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Saturday, May 14, 2005
Lots going on in Uzbekistan, apparently.
Just to state the obvious: this ain't fun for us.
If I recall correctly, Uzbekistan is one of the few places in the region where we have a decent base of operations.
When dust starts settling and the nation that advocates liberty for all and everywhere stumbles upon the authoritarian regime that has now fired on its own people, where do we go?
This whole region has the potential to be a pain in the... Lest we forget, Clancy's second novel (Red Storm Rising) was about angry Muslims lighting the refineries in - was it Kazakhstan? - the south of the Soviet Union. The Soviets are still sort of there, especially in the autocratic stylings of a couple regional leaders. The Muslims are still there too. The area, from what I know, is sort of cobbled together: Everyone speaks a Turkish dialect that mutates across the sweep of the old Silk Road, and if you live on a border you're more likely to understand the "foreigners" one village over than "fellow citizens" from the other end of the country. (Persian dialects with similar variations are spoken here and there.)
In the Ukraine, in Georgia and elsewhere we've had the good fortune to be standing alongside westward looking revolutionaries. Are we on the verge of having to pick between an authoritarian who plays nice with the West and revolutionaries who won't? Which way shall we go?
Glad I'm just a blogger.
posted by gbarto at 10:50 PM
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