Since the fall of the Soviet Union - and indeed, among certain specialist a full 50 years earlier - a large section of the largest continent on Earth has been divided into political units terminating with the suffix, "-stan," a (cognate) term in Persian that roughly means "place of." To the casual observer, for whom the region has little international relevance, the countries that have adopted this naming convention to describe their national identity are often lumped together under the umbrella term "The Stans." This informal geographic categorization assumes a certain political, cultural and linguistic similarity which is not entirely accurate. However, more formal delineations of the region - as Central Asia, the Greater Middle East, Eurasia, West Asia, etc. - also demonstrate obvious failures to identify the salient borders of a mid-continental, non-oceanic region.
Let us consider, then, a new conceptualization of this broad, geographically diverse landscape; let us start over from the naive innocence of name recognition, and apply ourselves to evaluating those countries, sub-national provinces, and macro-national regions that lay claim to a shared heritage. While existing formal definitions like Central Asia, et al fail to capture the interconnectedness of the region as a whole, an alternative conceptualization may present itself if we're willing to... Meet the Stans.
Let's start with the Classic Stans - those that have held the name the longest, represent the clearest commonality, and fit most closely with both the informal "-stan" and "Central Asia" definitions. These are the former Soviet Republics, and now sovereign nations, of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Each can traces its political delineation and nomenclature to the 1920s, when the Imperial Russian Govenorates of Turkestan and the Kazakh Steppe were "sorted out" according to their majority "ethnic" population. The process of identifying - indeed, creating - these isolated "ethnic" groups from the diverse intermarried and multi-lingual population of Central Asia is fascinating, but well documented and analyzed elsewhere. More important to the current consideration are the similarities which resulted in their original conglomeration, and which may suggest continuing commonalities today.
The following are not intended as absolute criteria, but rather as the predominant unifying characteristics of the Stans of Central Asia, which we will use as a guide in considering how much further the boundaries of these shared traits may stretch. There are exceptions - even large ones - and as such no assertion based on such casual observations should be taken as definitive. Rather, the argument being put forward is that certain traits demonstrate a more fundamental link between the countries and regions in question, and that the most-recognized, oldest and most-formal states of Central Asia establish some of the core qualifiers, from which the outlying, less formal regions will be expected to deviate. The ultimate frontier of this region, then, should not be where one trait terminates, but nor will it necessarily require a complete absence of every identified quality. Only careful analysis and reasoning can properly adjudicate these limits.
Characteristics of the Classic Stans/ Traditional Central Asia
- Muslim Majority population - most often of the Sunni persuasion, but usually with some acceptance of alternative denominations.
- History of repression - especially a Soviet legacy or political invention.
- Singular "ethnic" identifier - usually based on majority native language, often a Turkic root.
- 'centrally' located in Asia - somewhere between "Europe," the Indian subcontinent and China/East Asia.
Now let us apply these to other regions which may have a claim to the "stans" region. We will consider them in the following groups: The Stans Next Door, the Coulda' Stans, the Phantom Stans, and the Shoulda' Stans.
The Stans Next Door
The most obvious Stans outside of traditional Central Asia are Afghanistan and Pakistan. The former can claim almost as long a lineage as its neighbors to the north, being referred to informally as Afghanistan since at least the 18th century, and officially adopting the name in 1919. Pakistan, who came to the name 15 years later, added a novel approach and a great deal more enthusiasm to the process. In calling for a Muslim country independent from both British rule and Hindu-majority India, "proto-Pakistanis" were confronted with a serious problem - there was no one singular ethnic/linguistic group that would make up their proposed country. They therefore invented a portmanteau, incorporating the Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistani people into a new term - P.A.K.(i)S.TAN. It is therefore a deviation from the Classic Stans in that it is not - and was never conceived - as being the "land of" one particular ethnic or linguistic group. Rather, it was explicitly the Muslim faith, in this case Sunni Islam, that bound the neo-pakistanis together. Both of these countries are Muslim majority, and for reasons of trade, cultural similarity, and geographic location present the strongest argument for inclusion within the existing Central Asia terminology. In fact, they are often included in formal categorizations, sometimes as South-Central Asia, though with the recent international attention brought by the US "War on Terror" and the incredible amount of funding that has followed, this pair is increasingly being seen as its own region with its own problems, known in the international development field as "AfPak." (presumably voiced by Gilbert Gottfried in a camo vest)
Not technically a "stan" with a name that predates Russian or Soviet influence by over a millenium, the country of Azerbaijan as it exists today might be better thought of as Northern Azeristan. It borders the Northwest corner of Iran where the majority of ethnic Azeris reside and which, historically, had regular, almost constant, contact and interchange with its Russian-dominated cousins. While not invented by the Soviets, modern Azerbaijan certainly shares its legacy with other Central Asian Stans, has a Muslim majority population (albeit a regional outlier in aligning with the Shi'a branch), a dominant ethnic group, and a Turkic-based national language. Growing interest in Caspian petroleum by Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan - with Baku as the primary site of export pipelines - has dramatically linked the small nation to its Central Asian neighbors, and is likely to increase their interaction in the future.
The Coulda' Stans
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the former SSRs became de facto independent nations, enacting what was previously a ceremonial distinction in the heirarchy of Soviet administrative districting. In the US, we have the Federal, State and "local" (county, city, district/ward, etc) levels of governance, each with its own particular areas of authority, bureaucratic tasks, and nestled territorial jurisdiction. The same was true in the Soviet Union, but the type of sub-Republic status granted to a particular jurisdiction - Oblast, Autonomous Oblast, ASR, etc. - made a world of difference not only in the functioning of that area, but in its relationship to both its equal, superior, and even all-Union peers. The great priveledge of being an SSR - the highest sub-Union designation - was that, legally, you were recognized by Moscow as an independent country which willingly joined the Union. As in the United States - a federation of theoretically independent states - this membership was tacit, and secession was not really allowed (as the US Civil War demonstrated - Sorry, Texas).
What this meant in 1991 was that every SSR had the legal right, based on a constitution it voted to abrograte, to secede and form its own country. However, the non-SSRs, former Autonomous Oblasts, etc. did not have this legal option. Whether a part of a break-away Republic or the remaining skeletal Russian Federation, their chances of independent rule were effectively nil.
The most contentious example of the resulting backlash was in Chechnya, though a similar case could be made by its Caucasus neighbor, Daghestan. Likewise, several regions within the non-Russian Republics could make a case that they deserved their own independence, having few connections or affinities for their "parent" SSR save through mediation from Moscow. Karakalpakstan, in Western Uzbekistan, is one such example. These small, isolated regions would have been hard-pressed to build an economy separated from their former Soviet connections, but the same difficulty was faced by all post-Soviet regions, both within and outside Russia. Whether or not they "deserve" to be sovereign nations, their cultural ties and economic/political interaction argues strongly for their inclusion - and consideration - in our more-informed conception of The Stans as a geo-political region.
The Phantom Stans
Lacking any political organization or recognized territorial borders, three large areas of modern day Russia, China and the Middle East seem especially relevant in conceptualizing the larger domain of The Stans. Most notably, they demonstrate the weakness of political maps and artificial borders to convey the shared concerns and cultural linkages that our more-informed regional categorization seeks to identify. Even the terminology used to identify these areas is contentious, with authorities in the ruling countries actively seeking to put down any proponents. In each case, a national minority seeks independence - actively or not - from its current country
based on re-drawing political borders to better capture a group that identifies itself as Muslim, linguistically uniform, and in some way oppressed. The regions are 'Tatarstan' in Russia, 'Uyghurstan' in Western China, and 'Kurdistan' in the Middle East.
Tatarstan, which in its present use is one small 'republic' in central Russia, actually refers to a much larger zone of once-Muslim majority lands which were systematically conquered by the Russian Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries. Population exchange and several centuries of Russian and Soviet rule have radically changed the demographics of the region, decreasing the "stan-like" character of many, while simultaneously dispersing people with an affinity for Turkic or Muslim identity from the Baltic to the Pacific. Thus, we may think of Tatarstan - as intended here - as a 'nation' in the classic sense - a group of people bound by linguistic, cultural or even (imagined) historical identity - who may or may not be the majority in their place of residence, and which may span large, even non-contiguous areas.
Uyghurstan is effectively the same as the enormous Xinjiang 'autonomous region' - the largest province in China with an area more than twice the size of Texas. It's 21 million people (slightly smaller than Texas) are a split of indigenous ethnic Uyghurs - a majority Muslim, Turkic language group that split off from the Central Asian khanates in the 13th century - and Han Chinese that the central government in Beijing has been importing to the region over the decades. They are among the closest cultural kin to their neighbors in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, but receive very little aid due to China's overwhelming political influence and zero tolerance policy on the subject of Uyghur self-rule. More commonly referred to by proponents as "Eastern Turkestan," the failure to include "Xinjiang" in categorizations of Central Asia belies the shortcomings of exclusively political-bounded maps.
Finally, Kurdistan is an imagined conglomeration of existing Kurdish-majority areas in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. While there is an historic precedent for a Kurdish home country, like the Armenians before 1900, the Kurds have essentially been a minority nation split between larger powers for centuries. Kurdish nationalism received a tremendous boost in 1992 when Iraq was forced to accept a Kurdish autonomous region in its North after Saddam Hussein's brutal use of chemical weapons attracted an international reaction, and since 2003 the autonomy has increased dramatically. This has caused Kurds in neighboring Turkey especially to push hard for inclusion in what they see as a burgeoning Kurdish state, and prompted an equivalent backlash from Turkish authorities who seek to preserve the status quo. While not linguistically Turkic, or with any Soviet legacy, their sense of ethnic identity - tied to majority Sunni Islam - and geographic position alongside Azerbaijan and Iran, mark Kurdistan as a distant fringe of Central Asia, but certainly on the inside - rather than out - of a Stan-based categorization.
The Shoulda' Stans?
Before tracing the outlines of the new region we're developing, let us first consider the ones on the fence; those which a most-liberal interpretation could include in our categorization, but which a more reasoned analysis might disqualify. While Russia and China are, without a doubt, the most active international actors in Central Asian affairs, two other countries place great importance on foreign policy and economic development in the region. This belies not only their mutual interest and connectivity with events thereof, but also seems to have historic, even cultural, ties. Iran and Turkey, in their own, very different ways, continue to dabble in the affairs of The Stans. Language, Religion and History seem to have cache for these modern states, and bind them more to their neighboring Stans than would otherwise be the case. The great Turkish nationalism of the early 20th century not only inspired, but in many ways was developed, not by Anatolian turks, but by their Turkic cousins in Kazan, Baku and even distant Tashkent. And the influence of Persia on Central Asia - and vice versa - has long been strong, with mutual trade, intellectual discourse, and revolutionary zeal often spilling across borders. The lack of key components like history of repression, and their long parallel history as dominant empires of the region - not the glib absence of -stan from their names - discount the claim to include Iran or Turkey as part of a re-imagined Greater Central Asia, but it is also difficult to draw as clear a distinction between these 'border states' and the more obvious outliers (below). [It should also be noted that for many geo-political and cultural reasons, Mongolia could easily be considered part of "Central" Asia. However its general lack of foreign policy involvement, and minimal ties to core states and issues affecting Central Asia, make it difficult to argue that its inclusion in regional policy formation is anything near 'essential.'
Non-Stans
A completely opposite approach to sketching the new region we're trying to conceptualize would be to take the criteria above and effectively work our way "in," identifying those countries that clearly do Not fit the bill, until we have constructed borders by negative criteria. For example, to the North, Russia and China, despite their large Muslim population spread across 'tatarstan' and 'uyghurstan' are clearly not what we intend. Neighther Beijing nor Moscow is linked to Tashkent in the same way that Kabul, Baku or even Tehran might be. India to the South is another obvious exclusion, as it was separated from Pakistan specifically to delineate the religio-cultural break. In the West, the lines are harder to draw, as Turkey and Iran demonstrate, but the Arab heartland of the Middle East - Iraq, Syria, the Gulf - despite Muslim majorities and more distant colonial ties, have scant, if any, connections with core Central Asian issues, andmore active foreign policy concerns regarding oil and Israel. This leaves only Transcaucasia, the small strip of mountainous land between the Black and Caspian seas. Religion can easily serve to divide Georgia and Armenia as distant parts of Europe and/or the Middle East, but they share commonalities with the Stans in their Soviet experience, and especially their post-Soviet maneuvering. If called on the point, the should probably be considered outside our new Land of the Stans - Stanistan - but further debate is clearly warranted.
What is the purpose of this new regional categorization? Why should we re-think Cold War era titles like Central Asia, and why is a term as broad as Eurasia inadequate? What are the political implications of thinking about these countries 'regionally,' instead of 'marginally,' continuously on the fringes of other regions.
To see Turkey as proto-European, Iran as a distant Middle Eastern Nation, and China as an exclusively Eastern Asian power, is to risk academically and functionally missing the actual interactions, cooperation and competition in which these countries engage on a regular basis as major components of their foreign policy strategy. The US and the USSR were notorious for making their own maps which placed their country in the center, and allowed geometric distortion to marginalize the size - and by correlation, the importance - of more distant lands and people. What I am calling for is a new cartographic re-centering, minus the prior arrogance of centered importance. A map stretching from Istanbul to Urumqi would do little to facilitate EU efficiency or cure AIDS in Africa, but it is exactly through this lens that today's policy makers active in Russia, the Middle East, South Asia, and yes - even Central Asia - need to understand the impact and influence of their decisions.
I have chosen to look at this new region, perhaps best thought of as "Greater Central Asia," or "Middle Eurasia," through an odd constant in local cuisine. No more absolute or universal than any of our other criteria, I have chosen the simplicity of meat cooked on skewers as a symbolic unifier of this new geographic category, and will thus proceed to consider, from the vantage of a satellite hovering over Tashkent, how the world looks and functions in the land of Shashlykistan.
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