Nations without a cause

The Central Asian stans,as Uzbekistan,Turkmenistan,Kazakhstan,Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are known by the Western diplomats and oilmen who frequent them....

The Central Asian stans,as Uzbekistan,Turkmenistan,Kazakhstan,Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are known by the Western diplomats and oilmen who frequent them,conjure images of megalomaniac rulers,exotic nomads and mineral riches beyond compare. There is some truth in the caricature,as Dilip Hiro makes clear in this new study which also includes sections on Turkey and Iran,but it is not the whole truth. In addition there is the overwhelming influence of foreign ideologies-Islamism,socialism and,most recently,capitalism-and their promoters. The heirs to Genghis Khan they may be,but ever since the decline of the silk route in the 16th century,the five nations that lie in a vast swathe between China and the Caspian have been at the receiving end of foreign trouble. And it is Russias shadow that has fallen longest,and most balefully.

Central Asia was subjugated over the 18th and 19th centuries: it furnished tsarist Lebensraum,cotton and a buffer against the British. After the Bolshevik revolution,Lenin urged the Muslim toilers of the east to organise your national life freely and without hindrance. But things turned out differently. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed,and the five republics,themselves Soviet inventions,achieved independence,they had been shaped by Communist planning

and Russian assaults on their local

cultures mostly a hybrid of Islam and steppe shamanism.

When former Communists took control of the newly independent republics,they found themselves grappling with existential crises. One Uzbek teacher told Mr Hiro that her colleagues had grown up citing Lenin every five minutes. Now they have lost the very centre of their thinking. They dont know how to fill that big hole.

The story of this endeavour is the subject of Mr Hiros book. The favoured political model,authoritarian state capitalism,has not worked and the efforts of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to exploit hydrocarbons have been slowed by corruption.

Islam Karimov,the veteran leader of Uzbekistan,the most populous of the five,has kept his country secular and relatively stable at the cost of shocking human-rights violations. The attacks on America in September 2001 were timely for the regions strongmen. Uzbekistan provided airbases and help in extraordinary renditions,in return for which America turned a blind eye to atrocities and increased its military and economic aid. This,too,was the pattern in other republics which also have land borders with Afghanistan. Since then,however,some of the stans have been wooed back into Russias embrace.

For a region that came to nationalism relatively late-until recently,millions of Central Asians defined themselves primarily as Muslims-ethnic conflict has been widespread. One reason is the proliferation of manufactured nationalisms. From Tajikistans President Imomali Rakhmonov,with his celebration of Tajikistans Aryan,pre-Islamic past,to Uzbekistans adoption of Tamerlane as the nations founder even though he was not an Uzbek,these efforts have proved divisive.

In the case of Turkmenistan,the search became a consuming malaise. In 2000 its late president,Saparmurat Niyazov,who liked to call himself Father of the Turkmens,changed the names of the months,calling April after his mother. He also replaced cinemas with puppet theatres,which apparently are more authentically Turkmen. Niyazov attached such importance to his own epic account of the Turkmen nation that questions on the text appeared in the national driving test.

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Readers acquainted with Mr Hiros prolific writing about Asia and the Islamic world will be unsurprised to learn that Inside Central Asia is a conscientious guide to the region,full of dependable history-telling and analysis. But it does perhaps lack a little gusto.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009