The idea is that I can educate myself and any readers interested by doing the research publicly. I don't know if it will last a long time, or if it will be over with as soon as I can name all of the Stans without looking. But either way, it should be educational. As I wrote over there, it's kind of a detective story: Here's a whole part of the world you never hear about and it's linked to oil, terrorism, sketchy American diplomacy, Heroin Crops, Nuclear Weapons distribution and the constant lingering threat of Nuclear War between Pakistan and India, not to mention religious fundamentalism, vast human rights abuses and Anti-American Hatred born out of desperation from the seething class of oil casulaties.the entries so far seem to focus on uzbekistan, one of my ongoing obsessions. i have some quibbles with the idea of grouping together countries just because they end with "stan." (e.g. why not include india, which is called "hindustan" in numerous languages? what about bangladesh, which used to be called east pakistan? why not include several "stan" regions of russia, like tartaristan? what about "east turkistan" (i.e. xinjiang, china), it may not exist as an independent country but culturally and liguistically it has more in common with kazakhstan and kyrgyzstan than the rest of china). i also think scout is seriously mistaken in his recent post in which he seems to assume that the uzbek government is run by religious fundamentalist (in fact, it's quite the opposite, to a rather tragic extent).
nevertheless, its great that scout wants to join the central asia craze that is sweeping the nation and to try to learn more about the region. so i've added "blogging the 'stans" to links. go pay the site a visit.
(UPDATE: edited)
