors, Timur destroyed many of those same cities, probably so that his new capital would have no cultural or economic rivals.
The part that truly made me feel as if someone had sliced off a piece of my flesh though was when the caretaker chuckled while saying that if he was Iranian, he would hate Timur as well. It was like someone chuckling while talking about the Holocaust and the murder of millions of Jews, Gypsies, Gays/Lesbians, Poles and Catholics. Well, I suppose that considering this caretaker’s admiration for a psychotic mass-murderer, I shouldn’t be surprised to hear him state blatant mistruths, such as when he says that Timur “avenged” the inhabitants of Central Asia by punishing their Persian “conquerors”.
But what I don’t understand is that, you yourself seem to echo the ultra-nationalistic Uzbek caretaker at one point in your essay. Earlier in “Uzbekistan Today”, you seem to imply that the Uzbeks resent or distrust Iranians for both historical and modern political reasons: 1. because “the Persian empire conquered them” and 2. because Iran is promoting a “Greater Tajikistan” (along with war and ethnic cleansing). Well, I don’t know who your sources are, but I think those interpretations are deeply flawed. Modern Iran has never laid claims to any other nation and has never supported the idea of open war between itself and any of its neighbors (including Saddam Hussain’s Iraq, which invaded Iran around 1980). And despite all the horrible things they have done to their own people, the mullahs who rule Iran are not proponents of “ethnic cleansing”, probably because of the simple fact that Iran is itself a very diverse nation, with millions of Turks, Kurds and Arabs. As for the reference to a Persian invasion of what is now Uzbekistan, the last Persian/Iranian/Indo-Aryan state to rule Central Asia were the Samanids, who lost power in the year 999. So from the 10th century to the year 1500, for around 500 years, Central Asia was ruled by Turkish and Mongol dynasties, not Iranians. Ancient empires based in southern Iran did invade Central Asia, but that was long before the coming of Islam and the rise of the Samanids and the arrival of the Turkish tribes; the peoples these Persian dynasties conquered were other Iranians, such as the Bactrians and Sogdians (the ancestors of modern Tajiks living in the cities of Samarqand and Bukoro, and in the nation of Tajikistan). So Timur didn’t avenge any previous invasion or liberate Central Asia from “foreign” Persian rulers. He was just another madman in a long list of madmen that have plagued that region of the world, all the way down to the Uzbek dictactor Karimov and Saddam Hussain. And now he is the Father of Uzbekistan…which is ironic since the Uzbek dynasty that came to power in 1500, forming the political foundations of modern Uzbekistan, destroyed the last remnants of Timur’s crumbling Timurid Empire.
Anyway, I’m sorry if I offended you or if I offend anyone else who reads this (LONG) message. I’m not a proponent of nationalism and try to keep my mind free of ethnocentric views. But, as a person of Iranian heritage, who is just as disgusted by the medieval holocaust unleashed by the conquerors Chengiz Khan and Timur-e-Lang as I am by the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, I felt the need to express my views. Thank you for your patience. And thank you for lots of great information.
Sincerely,
Sina Yousefi
ps: if you want some great historical information about Central Asian cultural figures, visit http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Al-Biruni.html
pss: The arch in front of Timur's mausoleum in Samarqand contains a cartouche, with the name Mohammad ibn Mahmud al-Banna al-Isfahani. These are the Arabic names of the man who made the amazing tiles on the arch--perhaps the best surviving tiles from that era. As his title "Isfahani" indicates, he was from the city of Isfahan, in modern Iran, and was one of the artists that Timur used to beautify Samarqand. Timur didn't build Samarqand, it was simple men like al-Isfahani, far from home and trying to survive in a cruel world. But that caretaker probably doesn't know any of this.
Sina -
My God, I'm not offended at ALL! I posted my little essays to hear what others have to say - especially others who knows more than I do. Thank you so much for your generous and informative content.
I must have not been clear in how much I abhor Timur. He was a destroyer of cities. The quote from Thubron's book I found interesting because of ... I guess because of the ignorance of the man Thubron talks to, and the general need-for-a-hero, ANY hero will do. For people who may feel as though their destinies were out of their own hands - then even a murderous monster may seem heroic. Not to excuse it ... but I found the passage interesting for that reason. The caretaker is obviously ignorant - chillingly ignorant.
It's like the people in Georgia, not all of them, but some of them, who secretly are proud that Stalin came from there. They miss the good old days of "law and order". They do not acknowledge the full scope of his monstrousness, if they acknowledge it at all. There is a strange through-the-looking-glass pride, at having produced such a "powerful" man. Please understand I'm not saying that this is right !
I am by no means an expert on Uzbekistan or the area - it is merely one of my passions. Not just Uzbekistan, but all of Central Asia. The books I read on Uzbekistan (my sources for these essays) are, in general, either political travelogues, or books like Thubron's - which are great, but which are much more about - talking to people, having wine with people, trying to get normal people to talk about what is going on in their country. It would be like trying to understand the history of America by only talking to random people you meet on the sidewalk. There will be a lot of ignorance there. Which also would be interesting, but it might not be all that accurate.
And I may be a "Westerner" - but what I actually am, is an American, and my heritage is Irish. I am 100% of Irish heritage, and let me tell you - that the name Oliver Cromwell is enough to still spark up arguments in my family today. There is a long cultural memory there, a memory of crimes committed long ago - We do not forget. My ancestors who suffered and were killed under Cromwell are with me.
Posts such as yours are why I wrote these essays.
I did not mean to hurt anybody, or to make someone feel as though a part of their flesh was sliced off!!
I will definitely check out that site you listed here ... Thank you very much!
I have a couple of friends from Isfahan, by the way. I had been planning a trip to Iran, to go and stay with their families - when September 11 happened, and it just didn't seem like the time was right anymore. But someday I would love to go and visit your country.
Thank you so much for writing ... Your comment was fantastic.