Uzbekistan Villagers Still Waiting for the State to Save Them

Legend has it that the powerful emir of Bukhara, desperate to have a son, came to this desert village hundreds of years ago to visit a woman famous for her fertility.

The emir, following the superstition of the day, sat under her dress for several minutes, according to the legend. Returning to his walled city, he was soon blessed with a son he named Shakh Murad. The village took the same name, and when the prince became emir, he exempted the village from taxes forever.

Today, that tax exemption is long gone, but life here goes on much as it always has. The Muslim villagers herd sheep in the desert and live in houses made of mud. Women fetch water from the village spring and burn cow dung for cooking.

No longer favored by the government--any government--the lonely village of 400 people is struggling to survive in a changing society. Uzbekistan gained independence with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union but is mired in poverty and isolated from the outside world. Its prolonged economic slump has taken the greatest toll in rural areas.

The same pattern has been repeated across the former Soviet Union, where communities built up in remote regions under communism are no longer economically viable. The end of state subsidies has triggered an exodus over the past decade from impoverished villages and distant outposts in Siberia, the Far East and the extreme north.

“With each year, there are fewer and fewer sheep that run in our flock,” said Estam Umarzakov, 40, who has lived in Shamurad all his life. “If this continues, the whole village will go bankrupt. I don’t know how people will survive. I just try not to think about it.”

Uzbekistan, an authoritarian Central Asian state headed by former Communist leader Islam Karimov, has proved unable to build a successful market economy. Many of its Soviet-era factories have closed, output has fallen, and unemployment has risen. Inflation, according to official statistics, is running about 25% a year.

The average monthly salary is the equivalent of $12. Pensions amount to as little as $3.50 a month. Villagers migrate to the cities in search of employment. Some leave Uzbekistan to find work in other countries.

“The economic situation in the republic is so dire that many people go to North Korea in search of jobs and a better life,” said Vitaly Ponomarev, a Moscow-based expert on Central Asia.

Uzbekistan, the largest nation in the region with 25 million people, is in a tough neighborhood. It shares borders with the totalitarian state of Turkmenistan as well as Afghanistan and Tajikistan, both plagued by civil wars with Muslim extremists.

Local businessmen say the economy is tightly controlled by the autocratic Karimov. For example, a Coca-Cola bottling plant that has a near-monopoly on nonalcoholic drinks is run by the president’s son-in-law, Mansur Rauf Maqsudi.

Uzbeks call their nation “doubly landlocked” since goods must pass through at least two countries in any direction to reach an international port.

Uzbekistan also is hampered by a currency that is not convertible--stifling its prospects for foreign investment. The government has set an official value of 233 sums to the dollar, but few places are willing to exchange money at that rate. The true value of the sum, as determined by the black market, is about 700 to the dollar.

During the years of independence, inflation has been so high that the biggest bill in circulation, a 200-sum note, is now worth less than 30 cents. Changing $100 into sums can easily mean carrying around a wad of 500 worn and tattered bills--giving new meaning to the term “lump sum.”

The village of Shamurad, where donkeys outnumber cars by more than 10 to 1, illustrates some of the difficulties facing the country.

During Soviet times, the government adopted a policy of subsidizing far-flung villages such as Shamurad whether they were economically viable or not. The village’s business of sheepherding was taken over by a collective farm, and whatever individual initiative that existed was stamped out.

The Communists brought a school, electricity and television to Shamurad--although phone service never arrived. Many such villages grew so large that they could not support themselves without government assistance.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the subsidies ended, and rural areas were largely left to their own devices--a pattern repeated from Armenia to the Bering Strait. The population of Shamurad, once greater than 500, has fallen by more than 20% as families move out in search of work.

“There’s quite a number of villages that have been abandoned by people moving to the cities because life has become impossible,” said Mahmudkul Shodiyev, 47, the village chief.

More trouble lies ahead for Shamurad. Its flock of sheep has shrunk from a high of 86,000 in Soviet times to 7,000 today.

Villagers say the decline is largely due to mismanagement after the breakup of the collective farm. Thinking only of short-term survival, the villagers sold many of the sheep and ate the rest--indeed, the men of Shamurad look as if they haven’t missed a meal in some time. At the current rate, however, the village’s main asset will soon vanish.

“In the past, under the Soviets, life was much better,” said Umarzakov, a hefty man in tattered pants who was attempting to repair the gearbox of a dilapidated 15-year-old Zil truck.

“Under Soviet rule, the state farm organized our work,” he said. “With the collapse of the Soviet Union, everything fell apart.”

The village has been declared a hardship area by the Karimov government, but that means only a few extra sums for the handful of people lucky enough to hold government jobs. Teachers at the village school are paid the most--the equivalent of $10 a month.

The spring is the center of life in the village. People come throughout the day to fetch water in buckets, wash their hands or let their animals drink. The supply of water is sufficient to grow some fruits and vegetables but not to plant crops in any great quantity.

“There’s enough to drink, so we don’t die, but there’s not enough to farm,” Shodiyev said.

The village is a closed society, locked in a tradition of multi-generational households where women do much of the hard work. One of the women’s jobs is to make kizyak, a fuel of cow dung mixed with straw and wheat chaff that is pressed and then dried in the sun. There are stacks of it all over the village.

The last time a foreigner visited was three years ago, when a group of Americans explored the possibility of a joint cattle-raising venture. Nothing ever came of the idea.

Most of the men wear clothes that are torn and frayed. A boy carries his prize possession: a soccer ball that lost its leather cover long ago and is now only rags.

The Russian language is fading into the past because villagers prefer to speak Uzbek. The people are Muslim but not deeply religious--the village has no mosque.

Thanks to communism, however, the villagers have televisions. They get three stations--two state-controlled channels from Uzbekistan and one from Russia. When someone arrives with a new video, the villagers gather to watch it in one of the three homes that have a VCR.

On the wall of the school, in cracked and fading paint, is a saying of the president: “Uzbekistan will become a powerful state in the future.”

Even after eight years of independence, the people of the village have not shaken their Soviet mentality--they still count on the government to save them.

“We hope that finally the country will rise to its feet and the state will find an opportunity to help its people who live in need like this,” said Shodiyev, the village chief. “It doesn’t depend on the people. It depends on the state.”