Restless Valley: Revolution, Murder, and Intrigue in the Heart of Central Asia - Softcover

Shishkin, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300205910 ISBN 13: 9780300205916

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2014

Synopsis

A reporter's vivid account of Central Asia's wild recent history--violent in the extreme and rife with characters both heroic and corrupt

It sounds like the stuff of a fiction thriller: two revolutions, a massacre of unarmed civilians, a civil war, a drug-smuggling highway, brazen corruption schemes, contract hits, and larger-than-life characters who may be villains . . . or heroes . . . or possibly both. Yet this book is not a work of fiction. It is instead a gripping, firsthand account of Central Asia's unfolding history from 2005 to the present.Philip Shishkin, a prize-winning journalist with extensive on-the-ground experience in the tumultuous region above Afghanistan's northern border, focuses mainly on Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Both nations have struggled with the enormous challenges of post-Soviet independent statehood; both became entangled in America's Afghan campaign when U.S. military bases were established within their borders. At the same time, the region was developing into a key smuggling hub for Afghanistan's booming heroin trade. Through the eyes of local participants--the powerful and the powerless--Shishkin reconstructs how Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have ricocheted between extreme repression and democratic strivings, how alliances with the United States and Russia have brought mixed blessings, and how Stalin's legacy of ethnic gerrymandering incites conflict even now.

About this title

Book Description

An award-winning reporter provides a vivid account of Central Asia’s wild recent history, its role as a staging ground for U.S. military actions in nearby Afghanistan, and its struggles against violence, corruption, and the ruinous heroin industry.

From the Author

An excerpt from Restless Valley by Philip Shishkin

Andijan, UzbekistanMay, 2005. Word is trickling out of a massacre of prisoners and civilians.
Rumors rippled through the crowd that high-ranking Uzbek officials, perhaps even the president himself, were on their way to address the rally and somehow make things better. Such was the enduring appeal of the myth of the good czar. Through centuries of misrule and repression, people in the Russian and then the Soviet empire held out hope that all the abuse was orchestrated by mid-level bureaucrats while the man at the top was kept in the dark. If only you could bypass the evil entourage and tell the czar directly what horrible injustices were being visited upon his subjects, he would open his eyes in shock, punish the abusers, and make things right.
You read accounts of victims of Stalin’s purges dragged into dungeons and forced by their interrogators to sign wholly fabricated admissions of guilt before getting shot like dogs, and the victims, incredulous to the last, say things like “Does Comrade Stalin know about this?” or “It’s all a mistake, you must tell Comrade Stalin.” The myth of the good czar is a coping mechanism, a refusal to believe that the political system is really as rotten from the top as it seems. 

In Andijan that day, as protesters were expecting the Uzbek president to alight on the square and talk to them, security forces quietly cut off all retreats and prepared to turn the square into a kill zone.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0300205910
• ISBN 13: 9780300205916
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 328