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Uzbekistan
Modern Uzbekistan may be a
20 th - century Soviet invention with an awkward name and an extraordinary
shape, but it is without doubt the heart of Central Asia. Remove
it, and the region would implode. Uzbekistan is the only country
in the region which borders on all the others. It is also the most populous,
with 20 million people, the most ethnically diverse, with 120 different
nationalities and-in desert terms-the richest, since it has
all the big oases.
 The
people and wealth of the nation are concentrated at its south-east end,
near the grand junction of the Tien Shan and Pamir mountain systems. Closest
to China, the Fergana valley is an Uzbek peninsula hemmed in by Kirghiz
highlands, and an agro-industrial powerhouse. Further west, Samarkand and
Bukhara soak up most of the Zerafshan River, which runs out of the western
Pamirs into the Kizyl-Kum desert. These rival provinces pivot about the
capital, Tashkent, rebuilt as a showcase of Soviet development after
a catastrophic earthquake in 1966. The rest of Uzbekistan is desert.
In satellite pictures the only green smudge in the featureless brown of
the Kizyl-Kum is the delta of the Amu Darya river, 1000 km north-west of
Tashkent. The delta and the salt-caked littoral of the shrinking
Aral Sea are actually part of Karakalpakstan, an 'autonomous republic'
within Uzbekistan whose extreme north-western tip is a mere 300 km from
Russia.
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