Global Security Watch: Central Asia

Home to vast energy reserves. Central front in the fight against global terrorism. Potential Western allies in Russia's backyard. Together, the independent nations of Central Asia-the former Soviet republics Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan, plus Afghanistan-comprise one of the most important yet least understood regions of the world.

Reuel R. Hanks, PhD, is professor of geography at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, and serves as editor of the Journal of Central Asian Studies. Dr. Hanks was a Fulbright Scholar in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1995 and has published more than a dozen articles and book chapters on Central Asia on Islam, nationalism and national identity, foreign policy, and political geography. He is the author of Uzbekistan, an annotated bibliography in the World Bibliographical Series, and Central Asia: A Global Studies Handbook, both published by ABC-CLIO. He has taught at Tashkent State Economics University, Samarkand State Institute for Foreign Languages, KIMEP (Almaty, Kazakhstan) and Eurasian National University (Astana, Kazakhstan).