Kyrgyzstan: What! No dictatorship?

As a seasoned connoisseur of dictatorships, Kyrgyzstan was always going to be something of a disappointment in a region characterized by kleptocratic despots. Sure, they can rustle up some electoral irregularities and even some human rights abuses when pushed but gone is the all-pervasive security presence or the anticipation at customs posts of a potential, full cavity search. The eloquent, almost poetic “thwap” of stretched rubber glove against the wrist, as the officer gleefully prepares for the  intimate intrusion into…

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Ashgabat: Turkmenistan’s city of dreams and nightmares

One day I saw a piece of rubbish in Ashgabat. I want you to ponder on the significance of that statement: in a whole day of walking around the central part of the city I saw a single, solitary piece of rubbish. Even the Swiss couldn’t manage that! You need the single-minded determination of a dictatorship to achieve this attention to detail. It is difficult to know where to start trying to explain such a city but certainly only a…

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Turkmenistan: a tale of two presidents

What is it with Islam and dictatorships? I sometimes wonder if it’s some kind of test Allah has set for his followers to endure to prove that they are truly worthy of paradise. I don’t expect paradise for myself in this world but I can’t quite grasp why so many other lovely people would need to be subjected to a lifetime of tyranny to qualify for it in the next one. At this rate my odds for the next one…

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Where’s the Islam Mr Karimov?

A typical lunchtime scene in Uzbekistan: a humble cafe, four men sit round a cheaply laminated table, in front of them a full bottle of vodka and some small, dainty, chipped bowls, commonly used for drinking tea. The first round is poured out and the earnest work of drinking begins. By the hour mark things descend into slumps, slurs, blurs and increasingly vague gesturing, the jolly affirmation of male bonding familiar to many of us from other cultures. But, this…

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