Thank you Hamdard for bringing up the Uzbekistani resolution. I faced some humongous obstacles myself last time I tried to leave home. The letter from a parent was submitted alright. An interview with law enforcement agents took place. That was horrendous. I was just visiting family. You could only indicate three countries as destinations: Turkey, Malasia and South Korea, indicate tourism. No, wait a minute. I am not leaving as a tourist. Here you go a letter from my employer faxed an hour ago, along with a letter from the University that I am doing my PhD. No, none of that made sense for them. Belgium cannot be indicated as a destination, unless I have a letter of invitation from the Belgian authorities, same relates to all EU Member States. The only option is to indicate tourism and one of the three countries mentioned above. How is that fighting trafficking? How am I in the vulnerable group? I have been living in Europe for the past 9 years. All that didn’t account for anything. Finally, I got out of the country a day before my flight. No bribe was given, some threats were made, that the case will be taken to the parliament. That worked. Authorities issued my exit visa. It was quite a battle. The worst thing is, the whole imitative is funded and implemented in consultation with UNDP and the EU. Go figure.

PS: Turkey, South Korea (and possibly Malasia) are top destination countries for human trafficking. Isn’t that just amusing.

I want to let Alisher off the hook about being inconsistent in his terminology–I lightly edited the article a bit for grammar and clarity and the inconsistency (and the headline) come from me. I think in this case he may not be aware of the nuances in English of “girl” vs “woman.” Because he’s making a consistent (in my reading, anyway) argument that young women should be treated as adults and wants to stand up for their rights to make their own decisions, I think he meant no derision by using the term “girls.” Though we can certainly debate it in further comments.

PS. Alisher, please figure out whether to refer to “female humans” as “girls” or “women” — seems to be very inconsistent and annoying. I guess culturally you want to call them “girls” but following your argument, I guess it would be much better to call them “women” or “young women”. Thanks for the article!

PS2. Noah, happy to hear that you’ll be managing the site. All the best wishes, and hope there will be lots of though provoking articles. Eagerly waiting for your and Sarah’s articles. I know Sarah has her own site now, and doing pretty awesome job in Al-Jazera, but hopefully she’ll have some extra time to post here as well. I’ll be checking Registan more often! Looking forwards to a new Registan chapter!

I’m looking specifically right now for stuff on the theme described above, people to make the case that Central Asia continues to be important and worthy of investment of our time and public resources in the post 9-11 era (if that’s a thing, you can call it whatever you want).

But I’m also open to pitches (or completed articles) about other things that are of interest to you. If you have a couple of guest posts that look good and it seems to be a good fit, then you get your own user name and can run with it. It’s sort of less like an application than like an audition.