more confusing news from uzbekistan--this morning i just saw a wash of reports of detentions, shootings and explosions. its not clear whether they're reporting what happened over the past few days or new stuff. it can be really frustrating to try to follow news from central asia when you don't read russian. the christian science monitor has a fairly good overview of the situation, although it's only as of yesterday. so it doesn't help me figure out what is happening there now.
the best blog coverage, i think, is at the agonist (like here and here) and the argus (like here) [ed's note: why do all the blogs following central asian news start with a definite article? apparently, i never got the memo]
there's an argument that the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks are not al-qaeda here. and this article reports that powell has offered u.s. assistance to the uzbek government.
i don't usually focus on uzbekistan that much here (at least i haven't since september when i was blogging from there), so perhaps i lost many of my regular readers by my obsession with these attacks. i don't know why, but they've really affected me in a way that other, perhaps worse, attacks have not. i've had this pit in my stomach ever since i got the first email about them monday morning. it's very strange. i mean, i never lived there, i just went to the country for vacation. there have been bombings in other places where i have visited (e.g. turkey, tunisia) but i haven't felt such an emotional impact from those attacks. perhaps the explanation for my reaction is that this attack, unlike the others, came much sooner after i visited there--a matter of months not years. and i made several friends in uzbekistan who i have kept in touch with by email. the emails of those who have written me this week have added a personal dimension to the whole thing. (actually, what's a little more frightening are the friends who have not written--which is most of them, in fact. but most likely, they just can't get to an internet cafe. obviously checking in with me is not a top priority for them right now).
