I was being sarcastic. But we have to understand that Islam absolutely dominates the culture, mentality, way of life, social interactions, and even economic and trade networks in Ferghana valley (and Tashkent to some extent).
Economically, people here don’t depend on government as much as they do on private trade and craftsmanship networks. They don’t give a rat’s ass to borders and keep trading across 3 borders because their social and economic networks and government borders do not coincide.
Let us be open minded for a moment and acknowledge that Ferghana valley is way more integrated and interconnected in one socioeconomic medium than the rest of the Central Asia is. The idea of lifting those formal limits called state borders is not new. People keep bringing it up.
Religious-political groups have advocated it more than anyone else so far. Therefore people think that if it takes to call it Caliphate to lift those borders, then be it so. Because most of the people in the Valley are practicing muslims anyway.
Now, I don’t want to leave a wrong impression about myself. I am an advocate of secular-democratic Turkistani regionalism. But I also beleive the building blocks of Turkistani regionalism will start in Ferghana valley. Because it is at the interconnection of three formal state borders and has more homogenized REGIONAL identity that transgresses ETHNIC identities.

The Khilafah is not a Totalitarian State
http://www.khilafah.com/index.php/the-khilafah/issues/1175-the-khilafah-is-not-a-totalitarian-state

The Khilafah’s Education Policy
http://www.khilafah.com/index.php/the-khilafah/education

An introduction to the Islamic Social System
http://www.khilafah.com/index.php/the-khilafah/social-system/387-an-introduction-to-the-social-system

Non-Muslims
http://www.khilafah.com/index.php/the-khilafah/non-muslims

Like I said, all of these states have serious structural problems that will make them nightmares if they collapse in worst-case-scenario fashion. But I don’t think they will collapse in ways that we’ll anticipate, and I don’t know that it’s really smart policy for the West to go chasing after every eventuality.

What we currently see not only in US – but also in EU/EU member states – policy making towards the region is an utter disregard of the specific long term challenges of each of the countries in the region. Instead, in DC, Berlin, London and Brussels Central Asia is subsumed as some sort of northern appendix of Afghanistan; or as convenient oil/gas exporter to satisfy growing energy demands in the west. The results are policies that at best are not necessarily informed by the do-no-harm doctrine; other policies such as the Northern Distribution Network might have serious implications in terms of facilitating graft and corruption; while increased cooperation in military and security matters leaves the question of what kind of security is supplied by whom and more important for whom completely open. I am not even going into the complete failure of Western policy makers to seriously adress other long-term issues, such as the enourmous youth bulge, rotting infrastructure and deplorable state of education opportunities and health services. The underlying strategic conundrum of sowing the long-term seeds of instability by cooperating with and propping up authoriatrian, secular regimes in order to meet short-term security and energy demands remains unsolved and not sufficiently discussed. The potentially catastrophic consequences of a serious crisis in, say, Uzebkistan should force everybody only remotly involved to take the risks of the region more seriously than the mere possibility would dictate.

If the alarmist speculations that everybody who has only a bit of experience in Central Asia can only roll their eyes about help to generate enough attention to the region and its challenges to get some actual experts involved it is worth the intellectual pain of having to read crappy analysis.

I assume that it has to do with more visas being issued, sure, but also the fact that people who get paid for their writing get paid more if they inject some intrigue and danger into their stories. You’ll get a lot less readers reading “No, really: Kazakhstan is a real country, albeit one with corruption issues” or “Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have very able internal security, thank you very much” compared to the ZOMG side of journalism.

Of course Ablyazov (who made his fortune importing cars into Lithuania) is saying that the charges are trumped up and political in nature. On the other hand, the charges against the bank are mostly genuine and hardly a surprise in the current financial climate (actually they were probably a rude surprise to BTA’s western investors.)

Anyways, I found it interesting that an opponent of Nazarbayev could enjoy such prominent standing and only be attacked when BTA had genuinely been involved in some financial hanky panky. Then again, he is a business man, and the authorities perhaps (*speculation*) didn’t want to spook foreign investors, so they waited until an opportune time arose.(*speculation*)