Lost in Stanland

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 gave us fourteen new countries (plus Russia) including the five “stans” of Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. We can be grateful the Soviet Union did not break up any further, or we would have to deal with Bashkortostan, Dagestan, and Tatarstan, all now Russian republics. From the mid-1990s, I faced the challenge of explaining my travels in Central Asia to colleagues, students, and friends. You would have thought the conflict in Afghanistan would have focused the attention of Westerners on the countries next door, but unfortunately it hasn’t. Just as medieval European maps tagged vast regions of Africa and Asia as terra incognita, unknown land, the five Central Asian republics are often a geographical blank between Afghanistan and Pakistan to the west and China to the east. To many, my travels might as well have been on another planet. I had simply been in “Stanland.”