The Foreign Service Journal, April 2003

32 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 3 hen the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the five Central Asian states —Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — were among the poorest and the least developed of its former republics, and among the least known in the West. At independence — unexpected, unplanned, even unwanted — they were confronted suddenly with at least three types of major adjustments. First, the new Central Asian nations had to adjust to the economic shock caused by the col- lapse of the Soviet Union’s erstwhile common market. Second, they had to shift their economies from state-controlled F O C U S O N C E N T R A L A S I A W Josh Dorman P ICKING U P THE P IECES : T HE D EVELOPMENT C HALLENGE T HE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY NEEDS TO PLAN FOR THE LONG HAUL , AS THE C ENTRAL A SIAN NATIONS STRUGGLE TO BUILD VIABLE ECONOMIES . B Y D AVID P EARCE