The third issue of Steppe Magazine, Central Asia’s first glossy magazine devoted to the arts, culture, people, history and landscape of the region, has just been published. This time, neweurasia teamed up with the editors of the magazine and contributed a Guide to Central Asian Blogs.

As a bonus to our readers, you can download the article here. Let us know what you think! Furthermore, we have started compiling an online Central Asia Blog guide at neweurasia.net/steppemagazine. If you think your blog should be included there, please let us know!

Of course, the “rest” of the current Steppe is well worth a read as well, not least for its stunning photography. Check out the magazine’s website for delivery options. Here’s a quick rundown on the main stories featured:

The two main features of Steppe 3 centre around the Aral Sea. So infamous is the story of the sea’s environmental devastation that we do not repeat it, but instead follow those who eke out a living by fishing from its shores. An extended photo essay with stunning images of ice fishing on the Aral Sea presents a stark insight into life in the surrounding fishing villages and shows that beauty can be found even amongst the harshest of realities. While a World Bank and Kazakh-sponsored dam is raising hopes for rising water levels, a local collective has helped open a fish-processing centre in Aralsk, a former Aral Sea port and major provider of fish for the entire Soviet Union, which now lies some 20 km from the sea’s shores. Steppe presents one of the very first articles that focuses on the human side of the Aral Sea disaster at a time when the sea is starting to come back to life.

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Humour is, it seems, a constant presence in life even in the most dire situations. As neweurasia’s latest cross-blog survey shows, humour in Central Asia takes many forms and expressions, though, as might be expected, political satire features prominently.

Over on the Kazakhstan blog, Adam kicks off the survey with an article looking at popular jokes and anecdotes in Kazakhstan (ENG, RUS). Meanwhile on the Kazakh-language blog, Askhat interviews humorist and blogger tehosyndrom, who believes the internet is the only place left that is free of an official presence (KZ). Askhat has also has photographic evidence of people’s efforts to fulfil President Nazarbaev’s development strategy “Kazakhstan 2030″ (KZ). Also, although not technically part of the survey, Kamneed’s latest Friday Photo is worthy of a mention for the bizarreness of the photos that will raise a smile with anyone acquainted with everyday life in Central Asia (RUS - but pictures don’t need translating).

Moving south to Kyrgyzstan, Asel introduces the phenomenon of internet humour, noting how political humour has become increasingly popular after the events of March 2005 and the so-called Tulip Revolution (ENG). Mirsulzhan continues the theme with a clip from Video.kg showing how popular culture references are used to create political satire, in this case targeting well-known politicians including President Bakiev and ex-speaker Omurbek Tekebaev (RUS).

Unsurprisingly given the political situation in Uzbekistan, satire very much of the laughter through tears sort is the order of the day. Kamron looks at possible scenarios for Uzbekistan’s future up to 2015 as a logical but ridiculous extension of reforms that are currently being discussed (RUS), while Erkin considers the Uzbek elections experience from the point of view of a young farmer (UZ) Feministka takes an ironic look at what would happen if men and women swapped places (RUS), and Zingy recounts an encounter with a fortune teller in Jizzak region (ENG).

On the Turkmenistan blog meanwhile, Abdulgamid chooses a different target for his sharp satire in the form of a review of the infamous film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”. With arguably as many jokes and certainly as much innuendo as the film itself, Abdulgamid argues that the film has made us all look like fools - or, to use a more entertaining image from a Russian idiom, “has hung a noodle over everybody’s ear”. See if you agree (RUS, ENG).

Finally, our Tajik bridge blogger Vadim writes about Hoja Nasridin, also known as Afandi, and shares some stories about this well-known figure (ENG), while Roma reckons that no-one laughs like the Tajik do (RUS).

How many of you have had the pleasure of trying to convey a very basic understanding of Central Asia to a friend or acquaintance with no prior knowledge about the region? (”Yes, they are Muslims, no, they aren’t Arabs, etc.”) For those of you living in Central Asia, the answer is probably not a whole lot. But for outsiders like me, the reality is that many people have at best heard of Borat, or “some crazy guy” in Turkmenistan.

Given that most non-specialists aren’t going to invest a huge amount of time into a dense scholarly text, what is the best read to most efficiently and entertainingly gain an appreciation of Central Asia? I recently picked up Monica Whitlock’s Land Beyond the River to assess its purported merits for just that purpose.

The short answer is that it fits the bill. Monica Whitlock is a journalist, and as such, it is better written (and more engaging) than academic texts. Whitlock follows several historical figures from present-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, beginning at the turn of the nineteenth century.

By tracing the Islamic scholar Hindustani, the intellectual Sadr-e Zia, and their descendants over the past century, Whitlock touches upon all of the century’s crucial historical events, focusing in greatest depth on the decade and a half since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Along the way, she brings events from secondary sources to life and contributes a lot of new information to the table from original reporting as well.

Though her treatment is relatively brief, I particularly enjoyed her depiction of the final days of the Bukharan Emirate through the eyes of Sadr-e Zia. Imprisoned by Amir Alim Khan for his intellectual pursuits (after the Amir threw his lot in with the Ulama), Zia spent three years from 1917-1920 in prison. He returned to a broken shell of Bukhara under siege by the Red Army, the architectural devastation presaging the dramatic lifestyle changes to come.

Whitlock also has some interesting information in the book about Central Asians in World War II, a topic about which there is practically nothing published. She follows the lives of ordinary Central Asians, initially sent to play support roles in the war — like digging trenches and cooking — but later, after the Soviets had taken considerable losses, sent to fight as well.

Other highlights — to name a few — include a history of the basmachis, a rather illuminating treatment of Tajikistan’s civil war, a skeptical introduction to Karimov’s war on extremism,

The lack of almost any information on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, or Turkmenistan, and the fact that it has already been slightly dated since it’s publication in 2002, probably damage this book’s credentials as a stand-alone volume of mandatory reading for the initiated, but I am at a loss to suggest a substitute.

Does anyone out in the ’stanosphere have another suggestion for a single entertaining work capable of elevating someone from “Borat is funny” to differentiating between the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan, and the Bukharan Emirate?

Kiran over Mongolia is a feature-length documentary about a Kazakh eagle hunter in Mongolia. neweurasia asked the filmmaker, Joseph Spaid, a few questions about the film, which is hitting the screen in Kazakhstan at this year’s Almaty Film Festival.

Question: Joseph, thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. Let’s start with a little bit about yourself.

I am a 41-year-old American male from a not-so-observant Christian family. I grew up in Southern California, studied film at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and have been working in the TV/film industry almost two decades now.

Besides filmmaking, I love to surf (yes, we do that in New York City), am fascinated with art, foreign cultures, hand crafted rugs and tapestries, and travel. At age 33, I took a year-long trip around the world to 20 countries. It was during this trip that I first encountered the Kazakh eagle hunters of Mongolia.

Q: What exactly does Kiran stand for?

“Kiran” is the Kazakh word for golden, and the word used to describe the qualities of an eagle that make it good for hunting, i.e., a bird that is large, fierce, and has deep red eyes is “Kiran”. (more…)