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Notes
President of Tajikistan Imomali Rahmon's ‘Address to the Nation’, 25 April 2008, delivered to bi-cameral parliament session. Text available on official presidential website, at: http://www.prezident.tj/rus/novostee_250408.html, last assessed 31 March 2009. Other leaders make similar claims.
The only real case of religious associations and field commanders being in charge of security and welfare provision took place in Gharm in Tajikistan during the civil war and their rule presented an adverse demonstration example.
Hizb ut-Tahrir operated freely in the Nookat district of Osh province, despite being officially banned. Clashes with the authorities took place on 1 October 2008 when the administrators attempted to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir-organised celebrations to mark the end of Ramadan. A total of 32 people were arrested and sentenced to 15–20 years in prison. See http://www.ferghana.ru/news.php?id=11170&mode=snews, last accessed on 31 March 2009.
The regimes in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan employ policies which broadly follow the same line as that by the leadership of Uzbekistan: they also suppress radical groups and movements, exercise control over mosques and religious education, but do so with less vigour, they sometimes exercise discretion and on occasion demonstrate lenient attitudes when the implementation of policies may have gone too far. These are the same type of policies, but their application differs from that in Uzbekistan.
In 1993, a year after his election as President of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov took on the title ‘Turkmenbashi’ or ‘leader of all Turkmen’. A pseudo-ideology of Turkmenbashism was constructed around him. It involved the writing of the Ruhnama or ‘soul book’ which was supposed to act as spiritual guidance for the nation and was part of a larger nation-building campaign.
The books and academic papers are available to download at the president's official site, available at: http://www.akorda.kz/www/www_akorda_kz.nsf/sections?OpenForm&id_doc=7917981ACDDB34D1462572340019E70E&lang=ru&L1=L7&L2=L7-49, accessed 28 April 2008.
President of Tajikistan Imomali Rahmon's ‘Address to the Nation’, 25 April 2008, delivered to bi-cameral parliament session. Text available on official presidential website, at: http://www.prezident.tj/rus/novostee_250408.html, assessed 31 March 2009.
My personal favourite is about a soldier who hears the voice of King Somon every midnight as he guards his monument. King Somon says: ‘Soldier, bring me a horse’. The terrified solider tells President Rahmon that King Somon is talking at midnight. The president gets curious and decides to stay with the soldier. As Rahmon and the soldier stand by the monument at midnight, the voice of King Somon comes. It says: ‘Man, I asked for a horse. Why did you bring me an ass?’.
Timur died in 1405, and the unity of the vast empire he founded did not survive him. Among other battles, he was known to fight against people called ‘the Ozbeks of Shibani’.
‘Uzbekistan: Capital Amnesty Initiative Stalls in the Face of Public Skepticism’, Eurasianet, 18 July 2008.
These ranged from a demand by the International Monetary Fund to repay the $47 million debt obtained by fraud by the government, a 40% increase in drug trafficking, and flour and energy shortages to an invasion of locusts. See ‘Tajikistan: Government Shakes Down Population Amid Deepening Economic Dysfunction’, Eurasianet Business & Economics, Eurasianet, 7 May 2008.
On the inability of the Turkmen opposition in exile in Russia to play any role in their country after the power change, see interview with Khudaiberdy Orazov, ‘Turkmenistan: Diktatura po vtoromu krugu’, 26 May 2008, available at: http://www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=5716, accessed 29 April 2009.
President of Tajikistan Imomali Rahmon's ‘Address to the Nation’, 25 April 2008. Available on the President of Tajikistan official website, at: http://www.prezident.tj/eng/news_150409.html, accessed on 29 April 2009.
Gulnara Karimova was appointed as a deputy minister in February 2008. See: http://www.oreanda.ru/ru/news/20080204/common/events/article276710/, accessed 28 April 2009.
The following from Khalid (Citation2007, p. 169) is a fairly typical stance: ‘Islamic militancy does exist in Uzbekistan, but if it didn't, the regime would have invented it’. A number of influential scholars, such as Shirin Akiner (Citation2005), have been more sympathetic to the position of the Uzbek President.
See http://www.centrasia.ru/newsA.php?st=1216234980, accessed 28 April 2009.
According to papers filed with a London court, the British firm Herbert Smith has continued to bill the Tajik government $11 million every month. Legal costs were going to set the UK and possibly the world record in legal fees. The Tajik Aluminium Plant's (TadAZ, renamed TALCO) litigation is set to rank as the third most-expensive lawsuit contested in the English courts to date. For further details see Murphy (Citation2008) and ‘Tajikistan: Government Shakes Down Population Amid Deepening Economic Dysfunction’, Business & Economics, Eurasianet, 7 May 2008.
