Daily Life in Turkmenbashy's Golden Age (37 page)

24. Pumpelly, Raphael. (1908).
Explorations in Turkestan, Expedition of 1904
. Washington DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, pp. 320-321.

25. Hiebert.
A Central Asian Village
, p. 9.

26. Pumpelly,
My Reminiscences
, p. 732.

27. Golombek, Lisa and Wilber, Donald (1988).
The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 291-292.

28. The Soviet government initially reported that the death toll was 10,000. In his 1990 book published in Ashgabat, The Ashgabat Catastrophe, Shokhrat Kadyrov suggests that the proper number is closer to 35,000. In the Rukhnama, Niyazov writes that there were 198,000 people in Ashgabat at the time of the earthquake and that 176,000 of them were killed (p. 41).

29. US Geological Survey. (Accessed June 2, 2007). “Most Destructive Known Earthquakes on Record in the World.” earthquake.usgs.gov/ regional/world/most_destructive.php.

30. Kadyrov, Shokhrat. (1990).
Ashkhabadskaia katastrofa: istoriko-demograficheskii ochek krupneishego zemletriasenia
. XX v. Ashgabat: Turkmenistan, p. 34.

31. Niyazov,
Rukhnama
, pp. 41-42.

32. Curzon, George. “The Transcaspian Railway.”
Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society
, 1889. Vol. 2, No. 5, p. 275.

33. Curzon took notes during his trip and then wrote a 478-page report on the railway and its significance to the Great Game, called
Russia in Central Asia and the Anglo-Russian Question
(according to Hopkirk). Eleven years later, Curzon would become Viceroy of India, from which post he would pursue the Great Game for years to come. He later became a member of the House of Lords and Foreign Secretary (1919-1924).

34. Curzon, “The Transcaspian Railway,” pp. 273-295, 279.

35. Morris, L.P. “British Secret Missions in Turkestan, 1918-1919.”
Journal of Contemporary History
, 1977. Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 363-379. Sargent, M. (2004).
British Involvement in Transcaspia (1918-1919)
. Swindon: Conflict Studies Center, Defence Academy of the UK.

36. Morris, “British Secret Missions,” p. 365.

37. To Christians, this is the story of Abraham and Isaac.

38. According to a 2000 World Bank report, “the share of income derived from self-employment or entrepreneurial activities has increased … to more than 50 percent in the poorer republics of the Transcaucasus and Central Asia.” World Bank. “Making Transition Work for Everyone.” Washington DC: World Bank, pp. 152.

39. Olcott,
Central Asia’s Second Chance
, p. 251.

40. Committee to Protect Journalists. “North Korea tops CPJ list of ’10 Most Censored Countries.’ May 2, 2006.

41. Reporters Without Borders. “Worldwide Press Freedom Index.” 2006.

42. In March 2005, Niyazov ordered the country’s rural libraries closed, saying that rural Turkmen didn’t read anyway. In my experience he was right. Few Turkmen I met outside of Ashgabat used books for anything except toilet paper. (Of course, that doesn’t mean the libraries should have been closed).

43. Olcott,
Central Asia’s Second Chance
, p. 184.

44. Ibid, p. 67.

45. International Merv Project. (1996). The Ancient Cities of Merv, Turkmenistan: A Visitor’s Guide. London: The International Merv Project.

46. Herrmann,
Monuments of Merv
, p. 16.

47. Ibid, p. 121.

48. Ibid, pp. 31-32.

49. Ibid, pp. 17, 125.

50. Sevin, A. (1992) “The Seljuqs and the Khwarazm Shahs
”
in
History of Civilizations of Central Asia Volume I: The Dawn of Civilization: Earliest Times to 700 BC
, A.H. Dani.and V.M. Masson (eds.). UNESCO Publishing: Paris, pp. 147.

51. Ibid, p. 155.

52. LeStrange, Guy (1977).
The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia and Central Asia from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur
. Lahore: Al-Biruni, p. 401.

53. Hermann,
Monuments of Merv
, p. 126.

54. Le Strange,
Lands of the Eastern Caliphate
, p. 402

55. Herrmann,
Monuments of Merv
, pp. 127-128.

56. Le Strange,
Lands of the Eastern Caliphate
, pp. 402-403.

57. Herrmann,
Monuments of Merv
, p. 82.

58. Gall, Carlotta (Nov. 21, 1998). “Winged Gods of the Desert.”
The Financial Times
.

59. Maslow, Jonathan (1994).
Sacred Horses: Memoirs of a Turkmen Cowboy
. New York: Random House, pp. 113.

60. Gall, “Winged Gods of the Desert.”

61. Associated Press (Dec. 27, 1999). “Turkmenistan Bans Smoking in Public Places.”

62. Brice, W.C. (1978).
The Environmental History of the Near and Middle East Since the Last Ice Age
. Academic Press: London, p. 329.

63. LeStrange,
Lands of the Eastern Caliphate
, p. 457.

64. Morgan, E.D. and C.H. Coote (Eds.) (1967).
Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and Persia by Anthony Jenkinson and Other Englishmen
. New York: Burt Franklin Publishers, p. 68.

65. LeStrange,
Lands of the Eastern Caliphate
, p. 403.

66. United Press International (March 2, 2005). “President Closes Down
Nation’s Hospitals.”

67. CIA. “World Factbook: Turkmenistan.” Retrieved July 4, 2007, from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tx.html

68. Most of Turkmenistan’s GDP comes from exports. About 80 percent of Turkmenistan’s exports are “fuels and mining products” and 10 percent are “agricultural products.” The first category includes mostly gas and oil, while the second is mostly cotton. World Trade Organization (2007). “Country Profiles: Turkmenistan.” World Bank (2007). “Turkmenistan Data Profile.”

69. Allworth,
Central Asia
, p. 127, and Whitman, John. “Turkestan Cotton in Imperial Russia.”
American Slavic and East European Review
, 1956. Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 190-205.

70. Allworth,
Central Asia
, pp. 284-289. Whitman, “Turkestan Cotton.”

71. Curtis, Glenn. (1996).
Turkmenistan: A Country Study
. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress. Retrieved on July 25, 2007 from http:// countrystudies.us/turkmenistan/

72. U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child (June 2, 2006). “UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: Concluding Observations, Turkmenistan.” CRC/C/TKM/CO/1. Retrieved June 27, 2007 from www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/refworld/rwmain?docid=45377ee50.

73. US Department of State (2004). “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2003: Turkmenistan.” Retrieved on July 1, 2007 from http:// www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27870.htm.

74. Agence France Presse. (Nov. 5, 2003). “Turkmen Traffic Cops Round
Up Drivers to Gather Cotton Harvest: Report.”

75. Gelb, Michael, “An Early Soviet Ethnic Deportation: The Far-Eastern Koreans.”
Russian Review
, 1995. Vol. 54, pp. 389-412. Kho, Songmoo (1987).
Koreans in Soviet Central Asia
. Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society.

76. Gelb, “The Far-Eastern Koreans,” p. 401.

77 . US Commission on International Religious Freedom (2004). “Countries of Particular Concern: Turkmenistan.” Retrieved on July 2, 2007, from http://www.uscirf.gov/countries/countriesconcerns/Countries/ Turkmenistan.html.

78. Conolly, Arthur (2001).
Journey to the North of India Overland from England Through Russia, Persia and Afghanistan
. New Delhi and Madras: Asian Educational Services, p. 76.

79. LeStrange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, pp. 379. Though the remains of Dekhistan now sit in the middle of the desert, the Caspian coast is actually not that far away. It’s possible that either the sea’s level was higher in Hawqal’s time, so that it extended further inland than it does today, or that Dekhistan was once a sprawling region that stretched all the way to the coast.

80. Kharin,
Vegetation Degradation
, pp. 40-41.

81. Edgar,
Tribal Nation
, p. 213.

82. Ibid, p. 206.

83. Ibid, p. 209.

84. Olcott, Martha Brill. “The Basmachi or Freemen’s Revolt in Turkestan 1918-1924.”
Soviet Studies
, 1981. Vol. 33, No. 3, p. 353.

85. Edgar,
Tribal Nation
, p. 212.

86. Lerman, Zvi and Karen Brooks (2001).
Turkmenistan: An Assessment of Leasehold-Based Farm Restructuring
. Washington DC: World Bank, pp. xi-xii. Pomfret, Richard. “Turkmenistan: From Communism to Nationalism by Gradual Economic Reform.” MOCT-MOST, 2001. Vol.11, p. 170.

87. For men, life expectancy at birth in Turkmenistan is 65. For women, it’s 72. CIA,
World Factbook – Turkmenistan
, retrieved on July 17, 2007 from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos / tx.html.

88. Masson, V.M. (1992). “The Decline of Bronze Age Civilization and Movements of the Tribes,” in
History of Civilizations of Central Asia Volume I: The Dawn of Civilization: Earliest Times to 700 B.C.
, 
A.H. Dani and V.M. Masson (eds.). UNESCO Publishing: Paris, pp 342.

89. Marri, Mir Khuda Bakhsh. (1997).
Searchlight on Baloches and Balochistan
. Lahore: Ferozsons, Ltd, pp. 17-21. By 1997, there were some 40,000 –50,000 living in the area.

90. Hopkirk,
The Great Game
, pp. 425-429.

91. De Laesso, F. 1885. “The Caves and Ruins at Penjdeh.”
Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography
, New Monthly Series, Vol. 7, No. 9 (Sep. 1885), p. 584.

92. Hopkirk,
The Great Game
, p. 429.

93. US Foreign Agricultural Service. (2004). “Crop Production in the Cotton Region of the Former Soviet Union.” Retrieved on July 25, 2007 from http://www.fas.usda.gov/remote/soviet/country_page / fsuasia_text.htm.

94. Aldiss,
Songs from the Steppes
, p. 5.

95. This hotel was home to a handful of American “gas-and-go” guys, who serviced the American military aircraft that regularly stopped off to refuel at the Ashgabat airport on the way from Europe to Afghanistan. This operation has been in place since the US invaded Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. See Balancing Military Assistance with Human Rights in Central Asia, a hearing in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 27, 2002.

96. United Press International. (March 1, 2004). “Men Get Makeovers in Turkmenistan.” Niyazov justified his decree by claiming that, “excess hair gives outsiders the ‘wrong impression’ of the country and is ‘unhygienic.’”

97. Hannan, Tim and Sarah O’Hara. (1998). “Managing Turkmenistan’s Karakum Canal: Problems and Prospects.”
Post-Soviet Geography and Economics
, Vol. 39, No. 4, p. 227.

98. Ibid,” p. 227.

99. Allworth,
Central Asia
, p. 117.