Paul Bartlett

A family of Soviet-era soft drinks has suddenly reappeared this summer to quench the thirst of Central Asians.

In Almaty's upmarket Samal district, a retro vending machine is offering a choice of plain fizzy water or three old, syrupy favorites. And in Tashkent, a billboard has popped up around town featuring a matronly Slavic woman standing by an old-fashioned soda fountain.

 

The Almaty dispenser is a throwback to the carbonated-water dispensers that were found on many a street corner in Soviet times. After the collapse of the USSR these machines largely disappeared or fell into disuse (some still languish, rusting and forlorn, in the occasional back alley or small-town bus station), unable to compete with imported sodas such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

But now the familiar flavors are fighting back, almost literally. The Almaty dispenser is decorated with the figure of a Bolshevik revolutionary on a striking red background. For 40 tenge ($0.30) you can have a Buratino, a caramel-colored concoction named after Russia’s indigenous Pinocchio. A radioactive-green, tarragon-flavored Tarkhun will set you back 50 tenge ($0.35), while a flowery, pear-inspired Duchess costs 60 tenge ($0.40).

In Uzbekistan, it’s sometimes like the Soviet Union never really went away. 

Walking around downtown Tashkent recently, I spotted a store advertising itself in English as a “Diplomatic Shop.” 

In the USSR, state-run Beriozka stores sold imported wares and hard-to-find local goods to foreigners in exchange for hard currency to supplement state coffers. Could it be that this Soviet institution had made a comeback in Uzbekistan, some 20 years after the collapse of the Union?

Like it’s predecessor, the Diplomatic Shop had well-stocked shelves lined with imported premium-brand liquor and perfume. Payment was accepted in hard currency or by credit card only. But there was a catch – a notice on the door said the goods were only for sale to diplomats or those with Foreign Ministry accreditation to live and work in Uzbekistan (that’s more than just a business visa). 

Playing the dumb foreigner, I entered the store anyway. The assistant immediately asked to see my diplomatic ID or accreditation card. I came clean, admitting I had no such documents, and asked if I could have a look around.

“That's not possible,” replied the assistant. 

“Could you, for instance, tell me the price of a bottle of wine?” I enquired.

“That's a secret.” 

The question was relevant as Uzbekistan applies notoriously high taxes on imported wine and liquor. An average bottle of foreign wine starts at around 60,000 som ($35) in a shop and about double that in a restaurant. 

A little bit of Kentucky has landed in Central Asia’s largest city. 

The logo and the overall design may look familiar – yes that's Colonel Sanders looking out from the center of the billboard – but welcome to Champions Fried Chicken (CFC) Uzbekistan's homegrown response to the restaurant formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken.   

Fans of fried chicken in Tashkent had hoped for a taste of Colonel Sander's secret recipe when advertisements appeared on a downtown development last fall promising a KFC franchise would open soon. The billboard has since disappeared and the KFC never materialized, but Tashkent has struck back with its own fried chicken emporium.

Located in the new Poytaxt shopping mall on the pedestrianized Sailgokh Street (better known to locals as “Broadway”) CFC is providing Uzbeks an alternative to plov, the national rice and meat dish, by introducing its customers to the wonderful world of “finger lickin' good” chicken.

In the heart of Central Asia, the KFC-Colonel connection may be lost on some. But the founders of CFC likely had another marketing opportunity in mind.

Chelsea Football Club, owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, is wildly popular in Uzbekistan. Chelsea is the current holder of the Champions League title. And so Tashkent's CFC puts the champions into fried chicken in more ways than one.

Falcon populations in Kazakhstan are about to get a welcome boost. A rescue center in the United Arab Emirates is preparing to introduce 66 falcons back into their natural habitat in the Central Asian nation, where the birds of prey have traditionally been used for hunting. 

The to-be-released raptors are wild birds that had been injured and handed over to the Falcon Hospital Abu Dhabi (FHAD) within the past year. The rescues are a boon to endangered species such as the Saker falcon, whose numbers have dwindled in recent years as a result of illegal poaching and habitat destruction.

The UAE shares a common avian hunting heritage with the Central Asian countries. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the trade in illegally procured birds has flourished in the Gulf states, with poachers smuggling young birds out of Central Asia. To counter this underground trade, in 1995 Emirati authorities introduced falcon passports and three-year licenses that allow hunters from the UAE to move their falcons across international borders and home again.

The passports seem to be working: “Definitely, the numbers of confiscated wild falcons are going down year after year,” FHAD head Dr Margit Muller told Abu Dhabi's Khaleej Times. The repatriation of these endangered falcons and the tighter controls on their trade should go some way to helping ensure the sport's long-term future.

Authorities in Kazakhstan appear to have finally found a sense of humor. 

Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov says fictional Kazakhstani journalist Borat Sagdiyev’s slapstick tour of America in the 2006 film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” had increased visa applications to the Central Asian nation ten-fold since its release.

“It was a great triumph for us and I am grateful to Borat for helping to attract tourists to Kazakhstan,” Kazykhanov told lawmakers in Astana on April 23. 

For years, Astana had no patience for Sasha Baron Cohen’s spoof hack, but now they see he’s helped put Kazakhstan on the tourism map. 

The film was banned from screens in Kazakhstan when it was released. In the subsequent years, Borat has repeatedly hit the headlines – usually to the irritation of Kazakh authorities – most recently at a sports competition in Kuwait last month when the parody version of Kazakhstan’s national anthem, which featured in the film, was played in error. 

On the heels of a police operation to clean up Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, by cracking down on unwashed vehicles, President Nursultan Nazarbayev has outlined plans to deal with a growing crime wave in the city.

At an April 11 discussion on the future development of the city, the president bemoaned the fact that the crime rate in his dream capital is rising. He said crime in Astana is 1.7 times the national average, while detection rates are the lowest in the country. 

The Leader of the Nation singled out a proliferation of bookmakers and gambling halls as a root cause of the growing problem. He urged police to focus on the problem of petty crime in Astana, instructing them not to overlook simple misdemeanors such as leaving chewing gum at street crossings. He suggested that the punishment for such an infraction should include fines and up to three days in jail. His hope is that cracking down hard on petty crime will lead to reductions in more serious crimes. 

Crime-wise, 2011 was a bad year for Kazakhstan, as it saw both simmering industrial unrest that led to at least 17 dead in the west, and the growing threat of domestic Islamic terrorism. 

It seems unlikely, however, that targeting the twin menaces of gambling and chewing gum will deter Islamic militants or help solve industrial disputes in the future. 

Traffic police in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, have launched a campaign sure to put fear in the hearts of the city's drivers. Were they targeting the unruly drag racing on Astana's dangerous streets, or the widespread drunk driving? Nope, the cops were concentrating on a more serious problem—unwashed vehicles.

Over the weekend of April 7-8, police handed out 1,067 tickets to drivers of dirty cars, inform.kz reports. The campaign was good for revenue, netting around $60,000—each ticket carrying a fixed penalty of 8,090 tenge ($55). With the spring thaw finally coming to Astana, targeting dirty vehicles is a certain source of revenue since it’s impossible to keep things clean at this time of year. The sweep also netted 41 intoxicated motorists, 45 cars parked illegally and 17 people driving without documents.

Traffic police in Kazakhstan’s gleaming new capital are fighting around the clock to keep order on the city's streets. Over one weekend in Astana earlier this year, 601 offenders were caught for violations including drunk driving, speeding, using a cell phone and driving into oncoming traffic.   

But the gaishniki are not having much effect on safety. In 2010, officials registered 12,008 road accidents, which resulted in 2,797 deaths in Kazakhstan. (By comparison, Western Europe suffers roughly half the number of traffic-related deaths per capita).

It remains to be seen if washing the spring mud off car bumpers results in fewer traffic deaths. 

Cambridge University has gotten a little too close for comfort to Kazakhstan's long-serving authoritarian leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.

The university’s Churchill College has suspended plans to award one Kazakh student a six-month postdoctoral scientific placement scholarship this year, after mistakenly promoting a “Nazarbayev Fellowship.” 

Richard Partington, a senior tutor at Churchill College, said in a statement that the advertisements should have read “Nazarbayev University Fellowship” but had unfortunately been marketed using only the president's surname. The Kazakhstan branch of the financial services giant PricewaterhouseCoopers – which operates independently from the UK firm – would have paid for the fellowship to bring a Kazakh citizen from Nazarbayev's namesake university in Astana to Cambridge.

Officials at Churchill told The Times Higher Education (THE) supplement they decided to change the fellowship's name after the college became nervous about any association with Nazarbayev himself. Schools in the UK have become increasingly wary of getting into bed with dictators since the furor surrounding the London School of Economics' suspicious dealings with the late Libyan dictator’s son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and lecturers’ protest when London's Metropolitan University proposed links with a university in Uzbekistan.

The days of Kazakhstan's national sport kokpar being a wild free-for-all with a headless goat may be numbered since plans have surfaced to replace the bloody carcass at the center of the game with a plastic dummy.

The move comes at the instigation of Kazakhstan-based animal-rights group KARE-Zabota (Kazakhstan Animal Rescue and Education), acting on complaints from animal-lovers who object to the killing of goats for the sport, a local take on buzkashi.

KARE-Zabota says it received a letter from Kazakhstan's Agency for Sports and Physical Training Affairs agreeing to introduce dummy goats.

Already, the Agency has carried out tests on models from Pakistan and a locally produced imitation goat from Taras, but, lacking flexibility, these were deemed unfit for play. Hopes are now being pinned on an artificial carcass from Shymkent, with testing scheduled for later this year.

Kokpar is a macho sport where two teams of horsemen grapple over a decapitated goat, which they try to deposit in the opponent's goal. The fierce struggle is a test of strength for both riders and horses. It’s unclear how this affront to tradition will be received.   

But all sports move on. Football (the game known as soccer in the US) was originally a tussle between villagers in 12th-century England over a pig's bladder before it developed into the relatively tame sport we know today. Could kokpar – which is rumored to have already given the world polo – evolve into a worldwide phenomenon by adopting fake, bloodless goats?