Echoes in Eternity

What with the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Islam, there’s been a huge proliferation of Stans in the news. There’s Tajiks and Uzbeks, a Nuristan and a Nurestan, there’s a Baluchistan and a Balochistan and probably a Biloxistan, there are Kremlin-pressured Stans (Bashkortistan) and vowel-challenged Stans (Kyrgyzstan) and Stans that sound vaguely like some big Corporate-Mergerstan (Karakalpakstan). There’s Waziristan, where Osama bin Laden is said to be holed up like a Muslim Pimpernel: they seek him in Waziristan, they seek him in Overtheristan.

So, in a world of Stans, with every Nickelandimistan clamoring for attention, how do you make yours Stan out from the crowd? This was the challenge faced by an obscure Communist apparatchik called Saparmurat Niyazov in 1991 when his Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic suddenly found itself pushed out onto the world stage as the newly independent nation of Turkmenistan. In Soviet Central Asia, Turkmenistan was pretty much the end of the line Stan-wise. You flew in from Baku across the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, the Stan that thinks it’s a Jan.