Turkmenistan, which ranks up with Burma and North Korea as one of the most appallingly totalitarian countries on earth and which only recently opened its doors to foreign investors, is building Avaza, a $5 billion resort complex on the Caspian Sea. Set for completion in 2020, a goal that's remained intact despite the global recession, Avaza will include high-rise hotels, sports facilities, conference centers, and, of course, a man-made island (which, when seen from the air, will resemble a crab--President Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov's zodiac sign). As the project was just getting started in early 2008, a government press release outlined the vision for Avaza's opulence:

Pleasure boats will furrow the river with the original bridges thrown across. Restaurants, cafes, sports grounds and footpaths will be constructed on the river banks. The river and lakes will be located in the natural hollows blended well with the local landscape. The lakes will surround the cozy beaches and when the gale will rage throughout the sea tourists can swim in the calm lakes.

Similarly, Kazakhstan is building Aktau-City, which will cost $38 billion and, like Avaza, will be completed by 2020. Construction of hotels and shopping malls is currently underway, and the complex already boasts, interestingly, an academic showpiece: Caspian State University of Technology and Engineering, which opened earlier this year.

So how do Avaza and Aktau-City seem to be faring thus far, in the less-than-stellar economic climate? Not well.

Avaza had trouble filling guestrooms after the first hotels opened this summer and fall. “[T]he ministries in Ashgabat received orders to select staff to be sent to spend a few nights in the five-star hotels. Some had to pay the hotel bills from their own pocket,” Farid Tuhbatullin, the head of the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, recently told Transitions Online, a news website that covers Central Asia. It doesn't help that Turkmenistan also has short summers--meaning, beach-going in February won't work as well as it does in Dubai--and an archaic visa process, or that it borders those havens of stability, Iran, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. And Aktau-City has some, er, environmental hazards to consider: According to the website Eurasianet, "[R]adioactive waste from Aktau’s disused Chemical Ore Mining and Smelting Complex has gathered [nearby]." What's more, in attracting investors and tourists, both Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan must contend with bad international reputations--the former's being worse than the latter's--on human rights, corruption, and other governance issues.

The country of seven million went from being the poorest Soviet republic to being one of the world's poorest nations. Independence brought the end of state farms, mines, irrigation channels, transport networks and energy plants.

Some Western analysts celebrate the locals' return to "ancestral traditions", but many adapting to the realities of the free market see it quite differently.

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't have to," says Timurbek, formerly a Russian philologist and now a pensioner who has taken to animal husbandry. "Before, nomadism was a matter of choice, now it's one of necessity," he told IPS.

Timurbek set up his yurt, a big tent made of wool and with an interior richly decorated with wall coverings, horse bags and carpets, on one of the few grassy fields left on the Pamir's high plateaus, at an altitude of 4,100 metres.

The Pamirs lie mostly in the Gorno Badakhsan province. The province is home to a mere 3 percent of Tajikistan's population - little more than 210,000 - but which constitutes almost half the country's territory.

The Pamirs are among the highest mountain ranges in the world, with altitudes ranging from 3,000 to 7,500 metres. Extreme climatic conditions make this one of the least densely populated areas on the planet.

"Under the Soviets we had all sorts of food in the shops, cheap fuel, buses and roads in good shape," says Aziz, a semi-nomadic farmer at the yurt camp, as his wife quietly runs a rudimentary machine producing butter and yoghurt from Yak milk.

"It doesn't mean we liked Stalin, but everyone here misses the Soviet Union," Aziz, a Kyrgyz of Sunni Muslim confession told IPS. "We couldn't practice our religion freely, but there was food and work."

[. . .]

At Murgab's "bazaar", where people often cover their faces with veils as strong winds lift clouds of dust, shopping choices are limited to imported cookies, bread, chocolate bars and mostly expired fish and meat cans sold at exorbitant prices.

The poverty affects education; some children do not go to school because their parents cannot afford school material and uniforms.

Fuel is scarce, and locals are forced to use the scarcely available tersken bush to heat households, leading to desertification.

Last year, Western countries put pressure on Beijing to hold a dialogue with representatives of the Dalai Lama, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy even threatening to boycott the Beijing Olympics if China refused. Beijing's protestations that Tibet was an internal Chinese affair were disregarded.

This time, however, the Western response is muted. The United States has adopted a mild tone, with President Barack Obama merely calling on all parties in Xinjiang “to exercise restraint.” The European Union has gone even further, taking the position that violence in Xinjiang “is a Chinese issue, not a European issue.” Serge Abou, the Eu's ambassador to China, said Europe also had its problems with minorities and “we would not like other governments to tell us what is to be done.”

While there are similarities between events last year in Tibet and those in Xinjiang this month, the world has changed: China is now seen as an indispensable partner of the United States and Europe, both of which are facing a financial crisis. Beijing's diplomatic assistance in resolving the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues is also seen as too important to put in jeopardy.

What reaction there has been came mainly from Muslim countries. The Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference, which represents 57 Muslim governments, condemned what it called the excessive use of force against Uyghur civilians. At least 184 people, both Uyghurs and Han Chinese, have been killed.

The OIC statement declared: “The Islamic world is expecting from China, a major and responsible power in the world arena with historical friendly relations with the Muslim world, to deal with the problem of Muslim minority in China in broader perspective that tackles the root causes of the problem.”

The country that has taken the strongest position is Turkey, whose people share linguistic, religious and cultural links with the Uyghurs. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan actually went so far as to characterize what has happened as “a kind of genocide” and said his country would bring the matter up in the United Nations Security Council.

Thousands of Turks and Uyghur expatriates took to the streets across Turkey after Friday prayers, protesting the violence in Xinjiang and burning Chinese flags and products, AFP photographers and media reports said.

The biggest of the demonstrations was at Istanbul's Fatih Mosque, where an estimated 5,000 people gathered and said prayers for members of the Uyghur community who lost their lives in the ethnic unrest in Xinjiang, the NTV news channel said.

"No to ethnic cleansing!" chanted the crowd, waving the Uyghur flag depicting a white crescent on a blue background, as some protestors set fire to Chinese flags and goods produced in China.

Some 200 people attended similar prayers at Istanbul's Beyazit mosque at the call of a Turkey-based Uyghur association and Turkish nationalist groups, after which they held a brief demonstration, shouting "Murderer China", an AFP photgrapher said.

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