A lot of people in the west, when they picture Central Asia, imagine....not very much at all. Throughout the years of Soviet domination the middle of the world's biggest continent was shut off from outsiders, and, as such, our image of what it is actually like has eroded badly. We have no problem imagining India, south-east Asia, even China. But remote (and hard to spell) republics like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan remain a mystery.
These former Soviet republics - Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - are collectively (and jocularly) referred to in diplomatic circles as "The Stans", as if they were a bunch of old guys sat together in a bar or a bowling alley. The truth is, there is nothing remotely old or boring about the Stans. They cover a huge area, a vast range of geography from deserts to the high peaks of the Pamirs and encompass many ethnic groups and nations. Although they are still relatively hard to get to, for the more adventurous traveler they can be very rewarding.
That's not to say they haven't had their troubles. Shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union the area was swept with revolution and civil war as local tribes and factions fought for power. Probably the worst of the civil wars was in Tajikistan, where rival Muslim clans fought each other with such intensity that most outsiders - in other words, ethnic Russians - fled the country. Others had a more peaceful passage, in particular Kyrgyzstan, which had enjoyed considerable properity in Soviet times and had a sufficiently strong culture, economy and society to withstand violent upheaval, although it has had its share of political instability.
The Stans are fascinating for the broad range of landscapes within them. They cover a huge area in central Asia, most of it taken up by Kazakhstan, which is the seventh largest country in the world. The western end of the region, bordering the Caspian sea tends to be flatter, consisting of farmland running to desert. Further east the land climbs rapidly. Most of Tajikistan is more than eight thousand feet above sea level.
Despite progress, human rights are a perennial problem in the area, largely because the nations involved have no history of democracy whatsoever, being formed out of former tribal and warlord lands by the Tsarist Russians in the nineteenth century and then devolving into Socialist republics. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have been identified as particularly problematic, and it remains to be seen whether increased Anglo-American intervention in the region will make much difference.