Geography

The Republic of Uzbekistan, the 'land of the Uzbeks', forms the very centre of ex-Soviet Central Asia, for it alone borders each of the new republics- Kazakhstan to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east and southeast, Turkmenistan to the southwest, as well as Afghanistan to the south. Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein share the distinction of being the only doubly landlocked countries in the world. Unlike some of their neighbours, the Uzbeks remain a clear majority in their republic, accounting for over 80 percent of the total population of 27.7 million (2007 estimate). Most of its territory of 447.400 square kilometres (roughly the size of Sweden) lies between the two majors rivers of Central Asia, the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) and Amu Darya (Oxus).

The Syr Darya rises in remotest Kyrgyzstan before plummeting from the Tian Shan (the 'Mountains of Heaven') into the wide hollow of the Fergana Valley in the northeast of Uzbekistan. Skirting the capital Tashkent, it completes a journey of 2,137 killometres (1,335 miles) through southern Kazakhstan and Kyzyl Kum (Red sands) desert to the distant Aral Sea. For centuries it marked the northern limits of Transoxiana and the edge of the boundless nomadic steppe.

From its origins in the Hindu Kush, the Amu Darya cuts through the High Pamirs of Tajikistan to follow the Afghan border and trace a northwesterly path of 1,437 kilometres parallel to the Syr Darya, separating the Kyzyl Kum from the Kara Kum( Black Sands) of Turkmenistan, and in ancient times dividing the Persian and Turkic worlds. Along its lower reaches the river enters the Turan lowland and the Khorezm oasis. Its final course has changed many times, sometimes stretching west to the Caspian Sea across the Ust'urt plateau. Today it founders heavy with silt at the shrinking Aral Sea, victim of insatiable irrigation.

Steppe and desert plains account for two thirds of Uzbekistan, with the remainder of the country rising into the foothills and mountains of the western Tian Shan and Gissaro- Alay ranges in the east and southeast, where peaks along the borders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan reached to 4,300 metres (14,100 feet). Its location between two major rivers has always ensured commercial and cultural prominence. Thousands of smaller streams expire in wasteland, but one, the Zerafshan, former tributary of the Amy Darya, first waters the most attractive oases in the religion, Samarkand and Bukhara. The fertility of these river valleys has long supported greater populations than elsewhere in Central Asia, although the Uzbeks themselves are relative latecomers to oasis community and culture.

While less than ten percent of Uzbekistan's territory is arable land, Soviet planners drew on tsarist experimentation to turn the republic into the Union's cotton production base. As the American civil war cut world cotton supplies, Turkmenistan was discovered to be ideal for cotton cultivation. Under Moscow's orders, irrigation networks stretching 150,000 kilometres (94,000 miles) were built in Uzbekistan to support a plantation economy supplying 70 percent the Soviet Union's. In 1924, output totaled 200,000 tonnes; by 1980 this figure had risen to nine million tonnes. The sheer size of the irrigation system this level of production has resulted in much of the water from the major rivers being diverted; deprived of its sustenance, the Aral Sea has been shrinking steadily, halving in size since 1960.

Despite the staggering environmental costs of the cotton monopoly, independent Uzbekistan desperately needs the revenue from its major crop. Some land is now being switched from cotton to less thirsty grain production, although the 1996 harvest of under four million tonnes still ranked Uzbekistan as the world's fourth-largest cotton nation. Other mainstays of the Uzbek economy include fruit and vegetables, animal husbandry and textiles, but it is the republic's mineral wealth that most excites foreign investors. In addition to being the world's ninth-largest gold producer, Uzbekistan harbours significant reserves of oil and natural gas, as well as uranium, silver, copper, zinc, coal and lead.

Ethnic groups

Nomadic migrations through the centuries make precise ethnic definition almost impossible. The ancient tribes of the Scythians, Sogdians, Khorezmians and myriad Turkic peoples formed the foundation for the later Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and even Tajiks. History is also complicated by Soviet 'divide and rule' tactics, whereby common heritage was distorted into artificial 'nationalist' identities. Uzbek authorities claim some 130 different nationalities reside within the republic.

Uzbek

The Uzbeks are a predominantly Turkic people, Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school, yet their ethnogenesis shows significant Persian and Turco-Mongol elements. The origin of the ethonym itself is in dispute. One view holds that the group name derives from Uzbek Khan (1282-1342), the last powerful ruler of the Golden Horde and responsible for its conversion to Islam, thought the nomadic Uzbeks were never subject to him. Etymological argument states that the name means 'independent' or 'the man himself', from uz, self, and Bek or 'Beg', a noble title of leadership.

The process of the formation of the Uzbeks began in the 11th century and solidified in the 14th as a conglomeration of Turkic tribes. Their language, Chagatai or Old Uzbek, evolved at the same time. These nomads clashed with the Timurids, Ulug Beg and Babur, as they moved south from the Kazakh steppes to dominate Transoxiana in the 16th century. The Shaybanid Uzbek dynasty promoted the transition to sedentary life by merging with the inhabitants in the 16th and 17th centuries, until the name Uzbek came to be used for the whole population.

By the early 20th century, the Uzbeks were yet to be consolidated into a nation. First and foremost an Uzbek was (and remains) a Muslim, while his next point of reference was his home town. The tsarist administration generalized the settled inhabitants of Turkestan as Sarts, or Sanskrit origin, to distinguish them from nomads. The Uzbeks comprised three major ethnic layers. The first was the urban population; oasis- dwelling Uzbeks intermingled with the original Persian (Tajik) inhabitants of Central Asia. The second and third layers were the semi-nomadic descendants of the Shaybanid Turco-Mongol tribes and the Shaybanid Uzbek tribes. The latter two groups still preserve some tribal identity, such as the Kipchaks, Karluks, Mangit and Kungrat, ethnic groupings shared by other Turkic nations.

Soviet delimitation," negative ethnic gerrymandering" in the words of American expert Edward Allworth, gave the Uzbeks the heart of Central Asia, less than the original Uzbeks domains, but encompassing the historic power centres. Soviet historiography encouraged an anachronistic Uzbek nationalism, once firmly within the Russian fraternal embrace, but which has taken on a life of its own. The belief that the glories of Transoxiana are an exclusive part of the Uzbek heritage, plus the Uzbeks' numerical superiority, leaves neighbouring republics wary of great Uzbek chauvinism'. At over 19 million strong, the Uzbeks are the third- largest nationality in the former Soviet Union, with substantial minorities in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. Up to two million Uzbeks inhabit northern Afghanistan, with another 15,000 in northwest China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

Kazakh

Like the Uzbeks, the Kazakhs have a complex ethnic history stretching back to various nomadic tribes breeding livestock on the steppes of Turkestan long before the Mongols of Genghis Khan. A popular explanation derives the ethonym, first used in the 16th century; from kaz (goose) and ak (white), after the legend of a while steppe goose that turned into a princess who birthed the first Kazakh. Another version reads Kazakh as 'wanderer, descriptive of their mobile lifestyle, or rather 'outlaw', a term coined after the first united Kazakh confederation, the Kazakh Orda, split from the Shaybani Uzbeks in the 15th century.

Resisting Uzbek advances, the Kazakhs built a steppe empire that defined 'Kazakh' as the tribes to the north of the Syr Darya and Uzbeks as the tribes to the south. In the 17th century the Kazakh groups were unified into three federations—the Great, Middle and Little Hordes. The wide, indefensible expanse of the Kazakh steppes, lacking in natural boundaries, meant that they were the first of the Central Asian peoples to be colonized by the Russians. The Soviets exploited the vast territory for nuclear testing until popular pressure stopped tests at the Semipalatinsk site in 1990.

Today, Kazakhstan reveals a clear divide between the industrialised, Russified north and the more traditional south. While the Kazakhs are mostly settled, their nomadic cultural past remains deeply embedded in the national consciousness. Mongol physical features are more pronounced than in the Uzbeks and the patrilateral lineages of the Kazakh hordes form an integral part of contemporary society. As with fellow nomads, the Kyrgyz and Turkmen, the Kazakhs are Sunni Muslim, although Islam contends with shamanist beliefs and never dominated the grasslands and mountains of Central Asia as it did the oases and valleys.

The Kazakhs represent 53.4 percent of the republic's shrinking population of 16.7 million (July 2001 estimate), with the Russians at 30 percent and another 100 ethnic groups forming the remainder. Almost one million Kazakhs inhabit northern areas of Uzbekistan, with a further 1.3 million in northwest China.

Kyrgyz

White felt ak-kalpak, the yurt-like headgear of the Kyrgyz, symbolize a proud nation of mountain nomads. One translation of their name is indestructible', for about 93 percent of Kyrgyzstan's territory comprises the lofty mountains of the Tian Shan and Altai ranges.

The Kyrgyz know them as the 'Wings of the Earth', a remote refuge from countless invasions.

Their origins lie along the Yenisei river in southern Siberia, source of another translation of Kyrgyz, 'forty clans', though this better describes the assimilation of indigenous tribes during the slow migration southwest. After falling under Turkic and Mongol suzerainty, the Kyrgyz became a distinct people by the 16th century. Yet even by the 20th century little was known of them. Their Kazakh cousins were called Kirghiz, or Kirghiz-Kazakh, while the true Kyrgyz were called Kara (black) Kirghiz.

Fierce resistance to the World War I draft, and later collectivization, brought violent repression, but industrialization and Russification has spared most of the Kyrgyz' beautiful homeland. The oral epic Manas, traditional sports such as falconry, eagle-hunting and baiga (polo with a goat carcass) remain important cultural denominators.

The Kyrgyz account for 66 percent of the republic's 5 million (2003 estimate) population, with Russians at 11 percent and Uzbeks at 14 percent. About 200,000 Kyrgyz are spread around the ethnic jigsaw of the Ferghana Valley and another 165,000 live over the border in Xinjiang, China.

Turkmen

For centuries, the 'man-stealing Turcomen' were the scourge of travellers in western Central Asia. Unscrupulous slave-traders, the Turkmen ravaged merchant caravans and sleeping oases in the hunt for loot and human flesh. Harsh desert wasteland characterizes most of present-day Turkmenistan, yet archaeologists have recorded agricultural settlements over 5,000 years old. The modern Turkmen are descended from the Oghuz Turkic tribes of the Mongol Altai region who migrated to this part of Khorasan in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Although its etymology is unclear, the ethonym 'Turkmen' had replaced Oghuz by the 13th century. By the 14th and 15th centuries, these warrior nomads had attained a recognizable ethnic identity, but tribal divisions were still uppermost. Four centuries later, the major groupings included the Tekke, Sariks, Salors, Yomuts, Ersary and Goklen. Harassment from the Persians and the warring Uzbek khanates frequently pressed the Turkmen into mercenary service, leaving little opportunity for a stable indigenous empire to establish itself.

Russian colonization met its stiffest test in pacifying these formidable masters of desert warfare. Today, the Tekke, resplendent in shaggy, Persian-lamb papakha hats, remain the most powerful Turkmen tribe. Despite the republic's undeniable mineral wealth, Turkmenistan attracts equal attention for its Stalinist personality cull, centred on President Niyazov, chiefly renowned for bestowing fine Turkmen steeds on foreign dignitaries. Turkmen comprise 85 percent of the total population of 5 million (2003 estimate), followed by 5 percent Uzbek, and 4 percent Russian (down from 13 percent at independence). Over one million Turkmen live across the border in Iran, with over 650,000 in Afghanistan.

Tajik

Tajikistan, like Kyrgyzstan, is predominantly a mountain state: some 76 percent of its territory rests high in the Pamir mountains, a world of yaks and glaciers rarely dipping below an altitude of 3,000 metres (10,000 feet). Most similarities end there, however, for the Tajiks are the odd men out of Central Asia—Indo-European, Iranian-speaking, with almond eyes, pronounced noses and heavy beards. This ethno-linguistic oasis predates the arrival of the Turks by at least a millennium.

During the sixth and seventh centuries ВС, Transoxiana was already peopled by east Iranian stock: the Bactrians, Sogdians and Scythians. Despite centuries of diverse cultural invasion, this Persian influence has dominated sedentary life. Derived from the Arabic tribal name Taiy, the Sogdian word Tazik was used for the Arab invaders and by the 11th century came to mean the lslamicized, Persian-speaking population, as opposed to the Turkic peoples of the region.

The Tajiks were increasingly marginalized to the southeast of the Uzbek domains, though Persian maintained its status as the premier literary language. Squeezed by the legacies of the Uzbek khanates, the Tajiks received the leanest slice of national delimitation, losing their historic centres of Samarkand and Bukhara to Uzbekistan. The complex divide between Tajikistan's pro-communist, industrialized north and the poorer, more Islamic south exploded just nine months after independence in a sorry confusion of ethnic, regional and political loyalties. For the rest of Central Asia, Tajikistan is held up as an example of the evils of political and religious liberalization. Tajiks comprise almost 80 percent of the republics population of 6.86 million (2003 estimate), followed by Uzbeks at 15 percent, Russians now at only one percent and Kyrgyz also at one percent.

Another four million Tajiks inhabit northern Afghanistan (outnumbering Pashtun). A further 1.2 million live in Uzbekistan and 40,000 in China.

Others

The Turkic Karakalpak, numbering over 400,000, occupy an autonomous republic within northwestern Uzbekistan. The Russian population percentage in Central Asia declines steadily with every new assertion of the republics' independence.

In 1989 the 1.65 million Russians in Uzbekistan accounted for 8.3 percent of the population of Uzbekistan; this had dropped to 1.1 million (4.5 percent) by 1999—a combination of low birth rates and large-scale emigration. Many of the other non-native peoples, such as Ukrainians, Belorussians, Volga Germans and Koreans, often deported to Central Asia in the 1930s and during World War II, have also found cause to leave.

Other inhabitants of Uzbekistan include Uighurs, the Turkic people based in Xinjiang, Dungans, Muslim Chinese immigrants, and relatively small numbers who still identify themselves as Tartars, Persians, Arabs, Jews, Gypsies or Turks.

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