Microsoft recently unveiled their answer to Google Books, but because of copyright issues, most of the books available are extremely old.
When searching for books on Central Asia, I came across a book titled The Mohammedan World of To-day, published in 1906. While mainly about missionaries in the larger Muslim world, it has some […]

I happened upon a strange article about a notebook that is being spread about Uzbekistan.

There was a smiling picture of another country’s president on the cover of the notebook. The notebook also contained copies of various issues of that president’s book, which is popular in his country, state symbols of that country - its […]

I know what you were thinking: “It’s about time for another post about Craig Murray, because we haven’t had enough of those.” Well you are in luck, because I just read his new book, Murder in Samarkand, and am about to — somewhat reluctantly — share my thoughts on it.
But first I should […]

This post is in direct response to Ben’s piece below, and poses a hypothesis to answer this question: Assuming we are to believe public opinion polling, why do Uzbeks tend to be so happy?
According to public opinion polls by the UNDP, they are the happiest people in Central Asia. The recent […]

Brookings scholar Fiona Hill and University of Maryland Ph.D. candidate Kevin Jones put out an analysis of the current political situation in Uzbekistan this summer in The Washington Quarterly enitled Fear of Democracy or Revolution: The Reaction to Andijon. Their article serves as the most current general synopsis of the political situation in […]

Since a scan of the headlines on Uzbekistan (or just scrolling down this page) paints an extremely depressing picture (human rights abuses, media crack-downs, etc.), a positive story not by the government reporting agency really stands out.
The Uzbek government has initiated a program to fight the spread of HIV and AIDS throughout the country:
In […]

On Tuesday, May 9, a conference was held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace entitled “One Year After Andijon: What’s Next For Uzbekistan and the U.S.” The highlight and most reported event of the conference was the outlining of new legislation for sanctions against Uzbekistan presented by Senator John McCain and Representative […]

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is visiting Uzbekistan on April 25th. Nathan over at Registan has a post summarizing some of the issues at stake.
Former Indian Ambassador to Uzbekistan MK Bhadrakumar wrote an interesting, if provocative, op-ed on the upcoming visit. He champions the diplomacy as India’s way of demonstrating that it is […]

Arena has one of the stranger articles out there about the OSCE’s visit to Uzbekistan. According to the source, the OSCE head Karel De Gucht (who RFE/RL erroneously reported had not visited Uzbekistan – a story repeated by myself here at neweurasia) asked a pointed question about Andijan, questioning whether the protesters were […]

UPDATE 2 The OSCE did in fact visit Uzbekistan. Apologies to our readers for the mistaken reporting!
UPDATE: There is some question as to the accuracy of the below information. Nathan has the lowdown at the Registan on who is saying the OSCE visited Uzbekistan, and who says they didn’t. The link […]