"Central Asia, home of Tamerlane and the Silk Road, is a crossroads of great cultures and civilizations. In 1991 five nations at the heart of the region - Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan - suddenly became independent from the USSR. Today they sit strategically between Russia, China, and Iran, holding some of the world's largest deposits of oil and natural gas. Long-suppressed ethnic identities are finding new expression in language, religion, the arts, international alignments - and occasional civil conflicts."--BOOK JACKET. "In the decades ahead, what kind of societies will the more than 50 million people living in Central Asia create? Single-party secular states, Islamic republics market democracies, something else?"--BOOK JACKET. "Civil Society in Central Asia is a collection of essays by scholars and activists that illuminates the social and institutional forces shaping this important region's future. Are the foundations of a democratic order emerging? As the essays suggest, trends are contradictory and vary in each country."--BOOK JACKET.