|
|
LET'S GO CENTRAL ASIA!
|
Central Asia! You've read about it on the Internets. You've glimpsed maps of it on the TV news. It's where your heroin comes from. But, aside from the fact that life there is cheaper than a Chinese harmonica, what do you really know about it?
Central Asia is much more than just an untamed land ruled by buggery-crazed, racially ambiguous tribal warlords who sleep on mattresses stuffed with bribe-money from the West's most corrupt politicians and businessmen. It's also the future's most strategically important piece of real estate, which, considering the pipelines and American military bases that are popping up all over its inhospitable terrain, should be obvious. So the least you can do is sit still for a brief history lesson.
Ready? Here we go.
For thousands of years, Central Asia was home to a number of nomadic, cutlery-worshipping steppe-dwelling peoples whose facility with horses, psychopathic fearlessness and unquenchable bloodlust earned them a reputation as the world's best sackers, looters, pillagers, murderers and rapists. Then Islam came along, and Central Asians took to it like Italians took to tomato sauce. Eventually, somewhere around the 1500's, the Chinese invented gun powder and settled things down a bit.
During the following centuries, most of Central Asia was known as Turkestan. Stretching from Turkey to China, Turkestan was home to the fifth largest Islamic population in the world. Russia absorbed the region in the 19th century, and for a while it was administered by the czars as a single colony. After the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1917, the Turkestanis applied for autonomy from Russia, and organized themselves into the Turkestan Independent Islamic Republic.
Cooperation was never their strong suit, however, and they promptly started a civil war that lasted six bloody years. In 1925, Uncle Joe Stalin waded into the conflict and brought the area under some semblance of control.
Surprisingly, sixty-five years spent under the brutal, crushing heel of a totalitarian Soviet regime failed to have any salutary effect upon the regional mindset. Today, fifteen years after the collapse of the CCCP -- hastened in part by their failed attempts to invade and conquer Afghanistan -- Central Asia is crazier than ever. And nowhere is that craziness more vividly on display than in the political regimes that have risen from the ashes of communist oblivion.
Let's go over them one by one, shall we?
KNOW YOUR CENTRAL ASIAN DICTATORS!
TAJIKISTAN
Head of State: President Emomali Sharipovich Rakhmonov
Nicknames: Rocky, The Rock
Nationality: Tajik
Has Ruled Since: 1992 or 1994, depending on who you ask
Form of Government: Quasi-democratic pseudo-republic
Leadership Style: Classic post-Soviet strongman
Assassination/Coup Attempts: Three
Crazy Factor: Is both Muslim and Zoroastrian
Likely Fate: Will rule for another decade before passing on the Presidency to one of his many children
Trivia Tidbit: In a 1999 election, Rakhmonov took 97% of the vote!
UZBEKISTAN
Head of State: President Islam Abduganievich Karimov
Nicknames: None
Nationality: Uzbek/Tajik
Has Ruled Since: 1991
Form of Government: Torture-based authoritarian brutocracy
Leadership Style: Terrifyingly effective
Assassination/Coup Attempts: None
Crazy Factor: He fucking boils people alive!!!
Likely Fate: Blown to bits by fundamentalist Muslims and/or fed-up opposition
Trivia Tidbit: Was raised in a Soviet state orphanage; enjoys having his picture taken with prominent Republicans; in a 2000 election, Karimov took 91.9% of the vote!
KAZAKHSTAN
Head of State: President Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev
Nickname: The Nanny
Nationality: Kazakh
Has Ruled Since: 1990
Form of Government: Nepotistic Kleptocracy
Leadership Style: Tenacious!
Assassination/Coup Attempts: None
Crazy Factor: Keeps unilaterally extending his term in office
Likely Fate: Will retain the presidency until senility sets in, whereupon he will wander into the wilderness and be eaten by feral dogs
Trivia Tidbit: Nazarbayev is a passionate collector of Western currencies
KYRGYZSTAN
Head of State: President Askar Akayev
Nickname: The Professor
Nationality: Turko-Mongolian mix
Has Ruled Since: 1991 (Deposed in March, 2005)
Form of Government: Communo-capitalist liberal autocracy
Leadership Style: Schizophrenic
Assassination/Coup Attempts: One
Crazy Factor: A world-class physicist, Akayev is an expert on "holographic systems of storage and transformation of information"
Likely Fate: Will score a gig at Microsoft
Trivia Tidbit: Kyrgyzstan's Tulip Revolution was all but ignored due to Ukraine's near-simultaneous Orange Revolution hogging all the headlines
TURKMENISTAN
Head of State: President for Life Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov
Nickname: The Turkmenbashi, Turk-Man, King of Crazy
Nationality: Ethnic Turkmen
Has Ruled Since: 1985
Form of Government: Cult of Personality
Leadership Style: Gonzotalitarian
Assassination/Coup Attempts: One (but it was fake)
Crazy Factor: Where to begin? This guy makes Saddam Hussein look like Jimmy Carter. In Turkmenistan, you can't throw a dead scorpion without hitting a portrait or statue of the Turkmembashi. He has renamed cities, streets, buildings, celestial bodies, the days of the week and the months of the year after himself and members of his family. All the books in the few remaining Turkmen libraries and schools were authored by the Turkmenbashi. He fired all the nation's doctors and replaced them with illiterate conscripts. When the Turkmenbashi quit smoking after a cancer scare, he declared chewing tobacco illegal. In the middle of the Kara Kum desert, he erected a giant, golden statue of himself that rotates so as to constantly face the sun. He created a new Turkmen alphabet from scratch. Kim Jong-il only wishes he was half as crazy as the Turkmenbashi. The guy is friggin' nuts.
Likely Fate: Will die along with the vast majority of his five million subjects in the most spectacular mass suicide the world has ever known.
Trivia Tidbit: Like Uzbekistani despot Islam Karimov, was raised in a Soviet state orphanage.
*** **** ***
Yer old pal Jerky's Words of Wisdom #281:
Lucky the man who lives not in Central Asia.
|
|
Send all Jokes, Letters and other stuff to Jerky:
jerkyleboeuf@gmail.com
|
|
|
