The Russian ruble has collapsed, but the effects are not only being felt in Russia. In the Tajik village of Eloki, marriages are being canceled and houses left half-built as remittances from migrant laborers dry up. Nearly every family has been affected — this is one family’s story. It was filmed when the ruble had lost around 40 percent of its value against the dollar, but before the dramatic plunge that shook markets on December 15-16. (RFE/RL)
Shipwrecks rusting in the desert have come to symbolize the environmental havoc that has befallen the Aral Sea, which straddles Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. More than 90% of what was once the fourth-largest lake in the world has vanished in half a century1, 2, 3. The cracked shores are symptoms of the dramatic overuse of water in central Asia. Since the 1960s, 70% of Turkmenistan has become desert, and half of Uzbekistan’s soil has become salty owing to dust blown from the dry bed of the Aral Sea1.
The republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan were developed as farming states to supply produce to the former Soviet Union1. Today, they are among the highest per capita users of water in the world — on average, each Turkmen consumes 4 times more water than a US citizen, and 13 times more than a Chinese one4(see ‘Top 20 consumers’). More than 90% of the region’s water use is irrigating thirsty crops including cotton and wheat1, 2.
….
Like most other parts of the former Soviet Union, central Asian states suffer authoritarian rule and political fragility. Soaring unemployment is leading to a mass emigration of educated people. Current figures estimate that up to one-third of working-age Tajiks are employed abroad. Ethnic, political and religious diversity and difficulties with boundary demarcation fuel nationalism. Internal hostilities, as in the Caucasus, Moldova and eastern Ukraine, are a threat. A full-scale regional conflict, regardless of the rise of radical religious groups, is not out of the question.
Read more at:
Resources: Curb vast water use in central Asia : Nature News & Comment.
Since the fall of 2014, Tashkent has been boosting diplomatic engagement with its neighbors. In particular, Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov met with President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan in Dushanbe on September 11 (press-service.uz September 13, 2014), and visited Turkmenistan on October 23–24 (press-service.uz October 25), and Kazakhstan on November 24–25 (press-service.uz November 26). Two critical issues have pushed Uzbekistan to reinvigorate its diplomatic efforts in its immediate neighborhood—the future of water and energy use in Central Asia, as well as the forthcoming pull-out of Western military forces from Afghanistan.
In July 2014, to Uzbekistan’s utter indignation, the World Bank’s Fifth and Final Riparian Meetings on Rogun Assessment Studies, held in Almaty, technically gave a green light to the construction of the Rogun Hydro Power Project in Tajikistan (worldbank.org, July 18). Appealing also on behalf of other downstream Central Asian countries like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan found the World Bank study’s conclusions “unsatisfactory and insufficient to form a qualified opinion” and categorically affirmed that “Uzbekistan will never under any circumstances provide support for this project” (mfa.uz, August 1). Tashkent’s discontent was mainly twofold—construction work at the Rogun site was never halted, even as Tajikistan waited for the feasibility study’s conclusion, and the World Bank allegedly did not take into consideration Uzbekistan’s concerns over the project’s environmental implications or considered building a series of smaller hydro-power stations instead.
Interestingly, Tajikistan is the only case in which Uzbekistan seeks outside backing via multilateral and international engagement. Tashkent prefers to deal with all other countries and address issues of global politics on a bilateral basis. But the current tangle of contradictions regarding Central Asia’s water and energy resources has arisen due to the gradual dissolution of the Central Asian Power Grid System, from which the downstream states of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan withdrew (the first in 2003, and the latter two in 2009) due to the upstream Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan both syphoning off electricity without due payment. This Grid System is still Central Asia’s most important energy and water dispatcher network, which links the entire region, and it functioned in central Tashkent throughout the Soviet period (Russiancouncil.ru, April 2, 2012). Consequently, not only has the transit of Turkmenistani electricity to Tajikistan and the shipment of Kyrgyzstani electricity to Kazakhstan been paralyzed, but the supply of electricity to Uzbekistan’s southern provinces has also partly malfunctioned due to the Grid System’s fragmentation.
Issues of water use and the energy deadlock are particularly acute between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan—even though bilateral Treaties of Friendship, Good-Neighborhood and Cooperation, and Eternal Friendship have been in force for decades among these three neighbors. Nonetheless, diverse national interests regarding the use of upstream hydro-power stations for energy by Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as opposed to downstream Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan’s use of the water for irrigation leads to serious regional conflicts. And this situation is further exacerbated by the downstream agrarian communities’ rampant inefficient water use (Nature.com, October 1).
Uzbekistan Seeks to Reinvigorate Diplomatic Clout In Region – Analysis – Eurasia Review.
Before Tajikistan’s presidential elections in 2013, the OSCE Office in Tajikistan, in co-operation with the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda conducted a door-to-door, person-to-person voter education campaign throughout the country. The campaign targeted women and potential first-time voters. From 22 October until 4 November, 60 voter educators reached 115,037 voters explaining procedures for casting a ballot and that proxy voting is prohibited.
(Longer version of the previous article)
The ‘vase’ has been slowly shattering in many countries as law enforcement agencies, somewhat hesitatingly, have opened their doors to women. Border police services are arguably one of the last outposts reluctant to include women in their ranks. The reluctance has often been mutual, with few women relishing postings away from home and family, in isolated and hostile locations, working for long periods alongside large numbers of men.
The strategic shift from viewing border guards as responsible for defence of the state to protection of citizens – and thereby easing the ‘unhampered flow’ of goods, persons and services – has demanded not only reform and expansion but inclusivity. Representative law enforcement institutions have become an operational necessity.
The 21st century has witnessed a massive increase in mobility and the numbers of labour migrants, with more women crossing borders primarily for trade and employment but also for education, marriage and adventure. The vast majority, looking for employment opportunities and the doorway to a better life for their families, are among the poorest, the least educated and skilled women, with limited employment options.
In May 2014, the OSCE Border Management Staff College introduced its first all-women staff course. The course content included the standard topics ranging from management models to information-sharing, migration, human trafficking and smuggling, counter-terrorism, anti-corruption measures, conflict management and leadership. There was also a two-day Train the Trainers session and a requirement for group research and presentation on selected topics.
Participants included twenty-five mid and senior-level female officers of the border, customs and drug control agencies of Afghanistan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Romania and Tajikistan.
Breaking the Vase: How women are becoming border guards in Central Asia and Afghanistan | OSCE.
DUSHANBE, 16 December 2014 – A two-day training course for Aarhus Centres and other non-governmental organizations on raising awareness of disaster risk reduction started today at the OSCE Office in Tajikistan. The training course will be delivered by national and international experts working in this field.
“It is not enough to simply invest in infrastructure to reduce the risk of natural disasters,” said Paul Hickey, Environmental Officer at the OSCE Office in Tajikistan. “We must encourage communities to make preventing and reducing the risk of natural disasters an integral part of their lives. The Aarhus Centres, with their proven ability to raise awareness on environmental issues, provide an ideal platform for building the knowledge of local communities in disaster risk reduction.”
From a text at project gutenburg: PERSIAN LITERATURE
comprising
Revised Edition, Volume 1, 1909
With a special introduction by
RICHARD J. H. GOTTHEIL, Ph.D.
The greatest of all Eastern national epics is the work of a Persian. The “Sháh Námeh,” or Book of Kings, may take its place most worthily by the side of the Indian Nala, the Homeric Iliad, the German Niebelungen. Its plan is laid out on a scale worthy of its contents, and its execution is equally worthy of its planning. One might almost say that with it neo-Persian literature begins its history. There were poets in Persia before the writer of the “Sháh Námeh”—Rudagi, the blind (died 954), Zandshi (950), Chusravani (tenth century). There were great poets during his own day. But Firdusi ranks far above them all; and at the very beginning sets up so high a standard that all who come after him must try to live up to it, or else they will sink into oblivion.
The times in which Firdusi lived were marked by strange revolutions. The Arabs, filled with the daring which Mohammed had breathed into them, had indeed conquered Persia. In A.D. 657, when Merv fell, and the last Sassanian king, Yezdegird III, met his end, these Arabs became nominally supreme. Persia had been conquered—but not the Persian spirit. Even though Turkish speech reigned supreme at court and the Arabic script became universal, the temper of the old Arsacides and Sassanians still lived on. It is true that Ormuzd was replaced by Allah, and Ahriman by Satan. But the Persian had a glorious past of his own; and in this the conquered was far above the conqueror. This past was kept alive in the myth-loving mind of this Aryan people; in the songs of its poets and in the lays of its minstrels. In this way there was, in a measure, a continuous opposition of Persian to Arab, despite the mingling of the two in Islam; and the opposition of Persian Shiites to the Sunnites of the rest of the Mohammedan world at this very day is a curious survival of racial antipathy. The fall of the only real Arab Mohammedan dynasty—that of the Umayyid caliphs at Damascus—the rise of the separate and often opposing dynasties in Spain, Sicily, Egypt, and Tunis, served to strengthen the Persians in their desire to keep alive their historical individuality and their ancient traditions.
Firdusi was not the first, as he was not the only one, to collect the old epic materials of Persia. In the Avesta itself, with its ancient traditions, much can be found. More than this was handed down and bandied about from mouth to mouth. Some of it had even found its way into the Kalam of the Scribe; to-wit, the “Zarer, or Memorials of the Warriors” (A.D. 500), the “History of King Ardeshir” (A.D. 600), the Chronicles of the Persian Kings. If we are to trust Baisonghur’s preface to the “Sháh Námeh,” there were various efforts made from time to time to put together a complete story of the nation’s history, by Farruchani, Ramin, and especially by the Dihkan Danishwar (A.D. 651). The work of this Danishwar, the “Chodainameh” (Book of Kings), deserves to be specially singled out. It was written, not in neo-Persian and Arabic script, but in what scholars call middle-Persian and in what is known as the Pahlavi writing. It was from this “Chodainameh” that Abu Mansur, lord of Tus, had a “Sháh Námeh” of his own prepared in the neo-Persian. And then, to complete the tale, in 980 a certain Zoroastrian whose name was Dakiki versified a thousand lines of this neo-Persian Book of Kings.
In this very city of Tus, Abul Kasim Mansur (or Ahmed) Firdusi was born, A.D. 935. One loves to think that perhaps he got his name from the Persian-Arabic word for garden; for, verily, it was he that gathered into one garden all the beautiful flowers which had blossomed in the fancy of his people. As he has draped the figures in his great epic, so has an admiring posterity draped his own person. His fortune has been interwoven with the fame of that Mahmud of Ghazna (998-1030), the first to bear the proud title of “Sultan,” the first to carry Mohammed and the prophets into India. The Round Table of Mahmud cannot be altogether a figment of the imagination. With such poets as Farruchi, Unsuri, Minutsheri, with such scientists as Biruni and Avicenna as intimates, what wonder that Firdusi was lured by the splendors of a court life! But before he left his native place he must have finished his epic, at least in its rough form; for we know that in 999 he dedicated it to Ahmad ibn Muhammad of Chalandsha. He had been working at it steadily since 971, but had not yet rounded it out according to the standard which he had set for himself. Occupying the position almost of a court poet, he continued to work for Mahmud, and this son of a Turkish slave became a patron of letters. On February 25, 1010, his work was finished. As poet laureate, he had inserted many a verse in praise of his master. Yet the story goes, that though this master had covenanted for a gold dirhem a line, he sent Firdusi sixty thousand silver ones, which the poet spurned and distributed as largesses and hied him from so ungenerous a master.
Via: Project gutenburg, THE SHÁH NÁMEH, THE RUBÁIYÁT THE DIVAN, AND THE GULISTAN
Epic literature occupies a key role in formulating and maintaining cohesive national and cultural identities– elucidating the spirit and values of a society as well as exploring mythic and historical origins. Works of epic literature are often retroactively embedded with political meaning, particularly after the rise of ethnic nationalisms in the 19th and 20th centuries. For modernizing nationalists, epics served a key role as tools to both create and strengthen ethnic and linguistic unity by highlighting (and almost always, distorting) a shared national history.
The Shahnameh (Book of Kings), completed by Hakim Abul-Qasim Ferdowsi in 1010 CE, is the undisputable national epic poem of the pan-Persian-speaking world. Composed of nearly 50,000 couplets, its narrative covers Creation to the Islamic conquest of Greater Iran (Iran Zamin) in the 7th century. Accentuating this chronicle are the tales of kings and heroes— from legendary champions like Rostam to historical personalities such as Alexander the Great. Cherished by communities in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, the Caucasus, and their respective diasporas, the Shahnameh links these societies to an imagined shared cultural past.
Due to his inclusion of pre-Islamic Iranian mythology, Ferdowsi is often accurately categorized as a pioneer of linguistic and cultural preservation for the Persian-speaking world. However, many rulers of Central Asia and the Iranian Plateau have politicized the Shahnameh by promoting it as a quintessential text that delineates “Persian-ness”— standing as a testament to the perseverance of Persianate culture in the face of Arab and Turkic domination. While there is no doubt that the Shahnameh has helped conserve the rich cultural heritage of the Iranian peoples, nation-states have historically propagated several misconceptions about the Shahnameh unrelated to its content and artistic form. These myths have attained the status of legend among many of the Shahnameh‘s most avid fans, despite their falsehood.
….
Towards a Multicultural Perspective
The purpose of this post is not to diminish the importance of Ferdowsi and Shahnameh for Iranian national heritage. It is vital, however, that we not take 20th century notions of ethnic separatism and apply them to 10th-11th century works. Ferdowsi’s work speaks to the cultural invigoration of the Iranian Peoples and the lands of Ajam, a revival summarized in the following couplet popularly attributed to Ferdowsi to note his monumental achievement:**
بسى رنج بردم در اين سال سى
عجم زنده كردم بدين پارسى
I struggled greatly during these thirty years,
I gave life to the Ajam with this Persian.
It is crucial to recognize the centrality of the Shahnameh to Iranian or Persianate transnational culture and heritage not because it combats Islam or foreign dominance, but exactly because it engages with and combines varied cultural influences. Ajam did not come alive because Ferdowsi denied our past and the diverse Persian, Arabic, and Turkic roots that helped formulate notions of Iranian, Afghan, and Tajik nationhood; Ajam came alive because Ferdowsi recognized that cross-cultural pollination enriches us all.
**Editor’s note: The couplet mentioned in the article was not composed by Ferdowsi, but has been attributed to the text centuries after its completion.
» Ferdowsi’s Legacy: Examining Persian Nationalist Myths of the Shahnameh Ajam Media Collective.
A number of videos of Central Asian women accused of prostitution and generally “shaming their nation and religion” have been uploaded onto file-sharing platforms by anonymous users in recent times. The videos, deleted by social media moderators, reappear again after being uploaded by different users.While the world speaks out about the enslavement of women by ISIS, netizens in Central Asia are vigorously discussing videos portraying the relentless persecution and physical punishment of Central Asian women suspected of prostitution.
Videos of Kyrgyz and Tajik female migrants facing public humiliation in Russia are nothing new, but a copycat tendency means the phenomenon has now affected the migrant communities of other states in the region. In November a video appeared on YouTube showing two young women in Uzbekistan sitting with their hands tied behind their backs. The man in the video beats them with a stick while calling them sluts.
….
A. added: “You tell them that they are bringing shame to the name of Tajiks? She regrets what she did. But you bring shame on Tajiks by making this video and showing it to everyone.”