Mohira Suyarkulova Phd Thesis
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BECOMING SOVEREIGN IN POST-SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA: 'DISCURSIVE ENCOUNTERS' BETWEEN TAJIKISTAN AND UZBEKISTAN Mohira Suyarkulova A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews 2011 Full metadata for this item is available in St Andrews Research Repository at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3159 This item is protected by original copyright Becoming Sovereign in post-Soviet Central Asia ‘Discursive encounters’ between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan Mohira Suyarkulova This dissertation is submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews March 2011 Candidate’s declaration I, Mohira Suyarkulova, hereby certify that this thesis, which is approximately 76,214 words in length, has been written by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. I was admitted as a research student in February 2007 and as a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in May 2008; the higher study for which this is a record was carried out in the University of St Andrews between 2007 and 2011. I received assistance in the writing of this thesis in respect of language, grammar, spelling and syntax, which was provided by Simon Taylor. Date …….......................................... Signature of candidate ………....................................................... Supervisor’s declaration I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution and Regulations appropriate for the degree of Doctor of Philosopy in the University of St Andrews and that the candidate is qualified to submit this thesis in application for that degree. Date …….............................................................Signature of supervisor ………......................................... Permission for Electronic Publication In submitting this thesis to the University of St Andrews I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. I also understand that the title and the abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker, that my thesis will be electronically accessible for personal or research use unless exempt by award of an embargo as requested below, and that the library has the right to migrate my thesis into new electronic forms as required to ensure continued access to the thesis. I have obtained any third-party copyright permissions that may be required in order to allow such access and migration, or have requested the appropriate embargo below. The following is an agreed request by candidate and supervisor regarding the electronic publication of this thesis: Access to all of printed copy but embargo of all of electronic publication of thesis for a period of five years on the following ground: publication would preclude future publication. Date ……........... Signature of candidate …….................. Signature of supervisor …...................... Acknowledgements Writing this doctoral thesis was an important learning process, a period of personal and professional growth, but most of all is was a very humbling experience. As a scholar of International Relations of Central Asia, I owe an intellectual debt to innumerable thinkers. Here, however, I would like to thank people in my life without whom this project would not be realised. A lot of people and institutions contributed to the process of thinking about, drafting and finalising this thesis. Parts of it were kindly read and commented on by Avery Archer, Jeanne Feaux de la Croix, Sandra Pagodda, Aisalkyn Botoeva. As a result the drafts were substantially improved. Some parts of this thesis were presented at various conferences and greatly benefited from the comments and criticisms from the audiences and discussants, to whom I am very grateful. The faculty of the International and Comparative Politics Department of the American University of Central Asia had a truly formative influence for me as a scholar. Bill Hansen will always be an inspiration. Victoria Lavrova, who left us too early, was a role model and a fashion icon. Emil Juraev, Burul Osmonalieva and Askat Dukenbaev were stimulating and generous teachers and mentors. To them and the scholarship from the Open Society Institute I owe the best education one can get in Central Asia. Special thanks are due to Temirlan Moldogziev, my undergraduate dissertation supervisor, and his lovely wife Olga for their incredible hospitality during my visit to Bloomington, Indiana, where I was presenting a paper at the conference. Credit is due to Madeleine Reeves, Nick Megoran and John Heathershaw, whose scholarship set a standard to which I aspired to in this thesis. The School of International Relations of the University of St Andrews has provided a stimulating intellectual environment for me over the past five years. I owe a great debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Sally Cummings, who gave me ‘tough love’, but nonetheless believed in me and challenged me to be a better scholar. Huge thanks to her for her patience, invaluable advice and making it possible for me to undertake and complete this project. This work could not have been completed if it was not for the income from my work as an Uzbek language instructor at the University of St Andrews, which I have had for the duration of my doctoral studies. Huge thanks are due to the Centre for Russian, Central and East European Studies (Glasgow) who have thus financed my PhD life. I would like to thank my PhD-colleagues and friends in St Andrews and elsewhere with whom I had the pleasure to discuss, argue, drink, dance, go for walks, have Sunday brunches and go strawberry picking. I thank Inga Jacobs, Gladys Mokhawa, Walter Lotze, Taryn Sheppard, Faye Donnely, Paola Raunio, Stefanie Kappler, Janka Skrzypek, Alison Careless, Maaike Warnaar, Teemu Naarajärvi, Merja Polvinen, John Morrison, Agnieszka Szemiel, Jan Grill and Ryan Parks for their encouragement, support, kindness, and always being there. Thanks to Aida Bekturova for staying in touch throughout these years. Thanks to Albena Kuiumdjieva for helping me through the darkest hour before the dawn. Thanks to Katharina Buck for her wisdom, wit and Cheburashka. Finally, and most importantly, I am forever indebted to my family. I thank my relatives in Tajikistan for assistance in getting the entry visa, hosting me during the fieldwork, being my informants and suppliers of literature. Thanks to my aunt Nigina and her son Yusuf for being my travel companions. I thank my brother Muhsin and his wife Anna for taking care of my mother over the extended periods of my absence from home. Special thanks go to my mother, who has supported my educational endeavours, remained my rock, and always brought me back to earth by her no-nonsense approach to life. It is to her that this work is dedicated. Abstract In 1991 republics of Soviet Central Asia were reluctantly ‘launched’ into independence. The central puzzle of this dissertation is: “How has sovereign statehood been ‘constructed’ in the post-independence period in the absence of history of anti-colonial struggle?” This is an analysis of state sovereignty as a practice that is performative and interactive through the examination of ‘discursive encounters’ between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Such analysis traces temporal and spatial dimensions of dialogical sovereign identity construction. In post-Soviet Tajikistan and Uzbekistan sovereignties have been performed in a dialogue, through dynamic interactions with one another. The work of asserting state sovereignty is performed by various actors who claim to impersonate the state and speak on its behalf. Multiple narratives of the self are articulated in relation to the relevant “interlocutor”, whose reactions and counter-articulations are “fed back” into the narrative of the self. The right to existence of these states as agents of international relations is justified through such ‘discursive encounters’ that simulate sovereignty. I propose the Möbius strip as a conceptual model for understanding the process of sovereignty-assertion. Competing historiographies present two irreconcilable narratives: history of an ethnic group and history of the territory of the current state. These are consistent with the nature of nationalisms in each state. While Tajik nationalists long for ‘historical Tajikistan’, Uzbek nationalism is inherently conservative and defensive of territorial sovereignty. The controversy surrounding the Roghun HPP is an example of the daily construction and maintenance a state. Competing principles of water sharing contributed to an ongoing crisis in Tajik-Uzbek relations. Sovereignty is simulated within the periods and zones of ‘exception’ via a Möbian mechanism of dialogical meaning-making, whereby each side strives to exploit the inherent ambiguity of signifiers in order to advance their own narrative of the self and other. Table of contents Chapter I. Introduction................................................................................................ 1 Thesis topic and rationale ........................................................................................................1