Welcome to the Ferghana Valley, Uzbekistan’s economical heartland but also the source of all its problems. Clustered between the Tien Shan and the Kuramin mountains, the Ferghana Valley is the agricultural, economical, and demographic heartland of Uzbekistan. Located at the merging of two rivers, the Kara Darya and the Naryn, it boasts the richest soil in all of Central Asia. Visited by Darius the Great, Alexander the Great, the Han dynasty, it also stands at the site of a long legacy of Central Asian silk production. What luck does the Uzbeks have right, so why haven’t they taken over the world? We’ll come to that later.
Uzbeks residing in the Ferghana Valley refer to themselves as the “True Uzbeks”, deliberately mocking their compatriots across the mountain ranges as bogus, fake Uzbeks. Endearingly of course, which I think is hilarious.
But for the True Uzbeks, the wealth of the Valley comes at a high price. Encircled by mountains, the Valley is only accessible through the narrow Kamchik Pass (that narrow purple neck), certainly a bumpy ride. Consequently, Uzbeks travelling from the Valley to the political capital Tashkent have to drive through the natural flatland outlet to the West owned by Tajikistan.
Tajikistan is obviously not happy about all the admin work due to the mass of Uzbeks flooding to and fro its already porous borders. The unusual borders undermine the sovereignty of their country, causing frequent border disputes and has since become a breeding ground for smuggling and ethnic violence.
The Ferghana Valley is itself an irony. Wealth brings about a whole array of other problems for Uzbekistan. Its rivals seek to leverage their influence in the valley for their own gain and the fragility of the valley’s environment threatens the power that the government wields. If there is a lesson here, it would be to never take good fortune for granted. The future of the Valley will be decided by which direction the Uzbek people take, we can only guess what its fate would be.
For Fox Sake 