Of all the regions of the former Soviet Union, Central Asia is potentially one of the most explosive and certainly one of the least understood. It is also growing rapidly in importance to US national security, commercial, and foreign policy interests: it has vast oil, gas, gold, and other resources; it has become a source and transit route for narcotics and possible nuclear and other materials; and it is affected by the fierce conflicts in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Vast in size (larger than Eastern and Western Europe combined), and with a rapidly growing population of over 50 million people, it is marked by the persistence of relatively corrupt and authoritarian governments. This report assesses the potential for conflict in Central Asia through the prism of one of its most volatile areas, the Ferghana Valley. Spanning parts of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, the Ferghana Valley is home to 20 percent of Central Asia's entire population. The region has recently experienced increasing religious and ethnic tensions - the further danger being that instability in the valley could spread more widely throughout Central Asia. The Ferghana Valley project of the Council on Foreign Relations' Center for Preventive Action (CPA) has produced this report as the fourth volume in its series of Preventive Action Reports. Nancy Lubin is president of JNA Associates, a consulting firm that works on projects and assessments concerning the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. Keith Martin has been senior research associate at JNA and is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at McGill University in Montreal. Barnett R. Rubin is director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Nancy Lubin is President of JNA Associates, Inc. -- a research and consulting firm on the former USSR, especially Central Asia and the Caucasus. She has lived, worked and traveled throughout this region since the early 1970s, as an academic researcher; Congressional staffer (1982-89); university professor (Carnegie Mellon University); and consultant to private foundations, international donors/ financial institutions, US government agencies/ contractors, the media, and other private industry ranging from Fortune 100 corporations to smaller non-profit companies. She received her BA, Magna Cum Laude, from Harvard University; her PhD from Oxford University; studied at the Universities of Leningrad and Moscow (1974-75); and was one of the first westerners to spend a year conducting doctoral research in Uzbekistan (1978-79). The heart of her work has been navigating corruption, and the informal economic and political systems in these countries.
She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; serves on the Boards of the Open Society Institute, Central Eurasia Project; the Eurasia Foundation Board of Trustees/ Board of Advisors; and of other organizations; and has been a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, the US Institute of Peace, and the American Foreign Policy Council. Her publications include Labour and Nationality in Soviet Central Asia, (reviewed in the New York Times Book Review and elsewhere); Calming the Ferghana Valley (for the Council on Foreign Relations); Narcotics Interdiction in Afghanistan and Central Asia (Open Society Institute, 2002); various Congressional testimony and reports; and scholarly and popular articles, including cover stories for GEO Magazine and Readers Digest.
