Taking a Look at Uzbekistan

Mongolia is a landlocked, central Asian country, between China and Russia, with many mountainous and desert areas. The climate in Mongolia can be very extreme, with droughts in the summer and heavy snow in the winters. Mongolia gained its independence in 1921, and was declared a socialist nation, until the late 1980s, since around 1990, the country has had a type of free market economy. There are branches similar to the United States, where there is a president, prime minister and cabinet in the executive, some members of parliament in the legislative branch and a constitutional court in the judicial branch. The government in Mongolia is fairly new and not incredibly developed. The capital of Mongolia is Ulaanbaatar, and about 45% of all of Mongolia’s population lives there. The population of Mongolia is young; the majority of the people are younger than 30 years old. The population’s social structure is mostly differentiated by the increasing gaps between the amounts of wealth people have, unlike the past where it had more social hierarchies of clans and tribes. Some of the main industries in Mongolia today are food processing, leather goods, carpets, and mining (specifically coal), all of these industries were built under the old socialistic practice of the country. In the past, Mongolia’s main trading partner was the Soviet Union, now the country trades items like livestock, various animal products and metals with 25 different countries specifically its neighboring

For over 2 centuries, Afghanistan has known virtually no time without war. Beginning around 326 B.C. with the conquests of Alexander the Great, to the Persians, British, Russians and most recently, America and our NATO allies, Afghanistan has been cultivated into the country that it is today through a trial by fire. Regardless of this relentless onslaught of foreign military power, the Afghan people have tirelessly defended their homeland with no outside power ever being able to subdue them completely. Following the withdrawal of the Soviet Union in 1989, the country fell into civil war, torn even further apart by fiercely dedicated tribal warlords. This power vacuum led to the rise of a group called the Taliban. Led by a one eyed man

Classic Eurasia: a time saturated with cultural growth and development of societies. During this era Empires rose and fell, various religions were created, and mankind was morally tested time and time again. In some societies, the equality of men arose from this challenges. In others civilizations however, people were dragged into the toxic cycle of sharply stratified class systems. But, a common theme in all of these Second-wave civilizations was the clear presence of patriarchy. Under patriarchal rules, women are inarguably subordinate to men in all matters (233). Given the presence of patriarchy in all classic Eurasian empires, narrowing down the choice of which empire to live under as a woman is a bit tricky. Although the presence of patriarchies among classic Eurasian Empires ensured the overall subordination of women, certain Empires offered women more opportunites than others.

The Chechen Republic or, informally, Chechnya, is a federal subject of Russia. It is located in the Northern Caucasus Mountains, in the Southern Federal District within 100 kilometers of the Caspian Sea (Chechnya, 2013). The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny. The population of Chechnya was 1,268,989, according to the 2010 Russian Census (Chechnya, 2013). As of the 2010 Census, Chechens make up 95.3% at 1,206,551 of the republic 's population. The predominant religion in Chechnya is Islam. Chechens are overwhelmingly adherent to the Shafi 'i Madhhab of Sunni Islam, the republic having converted to Islam between the 16th and the 19th centuries (Twigg, 2005) . In 1997 Chechnya officially embraced Islam

Before the Soviet Union dissolved into several smaller countries in 1991, it was a huge country covering around eight million square miles. However, most of the areas were not suitable to be occupied. They were either too cold, or too hot and too dry to be occupied. The best land in the Soviet Union was generally located inside the triangle Leningrad (A) - Lake Baikal (B) - Odessa (C) shown in Fig. 1. This was nine-tenths of the best land in the Soviet Union, where most cities, transportation systems, and farms were located. The triangle also includes the Black Earth region with the Central Black Earth Region or Chernozemie is located approximately in the grey area inside the triangle shown in Fig 1. This is a perfect land for agriculture

USSR - (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the official name of the former Soviet Union) a former federation of Communist republics occupying the northern half of Asia and part of eastern Europe; capital, Moscow, created from the Russian empire in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union was the largest country in the world.

Both the Russian and the Chinese empires pushed from facing directions across Eurasia beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the Eurasian frontiers, Chinese and Russians also viewed their arrangement programs as the sagacity of reclamation into wilderness, ignoring or stop the unconstrained histories of other inhabitants. The common histories of both countries are intimately bound up with their expansion into the Eurasian interior. Although they have maintained public states, different the native Americans, Mongols and other Central Eurasian followers also still find much of their history literal in terms of penetration of their region expanding empires. Here, however I debate

Half of the land is used for crops, but most people work in inudtries brought in by other countries. The United States brought in the U.S. dollar and since 2001 the Economy seems to be

Imagine if the people of a country did not have clean water to shower with, gas for transportation, or a place to live in because of the lack of natural resources. These resources can be found within certain areas of Afghanistan’s geological setting. Discovering them would have an economic and political effect on society. Natural resources are vital because Afghans utilize them to help carry out daily life. In the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Amir’s father built an orphanage using the materials Afghanistan provided.

Imagine being an American living in the United States. One day, Europe decides to group the US with Canada and Mexico, just for ease. Would you be okay with suddenly becoming a “North American”, instead of a regular US American? Most likely not. Though it sounds like a crazy idea, such is the case in Western Asia. On the east edge of the Black Sea lies a small country by the name of Georgia. Within its boundaries, is an even smaller separatist state called Abkhazia. At the moment, only about four or five countries, mainly Russia and a few of its allies, actually recognize their independence. Abkhazia wants to become completely independent and to be fully recognized as its own country.

Russia is a huge landmass and covers a vast amount of the earth’s surface area. Being so large, Russia contains a huge variety of different geographical features. There are several mountains, rivers, bodies of water, climate zones, and population centers in Russia. Most of the development in Russia is located in its core area, east of the Ural Mountains. There are several countries around Russia that used to be parts of a larger union called The Union of Soviet Socialists Republics, however, in 1991, the USSR broke apart into several other independent states. The new states that were formed are: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and

Russia, originally called the republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R). It is the largest country in the world housing an estimated 143,304,000 people. Spanning across nine different time zones Russia covers the entire Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe and incorporates a large variety of environments and landforms.

The fight for control of Afghanistan’s opium economy has created a powerful entity competing for influence within an already fragile state. Worldwide drug use has led to a steady demand for Afghanistan’s opium and heroin production. The benefits for those involved including workers and farmers who produce the opium to the warlords, commanders, and international traffickers who control its movement, is great. Years after the fall of the Taliban government, some argue that the rebellion is no longer about religion or ideology, but about money and wealth. With almost all of the worlds opium production in Afghanistan most is cultivated in a small areas of southern provinces near the Iranian and Pakistani border, Kandahar,

Russia is a country in Northern Eurasia, bordered by the Arctic Ocean, and numerous countries such as China, Mongolia, and Georgia. The total area of Russia is 17,098,242 square kilometers (CIA.gov), making it the largest country in the world. The terrain of the country is “broad plain with low hills west of Urals; vast coniferous forest and tundra in Siberia; uplands and mountains along southern border regions” (CIA.gov) with a climate that ranges from humid and warm places to extremely frigid regions varying on its location. Russia is a federation

Uzbekistan is a former soviet bloc country in the central Eurasia region. It was a functioning member of the USSR from 1924 all the way until the fall of the Gorbachev administration in 1991. Since then it has struggled with the formation of a functioning democratic system within its own borders. It has formed what appears to be a form of the famous multi-representative democratic system, modeled after the system birthed by the United States. However, it has done poorly at that and has descended into what could be accurately characterized as a single party state, masked from that definition by shady bureaucratic technicalities. The president of Uzbekistan, Islom Karimov, has unconstitutionally sustained his presidency since the formation of the democratic system. He holds an inordinate amount of power with the ability to supersede both the legislative branch through dissolution and the judiciary branch by blatant executive power. He has diminished opposition by allowing only parties that support him in elections, and only voters that are registered to those parties. Furthermore, Karimov has eliminated the right to protest, resulting in the arrest of many and even the death of some unlucky dissenters. Because of the amount of power the president holds, other political officials exist solely to uphold the wishes of the executive branch, with little power to do much of