Yale University Press NEW HAVEN & 9 780300"089028 - Sito Mistero

11DICTATORS AND OILBARONS: THE TALIBAN ANDCENTRAL ASIA, RUSSIA,TURKEY AND ISRAELIn Ashkhabad, the capital of Turkmenistan, a massive new internationalairport was completed in 1996. The enormous, luxurious terminalbuilding, was built to meet the expected flow of Western airlinesto this oil- and gas-rich desert Republic, but it echoes with the sounds ofsilence. Within months, half of it was closed down, because it was tooexpensive to maintain and the rest - with only a few weekly flights arriving- was barely used even in 1999.In 1995 at Sarakhs, on the Turkmenistan-Iranian border, a spankingnew railway station with marbled walls and ticket counters was completed.The howling red sand and shifting dunes of the Karakum or BlackSand desert lapped the building and the heat was stifling. The station wasthe Turkmen end of a new railway line built by the Iranians, which connectsMeshad in north-eastern Iran with Ashkhabad - the first directcommunications link between Central Asia and Muslim countries to thesouth after 70 years of being cut off from each other. Yet with only twogoods and passenger trains arriving from Iran every week, the station isclosed for much of the week.Communication links with the outside world were a top priority for allthe Central Asian Republics (CARs) after they achieved independencein December 1991, but nearly a decade later it appeared that there wasmore camel traffic on the fabled Silk Route than today. These monumentsto extravagance, grandiose ambition and unrealized dreams were thehandiwork of Turkmen President Saparmurad Niyazov, who spends littleof his country's dwindling finances on the upkeep of his country's 4-2million people but much on his thriving personality cult. But these desertmirages also represent the still unfulfilled hopes of Turkmenistan becom-