In Khiva, one of Uzbekistan’s most popular tourist destinations, visitors flock to enjoy a panoramic view of the entire city.

Photo credits : Salomé Aldeguer-Roure (France)

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Uzbekistan’s first World Cup appearance is often told through the players who carried the national team there: Eldor Shomurodov, Abbosbek Fayzullaev, Abdukodir Khusanov, Oston Urunov and the rest of a generation that made Uzbek football visible far beyond Central Asia. But national teams do not emerge from nowhere. They are built from clubs, cities, stadiums, academies, rivalries and local football cultures.

Over the past three decades, Uzbekistan’s domestic game has developed through several different models. There are old Soviet-era institutions, post-independence regional powers, prestige projects, industrial clubs, state-company teams, academy-driven structures and smaller provincial sides that rarely dominate the headlines but help give the league its geography. Together, they form the football map behind Uzbekistan’s World Cup dream.

The most famous point on that map is still Pakhtakor Tashkent. No club carries more symbolic weight in Uzbek football. Its name evokes cotton, Soviet Uzbekistan, the capital and one of the deepest tragedies in the country’s sporting memory: the 1979 air disaster that killed the team. Pakhtakor is not only a club with trophies. It is a national institution, a vessel of memory and the historic reference point against which other Uzbek clubs have often measured themselves.

If Pakhtakor is memory, Nasaf Qarshi is one of the clearest examples of regional achievement. Based in Kashkadarya, away from the capital and the Fergana Valley, Nasaf showed that a club outside Tashkent could build patiently, compete seriously and win internationally. Its 2011 AFC Cup victory remains one of the most important achievements in Uzbek club football. Nasaf’s story matters because it is not built around glamour. It is built around structure, continuity and the idea that a regional club can become more than a local project.

Navbahor Namangan represents something different again: popular passion. In the Fergana Valley, football is not only a sport but a form of civic identity. Navbahor’s name, meaning “spring”, gives the club a softer and more poetic image than many of its rivals, but its supporter culture is intense. Namangan’s Markaziy Stadium has become one of the emotional centres of Uzbek football, and Navbahor’s fan base has helped make the club a symbol of regional pride. If Uzbek football has a popular heartland, much of it beats in the Valley.

Also read on Novastan: Uzbekistan at the World Cup: The White Wolves Enter the Global Stage

Neftchi Fergana adds another layer to that same geography. Where Navbahor expresses Namangan’s football passion, Neftchi represents Fergana’s industrial memory. Founded as Neftyanik and linked to the oil-refining world of Fergana, the club dominated the early years after independence. It shared the first Uzbek league title with Pakhtakor in 1992, then won the championship outright in 1993, 1994 and 1995. Under Yuriy Sarkisyan, who coached the club from the late Soviet period into the post-Soviet era, Neftchi became the first great provincial power of independent Uzbek football.

Bunyodkor Tashkent belongs to another category entirely. Founded in 2005 and rapidly transformed into a prestige project, it tried to make Uzbek football visible through money, infrastructure and global names. Rivaldo came. Zico coached. Luiz Felipe Scolari followed. Samuel Eto’o did not sign, but even the rumour was enough to make international media look at Tashkent. Bunyodkor’s story is brilliant and excessive, but also fragile. It showed both the attraction and the limits of football spectacle in late Karimov-era Uzbekistan.

These five clubs explain much of Uzbek football’s recent history. Pakhtakor is memory. Nasaf is regional achievement. Navbahor is passion. Neftchi is early independence power. Bunyodkor is ambition. But the map does not end there.

Also read on Novastan: Pakhtakor Tashkent: The Club That Carries Uzbek Football’s Memory

Lokomotiv Tashkent is the most obvious next point. Founded in 2002, the club is closely associated with Uzbekistan Railways, and its nickname, the Railroaders, gives it one of the clearest institutional identities in the country. Lokomotiv became especially important in the mid-2010s, when it broke through as a serious domestic force. After several seasons as runner-up, it won the Uzbek league in 2016, 2017 and 2018, turning a railway-backed club into one of the strongest teams of the period. If Bunyodkor was the glamour project, Lokomotiv was the state-company model in a more disciplined form: less spectacular, but highly effective for several years.

AGMK, from Almalyk, shows another version of the industrial club. Its name comes from the Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Combine, the company that has been central to the club’s identity and sponsorship. Almalyk itself is one of Uzbekistan’s major industrial towns, associated with mining, metallurgy and copper. AGMK therefore belongs to the same broad family as Neftchi and Lokomotiv: clubs whose football identity is inseparable from a major economic institution. Its importance is not only sporting. It shows how Uzbek football has often developed through the relationship between local industry, company patronage and regional visibility.

Sogdiana Jizzakh gives the map a historical and regional dimension. Founded in 1970, the club takes its name from Sogdia, the ancient region that once connected Central Asia to wider Eurasian trade, culture and empire. In football terms, Sogdiana has rarely dominated Uzbekistan, but it has mattered as a durable provincial club. Its 1992 bronze medal in the first season of the independent Uzbek league and its 2021 runner-up finish show that Jizzakh has periodically produced teams capable of challenging the established hierarchy. Sogdiana is not a giant, but it gives Uzbek football one of its strongest historical names.

Mash’al Mubarek represents yet another kind of provincial football. Based in Mubarek, a town located in Kashkadarya associated with the gas industry, the club’s name means “torch”. That symbolism matters: in a football landscape full of cotton, oil, railways, metallurgy and construction, Mash’al carries the image of gas, flame and energy. Its greatest domestic achievement came in 2005, when it finished second in the Uzbek league behind Pakhtakor and qualified for the AFC Champions League. Mash’al has not become a permanent national power, but it remains a reminder that even smaller industrial towns have produced important chapters in Uzbek football.

Andijan brings the map back to the Fergana Valley. The club has not had the same national success as Navbahor or Neftchi, but it gives the Valley another emotional football centre. In many countries, football geography is not only shaped by champions. It is also shaped by cities whose clubs carry local loyalty through difficult seasons, relegations and returns. Andijan belongs to that category: a club whose importance is regional, social and emotional more than trophy-based. In the wider story of Uzbek football, it helps show why the Fergana Valley is not one football identity, but several competing city identities.

Surkhon Termez pushes the map south. Termez, on the Afghan border, occupies a very different place in Uzbekistan’s geography and imagination from Tashkent, Namangan or Qarshi. Surkhon’s role in Uzbek football is not primarily about trophies. It is about representation. A league that includes Termez is a league that reaches the country’s southern frontier, connecting football to a borderland city shaped by trade, military routes, religion, archaeology and proximity to Afghanistan. Surkhon gives Uzbek football a southern edge.

Also read on Novastan: Nasaf Qarshi: the club that put Uzbek football on Asia’s map

There are others too. Metallurg Bekabad (Tashkent region) reflects another industrial city and another metallurgy-linked identity. Kokand 1912 carries one of the oldest and most evocative city names in Uzbek football, rooted in the history of the Kokand Khanate and the Fergana Valley’s cultural geography. Qizilqum Zarafshon adds the mining landscape of the Kyzylkum desert and the gold-producing world of Navoi Region. Turon Yaypan (Fergana region) and other smaller clubs show how the football map continues to expand and contract as money, promotion, relegation and local support shift from season to season.

This diversity matters because Uzbek football is sometimes reduced to a national-team story or to a few famous names abroad. Shomurodov in Italy, Khusanov in England, Fayzullaev in Russia and other players in foreign leagues are now the most visible symbols of the country’s rise. But behind them stands a domestic structure that is more complicated than a simple talent pipeline. It includes Soviet legacies, regional pride, industrial sponsorship, state-company backing, academy projects, local administrations and fan cultures that vary sharply from city to city.

That structure has not always been stable. Uzbek clubs have often depended on powerful sponsors, state-linked companies or regional authorities. Budgets can rise and fall. Ownership can be opaque. Teams can surge quickly and decline just as quickly. Bunyodkor’s rise and fall showed the risks of spectacle. Neftchi’s long decline after its golden age showed how difficult it is to maintain dominance. Lokomotiv’s mid-2010s success showed how quickly a well-supported club can become a domestic force, but also how hard it is to turn a strong cycle into permanent mythology.

Yet this instability is also part of the story. Uzbek football has been built through experimentation. Some clubs have relied on memory. Some on fans. Some on factories. Some on railways. Some on academies. Some on local government. Some on the charisma of a coach or the ambition of a sponsor. The result is uneven, but it is not empty. It has produced institutions, rivalries and football environments that helped prepare the ground for the current generation.

Also read on Novastan: Discussions sur le développement du football féminin au Kazakhstan

The World Cup moment gives this domestic map new meaning. For years, Uzbekistan was one of Asian football’s nearly teams: technically strong, competitive, respected, but repeatedly falling short of the final step. Qualification changes the story. It allows the country to look back and ask not only which players made history, but which clubs, cities and football cultures helped make those players possible.

In that sense, the road to the World Cup did not begin only in national-team camps. It passed through Pakhtakor’s memory, Nasaf’s discipline, Navbahor’s crowds, Neftchi’s industrial Fergana, Bunyodkor’s academy fields, Lokomotiv’s railway-backed structure, AGMK’s metallurgical city, Sogdiana’s Jizzakh, Mash’al’s gas-town football, Andijan’s Valley loyalty and Surkhon’s southern frontier.

Uzbekistan’s football map is therefore not a straight line from Tashkent to the World Cup. It is a network. It runs through cotton, oil, gas, railways, mining towns, ancient cities, border regions and stadiums where local pride is turned into football identity. That is what makes the country’s first World Cup appearance more than a national-team success. It is the result of a football culture built across many Uzbekistans: capital and province, industry and academy, memory and ambition, spectacle and patience.

The next question is whether this moment can strengthen the clubs themselves. World Cup qualification can inspire young players, attract more attention to the domestic league, and make football more attractive to sponsors and families. But it can also widen the gap between the national team’s global visibility and the domestic league’s everyday realities. The challenge for Uzbekistan will be to use the World Cup not only as a celebration, but as a catalyst: better academies, better coaching, stronger governance, more transparent club structures and stadium cultures that can grow beyond occasional big matches.

If that happens, the clubs behind the World Cup dream will not remain only background stories. They will become part of Uzbekistan’s next football chapter. The country has reached the World Cup. Now its domestic game has to decide what kind of football nation it wants to become.

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post Beyond the big clubs: the football map behind Uzbekistan’s World Cup dream appeared first on Novastan English.

Special series – The Clubs Behind Uzbekistan’s World Cup Dream

As Uzbekistan plays in its first-ever FIFA World Cup after a historic qualification campaign, Novastan looks at the clubs that shaped the country’s football identity. From Soviet-era Pakhtakor Tashkent to regional powerhouses such as Nasaf Qarshi, Navbahor Namangan and Neftchi Fergana, this series explores how club football helped build the foundations of the White Wolves’ rise.

In 2008, Uzbek football briefly became one of the strangest stories in the global game. A young Tashkent club, only three years old, claimed it was close to signing Samuel Eto’o from Barcelona, actually signed Rivaldo, hired Zico, and then brought in Luiz Felipe Scolari, Brazil’s 2002 World Cup-winning coach. Its name was Bunyodkor, meaning “creator” or “builder”, and for a few years it seemed to offer a new idea: that Uzbek football could force its way into international visibility through money, infrastructure and famous names.

Bunyodkor is unlike the other clubs in this series. Pakhtakor Tashkent carries Soviet memory and national tragedy. Nasaf Qarshi represents regional achievement and Asian success. Navbahor Namangan embodies popular passion in the Fergana Valley. Neftchi Fergana recalls the early years of independent Uzbek football. Bunyodkor belongs to a different category. It was not an old community club or a regional football institution. It was a project: fast, ambitious, spectacular and deeply tied to the political economy of late Karimov-era Uzbekistan.

The club was founded on 6 July 2005 as Neftgazmontaj-Quruvchi, usually shortened to Kuruvchi, meaning “builder”. The name reflected its origins in construction and energy-linked structures. In 2008, after rapid sporting success, the club was renamed Bunyodkor. The new name, often translated as “creator” or “builder”, suited its self-image. This was a club built quickly, with the aim of doing quickly what most football institutions take decades to achieve.

Its rise was immediate. After starting in the lower divisions, Bunyodkor moved rapidly through Uzbek football. It finished second in the 2007 Uzbek League, then won the championship in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013. It also won the Uzbek Cup four times, in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013, and the Uzbek Super Cup in 2014. In less than a decade, it became one of the most decorated clubs of independent Uzbek football.

Also read on Novastan: Uzbekistan at the World Cup: The White Wolves Enter the Global Stage

But domestic success alone was not what made Bunyodkor famous. The turning point came in 2008, when the club tried to place itself in the global football conversation. The first episode was Samuel Eto’o. Kuruvchi publicly claimed that it had signed the Barcelona striker on a short-term contract. Eto’o travelled to Tashkent and gave a skills session, but the transfer never happened. Barcelona denied that a completed deal existed, and Eto’o remained in Europe. The episode mattered less because Eto’o played for the club – he did not – than because it showed Bunyodkor’s new method: using global football names to make the world look at Tashkent.

Rivaldo was different. He actually came. In August 2008, the Brazilian World Cup winner and former Ballon d’Or winner left AEK Athens for Bunyodkor. Reports described the contract as one of the most lucrative ever offered by a Central Asian club. For an Uzbek club, this was extraordinary. Rivaldo’s arrival gave Bunyodkor instant global recognition. For the first time, a club from Uzbekistan was not being discussed only in Asian football circles, but in the international sports press.

His presence was more than symbolic. Rivaldo played for Bunyodkor between 2008 and 2010, scored regularly and became the club’s international face. He brought glamour, but also credibility. The idea of an Uzbek club employing a player who had won the World Cup with Brazil and starred for Barcelona would have sounded impossible only a few years earlier. Bunyodkor made it real.

Also read on Novastan: Pakhtakor Tashkent: The Club That Carries Uzbek Football’s Memory

The club then added another Brazilian legend, this time on the bench. Zico arrived as head coach in September 2008. His stay was brief, but successful. Under him, Bunyodkor won the Uzbek league and cup double and reached the semi-finals of the AFC Champions League. That continental run was important because it showed that the project was not only spectacle. Bunyodkor could also compete seriously in Asia.

In 2009, the club went further by appointing Luiz Felipe Scolari. Scolari had led Brazil to the 2002 World Cup and had recently left Chelsea. In Tashkent, he was reunited with Rivaldo, one of the stars of his World Cup-winning Brazil side. His contract was reported to make him one of the world’s best-paid football managers at the time. Bunyodkor’s domestic dominance continued, but the experiment did not last. Scolari left in 2010, less than a year into his contract, and Rivaldo also departed that year.

The money behind this period remains central to the story. Officially, Bunyodkor’s early sponsors were linked to construction and oil-gas structures, and later to state-linked companies such as Uztransgaz. During the Rivaldo and Scolari years, international reporting connected the club’s big-spending model to the opaque political economy of Karimov-era Uzbekistan, including companies and elite networks close to the presidential family. The precise ownership and financing arrangements were never fully transparent, and that opacity is part of the club’s history. Bunyodkor was not only a football club with rich sponsors; it was a product of a specific political moment, when energy money, elite business networks, international branding and football spectacle briefly came together.

When the money became less reliable, the illusion of unlimited ambition faded quickly. Rivaldo later pursued unpaid wages. Scolari left. Zeromax ran into serious trouble. Bunyodkor remained an important Uzbek club, but the era when it could plausibly attract Brazil’s biggest football names was over.

The club’s stadium tells a parallel story. Bunyodkor initially played at smaller Tashkent venues, including the MHSK and JAR stadiums. In 2012, the new Bunyodkor Stadium opened in Tashkent with a capacity of around 34,000 spectators. Later renamed Milliy Stadium, although the Bunyodkor name has remained closely associated with the venue, it became one of Uzbekistan’s main football arenas and an important home for the national team. The stadium gave the club a physical monument to its ambitions: modern, large and clearly designed to project national football confidence.

Bunyodkor’s nicknames also reveal how it wanted to be seen. The club is commonly known as Qaldirg‘ochlar, “the Swallows”, a nickname that gives it a more elegant and modern identity than the industrial or regional names of many older Uzbek clubs. It has also been called the “Asian Barcelona”, a label linked to the club’s attempted relationship with Barcelona, its Brazilian stars and its dream of becoming a stylish continental power. These labels matter because Bunyodkor was always more than a team on the pitch. It was also a brand, a projection of ambition and a claim that Uzbek football could belong in a wider global conversation.

Also read on Novastan: Nasaf Qarshi: the club that put Uzbek football on Asia’s map

Yet Bunyodkor’s fan identity is more complicated than that of clubs such as Navbahor or Neftchi. Navbahor has the emotional weight of Namangan. Neftchi has Fergana’s industrial memory and early independence dominance. Pakhtakor has generations of Soviet and post-Soviet supporters. Bunyodkor is younger and more constructed. Its fans are mostly Tashkent-based and linked to a newer football culture: urban, stadium-centred, and associated with the club’s years of success rather than with decades of inherited loyalty.

This does not mean the club lacks supporters. Bunyodkor’s rise, stars, stadium and trophies gave it visibility, especially among younger fans in Tashkent. But its supporter culture has never carried the same mythology as Pakhtakor’s tragedy, Navbahor’s packed stands in Namangan or Neftchi’s Sarkisyan-era memory. Bunyodkor’s fan base is a product of modern Uzbek football: newer, more media-driven, and shaped by success, branding and academy football.

The club’s place in popular culture is also different. Pakhtakor has been celebrated in songs and public memory. Navbahor’s culture lives strongly through supporters, fan pages and stadium chants. For Bunyodkor, there does not appear to be a clearly documented famous pop song comparable to Pakhtakor’s songs by well-known Uzbek performers. Its pop-cultural footprint comes instead from spectacle: the astonishing arrival of Rivaldo, the Eto’o episode, Scolari in Tashkent, the “Asian Barcelona” label, and the image of a club that briefly made Uzbekistan visible in global football gossip.

That may be Bunyodkor’s most distinctive cultural role. It did not enter Uzbek popular culture mainly through music or folklore. It entered it through headlines. For a few years, the club made people ask: how could Rivaldo be in Tashkent? Could Eto’o really come? Why was Scolari coaching in Uzbekistan? Bunyodkor became a football story that sounded almost unreal, and that unreality was part of its appeal.

Also read on Novastan: Discussions sur le développement du football féminin au Kazakhstan

There were also real footballers behind the spectacle. Mirjalol Qosimov, one of Uzbekistan’s great football figures, coached the club before and after the Brazilian era and helped give it a domestic football identity. Server Djeparov, one of the best Uzbek players of his generation and a two-time Asian Footballer of the Year, played for Bunyodkor. Rivaldo brought global fame, but players like Qosimov and Djeparov connected the club to Uzbek football’s own hierarchy of talent and authority.

Bunyodkor also became part of the careers of players who now define Uzbekistan’s World Cup generation. Eldor Shomurodov played for Bunyodkor from 2015 to 2017 before moving to Rostov in Russia, the transfer that opened the path to Serie A and later to his role as Uzbekistan’s captain. Abdukodir Khusanov, now one of the most internationally visible Uzbek players after his move to Manchester City, also passed through Bunyodkor’s academy before leaving for Belarus and then moving through Lens to English football. In this sense, Bunyodkor’s future may be more important than its past glamour: not as a club that buys stars, but as a club that helps produce them.

This is where the hope for the future lies. Bunyodkor is unlikely to repeat the Rivaldo-Scolari moment. That period belonged to a specific political and financial environment that no longer exists in the same form. But the club still has assets that matter: a recognised name, a major stadium environment, an academy tradition, experience in Asian competitions and a place in the capital’s football ecosystem. If it builds from youth development rather than spectacle, Bunyodkor can remain important to Uzbek football in a more sustainable way.

The club’s recent position suggests a more modest but potentially healthier phase. It is no longer the overwhelming force of 2008-2013, and it no longer looks like a club trying to buy global attention. But that may not be a weakness. Bunyodkor’s next chapter could be less glamorous and more useful: developing young players, competing domestically, returning to Asian relevance and contributing to the national team’s talent pipeline.

That would also change the meaning of its name. “Bunyodkor” means builder. In the late 2000s, the club tried to build international prestige from the top down, with money, names and spectacle. In the future, it may have to build differently: from academy fields, coaching structures, scouting and patience.

This is why Bunyodkor belongs in a series about the clubs behind Uzbekistan’s World Cup dream. Not because it is the deepest-rooted club in the country, and not because its big-money years offer a model to copy. It matters because it shows one of the boldest and most contradictory experiments in Uzbek football history. It brought global attention to Tashkent. It produced real trophies. It reached the AFC Champions League semi-finals. It revealed the risks of opaque money and prestige politics. And, through players such as Shomurodov and Khusanov, it still connects to the generation carrying Uzbekistan onto the World Cup stage.

Pakhtakor is memory. Nasaf is regional achievement. Navbahor is passion. Neftchi is early independence power. Bunyodkor is ambition – brilliant, excessive, fragile, and still unfinished.

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post Bunyodkor Tashkent: the prestige project that tried to put Uzbek football on the world map appeared first on Novastan English.

Special series – The Clubs Behind Uzbekistan’s World Cup Dream

As Uzbekistan plays in its first-ever FIFA World Cup after a historic qualification campaign, Novastan looks at the clubs that shaped the country’s football identity. From Soviet-era Pakhtakor Tashkent to regional powerhouses such as Nasaf Qarshi, Navbahor Namangan and Neftchi Fergana, this series explores how club football helped build the foundations of the White Wolves’ rise.

In the first years after Uzbekistan’s independence, the strongest club in the country was not always Pakhtakor Tashkent. For much of the 1990s, Uzbek football revolved around Fergana, where a team born from the oil industry became the first great provincial power of the new national league.

That team was Neftchi Fergana. Founded in 1962 as Neftyanik and renamed Neftchi after independence, the club carried the world of Fergana’s industrial economy into football. Its name means “oil worker” or “oilman”, a direct reference to the city’s refinery, chemical production and working-class sporting culture. If Pakhtakor’s name evokes cotton and Soviet Uzbekistan, Neftchi’s evokes oil, labour and the industrial pride of the Fergana Valley.

The club’s importance lies above all in what it achieved after 1991. Neftchi shared the first independent Uzbek league title with Pakhtakor in 1992, then won the championship outright in 1993, 1994 and 1995. It added another title in 2001. In the formative decade of Uzbek football, Neftchi was not an outsider challenging the hierarchy. It was the hierarchy.

The roots of that dominance go back to the Soviet period. Neftyanik Fergana spent years in the Soviet lower leagues, developing within sports structures linked to the region’s oil industry. In 1990, it won its Soviet Second League zone and reached the Soviet First League. In 1991, the final year of Soviet football, it finished seventh in that division. When Uzbekistan became independent, Neftchi entered the new national championship with organisation, confidence and a squad already used to competitive football.

The figure who connected these eras was Yuriy Sarkisyan. Born in Yerevan, Sarkisyan made his football life in Uzbekistan. He joined Neftyanik as a player in the 1970s, finished his playing career in Fergana, and later became head coach. From 1987 to 2013, he led the club for more than a quarter of a century, an almost unimaginable tenure in post-Soviet football.

Also read on Novastan: Uzbekistan at the World Cup: The White Wolves Enter the Global Stage

Sarkisyan was more than a successful coach. He became the face of Neftchi’s golden age. Under his leadership, the club won five Uzbek league titles, two Uzbek Cups and nine silver medals. Local football media often called him the “Uzbek Ferguson”, a comparison to Sir Alex Ferguson that reflected not only his trophies, but his longevity, authority and ability to build a club culture over decades.

His approach also shaped Neftchi’s identity. Sarkisyan relied heavily on domestic and local players rather than building the team around foreign signings. That made Neftchi feel like a Fergana club in a deeper sense: not only based in the city, but built from its football environment. At a time when many post-Soviet clubs were unstable, changing names, sponsors, budgets and squads, Neftchi had a recognisable structure and a coach who became an institution.

The 1990s side became the foundation of the club’s legend. Neftchi’s early champions were not only title winners; they helped define the new Uzbek league. The club’s squads included players who would become important figures in Uzbek football, including Andrey Fyodorov, later one of the country’s best-known defenders and coaches, and Oleg Shatskikh, who passed through Neftchi before becoming associated with other major clubs. The team also relied on players from Fergana and the wider valley, reinforcing its regional character.

Also read on Novastan: Pakhtakor Tashkent: The Club That Carries Uzbek Football’s Memory

For supporters, Neftchi’s strength was not only about results. It was about the feeling that Fergana could stand at the centre of national football. The early years after independence were a moment of reordering, when cities, institutions and regions were looking for their place in a new state. Neftchi gave Fergana a football voice at precisely that moment.

The club’s home today is Istiqlol Stadium, opened in 2015 with a capacity of around 20,500 spectators. The name means “independence”, which suits Neftchi better than almost any other Uzbek club. Its greatest period came when independent Uzbekistan’s football institutions were being born. The stadium is therefore not only a modern arena, but a reminder of the era that made the club famous.

Fergana itself gives the team much of its meaning. The city is one of the main urban centres of the Fergana Valley, long associated with oil refining, chemicals, textiles and regional production. Around it lies one of Central Asia’s richest cultural landscapes: Margilan and its silk traditions, Rishtan and its ceramics, Kokand and the memory of the khanate. Neftchi belongs to that setting: industrial, regional, confident and deeply connected to the valley.

This identity sets it apart from the other clubs in this series. Pakhtakor Tashkent carries Soviet memory and national tragedy. Nasaf Qarshi represents regional ambition and Asian success. Navbahor Namangan expresses popular passion and supporter culture. Neftchi represents the first post-independence football order: disciplined, industrial, local and built around a coach who became part of the club’s mythology.

Its rivalries reflect that history. Matches against Pakhtakor were among the defining fixtures of the early Uzbek league, opposing the capital’s historic club to Fergana’s rising power. Matches against Navbahor Namangan carry the internal geography of the Fergana Valley. Navbahor represents Namangan’s emotional football culture; Neftchi represents Fergana’s industrial memory and early dominance. Their rivalry is not only about points, but about prestige between neighbouring cities.

Yet Neftchi’s story is not one of uninterrupted glory. After the 2001 title, the club gradually lost ground. Pakhtakor reasserted itself. Bunyodkor became the prestige project of the late 2000s. Nasaf developed its own regional model and won the AFC Cup. Neftchi, once the symbol of the new Uzbek league, began to look like a club living more on memory than on present success.

Also read on Novastan: Nasaf Qarshi: the club that put Uzbek football on Asia’s map

The decline became severe enough for the club to spend time outside the top flight, a painful fall for a team that had once shaped the championship. That is why its recent revival matters. Neftchi’s return to the top of Uzbek football in 2025 was not simply another sporting success. It restored one of the original names of the independent Uzbek league to the centre of the domestic game.

The 2025 championship ended a 24-year wait. In Fergana, it was received as more than a trophy. It was the return of a club that had once made the city central to Uzbek football. Local media and regional officials presented the achievement as a source of pride, linking it to a wider ambition to strengthen football in the region. The title showed that Neftchi was not only a nostalgic reference to the 1990s. It could again shape the present.

The institutional context also remains important. Neftchi has long been closely connected to Fergana’s industrial and regional structures, above all through the oil-refining economy that gave the club its name and identity. Like many Uzbek clubs, it sits at the intersection of sport, local administration, industrial support and regional prestige. Its story is therefore not only about football results, but also about the way regional institutions, industries and local pride have helped shape club football in Uzbekistan.

Its present-day squad also gives it a link to the wider national-team environment. Goalkeeper Botirali Ergashev, who has been called up by Uzbekistan and plays for Neftchi Fergana, connects the club to the country’s current football generation. But Neftchi’s deeper contribution is historical rather than symbolic. The club helped create the competitive domestic culture from which Uzbek football developed.

Also read on Novastan: Discussions sur le développement du football féminin au Kazakhstan

That is why the club deserves a central place in any account of Uzbekistan’s football rise. It was there at the beginning of the independent league. It gave Fergana a national football voice. It had one of the longest and most successful coaching eras in post-Soviet football. It rose, declined, rebuilt and returned. Few Uzbek clubs offer such a complete football biography.

Neftchi’s story contains several layers of modern Uzbek football: the Soviet legacy, the first years of independence, regional ambition, industrial sponsorship, coaching continuity, collapse and revival. It is not only a club of the past, nor simply a revived champion of the present. It is a bridge between both.

As Uzbekistan steps onto the World Cup stage, Neftchi reminds us that national football identities are built over decades, often far from the spotlight. They are built in cities like Fergana, through clubs that give local pride a structure, a history and a stadium.

The road to Uzbekistan’s first World Cup passed through many places: Tashkent, Qarshi, Namangan, foreign leagues and national-team camps. But it also passed through Fergana, through Neftchi, and through the long shadow of Yuriy Sarkisyan, the coach who turned an oil-workers’ club into one of the founding powers of independent Uzbek football.

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post Neftchi Fergana: the oil-workers’ club that dominated early Uzbek football appeared first on Novastan English.

Special series – The Clubs Behind Uzbekistan’s World Cup Dream

As Uzbekistan plays in its first-ever FIFA World Cup after a historic qualification campaign, Novastan looks at the clubs that shaped the country’s football identity. From Soviet-era Pakhtakor Tashkent to regional powerhouses such as Nasaf Qarshi, Navbahor Namangan and Neftchi Fergana, this series explores how club football helped build the foundations of the White Wolves’ rise.

If Pakhtakor Tashkent carries Uzbek football’s memory and Nasaf Qarshi represents its modern regional ambition, Navbahor Namangan explains why the game has such emotional depth outside the capital. Based in one of Uzbekistan’s largest cities and one of the main centres of the Fergana Valley, Navbahor is not only a football club. It is Namangan’s public football identity: a club of local pride, strong support and regional self-confidence.

As Uzbekistan plays in its first-ever FIFA World Cup, attention naturally falls on the national team’s most visible stars: Eldor Shomurodov, Abdukodir Khusanov, Abbosbek Fayzullaev and Fabio Cannavaro, the Italian World Cup winner now leading the White Wolves. But behind the national team’s breakthrough lies a domestic football culture built in cities and regions across the country. Namangan is one of those places, and Navbahor is one of the clubs that explain why Uzbek football is not simply a Tashkent story.

The World Cup link is direct. Goalkeeper Utkir Yusupov, one of the players named in Uzbekistan’s 2026 World Cup squad, has been associated with Navbahor and returned to the club after playing abroad. His presence connects Namangan to the national-team story at a moment when the White Wolves are stepping onto the global stage for the first time. But Navbahor’s importance goes beyond one player. It lies in what the club represents: the idea that football in Uzbekistan is rooted in regional cities, local loyalties and stadium cultures that have developed far from the administrative centre.

Navbahor was founded in 1978 under the name Tekstilshchik, a name that reflected the Soviet-era connection between football clubs, local industries and institutions. The club later became Navbahor, a name usually understood as “new spring”. In the years before and after independence, the club also appeared under names such as Avtomobilist and Novbahor before settling into its current identity. The changes say something about the post-Soviet world in which Uzbek football developed: clubs were not only sporting teams, but institutions shaped by industry, administration, city identity and national transition.

Navbahor is not just a popular regional club. It is one of the historic names of post-Soviet Uzbek football. Since the creation of the independent Uzbek league in 1992, it has remained one of the few clubs, alongside Pakhtakor and Neftchi, to have played every season in the top division. This continuity matters. It means that Navbahor is not a passing regional enthusiasm, but one of the permanent structures of Uzbek football.

Also read on Novastan: Uzbekistan at the World Cup: The White Wolves Enter the Global Stage

The club quickly became one of the leading sides of the independent era. It won the Uzbek Cup in 1992, 1995 and 1998, became national champion in 1996, and won the Uzbek Super Cup in 1999. In Asia, Navbahor reached the semi-finals of the Asian Cup Winners’ Cup in the 1999-2000 season, one of the club’s strongest continental results. These honours gave Navbahor a firm place in the early history of independent Uzbek football.

The 1996 league title remains a key moment. It showed that Uzbek football’s post-independence order was not fixed only around Tashkent or Fergana. Namangan, too, could produce a champion. For supporters, the title became part of a local memory of pride and possibility. For the national football map, it helped establish the Fergana Valley as one of the country’s strongest football regions.

Namangan itself gives the club much of its meaning. It is one of Uzbekistan’s largest cities and one of the main urban centres of the Fergana Valley, a densely populated region where local identities are especially strong. The city is known for gardens, flowers and public celebrations, especially the Namangan International Flower Festival, which has become one of its most recognisable events. It is also associated with crafts, trade, light industry and a strong sense of local identity within the valley. In this context, Navbahor is more than a football team: it is one of the ways Namangan becomes visible to the rest of Uzbekistan.

Also read on Novastan: Pakhtakor Tashkent: The Club That Carries Uzbek Football’s Memory

Namangan’s cultural profile also helps explain why the club’s identity feels larger than sport. The city is associated with figures such as the poet Usmon Nosir, one of the important voices of twentieth-century Uzbek literature, and with popular singers including Samandar Hamroqulov and Muhriddin Xoliqov. These references matter not because they are directly linked to the club, but because they show that Navbahor comes from a city with its own cultural confidence, not from a peripheral football town waiting to be defined by Tashkent.

Navbahor’s home is Markaziy Stadium in Namangan, one of the important regional football arenas in Uzbekistan. Originally built with a larger capacity, it was renovated in the early 2010s and reopened in 2014 as an all-seater stadium with around 22,000 seats. The renovation matters because it gave the club a modernised regional stage at a time when Uzbek football was becoming more professional and more media-visible. In a city where local pride is strong, the stadium is not only a sports venue; it is one of the places where Namangan presents itself nationally.

That supporter culture is one of the reasons the club stands out. Markaziy Stadium is often described as one of the most attended football venues in Uzbekistan, and Navbahor’s home matches have a reputation for drawing full or near-full crowds. In a national league where not every club can rely on a large match-going public, this makes Navbahor distinctive: the club is not only followed, it is physically present in the city’s weekly life.

Around Uzbek stadiums, football is also part of a wider social ritual, with food stalls, local snacks and the familiar smells of plov, samsa, manti, lagman and fresh bread forming part of the matchday environment. For Navbahor, this should not be understood as an official tradition, but as part of the social setting of football in the Fergana Valley: a match is a public gathering as much as a sporting event.

Navbahor’s identity is also carried by its symbols. Supporters often refer to the club as Lochinlar or Sapsanlar – the Falcons, or Peregrine Falcons. The image fits the club’s reputation: fast, proud, regional and difficult to domesticate. Rather than a single widely documented official mascot, Navbahor’s symbolic world is built around this bird imagery, the red-and-white colours, the city of Namangan and the energy of its supporters.

The club’s cultural presence is therefore more fan-based than celebrity-based. Unlike Pakhtakor, which has entered Uzbek pop culture through songs by well-known performers, Navbahor’s soundscape is closer to the stadium: chants, supporter videos, fan pages and the repeated use of falcon imagery. The club’s culture is produced less by national pop stars than by the crowd itself.

Also read on Novastan: Nasaf Qarshi: the club that put Uzbek football on Asia’s map

Navbahor’s rivalries give the club further weight. Its matches against Neftchi Fergana and Andijan are part of the “Derby of the Valley”, a rivalry between the main football centres of Namangan, Fergana and Andijan. These games matter because they are not only sporting contests. They express the internal geography of the Fergana Valley, where neighbouring cities are close enough to share a regional identity but distinct enough to compete for prestige.

Games against Pakhtakor Tashkent, meanwhile, oppose the emotional force of a regional club to the prestige of the capital’s historic institution. In recent years, matches against Nasaf Qarshi and other ambitious regional clubs have also reflected a broader shift in Uzbek football: the challenge to Tashkent’s long-standing centrality.

Navbahor’s institutional structure also reflects the way many Uzbek clubs operate. Publicly available reporting presents the club less as a privately owned Western European-style football company than as an institution linked to regional administration, local football structures and sponsors. In 2021, Namangan Pravda reported that Otabek Samatov had become president of FC Navbahor, adding that the post had traditionally been held by the hokim of Namangan city. In 2025, Zamin.uz reported that Anvarjon Tojimirzayev, hokim of Namangan’s Davlatabad district, had been appointed club president at a meeting attended by the hokim of Namangan Region, who also headed the regional football association. In February 2026, Tribuna.uz again described Tojimirzayev as both Davlatabad district hokim and president of Navbahor during a meeting on club and stadium management changes. This gives Navbahor a public-regional character rather than the profile of a purely private club.

The club has also relied on sponsors and public support. In February 2024, Namangan Pravda reported that the electronic trading platform E-AUKSION had become Navbahor’s title sponsor for the season. A few weeks earlier, Gazeta.uz reported that Namangan regional hokim Shavkatjon Abdurazzoqov had allocated 2.5 billion soums (about €181,003) to the club from the reserve fund of the regional budget. Kursiv, citing the same public decision-making trail, reported that the money was allocated in two tranches, 500 million (about €36,201) and 2 billion soums (about €144,803), for football development in the region and the restoration of Navbahor’s financial position. Together, these sources show how Navbahor sits at the intersection of sponsorship, regional administration and local football prestige.

Also read on Novastan: Discussions sur le développement du football féminin au Kazakhstan

The clearest sign of Navbahor’s attempt to professionalise is its new partnership with Ajax. In June 2026, Ajax announced that Navbahor had joined its international football network, with the Dutch club supporting the development and coordination of Navbahor’s youth academy through Ajax’s football philosophy and methodology. Uzbek reporting presented the agreement as a step toward aligning the Navbahor academy with international standards and bringing Ajax’s training approach to young players in Namangan. For a club often described through passion and local pride, the Ajax partnership adds another layer: Navbahor is trying to turn regional energy into a more structured development model.

Navbahor’s history is also linked to several important players and coaches. In the 1990s, the club’s title-winning period was associated with coaches such as Viktor Jalilov and Sharif Nazarov, while players from that era helped establish Navbahor as one of the first serious challengers in the independent Uzbek league. More recently, goalkeeper Utkir Yusupov connected the club to Uzbekistan’s first World Cup squad. The appointment of former Uzbekistan international Timur Kapadze as head coach also gives Navbahor a current national-team resonance: the club is not only a historical name, but part of the country’s contemporary football conversation.

Navbahor’s story also says something about the relationship between football and demography. Namangan is one of Uzbekistan’s major cities, and the Fergana Valley is one of the most densely populated regions of Central Asia. A strong club there is not just a sporting asset. It is a social institution, giving local identity a public form. When Navbahor plays, it is not only a team on the pitch. It is a city and a region seeing themselves represented.

This is why Navbahor deserves its own place in this series. Uzbekistan’s World Cup qualification is often told through elite players abroad, through Shomurodov in Türkiye, Khusanov in England, Fayzullaev’s rise and Cannavaro’s global name. But the emotional depth of Uzbek football comes from places like Namangan. It comes from supporters who built attachments to clubs long before the national team reached the World Cup.

Navbahor also helps explain why Uzbek football has national resonance. A football culture cannot be built only through academies, transfers and professional leagues. It also needs places where people care. Namangan is one of those places. Navbahor gives that care a colour, a name and a stadium.

As Uzbekistan steps onto the World Cup stage, Navbahor’s role is therefore symbolic as much as sporting. It reminds us that the White Wolves’ rise is not only the result of a golden generation or an imported coach. It is also the product of regional football cultures, local pride and stadiums where supporters learned to see football as part of who they are.

This is why Navbahor is more than the “passionate club” of Uzbek football. It is the football expression of a major regional city. Namangan has population, cultural confidence, public festivals, economic activity and a strong sense of place. Navbahor gives all of that a weekly form. When the club plays, it is not only competing for points; it is representing a city that wants to be seen, heard and respected within Uzbekistan’s national football map.

If Pakhtakor is the memory of Uzbek football and Nasaf is its modern regional proof, Navbahor is its heartbeat. It is the club that shows why Uzbek football matters not only in the capital, but in the valley, in the city, in the stands and in the emotional geography of the country.

The road to the World Cup did not begin only in Tashkent, Qarshi or Europe’s professional leagues. It also passed through Namangan, through Markaziy Stadium, through the red and white of Navbahor, and through a city that has long made football part of its identity.

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post Navbahor Namangan: the Fergana Valley’s football heartbeat appeared first on Novastan English.

Just like their human owners, domestic cats have their own distinctive characteristics in every region of the world. Genetic analyses have revealed that the domesticated species (Felis catus) most likely spread from the Near East to Asia through trade along the Silk Roads. It did not finally reach China until around the 8th century AD. Khiva, Uzbekistan.

Credit : Margaret Bullich (Germany)

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Special series – The Clubs Behind Uzbekistan’s World Cup Dream

As Uzbekistan plays in its first-ever FIFA World Cup after a historic qualification campaign, Novastan looks at the clubs that shaped the country’s football identity. From Soviet-era Pakhtakor Tashkent to regional powerhouses such as Nasaf Qarshi, Navbahor Namangan and Neftchi Fergana, this series explores how club football helped build the foundations of the White Wolves’ rise.

If Pakhtakor Tashkent carries Uzbek football’s memory, Nasaf Qarshi represents its modern regional ambition. The club from Qarshi, in the southern region of Qashqadaryo, has become one of the clearest examples of how Uzbek football moved beyond the capital and built a wider national geography.

As Uzbekistan makes its first appearance at the FIFA World Cup, attention naturally falls on the national team’s most visible names: Eldor Shomurodov, Abdukodir Khusanov, Abbosbek Fayzullaev and Fabio Cannavaro, the Italian World Cup winner now leading the White Wolves. But behind that national breakthrough lies an ecosystem of clubs that developed players, created competitive pressure and gave Uzbek football its domestic foundation. Nasaf is central to that story.

The World Cup may be new for Uzbekistan, but Nasaf’s role in the country’s football rise is not. Current national-team goalkeeper Abduvohid Nematov and defender Umar Eshmurodov both connect the club directly to Uzbekistan’s first World Cup squad, while Nasaf has also become known for developing and giving responsibility to Uzbek players at a high competitive level. In a football culture long associated with Tashkent’s dominance, Nasaf showed that a club from Qarshi could win at home, compete in Asia and become a national reference point.

Nasaf was founded in 1986 under the name Geolog, a reminder of the Soviet and industrial context in which many clubs across the region were created. Like other post-Soviet teams, its early identity reflected local institutions, economic structures and regional life as much as sport itself. The club later became known as Nasaf, a name linked to the historical name of the Qarshi area, connecting the team to a deeper local geography.

That geography matters. Qarshi is not Tashkent. It is not the political, administrative or media centre of Uzbekistan. Located in Qashqadaryo, in the south of the country, it sits in a region associated with energy, agriculture, industry and routes towards the wider south. For a club from Qarshi to become one of Uzbekistan’s leading football institutions means that Uzbek football cannot be understood only through the capital.

Also read on Novastan: Uzbekistan at the World Cup: The White Wolves Enter the Global Stage

Nasaf’s home is Markaziy Stadium, also known as Nasaf Stadium, in Qarshi. Built in the 2000s and holding around 21,000 spectators, it became one of the most important football arenas outside Tashkent. Its most famous night came on 29 October 2011, when Nasaf hosted the AFC Cup final against Kuwait SC. For one evening, the centre of Uzbek football was not the capital. It was Qarshi.

That final remains the defining moment in Nasaf’s history. Playing at home, the club beat Kuwait SC 2-1 and became the first Uzbek side to win the AFC Cup. The goals came from Ilkhom Shomurodov and Andrejs Pereplotkins, before Kuwait SC reduced the score. The result did more than add a trophy to the cabinet. It proved that an Uzbek club from outside Tashkent could win a major Asian competition and make the country visible beyond the domestic league.

The symbolism was powerful. Pakhtakor had carried Uzbek football through Soviet visibility, post-independence dominance and repeated Asian ambitions. Bunyodkor would later become associated with money, international names and prestige projects. But Nasaf offered something different: regional consistency, continental seriousness and a sense that football development could come from outside the capital.

Also read on Novastan: Pakhtakor Tashkent: The Club That Carries Uzbek Football’s Memory

Nasaf’s main symbol is the dragon. The club is widely nicknamed The Dragons, or Ajdarlar in Uzbek, and its official social-media identity has used the hashtag #FireDragons. The image suits the club’s modern identity. Unlike Pakhtakor, whose name evokes cotton and Soviet Uzbekistan, Nasaf’s dragon symbol suggests force, regional pride and a more contemporary football brand. For supporters in Qarshi, the dragon is not only a nickname; it is a way of turning a regional club into a recognisable national and Asian football image.

Nasaf’s popular culture is less nationally mythologised than Pakhtakor’s, but the club has its own fan identity. Online fan material includes songs such as Nasaf Ajdaholari – “Nasaf’s Dragons” – a title that draws directly on the club’s nickname. This is different from Pakhtakor’s place in Uzbek pop music: Nasaf’s cultural image is more regional and supporter-driven, tied to Qarshi pride, the dragon symbol and the memory of the 2011 AFC Cup victory.

Unlike Pakhtakor, Nasaf does not appear to have generated the same publicly visible literature of tragedy, memory and commemoration. Its story is preserved more through match reports, AFC retrospectives, fan media, club archives and the memory of decisive games, especially the 2011 AFC Cup final. This also says something about the club’s identity: Nasaf is less a monument to the past than a symbol of regional football ambition and institutional work.

Nasaf’s 2011 AFC Cup victory was not an isolated emotional moment. It became a reference point for the club’s identity. Nasaf returned to the AFC Cup final in 2021 and continued to appear regularly in Asian competitions. In recent years, it has also participated in the continent’s higher-level tournaments, showing that the 2011 win was not only a memory, but part of a longer process of institutional consolidation.

Domestically, Nasaf long carried a paradox. It was one of Uzbekistan’s strongest and most respected clubs, but for many years it had not won the national league. It collected cup titles, challenged the leading sides and built a strong reputation, yet the league crown remained elusive. That changed in 2024, when Nasaf finally won the Uzbekistan Super League. The title was more than another honour. It confirmed the club’s place as one of the country’s major football powers.

Nasaf has now won one Uzbek league title, four Uzbek Cups and four Uzbek Super Cups, alongside its 2011 AFC Cup triumph. This trophy list is not as large as Pakhtakor’s, but it tells a different story. Pakhtakor’s honours speak of dominance and hierarchy. Nasaf’s speak of persistence, regional ambition and gradual consolidation.

Also read on Novastan: L’Ouzbékistan savoure sa première participation à la Coupe du monde de football

The club is often associated with stability. Since the early 2010s, Ruziqul Berdiev has been one of the central figures in Nasaf’s modern identity. Long coaching cycles are rare in football, especially in post-Soviet leagues where clubs often change direction quickly. Nasaf’s relative continuity has helped shape its image as a structured club rather than only a spending project or temporary force.

Nasaf’s player history is closely linked to its 2011 breakthrough and to the current national-team cycle. Ilkhom Shomurodov, who scored in the AFC Cup final against Kuwait SC, remains one of the names most strongly associated with the club’s greatest night. Latvian international Andrejs Pereplotkins, who scored Nasaf’s second goal in that final, added an international dimension to the team. In the following years, players such as Turkmenistan international Artur Gevorkyan helped keep Nasaf competitive in the Berdiev era. Today, goalkeeper Abduvohid Nematov and defender Umar Eshmurodov connect the club directly to Uzbekistan’s first World Cup squad, showing that Nasaf’s role in the national team is not only historical, but current.

This is one of the reasons Nasaf matters for understanding Uzbek football today. It has not been built only around glamour, foreign stars or sudden ambition. Its image is closer to that of a working institution: a club that competes, develops, returns to Asian tournaments and gives Qarshi a permanent place on the football map.

What makes Nasaf distinctive is not only one trophy, but the kind of club it became. It is famous as the first Uzbek club to win the AFC Cup, after its 2-1 victory over Kuwait SC in Qarshi in 2011. It is famous as the club of Ajdarlar, the Dragons, a symbol that gives Nasaf a sharper modern identity than many post-Soviet teams. It is also famous for offering a regional counterweight to Tashkent: a club from Qarshi that could win in Asia, challenge domestically, develop players and eventually become national champion in 2024. In that sense, Nasaf is less a club of nostalgia than a club of proof – proof that Uzbek football could be built outside the capital.

Also read on Novastan: Discussions sur le développement du football féminin au Kazakhstan

The club’s importance also lies in what it says about the geography of Uzbek football. Tashkent remains central, and Pakhtakor remains the historic institution. But Uzbekistan’s football identity is broader: Qarshi, Namangan, Fergana, Samarkand, Bukhara, Almalyk and Termez all form part of the national map. Nasaf is the strongest argument that this map has become more balanced.

This regional dimension matters even more in the World Cup year. Uzbekistan’s qualification is often presented through the national team’s stars abroad, from Shomurodov to Khusanov. That is understandable. But the deeper story is domestic. Before players reach Istanbul, Manchester, Lens, Rome or other foreign clubs, they emerge from a football environment shaped by local teams, regional competitions, youth systems and national rivalries. Nasaf is one of the clubs that made this environment stronger.

The club also shows how Uzbek football has professionalised. Its Asian results, domestic trophies and ability to remain competitive over time suggest that success no longer depends only on capital-city prestige. Nasaf’s rise helps explain why Uzbekistan could build a national team with greater depth, stronger defensive organisation and players accustomed to competitive continental football.

For supporters in Qarshi, Nasaf’s success is also a matter of local pride. Football gives the city visibility in a country where Tashkent often dominates politics, media and national attention. When Nasaf won the AFC Cup in 2011, the victory was not only Uzbek. It was also Qarshi’s victory. It showed that the south of the country could host a continental final, win it, and make the rest of Asia look towards Qashqadaryo.

That is why Nasaf is the natural second chapter in this series. Pakhtakor explains where Uzbek football’s memory begins. Nasaf explains how Uzbek football became more geographically ambitious. One is the capital’s historic institution; the other is the regional club that turned consistency into continental success.

As Uzbekistan steps onto the World Cup stage, Nasaf’s role is therefore both practical and symbolic. It is practical because the club contributes players and competitive experience to the national ecosystem. It is symbolic because it represents the expansion of Uzbek football beyond Tashkent. If the White Wolves’ World Cup debut is a national achievement, Nasaf reminds us that the national story is built from regional foundations.

The road to the World Cup did not begin only in the stadiums of Europe, the Middle East or North America. It also ran through Qarshi, through Markaziy Stadium, through the night Nasaf beat Kuwait SC, and through the long work of a club that proved Uzbek football could be ambitious far from the capital.

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post Nasaf Qarshi: the club that put Uzbek football on Asia’s map appeared first on Novastan English.

Special series – The Clubs Behind Uzbekistan’s World Cup Dream

As Uzbekistan plays in its first-ever FIFA World Cup after a historic qualification campaign, Novastan looks at the clubs that shaped the country’s football identity. From Soviet-era Pakhtakor Tashkent to regional powerhouses such as Nasaf Qarshi, Navbahor Namangan and Neftchi Fergana, this series explores how club football helped build the foundations of the White Wolves’ rise.

As Uzbekistan makes its first appearance at the FIFA World Cup, attention naturally falls on the national team’s stars: Eldor Shomurodov, Abdukodir Khusanov, Abbosbek Fayzullaev and Fabio Cannavaro, the Italian World Cup winner now leading the White Wolves. But behind the historic debut lies a longer football story, one that begins not in North America, but in Tashkent.

That story begins with Pakhtakor.

Founded in 1956, Pakhtakor Tashkent became the main football symbol of Soviet Uzbekistan, later the dominant force of the independent Uzbek league, and above all the bearer of a national sporting trauma after the 1979 air disaster that killed much of its team. Today, as Uzbekistan enters the World Cup for the first time, Pakhtakor remains part of the national-team ecosystem. Current squad members such as Khojiakbar Alijonov, Sherzod Nasrullaev, Akmal Mozgovoy and Dostonbek Khamdamov play for the club. The World Cup may be a new stage for Uzbekistan, but the roots of Uzbek football’s visibility run through Pakhtakor.

Also read on Novastan: Uzbekistan at the World Cup: The White Wolves Enter the Global Stage

Pakhtakor was created in Tashkent on 8 April 1956, at a time when football in the Soviet Union was not only a sport, but also a system of representation. Clubs carried the identities of cities, factories, ministries, military institutions and republics. Pakhtakor carried Uzbekistan. Its name means “cotton grower” or “cotton picker”, a direct reference to the crop that defined the Uzbek SSR’s place in the Soviet planned economy.

The name matters. Cotton was not simply an agricultural product in Soviet Uzbekistan. It was a political and economic identity imposed on the republic, shaping landscapes, labour and the way Uzbekistan was imagined from Moscow. Pakhtakor’s name therefore linked football to a broader Soviet story: the republic that produced cotton now had a club that could represent it on the all-Union sporting stage.

The club’s identity is also visible in its Uzbek nicknames. Pakhtakor is known as Paxtakorlar, the Cotton Growers; Sherlar, the Lions; and Xalq jamoasi, the People’s Team. Together, these names capture three layers of meaning: labour and cotton, strength and pride, and the idea of a club that belongs not only to Tashkent, but to Uzbek football as a whole.

Also read on Novastan: A hundred years of Kyrgyz football

The club’s home, Pakhtakor Central Stadium, also became part of that identity. Built between 1954 and 1956 in central Tashkent’s Shaykhantahur district, it opened the same year as the club and became one of the main sporting arenas of Uzbekistan. Today it holds around 35,000 spectators after several renovations, but its symbolic weight is larger than its capacity. From 1992 until 2012, it was also the main home of the Uzbekistan national team, before the national side moved mainly to Milliy Stadium. For generations of supporters, Pakhtakor Central Stadium was not just a club ground, but one of the places where Uzbek football imagined itself nationally.

On 11 August 1979, Pakhtakor stopped being only a football club. The team was travelling to Minsk for a Soviet Top League match against Dinamo Minsk when its plane was involved in a mid-air collision over Soviet Ukraine. For many supporters, the first sign that something was wrong was not an official announcement, but an absence: the match did not appear among the day’s results. What followed became one of the deepest tragedies in Soviet and Uzbek sporting history.

The disaster matters because Pakhtakor had already become more than a team. In the Soviet Union, Moscow considered it desirable for each Soviet republic to be represented in the top football tier. Pakhtakor became the first Central Asian club to play at that level in 1959. It remained the only Uzbek club to appear in the Soviet top league and the only Central Asian club to reach a Soviet Cup final. For supporters in Tashkent and across Uzbekistan, Pakhtakor was proof that Uzbek football could appear on the all-Union stage.

The 1979 crash transformed that symbolism into memory. The team lost players and staff, including figures such as Mikhail An and Vladimir Fedorov, and the club’s tragedy became part of Uzbekistan’s collective football identity. In later decades, Pakhtakor would rebuild, win, dominate and represent the independent country abroad, but the memory of the lost generation remained central to how the club was understood.

Pakhtakor’s importance also extends beyond football. Few clubs in Central Asia have entered popular culture in the same way. The team has been celebrated in songs by well-known Uzbek performers, including Shahzoda, Bojalar, Rustam Gaipov, Kvartet and Ummon. Shahzoda released a music video titled Paxtakor, while Bojalar’s song Paxtakor turned the club into a pop refrain, with lyrics built around supporters, goals and collective confidence in the team. This musical presence matters: Pakhtakor is not only watched in stadiums; it has been sung as part of Uzbek urban and popular culture.

The 1979 tragedy also gave Pakhtakor a place in memorial culture. The lost team is remembered through monuments, annual commemorations, articles, documentaries and public storytelling. The memory of “Pakhtakor-79” is often compared to the Munich air disaster of Manchester United’s Busby Babes: a football team turned into a national symbol of loss, youth and interrupted promise.

Also read on Novastan: L’Ouzbékistan savoure sa première participation à la Coupe du monde de football

This is why Pakhtakor is different from most football clubs. It is a sports institution, but also a cultural reference. Its name evokes cotton and Soviet Uzbekistan; its stadium evokes Tashkent’s football geography; its songs evoke popular pride; and its tragedy evokes collective memory. To write about Pakhtakor is therefore to write not only about football, but about how Uzbekistan remembers, celebrates and narrates itself.

Pakhtakor’s history is also a history of players who shaped Uzbek football across different periods. Berador Abduraimov, one of the greatest footballers produced by Uzbekistan, became a Soviet Top League top scorer while playing for Pakhtakor and later coached independent Uzbekistan to its 1994 Asian Games title. Gennadi Krasnitsky, another legendary Pakhtakor striker, became so closely associated with goalscoring that Uzbekistan later created a scorers’ club in his memory. In the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods, names such as Gennadi Denisov and Igor Shkvyrin connected Pakhtakor to continuity and renewal.

In the independent era, players such as Server Djeparov and Odil Ahmedov helped link the club to the modern national team and to Uzbekistan’s growing football presence abroad. Djeparov became one of the country’s most decorated footballers, while Ahmedov’s later career in Russia and China showed how Uzbek players could move into larger football markets. Today, Dostonbek Khamdamov offers another link between Pakhtakor and the current national-team story: once one of Asia’s most promising young players, he returned to the club and entered the World Cup cycle as part of Cannavaro’s squad.

After independence, Pakhtakor became the powerhouse of the new Uzbek league. The club has won 16 Uzbek league titles, 14 Uzbek Cups and 2 Uzbek Super Cups, making it the most decorated side in the country’s post-Soviet football history. This domestic dominance, especially during the 2000s, made Pakhtakor the reference point against which other clubs were measured. The club became associated with professionalism, hierarchy and expectation: the team everyone wanted to beat, and the team expected to represent Uzbekistan abroad.

Also read on Novastan: Discussions sur le développement du football féminin au Kazakhstan

That dominance also created rivalries. In the Soviet period, Pakhtakor’s most symbolic opponent was Kairat Almaty, then the leading club of Kazakhstan. Their meetings were remembered as a kind of Central Asian derby, a football expression of the broader Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan rivalry within the Soviet Union. After independence, Pakhtakor’s rivalries became more domestic. Matches against Bunyodkor Tashkent developed into a capital derby, especially after Bunyodkor’s rise in the 2000s. Games against Neftchi Fergana became one of the classic rivalries of the Uzbek league, linking Tashkent’s historic powerhouse with one of the strongest clubs of the early independence period. More broadly, matches against clubs such as Navbahor Namangan, Lokomotiv Tashkent and Nasaf Qarshi have often carried the weight of regional pride and competition against Pakhtakor’s capital-city dominance.

Pakhtakor’s history is also a story of ownership and state power. Like many post-Soviet clubs, it has never been only a private sporting institution. In 2017, SFI Management Group was reported to have acquired an 80 percent stake in Pakhtakor under investment obligations, with a commitment to invest in the club’s infrastructure. Later, the club became associated with businessman and former Tashkent mayor Jahongir Artikkhodjayev, who has been listed as club president and described in Uzbek media as the club’s owner. In January 2024, Uzbekistan’s State Assets Management Agency put 100 percent of the state share in Pakhtakor Football Club LLC up for sale, before temporarily suspending the privatisation process after public reaction.

This makes Pakhtakor not only a football institution, but also a case study in how Uzbek sport sits at the intersection of public assets, private capital and national prestige. These ownership debates show why Pakhtakor still matters in 2026. It is not a museum club remembered only for Soviet history or the 1979 tragedy. It remains a living institution in Uzbek football: a producer of national-team players, a target for rivals, a symbol of Tashkent’s football power and a club whose future reflects wider questions about investment, privatisation and the role of the state in Uzbek sport.

In Asian competition, Pakhtakor came close to a larger breakthrough. It reached the AFC Champions League semi-finals in 2003 and 2004, showing that Uzbek club football could compete beyond the domestic league. In more recent years, the club has remained part of Uzbekistan’s continental presence, including participation in Asia’s elite club competitions. Yet Pakhtakor never quite turned continental visibility into an Asian title. That absence is important, because it shows both the club’s strength and the limits of Uzbek football’s capital-centred model.

That is why the story of Uzbek club football cannot end in Tashkent. Pakhtakor carries the memory, prestige and institutional weight of the game. But the first major Asian club title won by an Uzbek side would come from elsewhere: from Nasaf Qarshi. If Pakhtakor is the memory of Uzbek football, Nasaf is the beginning of its modern regional ambition.

As Uzbekistan steps onto the World Cup stage, Pakhtakor’s role is therefore double. It is present in the squad through current players, but it is also present as history. Before Shomurodov, Khusanov and Fayzullaev carried the White Wolves into the global spotlight, Pakhtakor had already carried Uzbek football into Soviet stadiums, through tragedy, into independence, and towards Asia. The World Cup is new. The dream behind it is not.

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post Pakhtakor Tashkent: The Club That Carries Uzbek Football’s Memory appeared first on Novastan English.

Documentary filmmaker and visual anthropologist Almira Saifullina explores how landscapes preserve traces of Soviet violence, forced displacement and family memory. In this interview with Novastan, she discusses her new film project DALA, the legacy of Karlag in Central Kazakhstan, the risks of aestheticizing historical trauma, and her earlier work in Mongolia and Uzbekistan.

Novastan: Could you introduce yourself to Novastan’s readers? How would you describe your path into cinema, visual anthropology and documentary research?

Faites un don à Novastan

Almira Saifullina: My name is Almira Saifullina. I am a documentary filmmaker and visual anthropologist.

My journey began with a passion for documentary photography at a young age. With the first money I ever earned, I bought a camera and started photographing the world around me. My first conscious attempt to explore people’s lives through a camera came in 2011, when I travelled across Uzbekistan and created my first photo series. Looking back, I think that was my first step into documentary filmmaking and visual anthropology, although at the time I did not know those disciplines had names.

I continued searching for my own language and tools, and in 2014 I enrolled at the Moscow School of New Cinema. There I met friends and like-minded collaborators with whom I began making films. In 2022, after several years working in documentary cinema, I realised that I wanted to give a new form to my visual method and expand the boundaries of how knowledge and art can be produced. I enrolled in a master’s programme in Visual Anthropology in Berlin. That experience gave a new impulse to my work.

You have lived and worked in different cities and countries, including Kyiv, Kazakhstan, Moscow and elsewhere. How has this personal geography influenced your perspective as a filmmaker?

I was born in Kyiv, where my father was completing postgraduate studies. Three months later, however, we left because of the Chernobyl disaster and returned to Karaganda, in central Kazakhstan, where my family comes from.

After that came many moves across Kazakhstan: Almaty in the 1990s, Astana in the 2000s, then Moscow, and later the wider world. I have had a fairly nomadic biography, moving between cities and countries since birth.

I think this path has allowed me not to become trapped within a single locality. It has given me a broader view of the world and made me more open to different cultures. At the same time, there are disadvantages. I cannot describe myself as a filmmaker of one particular country, nor can I fully claim any place as my own in every sense. I do not possess a deeply local insider’s perspective. In that sense, it is a double-edged sword.

How did Kazakhstan become part of your biography and creative imagination? What does it mean for you to film and research Kazakhstan today?

Kazakhstan is my homeland and a place of constant return. My family lives there, and my ancestors are buried there.

For the past several years, I have been working on a new film with the working title DALA, which is my first film shot in Kazakhstan.

At the same time, it is a difficult project because I do not have the same distance that I had when filming in Mongolia or Uzbekistan. Many things pass directly through me. They affect me emotionally and draw me into the history of my own family.

Yet I also feel an absolute artistic and personal necessity to make a film in my homeland, however emotionally demanding that may be.

In some ways, I am glad that I am making a film in Kazakhstan now, after having gained substantial experience in documentary cinema. It allows me to engage with complex themes while focusing more on meaning and less on the practical challenges of production.

You studied economics at Moscow State University before turning to filmmaking and later studying directing at the Moscow School of New Cinema. How did that transition happen? Were there any films, directors or artistic discoveries that particularly influenced your decision to pursue cinema?

Since childhood, I have been drawn to art and to expressing myself through it. Studying economics at Moscow State University was more of a compromise shaped by circumstances than a genuine passion for economics.

When I moved to Moscow in 2005, however, I discovered auteur cinema. Someone introduced me to the Mir Iskusstva cinema, which at the time was a gathering place for young people who wanted to study, watch and even make a different kind of cinema. They screened masterpieces from around the world.

I spent nearly all my free time there. Those films were a revelation.

The real turning point came when I discovered the work of Artavazd Peleshian. Through his short films, I felt the magic and power of cinema. They awakened in me an irresistible desire to work in film and to make the invisible visible.

What did the Moscow School of New Cinema give you in terms of artistic method, discipline and freedom? Were there teachers, directors, films or exercises that changed the way you observe people and spaces?

More than anything, the Moscow School of New Cinema gave me close friends and like-minded collaborators. They became my greatest source of inspiration.

Together we explored cinema, dramaturgy, cinematography and editing. We experimented with form and language, discussed ideas endlessly, and learned by making films together.

I studied there at the very beginning of the school’s history, what I consider its golden period. It was a fortunate moment when we were not yet concerned with industry questions such as funding, distribution, professional status or careers. We existed entirely within the space of art and ideas. We dreamed about cinema and searched for ourselves through it.

We supported one another and worked on each other’s films with complete commitment and enthusiasm. It was a very special environment. It gave me an important foundation, and the discoveries that emerged from that collective experience profoundly shaped the way I observe life and transform it into cinema.

Your work sits at the intersection of documentary cinema, visual anthropology and practice-based research. Do you see yourself primarily as a filmmaker, a researcher, an anthropologist, or someone who moves between these roles?

First and foremost, I see myself as an author.

Filmmaking, research and visual anthropology are different angles, different tools and different methods. Yet they all follow the same trajectory. I observe the world, study it, live through it and reflect on it. Then I materialise that knowledge in one form or another so that it can be shared with others.

For me, a film is not an illustration of research that has already been completed. The process of making a film itself – observation, filming, being present in a space, building relationships with participants, and later working with the material through editing- becomes a form of research.

Very often, it is during filming or editing that I begin to understand things I could neither see nor articulate beforehand. Cinema is therefore not only a form of expression for me; it is also a way of producing knowledge.

I move between these different roles and sometimes blend them together, but for me they are all parts of the same process. I believe that the intersection of anthropological inquiry and documentary filmmaking is where some of the most interesting forms and subjects are emerging today. In many ways, that intersection is not the future anymore- it is already the present.

Novastan est le seul média en français et en allemand spécialisé sur l'Asie centrale. Entièrement associatif, il fonctionne grâce à votre participation. Nous sommes indépendants et pour le rester, nous avons besoin de vous ! Vous pouvez nous soutenir à partir de 2 euros par mois (défiscalisé à 66 %), ou en devenant membre actif par ici.

Your current project DALA focuses on Soviet forced deportations, labour camps and industrial experiments in Central Kazakhstan. How did this project begin?

This project grew out of my interest in the history of my home region, Karaganda and the wider Karaganda oblast. I would regularly travel there, filming the steppe and sites of memory, visiting former Gulag camp territories. For a long time, however, this remained more of a personal historical interest.

In 2022, I began to see this history from a different perspective and realized that it concerned me much more deeply than I had previously understood. My own family arrived in Central Kazakhstan as a result of forced displacement. The family of my great-grandfather, who was a mullah, was deported from Orenburg to the Karaganda steppe. I grew up in a region whose population was largely shaped by deportations, exile, labour camps and the industrialization that followed.

Over the last two years, together with my cinematographer, I have travelled across the steppe in search of camp remains, former camp settlements, buildings, burial sites and other traces of this history. Gradually, these journeys became more than a process of collecting material. They turned into a way of understanding how the violence of the past continues to exist within the contemporary landscape, within family memory and within the very structure of the region itself.

DALA means “steppe” in Kazakh. Why did the steppe become the central image and space of the project?

Because the steppe is a blank canvas upon which people and historical events have drawn their own picture. It is like a guiding thread, a silent protagonist that follows you everywhere, a place where you inevitably encounter things you would often rather avoid.

The steppe is a silent witness to what human beings do. It is a place of life and death, suffering, memory, cruelty and violence, but also of humility and mercy.

In the film, the steppe becomes more than an image or a backdrop. It becomes a space of inquiry. We move through it in search of camp remains and historical artefacts that have sometimes almost completely merged with the landscape itself.

You describe the steppe as a kind of archive. What can the landscape tell us about violence, memory and history that documents or official archives often cannot?

The steppe offers a direct, physical encounter with history.

When local historians show you how a transit camp was organized, how the camp system functioned, where prisoners were transported from and to, when you enter a prison building and find yourself inside a punishment cell, or stand inside a barrack where prisoners once lived, you immediately gain a different understanding of historical events, their significance, the conditions people endured and the realities they experienced.

No document can provide that kind of experience.

It is a form of immersion into history through space and through one’s own body.

At the same time, the landscape does not speak directly. Very often, what you see is simply steppe, ruins or an ordinary house. You need to search, listen to local residents and regional historians, and compare what you see with archival sources and testimonies. Only then does the landscape begin to reveal itself as an archive.

For readers unfamiliar with this history, could you explain what the Karaganda camp system, or Karlag, was? Why is it so important for understanding Soviet repression in Kazakhstan?

It is important to understand Karlag not as a single camp surrounded by barbed wire, but as a vast and highly complex system of camp branches, farms, industrial enterprises and settlements spread across a significant part of Central Kazakhstan.

Karlag was established in 1931 and reported directly to the central Gulag administration in Moscow. Its administrative centre was located in the settlement of Dolinka, near Karaganda.

The territory of Karlag stretched roughly 300 kilometres from north to south and 200 kilometres from west to east. By the early 1950s, the system included more than two hundred camp branches and facilities.

In many ways, Karlag functioned as a state within a state, with its own administration, production system, agricultural sector, transport network, prisons and vast numbers of forced labourers.

Prisoners and special settlers were used as labour for the development of agriculture, construction, mining and the coal and metallurgical industries of Central Kazakhstan. Karlag was therefore not only a system of punishment and isolation. It was also one of the key instruments of Soviet industrialization and the colonial development of the region.

Karlag is essential to understanding Kazakhstan’s history because labour camps, mass deportations and forced labour all played a role in creating the modern face of the region: its cities, mines, factories, roads and multi-ethnic population.

This is not a separate chapter of history that existed somewhere outside ordinary life. In many respects, it is one of the foundations upon which contemporary Central Kazakhstan was built.

What traces of Karlag and other forms of Soviet violence remain visible today: buildings, ruins, archives, graves, family stories, silences, industrial landscapes?

There are many traces, although not all of them are immediately recognized as traces of violence.

The former Karlag administration building in Dolinka still stands and now houses a museum. Individual prison facilities, barracks, agricultural buildings, camp settlements, railway stations through which prisoners arrived, and transport routes have also survived.

There are mass graves, the Spassk Memorial, and “Mamochkino Cemetery”, where women prisoners and children connected to the Karlag system were buried.

Yet much of this history is not preserved in museums or memorials.

Some former camp buildings are still inhabited. Others have become ruins or have nearly disappeared into the steppe. Sometimes all that remains of a camp site is a foundation, part of a wall, fragments of wire, a few trees or a subtle change in the landscape that would be impossible to identify without the explanation of a local historian.

There are also Soviet archives, personal files, photographs, letters, memoirs of former prisoners and special settlers, family archives and oral histories passed down through generations.

Family memory often preserves things that official documents do not: how a person arrived in Kazakhstan, what happened to them, how the family survived, what they chose to forget or what they were afraid to discuss.

And, of course, one of the most important traces is the industrial landscape of Central Kazakhstan itself. Mines, factories, railways and workers’ settlements are now seen as natural parts of the region, even though many were created or developed through the labour of prisoners and special settlers.

The traces of Karlag are therefore everywhere. They often remain invisible precisely because they have become part of everyday life.

How do people living in these places today relate to this history? Is it present in everyday life, or does it remain marginalized and largely invisible?

This is a densely populated region, so I would be cautious about making broad generalizations.

Most people know the history of the region to some extent. For many, the history of repression, deportation, exile and subsequent industrial development forms part of their own family history.

A significant proportion of the region’s non-Kazakh population still lives there today: Germans, Koreans, Chechens, Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars and many others. Yet the reasons why these communities arrived in Kazakhstan differ greatly, and it would be inaccurate to reduce all of these histories solely to repression and deportation.

I would say that this history is present in everyday life in a fragmented way.

Some people know in great detail how their family arrived there and preserve documents, photographs and stories. Others know only fragments. Still others view the mining towns, workers’ settlements and multi-ethnic character of the region as something entirely natural, without questioning how these realities came into existence.

As a result, the past is simultaneously everywhere and almost invisible. It exists in surnames, family histories, buildings, cemeteries and the layout of cities, but it is not always explicitly recognized as the product of specific historical policies.

How is Kazakhstan engaging today with the memory of Soviet repression? Are there museums, archives, research centres, NGOs or memorial initiatives supporting this work?

In recent years, Kazakhstan has undertaken substantial state-led work in this field.

A State Commission for the Full Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression was established. Hundreds of thousands of people have been rehabilitated. Large numbers of archival documents have been declassified, collections of materials have been published and a unified electronic database has been created.

There are state museums dedicated to Karlag in Dolinka and ALZHIR near Astana, as well as regional museums, archives and research projects. Every year on May 31st, Kazakhstan commemorates the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression and Famine. Numerous memorials and monuments dedicated to victims of repression and the Asharshylyk famine have also been erected.

It would therefore be incorrect to say that the state is doing nothing or that this history is completely silenced. On the contrary, it has been officially acknowledged, and a tremendous amount of material has been collected and made accessible in recent years.

However, in my view, this remains insufficient, particularly when it comes to drawing lessons from this history and critically examining contemporary social and political processes through the lens of how the Soviet system, and especially Stalinist repression in the 1930s-1950s, shaped present-day Kazakhstan.

I believe there is a need for more civic initiatives devoted to working through this difficult past. This work should not be confined to official history, state archives, museums and commemorative dates. It should also exist within civic discourse.

Memory should not be preserved exclusively within state institutions. It should remain a living and open space where difficult questions can be asked.

What remains the most difficult aspect of this work of memory today: access to archives, recognition of victims, public interest, political sensitivity or passing memory on to younger generations?

Perhaps the most difficult challenge is transforming documents, museums, monuments and official commemorations into a living public engagement with the past.

Archives can be opened, victims rehabilitated and monuments erected, but that does not necessarily mean that society has truly reflected on what happened.

The consequences of repression remain present in families, in the fear of speaking openly, in attitudes toward the state, and in lost histories and identities.

The subject remains politically sensitive, but that is precisely why honest and open engagement is so important for Kazakh society.

For younger generations, it is not enough simply to transmit facts. We need to create spaces in which this history can provoke genuine questions.

How can filmmakers represent sites of historical violence without aestheticizing suffering or turning memory into spectacle?

I do not yet have a definitive answer to that question. In many ways, I am still working through it as part of this film.

The risk of aestheticization is particularly high in the steppe because the steppe is inherently beautiful and cinematic. A camera can very easily transform a site of violence into a beautiful landscape and thereby obscure what actually happened there.

I do not want to reconstruct suffering, artificially intensify emotions or turn camp ruins into scenery.

I am more interested in sustained observation of space and material traces, in working with archives, with the voices of descendants and with silence itself.

I hope that the final form of the film will emerge through the process of filming and editing.

Novastan est le seul média en français et en allemand spécialisé sur l'Asie centrale. Entièrement associatif, il fonctionne grâce à votre participation. Nous sommes indépendants et pour le rester, nous avons besoin de vous ! Vous pouvez nous soutenir à partir de 2 euros par mois (défiscalisé à 66 %), ou en devenant membre actif par ici.

Your film My Father Genghis Khan was shot in Mongolia. Why did you turn to Mongolia, and what made you realize that this experience could become a full-length film?

I first encountered Mongolia through a photo essay published in Russian Reporter magazine by the renowned photographer Sergey Maximishin. It told the story of a ballerina from a ger district. Her name was Baska. She attended ballet school in Ulaanbaatar and then returned home to the ger settlements on the outskirts of the city.

I was struck by the contrast between the different realities in which she lived, particularly on a visual level.

Through Maximishin, I got in touch with her. We initially became acquainted remotely. I then invited my classmate and cinematographer, Leonid Nikiforenko, to travel with me and make a film. At the time, it sounded like a complete adventure, but we both believed in it and decided to go.

When we arrived in Mongolia and saw everything with our own eyes, it became clear that our protagonist was not only Baska herself, but also the reality surrounding her and the people living within it.

Watch the trailer here: My Father Genghis Khan

Everything looked incredibly cinematic. We felt a strong desire to film, and as often happens in such situations, the film seemed to come to us on its own – or rather, into our camera.

We filmed not only in Ulaanbaatar but also in provincial areas where nomadic ways of life remained much more visible in everyday life.

What did you observe in Mongolia regarding the transition from rural or nomadic life to Ulaanbaatar? How visible was this shift in housing, infrastructure, work, air pollution and family life?

We filmed the documentary ten years ago, and I am sure many things have changed since then. At the time, however, there was a strong sense that Mongolia was undergoing rapid economic, political and social transformation.

At the same time, there was also a feeling of uncertainty, as though many people were struggling to keep pace with these changes.

This was particularly visible in Ulaanbaatar, where large numbers of former nomads were moving and attempting to adapt to urban life. Such a transition inevitably created numerous social challenges: a radically different way of life, unemployment, and the difficulties of adjusting to both city life and permanent settlement.

People arriving in the city rarely moved directly into apartments. Instead, they first set up their gers on the outskirts, in the now well-known ger districts. Many lacked sewage systems, reliable heating and other forms of urban infrastructure. This situation contributed significantly to the severe air pollution affecting the city.

In the provinces, life seemed to change more slowly. There, it was still possible to immerse oneself more deeply in nomadic culture, which remained an important part of everyday life, even as it continued to evolve under the influence of modern civilization.

Many people associate both Kazakhstan and Mongolia with nomadic life, yurts and the steppe. Beyond these images, what deeper similarities did you notice between the two countries?

When I first arrived in Mongolia to make the film, I saw a picture that strongly reminded me of Kazakhstan in the 1990s and early 2000s.

It was largely an intuitive and visual impression: new architecture rising in the middle of the steppe, a fascination with large-scale projects, fragmented infrastructure and a broader atmosphere of transition.

Both countries were experiencing rapid urbanization, the expansion of their capitals, internal migration and a pronounced divide between the centre and the periphery.

At the same time, Mongolia followed its own distinct historical trajectory. It was never formally part of the Soviet Union, although it was strongly influenced by it. In my view, Mongolia had more opportunities to preserve aspects of its traditional way of life.

In everyday life, Buddhism and shamanism are far more visible there, as is the direct connection to the land and to nomadic culture.

Kazakhstan, by contrast, underwent far more extensive industrialization, collectivization and forced transformation of traditional lifestyles.

As a result, the apparent similarity of the steppe landscapes conceals very different historical experiences.

In Mulberry, you portray Bukhara through the story of Bekhzod, a young man entering adulthood through marriage and traditional rites of passage. Why Bukhara, why Bekhzod, and what did his story reveal about masculinity and patriarchy in Uzbekistan?

I first came to Bukhara in 2011, and this remarkable city resonated deeply with me. I returned several times afterwards.

Sometimes certain places create the feeling that you are coming home. That is exactly what happened to me in Bukhara, and it made me want to make a film there.

From the beginning, I was drawn to the image of the mulberry tree standing in the courtyard of the Kalyan Mosque, as well as to the local culture and daily life that I wanted to explore beyond the usual tourist routes.

Watch the trailer here: Mulberry

By chance, I met Bekhzod. He helped me find my hostel in the old city. Later, I realised that he would become my guide into Bukhara’s inner life.

By following Bekhzod and the events unfolding in his life, I gradually discovered the film’s central theme, its conflict and its narrative direction.

For me, Bekhzod’s story became a story about constrained choices and predetermined life paths within a patriarchal society, where men, especially young men, can become just as trapped by traditional norms and social hierarchies as women, although in different ways.

This pressure rarely appears openly. It is seldom discussed publicly and often remains internalized, sometimes even unconsciously. Yet it exerts a significant emotional burden.

How did you film in Bukhara given the strong separation of male and female spaces in certain contexts? How did you gain access to rituals, family interiors or religious spaces such as mosques?

I spent roughly four years with Bekhzod and his family, and during that time we developed close and trusting relationships.

I entered the family circle as a guest, which meant I was invited to family celebrations, wedding rituals and religious ceremonies. Quite quickly, the protagonists stopped paying attention to the camera.

Access to mosques during religious rituals was indeed more complicated because I am a woman filming men. I tried to work discreetly and respectfully, remaining sensitive both to the events themselves and to the people involved.

Another friend from Bukhara, whom I met during the making of the film, also helped me obtain filming permissions when necessary.

For Novastan readers interested in discovering your work, where can they watch DALA, My Father Genghis Khan, Mulberry and your other films? Are they available online, at festivals, through private screeners, streaming platforms or upon request?

Work on DALA is still ongoing, so the film is not yet available for viewing.

My Father Genghis Khan can already be watched online, and I hope that Mulberry will soon become available on one of the online streaming platforms as well.

At the same time, readers are always welcome to contact me directly. I am happy to share viewing links to my films upon request.

Interview with Almira Saifullina by Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English, and Maya Ivanova, Contributor for Novastan-English

Thank you for reading this article! If you have time, we would appreciate your feedback, either through this anonymous form or by email at editorial@novastan.org. Thank you very much!

The post Almira Saifullina: “The steppe is an archive of violence, memory and silence” appeared first on Novastan English.

Some books are interesting because they tell a story. The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini is interesting because it captures an entire world at the moment before it disappears.

Through the eyes of a clever, frightened and observant boy in late nineteenth-century Bukhara, Sadriddin Aini turns childhood into history. Village schools, sandstorms, canals, cholera, hunger, superstition, poetry, cruelty and humour all pass through the same narrow lanes.

The result is more than a memoir: it is a portrait of old Central Asia, and a quiet explanation of why that world could not remain unchanged.

Why the past refused to become propaganda

Originally published in Tajik as Yoddoštho / Ёддоштҳо between 1949 and 1954 in Stalinabad (now Dushanbe), The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini, appeared in English in 1998. Published at a time when Soviet writers were often expected to celebrate factories, production and Stalinist progress, Aini instead returned to childhood. That choice matters because the book is not a nostalgic retreat into the past. It is Aini’s attempt to explain how a child of old Bukhara became a modern writer, reformer and Soviet-era national figure.

Also read on Novastan: “Hafiz Saifullaev’s prose marks a fruitful turning point in Russian-language Tajik literature”

The book begins in rural Bukhara, among village celebrations, halva workshops, shifting sands, irrigation canals, family disputes, religious lessons, fasting, fairs, harvests and death. Aini writes about the physical struggle of everyday life: villagers fighting sandstorms, digging canals, enduring hunger and disease. But he also captures the mental universe of the time: fear of demons, belief in exorcism, the authority of religious teachers, the prestige of Persian poetry and the weight of inherited customs.

One of the most striking things about the book is that it does not read like simple Soviet propaganda. Aini certainly condemns the old order. Poverty, superstition, arbitrary power, clerical abuse and social cruelty appear throughout the book. However, the book does not present history as a clean march from darkness to socialism. Lenin is absent; Saadi is present. Poetry often matters more than ideology.

That ambiguity made Aini’s work powerful, but also politically delicate. Aini was not an anti-Soviet dissident, and Yoddoštho was published in the Soviet Union. The memoirs could be read as anti-feudal, anti-clerical and pro-enlightenment, which made them acceptable to Soviet editors. Yet his writing sat uneasily within Soviet nationality policy. It preserved a Persianate world of Islamic learning, village ethics, oral memory and Bukharan social complexity. It helped build modern Tajik identity while also describing a shared Central Asian past that did not fit neatly into Soviet national borders.

Bukhara between Tajik and Uzbek memory

The renewed relevance of The Sands of Oxus lies in the fact that Central Asia is once again debating its past. Jadidism, Bukhara, colonialism, Soviet modernisation, Islamic heritage, national identity and the relationship between Uzbek and Tajik cultural histories are all being reconsidered.

Aini stands exactly at that intersection. He was born in what is now Uzbekistan, wrote across Tajik and Uzbek contexts, and described Bukhara, a city central to both national narratives. His memoirs are therefore not only personal recollections. They are an archive of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Central Asian life: village customs, schools, professions, beliefs, family structures and social hierarchies.

This is why the book speaks so strongly today. It recalls a Central Asia before national borders hardened, when Persianate culture, Turkic speech, Islamic education, local identities and imperial pressures overlapped in complicated ways.

In Tajikistan: a national classic

In Tajikistan, Aini is foundational. He is not simply a writer, but a national institution: the father of modern Tajik prose, a builder of the literary language, and a figure through whom Tajik Soviet and post-Soviet identity have been narrated.

For Tajik readers, Yoddoštho is more than an autobiography. It is almost a national archive. Through Aini’s childhood, Bukhara becomes part of a recoverable Tajik past. Village life, old schools, artisans, religious figures, intellectuals and reformers all become elements of a literary homeland.

The book therefore carries emotional and cultural weight. It preserves a world that Tajik national memory claims as central to its own formation.

In Uzbekistan: a shared but sensitive legacy

In Uzbekistan, Aini’s reception is more layered. He belongs to Uzbek literary history as well: he lived in Bukhara and Samarkand, wrote in Uzbek contexts, and engaged with the Jadid and Soviet transformations of the region.

Yet his legacy is sensitive because his work also helped define a distinct Tajik literary identity, often by presenting Persian-speaking Bukhara as a central part of Tajik cultural history. In a country where Bukhara is one of the great symbols of Uzbek heritage, this creates a complex overlap rather than a simple national ownership.

Today, as Uzbekistan revalorises Jadidism and revisits its early modern intellectual history, Aini can be read in a new way: not only as a Soviet Tajik monument, but as a Bukharan intellectual whose life crossed the Uzbek-Tajik divide.

Before borders hardened

Beyond Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, The Sands of Oxus is less of a national classic, but it remains an important regional text. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, Aini does not occupy the same canonical place as national literary figures such as Abai, Chingiz Aitmatov or Makhtumkuli. Yet his memoirs illuminate a shared Central Asian problem: how traditional authority, religious education, rural poverty, imperial pressure and Soviet modernisation interacted before borders and national canons became fixed.

Also read on Novastan: Central Asia through the lens of… Behzod Boltayev

The book is therefore valuable not only for Tajik or Uzbek readers, but for anyone interested in how Central Asia entered the twentieth century.

A past too complex for Soviet ideology

The Sands of Oxus is not a fast book, but it is a rewarding one. Its power lies in detail: a schoolroom, a sandstorm, a canal, a death, a rumour, a poem, a beating, a feast. Through these fragments, Aini turns childhood into a map of pre-Soviet Central Asia.

The book refuses to belong neatly to one category. It is Tajik and Bukharan, Persianate and Soviet, autobiographical and political, nostalgic and accusatory. That refusal is exactly what makes it so relevant today. At a time when Central Asian states are reassessing Jadidism, Soviet rule, colonial legacies and the ownership of cities such as Bukhara, Aini’s memoirs are a reminder that the region’s past cannot be divided cleanly into today’s national narratives. They show a world where Persianate culture, Islamic learning, rural poverty and early reformist politics overlapped before Soviet borders turned shared histories into competing national legacies.

Maya Ivanova, Author for Novastan-English and Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post Bukhara Before the Border: Aini and the Politics of Tajik-Uzbek Memory appeared first on Novastan English.

Citizens from Central Asia now represent the largest group of foreign nationals fighting in the Russian army. Novastan spoke with several of them after their capture by Ukrainian forces. Their accounts reveal how Central Asian migrants have become an especially vulnerable recruitment pool for Moscow.

In the yard of a military prison in Lviv region, West Ukraine, dozens of prisonners silently head towards the dining hall. The walls surrounding them are filled with portraits of Ukrainian prominent nationalist figures such as Daniel of Galicia or Stepan Bandera. In the largest prisoner camp in the whole country, everything is in Ukrainian, from the inscriptions to orders given to prisoners.

“There is no trouble here, they are pretty calm and do not brawl much” says a prison guard. In front of him, prisonners start entering the lunchroom, their faces blank. Some of them have already been detained for four years. Many prisonners clearly appear to have Asian features. Among them, some Russian citizens from Siberian republics of Buryatia and Yakutia, where mobilisation rates are particularly high.

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Many others come from the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia. “From what I saw, a majority of foreigners in the Russian army come from this region”, explains Khushbakht Peruzaliev. In spring 2024, the 47-year old Tajikistani citizen signed a contract to serve the Russian Army : “I was told that I would not have to go to the front or anything of this kind. They said I would only be working in a warehouse, so I accepted”, he remembers. But soon, these promises revealed to be lies. Few weeks later, the man was captured by Ukrainian forces after being injured in a frontal assault in Donetsk oblast.

Far beyond the 1,400 Africans or 200 Indian citizens that the Russian army recruited since the beginning of the war, more than 12,000 soldiers from Central Asia have already participated in the “special military operation”, according to public data published in April 2026 by the Ukrainian war prisoners coordination. More than half of foreign soldiers serving Russia are originally from Central Asia.

Passport promises amid raids and deportations

In Mykolaiv penitentiary, all Central Asian soldiers that Novastan met were already in Russia before 2022. “Recruitment efforts towards foreigners were targeting on both migrant workers and people who were in jail”, according to an officer of the Ukrainian coordination of war prisonners.

Ilyas, a 40-year old Kyrgyz citizen, worked as a drink retailer in Moscow since 2007. He signed his contract in April 2025. “During the hiring process, they didn’t directly promise me citizenship, but I knew I would have the possibility to obtain it after” he says.

Novastan est le seul média en français et en allemand spécialisé sur l'Asie centrale. Entièrement associatif, il fonctionne grâce à votre participation. Nous sommes indépendants et pour le rester, nous avons besoin de vous ! Vous pouvez nous soutenir à partir de 2 euros par mois (défiscalisé à 66 %), ou en devenant membre actif par ici.

Indeed, in January 2024, a decree was signed by Vladimir Putin, allowing certain foreigners to obtain Russian citizenship under the condition that they served the army, especially during the “special military operation”. The number of foreigners who benefited from this process remains unknown.

In Ukraine, most prisoners from Central Asia mention that they were sent to the front only after a short training, which caused heavy casualties. “We were moving to a village, when on the road, drones already started appearing and targeting us”, Ilyas remembers. He barely escaped, only to be taken prisoner shortly after.

Khushbakht Peruzaliev, a prisoner whose wife and children still live in Ryazan, 200 kilometers south east of Moscow, was harmed during an intense artillery bombing, while he was moving towards Ukrainian lines. “Half of the group was killed immediately, all 200 [Russian military code for death, Editor’s note]”. 

He describes a general climate of fear that began to appear “right after the Crocus City Hall attack”. This terrorist attack committed by Tajikistani citizens was claimed by the Islamic State of Khorasan, and killed 149 people. Following this tragedy, living conditions of Central Asian migrants in Russia got tougher. “Raids against Tajiks” became frequent, during which migrants were “barred from Russian territory”, according to Khushbakht Peruzaliev.

The Tajik migrant abandoned plans to renew his expired passport, for fear of being arrested on his way to the embassy in Moscow. “Eventually, special police forces started checking the construction site where I was working”, he explains. During police controls, he was promised to obtain citizenship if he accepted to join the army.

Caress Schenck, a political science professor at Nazarbayev University in Astana, acknowledges that “Tajiks were indeed more targeted than other ethnic groups from Central Asia, after the Crocus City Hall attack”. According to the Ukrainian coordination of war prisoners, Tajiks represent the second most represented nationality in the Russian army, with more than 3,400 recruits, while 4,800 Uzbeks and 2,400 Kazakhs also joined the army.

Caress Schenck reminds that, however, in Russia “migration control policies, raids and pressure to join the army are still highly influenced by the news cycle”.

Other ethnic groups have also been targeted since the beginning of the war, depending on the context : “Sometimes, anyone with Asian features can be perceived as suspicious”, according to the researcher.

Since November 2025, some foreigners in Russia are required to present a commitment contract in the army to obtain Russian citizenship or a residency permit. People from Central Asia are particularly impacted by these policies, as they make up more than 40% migrants living in Russia in 2020.

Despite that, all prisoners met by Novastan explain that they signed the contract by their own will to obtain a Russian passport, Caress Schenck mentions a strong administrative pressure on migrants that “reduces their ability to act and make their own decisions, rather than offering them a real choice”

The ideological vulnerability of migrants

In addition to the precarious administrative status of Central Asian migrants, the Russian army bases its mobilization stategy on shared ideological patterns. “As for me, I wanted to live in Russia. I considered that I had the right to obtain citizenship, so to earn it, I had to serve the homeland” says Jasur Islamov with a detached voice. After a year and a half in the army, in March 2025, the 38-year old man was promised he would obtain citizenship if he continued serving. A few weeks later, Jasur Islamov was captured, after being wounded by a drone strike.

Ilyas, Islamov and Khushbakht never tried to surrender on purpose, unlike accounts from other foreign prisoners of war fighting for Russia, such as African recruits. This behaviour at war could be explained by the fact that parts of migrant populations in Russia are already “Russian speakers, born in the 1970s or 1980s, under the Soviet Union”, according to the Ukrainian coordination of war prisoners.

Prisoners met by Novastan also state that they wish to go back to Russia, hoping to be included in a prisoner exchange. “We have nothing against an exchange of prisoners from Central Asia”, says the Ukrainian coordination of war prisoners. However, among the 7,000 Russian soldiers already exchanged, those originally from Central Asia remain a small minority. 

When Novastan asked them about their experience with racism in Russia, before or after serving, all assert that they “never” faced it. They are confident in their ability to rejoin Russian society after their detention, once they obtain a passport. “Could you imagine that I risked my life to obtain citizenship, and they would send me back to my country, when I have nothing left there ? It would be a huge betrayal” says Jasur Islamov, bitterly.

However, it would not be the first time that these war prisoners face disappointments related to their migrant experience in Russia. Despite being married to a Russian woman for years, Ilyas failed to obtain a passport : “I submitted all documents to apply for citizenship, a long time ago, but it was refused”. Jasur Islamov admits that he “did not even receive any money from the contract”, with only two months paid out of the eighteen months he spent in the army.

Novastan est le seul média en français et en allemand spécialisé sur l'Asie centrale. Entièrement associatif, il fonctionne grâce à votre participation. Nous sommes indépendants et pour le rester, nous avons besoin de vous ! Vous pouvez nous soutenir à partir de 2 euros par mois (défiscalisé à 66 %), ou en devenant membre actif par ici.

“I believe it would take years to dismantle internalized discriminations” Caress Schenk explains. The researcher reminds that in the Soviet imagery, racism was seen as inherent to capitalism and the Western bloc.

Citing the Geneva convention, the Ukrainian coordination of war prisoners explains that Central Asian citizens are treated the same as other prisoners. In the courtyard, on the weight training benches, Central Asian prisoners exercise alongside their Russian cellmates.

“We never thought we would end up here”, says Jasur Islamov. When he is reminded that he signed consciously and was aware of risks, the Uzbek detainee bristles : “You are talking as if I specifically signed to kill people… I only needed a place to live, a passport, to work and feed my family”. After a silence, he adds, regretfully : “I’m not saying we made the right decision. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone”.

Driss Rejichi,
Contributor for Novastan France

Translated by Elea Muresan

Thank you for reading this article! If you have time, we would appreciate your feedback, either through this anonymous form or by email at editorial@novastan.org. Thank you very much!

The post “I only needed a passport” : In Ukraine, Central Asian prisoners of wars caught between loyalty and regret appeared first on Novastan English.

The Bibi-Khanym Mosque in the city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan is one of the largest mosques in Central Asia. It is named after one of the wives of the Turkic-Mongol conqueror Tamerlane. Construction of this important building began in 1399 and was completed five years later, in 1404. The haste with which Tamerlane himself, upon his return from a victorious expedition to northern India, insisted on the work being carried out meant that a solid structure could not be built. Indeed, the mosque began to deteriorate very early on and was permanently damaged by the 1897 earthquake. Today, the restoration and preservation of the mosque are the subject of controversy. In 2024, however, Qatar committed to supporting the restoration of the iconic mosque.

Credits : Tristan Bjalon (France, @tristanbja)

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For its first-ever appearance at the FIFA World Cup, Uzbekistan arrives in North America with more than a football story. Around Eldor Shomurodov, Abdukodir Khusanov, Fabio Cannavaro and a generation shaped by both domestic clubs and foreign leagues, the White Wolves carry the hopes of a country eager to be seen on the global stage. Between Tashkent, Qarshi, Namangan, Istanbul, Manchester and the Uzbek communities of New York and Toronto, the 2026 World Cup could become a defining moment for Uzbek football and for Central Asia’s sporting visibility.

In Uzbekistan, the qualification has already been framed as the fulfilment of a long national wait. The documentary series 34 yillik orzu – “A 34-year dream” – follows the national team’s path to the World Cup as a story of near misses, collective frustration and eventual breakthrough. The film captures something essential about the moment: for Uzbekistan, this tournament is not simply a debut. It is the end of a long cycle of waiting.

That emotional weight matters. Uzbekistan is not a country without football culture. Since independence, the national team has repeatedly approached the World Cup without crossing the final threshold. Clubs such as Pakhtakor Tashkent, Nasaf Qarshi, Bunyodkor Tashkent and Navbahor Namangan have kept Uzbek football visible in Asian competitions, while generations of players built careers across Russia, Türkiye, Iran, the Gulf and, increasingly, Western Europe. What is new in 2026 is not the existence of Uzbek football. It is its arrival on the biggest stage.

A difficult group, but not an impossible story

Uzbekistan’s Group K is unforgiving. Portugal, Colombia and DR Congo all arrive with deeper World Cup histories or stronger reputations. In the latest ranking snapshot used by tournament previews, Portugal are fifth in the world, Colombia thirteenth, DR Congo forty-sixth and Uzbekistan fiftieth. The gap with Portugal and Colombia is substantial. The gap with DR Congo is much narrower.

Also read on Novastan: L’Ouzbékistan savoure sa première participation à la Coupe du monde de football

That makes the group both intimidating and open-ended. Portugal are clear favourites, with the experience and attacking quality to dominate possession. Colombia bring the rhythm, confidence and technical maturity of a strong South American side. DR Congo offer physical power, European-based talent and emotional momentum after returning to the tournament. Uzbekistan, on paper, are the lowest-ranked team in the group. But they are not a ceremonial debutant.

Their opening match against Colombia, followed by Portugal and DR Congo, gives the tournament a clear narrative arc. The first two fixtures will test whether Uzbekistan can survive against technically superior opponents. The final match against DR Congo may determine whether their debut becomes only symbolic or genuinely competitive.

The path to qualification

Uzbekistan’s qualification was built on consistency rather than a single miracle. In the decisive phase of Asian qualifying, the team showed defensive discipline, maturity and the ability to manage pressure away from home. The historic moment came on 5 June 2025, when Uzbekistan drew 0-0 with the United Arab Emirates in Abu Dhabi. The result secured a top-two finish in their group and confirmed the country’s first World Cup qualification since joining the Asian Football Confederation.

It was an understated way to make history: no dramatic late winner, no avalanche of goals, but a controlled result away from home. Goalkeeper Utkir Yusupov, who plays for Navbahor, made important saves, and the team managed the match with the calm of a side that had learned from previous failed campaigns.

Five days later, Uzbekistan completed the campaign with a 3-0 win over Qatar in Tashkent. The symbolism was strong. The qualification had been secured abroad, but the celebration came at home, in front of supporters who had waited for more than three decades to see their national team reach the World Cup.

Cannavaro, prestige and pressure

Fabio Cannavaro’s presence gives Uzbekistan an instantly recognisable figure. As Italy’s 2006 World Cup-winning captain and Ballon d’Or winner, he embodies elite defensive culture and global football prestige. His appointment also creates an interesting paradox. Uzbekistan qualified under Timur Kapadze, but will play the World Cup under Cannavaro.

This makes Cannavaro less the architect of qualification than the man responsible for translating that achievement into a credible tournament performance. His challenge is clear: to give the team structure, confidence and emotional control against opponents who are used to this level.

Tactically, Uzbekistan are unlikely to dominate the ball in Group K. Their prospects depend on compact defending, disciplined midfield spacing, rapid transitions and the ability to make set pieces count. Against Portugal and Colombia, patience may matter more than ambition. Against DR Congo, physical resilience may be just as important as technique.

Shomurodov, the captain who opened the path

Uzbekistan’s World Cup story inevitably begins with Eldor Shomurodov, the Istanbul Basaksehir forward and national team captain. For years, Shomurodov has been the most recognisable Uzbek footballer abroad, building a career across Russia, Italy and Turkey. His path took him from Bunyodkor and Rostov to Genoa, Roma, Spezia, Cagliari and Istanbul Basaksehir.

For Uzbekistan, Shomurodov is more than a striker. He is the player who made the idea of an Uzbek attacking star in major foreign leagues feel realistic. His role at the World Cup will not be limited to scoring. He will have to hold the ball under pressure, lead the line, draw fouls, bring teammates into play and provide a reference point when Uzbekistan are forced deep.

His presence also links the current team to an older dream: that Uzbek players could move beyond regional visibility and become recognised names in European football. In 2026, he will carry that story as captain.

Khusanov, from Lens to Manchester City

For French readers, Abdukodir Khusanov is perhaps the most familiar name in the squad. Now a Manchester City defender, Khusanov first became known to many European observers during his spell at RC Lens. In northern France, he impressed with his physical power, anticipation and maturity in duels. His move to Manchester City then changed the scale of his profile.

Khusanov matters because he changes the perception of Uzbek football. He is not simply a promising player from an emerging football country. He is a defender associated with one of the most demanding club environments in the world. At the World Cup, his performances will be watched closely, especially against elite attackers.

Also read on Novastan: Football, URSS et Ouzbékistan : la demi-gloire du Dinamo Samarcande (3/5)

For Cannavaro, Khusanov is likely to be central to the defensive structure. Uzbekistan’s ability to remain competitive against Colombia and Portugal may depend on how well he organizes the back line, absorbs pressure and handles moments when the team is forced to defend close to its own box.

Fayzullaev and the wider generation

Uzbekistan are not a team built around only Shomurodov and Khusanov. Abbosbek Fayzullaev, Shomurodov’s teammate at Istanbul Başakşehir, brings creativity, movement and technical intelligence between midfield and attack. If Uzbekistan are to threaten stronger opponents, Fayzullaev may be the player capable of turning defensive recoveries into dangerous transitions.

Jaloliddin Masharipov, the Esteghlal midfielder, adds seniority and flair. Oston Urunov, the Persepolis midfielder, brings directness and physical presence. Igor Sergeev, the Persepolis forward, gives Cannavaro another experienced attacking option, particularly useful if Uzbekistan need to compete aerially or hold the ball higher up the pitch.

Also read on Novastan: Football, URSS et Ouzbékistan : une histoire délicate (1/5)

In midfield, Otabek Shukurov, who plays for Baniyas in the United Arab Emirates, and Odiljon Hamrobekov, who plays for Tractor in Iran, provide balance and defensive discipline. Against teams such as Portugal and Colombia, these players may be as important as the more visible attacking names. Uzbekistan’s best chance will come from keeping games narrow for as long as possible.

The squad also remains connected to the domestic game. Utkir Yusupov, the Navbahor goalkeeper, and Abduvohid Nematov, the Nasaf goalkeeper, represent two important clubs in Uzbek football. Botirali Ergashev, the Neftchi goalkeeper, also reflects the continued role of the Fergana Valley in the country’s football geography. The defensive line includes players from Pakhtakor, Nasaf, Neftchi, Surkhon, Dinamo Samarkand and AGMK. This is not only a team of expatriates. It is still rooted in the domestic league.

The clubs behind the national team

Uzbekistan’s World Cup qualification should not be seen as an isolated miracle. It rests on a club tradition that has been regionally significant for decades.

Pakhtakor Tashkent remains the historic institution of Uzbek football. During the Soviet period, it was the flagship club of the Uzbek SSR and the only Central Asian club to reach a Soviet Cup final. After independence, Pakhtakor became a regular presence in Asian competitions and reached the AFC Champions League semi-finals in 2003 and 2004. Its legacy matters because it connects the current national team to both Soviet football history and post-independence Uzbek sporting identity.

Also read on Novastan: Football, URSS et Ouzbékistan : la tragédie du Pakhtakor Tachkent (2/5)

Nasaf Qarshi offers a different model. Based outside the capital, Nasaf has become one of the most important clubs in the country and one of the clearest examples of Uzbek continental success. Its greatest achievement came in 2011, when it won the AFC Cup by beating Al-Kuwait 2-1 in the final in Qarshi. It remains one of the most important international trophies won by an Uzbek club.

Bunyodkor Tashkent represents the more ambitious, investment-heavy phase of Uzbek club football. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the club attracted international attention, including through links with major foreign names, and reached the AFC Champions League semi-finals in 2008 and 2012. Its rise showed that Uzbek clubs could briefly compete with some of Asia’s strongest sides, even if they did not manage to win the continent’s top club tournament.

Navbahor Namangan and Neftchi Fergana show that Uzbek football is not only a Tashkent story. The Fergana Valley has long been one of the country’s most passionate football regions. Dinamo Samarkand, Bukhara, Surkhon and AGMK add further regional depth. The national team therefore reflects a wider football map: Tashkent, Qarshi, Namangan, Fergana, Samarkand, Bukhara and the south.

Recent friendlies: warning signs and encouragement

Uzbekistan’s final preparation produced mixed signals. On 1 June 2026, they lost 2-0 to Canada in Edmonton, with Jonathan Osorio and Jayden Nelson scoring for the hosts. The result exposed some of the difficulties Uzbekistan may face against athletic, direct opponents who can increase pressure in the second half.

The next friendly, however, was more encouraging. On 8 June, Uzbekistan lost 2-1 to the Netherlands behind closed doors at Icahn Stadium in New York. The Dutch won through two Cody Gakpo penalties, including one with the final kick of the game, after Igor Sergeev, the Persepolis forward, had equalised in stoppage time. Reuters described the Dutch win as unconvincing.

Also read on Novastan: Discussions sur le développement du football féminin au Kazakhstan

For Cannavaro, that match was useful. Uzbekistan showed they could remain competitive against a major European side, stay in the game until the final minutes and punish a lapse late on. The lesson was not that Uzbekistan are ready to dominate stronger teams. It was that they can frustrate them.

A Soviet football shadow

Uzbekistan has never previously appeared at a World Cup as an independent country. But Uzbek football was not absent from the Soviet football map. Pakhtakor Tashkent was the most visible club of the Uzbek SSR, and players from Tashkent and Uzbek football entered the wider Soviet system.

One example is Yuri Pshenichnikov, a Tashkent-born goalkeeper associated with Pakhtakor who represented the Soviet Union. His career does not make Uzbekistan a World Cup nation retroactively, but it helps explain why the country’s football history did not begin in 1991. The difference in 2026 is political and symbolic: Uzbekistan is no longer visible through a Soviet frame. It arrives with its own flag, anthem, supporters, clubs, players abroad and diaspora.

A World Cup in front of the diaspora

The fact that the 2026 World Cup is being held in North America gives Uzbekistan’s debut an additional layer. The team will not only be watched from Tashkent, Namangan, Samarkand, Qarshi or Fergana. It will also be followed in neighbourhoods where Uzbek, Bukharan Jewish, Central Asian and wider post-Soviet communities have become part of the urban landscape.

The clearest example is New York. In Queens, Rego Park and Forest Hills are strongly associated with the Bukharan Jewish community, many of whom trace their origins to Uzbekistan, especially Bukhara and Samarkand. The area is sometimes informally described as “Little Bukhara”, with synagogues, restaurants, bakeries and community institutions reflecting a Central Asian Jewish presence.

In Brooklyn, Uzbek and broader Central Asian visibility is especially noticeable around Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay and Bensonhurst. Restaurants, supermarkets and cafés serving plov, samsa, manty, shashlik and non have made food one of the most visible markers of the community. Northern New Jersey, connected to the wider New York metropolitan region, also forms part of this community geography.

Also read on Novastan: Les Pakhtakors de Tachkent, troisième équipe de football en Asie

The Uzbek presence in the United States is not limited to New York. Philadelphia and parts of Pennsylvania are often mentioned among important Uzbek-American centres. Smaller but active communities can also be found around Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Houston, San Antonio and Los Angeles. These communities are more dispersed than in New York, but they contribute to a wider map of Uzbek life in North America.

In Canada, Toronto and the wider Greater Toronto Area are the main reference points. Unlike New York, Toronto does not have a single neighbourhood as clearly associated with Uzbek life. The community is more spread across the metropolitan area, but cultural associations, student networks and community events make the city an important place to watch Uzbekistan’s World Cup debut.

For many Uzbeks abroad, the tournament may therefore become more than a sporting event. It could be a rare public moment of collective recognition, bringing together recent migrants, long-established families, Bukharan Jews, students, workers and entrepreneurs around a national team playing on their continent.

More than a debut

Uzbekistan are unlikely to be judged by the standards applied to Portugal or Colombia. They are not expected to control matches, dominate possession or overwhelm opponents. Their success will depend on narrower margins: staying compact, resisting pressure, using Shomurodov intelligently, releasing Fayzullaev at the right moments and relying on Khusanov to keep the defence organised.

But even if Uzbekistan do not reach the knockout stage, their presence already changes the geography of the tournament. For the first time, the World Cup includes an independent Uzbek team. For the first time, millions of Uzbek supporters can watch their own flag on football’s biggest stage. For the first time, Central Asia’s most populous country enters the global football imagination not through potential, but through participation.

If the White Wolves manage to take points, or even to make the match against DR Congo decisive, the meaning will be greater still. The 2026 World Cup could become the moment when Uzbek football stops being a regional story and becomes part of the global game.

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post Uzbekistan at the World Cup: The White Wolves Enter the Global Stage appeared first on Novastan English.

Dilmurad Yusupov is an Uzbekistani researcher, civil society activist and international development consultant advocating for the rights and inclusion of persons with disabilities. He co-founded NGO Sharoit Plus, a grassroots disabled people’s organisation in Tashkent, and launched IshPlus.uz, Uzbekistan’s first disability-inclusive recruitment platform. After completing a PhD in Development Studies at the University of Sussex, he is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Tokyo College, the University of Tokyo, where he further researches disability inclusion focusing on employment of persons with disabilities.

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From Economics to Disability Rights Advocacy

Novastan : You are an Uzbekistani researcher and disability rights advocate whose work has taken you from Central Asia to Europe and now Japan. How has this international journey shaped the way you understand disability, inclusion, and citizenship?

Dilmurad Yusupov : Every country I have lived in has given me a new pair of glasses and forced me to take off the previous ones. I started as an economist when I studied at MGIMO in Moscow, then did a master’s in development economics at Waseda University in Tokyo. I was initially trained to look at the world through numbers and aggregate indicators. But with my first work experience while working in Uzbekistan with Japanese international development organisations such as the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) my whole worldview has shifted entirely. I started working as JICA project assistant on disability inclusion projects along with persons with various impairments: wheelchair users, deaf men and women, parents of children with intellectual disabilities – and it struck me that no statistic was capturing what I was seeing: the humiliation at an inaccessible government office, the mother who had never left her flat in years because she had no help with her son, the university graduate who was told he could not work because his medical commission had classified him as “unemployable.”

I went to Sussex to do a PhD specifically because I needed different tools: ethnography, participatory methods, critical disability theory. And now in Tokyo, I am back in Japan, but as a researcher looking at how Japan designs employment support for persons with disabilities, trying to extract lessons for Uzbekistan. The journey has taught me one fundamental thing: disability is not a personal or medical problem. It is a social and political question. Where you are born, what kind of state you live in, whether your community sees you as a full human being – these things determine your life far more than your physical condition.

Reform Beyond the Headlines

When you look at Uzbekistan from abroad, what progress becomes more visible, and what gaps become harder to ignore?

Distance gives you a strange kind of clarity but the progress is genuinely visible. Uzbekistan has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2021. The National Agency for Social Protection and its “Inson” Social Services Centres have been established since 2023. For the last couple of years there have been new presidential decrees on employment. We have a 3% employment quota for companies with more than 20 employees, some effort to improve physical accessibility. I see more Uzbek women and men with disabilities present in public life speaking at forums, running NGOs, appearing in media. Ten years ago that was rare. The disability rights conversation has finally begun in our country as well.

But from outside, the gaps also become impossible to ignore. Boarding houses closed institutional facilities where persons with disabilities, including children and adults with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities still exist and still confine people. The medical model of disability, inherited from the Soviet era, is still dominant in how the state assesses, classifies, and relates to disabled citizens. And there is a persistent gap between legislation and lived reality that frustrates everyone working in this field. It still often feels like laws exist on paper but a wheelchair user still cannot enter their district administration building. Disabled people’s organisations and other related NGOs still lack organisational capacity to advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities and still look at the problem through charity perspectives.

Can disability rights be used as a lens to assess the depth of Uzbekistan’s broader reforms since 2016?

Absolutely, and I would argue it is one of the most revealing lenses available which I have been applying in my work a lot. The reforms of the President Shavkat Mirziyoyev era have been substantive in some domains: economic liberalisation, somewhat cautious opening of civil society and media space, increased engagement with international institutions. But reforms that only benefit people who are already relatively advantaged tell us little about the depth of transformation.

Disability inclusion tests the genuineness of reform because it requires changing entrenched institutions, not just policies. It requires breaking the paternalistic logic of Soviet social protection which assumed that the state knows best, provides a minimal subsidy, and keeps “abnormal” people out of public life. If Uzbekistan’s reforms are real, we should see deinstitutionalisation people leaving boarding houses and living independently in communities. We should see more disabled people in parliament, on advisory committees, in leadership of public institutions. We should see the disability assessment system overhauled from a purely medical examination into a needs-assessment that actually enables meaningful participation. These things have not happened yet. The reforms are real, but they are still mostly skin-deep when it comes to disability.

The Soviet Legacy Lives On

To what extent are current disability policies still shaped by Soviet-era institutions and assumptions?

Enormously. My research thesis is essentially built around this question. The Soviet system treated disability as a medical deficit as the “loss of working capacity” caused by a health condition. The response was twofold: medical rehabilitation to return people to “normal”, and segregation for those who could not be normalised. That logic shaped the entire institutional architecture: the Medical and Social Expert Commission that classifies you as a “first group”, “second group” or “third group” disabled person; the specialised boarding schools and care homes; the sheltered workshops. These institutions are still with us, physically and conceptually.

What has changed since Soviet times is that disability is now more explicitly framed in rights terms, especially post-CRPD ratification. But the assumption that disability is primarily a medical issue, something to be fixed or managed rather than accommodated is still deeply embedded in how civil servants think, how families behave, and even how disabled people themselves have been taught to understand their own lives. One of the most painful aspects of participatory research is when the person with a disability internalises that logic: “I can’t work because I’m disabled,” rather than “I can’t work because there are no accessible workplaces.”

Uzbekistan ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2021. What has changed in practice, and what remains mostly on paper?

The ratification mattered. It was a political signal, and it created a reference point that activists and DPOs can use to hold the government accountable. Some things followed: new legislation on employment support, some amendments to the law on social protection, the development of national action plans. I celebrated the ratification publicly in 2021.

But the CRPD requires a paradigm shift from the medical model to the human rights model of disability and that shift has not happened at the institutional level. The legal definition of disability in Uzbekistan still essentially conflates disability with impairment. The Medical and Social Expert Commission (MSEC) system still divides people into those who can and cannot work based on a medical assessment. There are still no independent living, services personal assistance, accessible housing, supported decision-making which the CRPD requires.

The pattern I observe is common across many countries that ratify international conventions: the ratification is real, the rhetoric changes, some laws are amended, but the deeper bureaucratic, cultural, and financial changes that would actually transform disabled people’s lives get deferred indefinitely. The CRPD is a powerful tool but only if disabled people’s organisations have the political standing, resources and access to use it. That is the real bottleneck in Uzbekistan.

Read also on Novastan: Comment les femmes handicapées sont discriminées au Tadjikistan

What Disability Reveals About Society

What does the treatment of disabled people reveal about the relationship between the state and citizens in Central Asia?

It reveals a deeply paternalistic social contract. The state’s implicit message to disabled citizens has been: “We will provide you with a modest benefit and manage your needs, but you will not be a full public subject.” That logic is not unique to disability it shapes how the state relates to many categories of citizen. But disabled people make it especially visible because they depend on state services and infrastructure so directly.

The mahalla, the neighbourhood community, institution is a fascinating case study in this. On the one hand, mahalla networks provide real informal support to disabled people and their families: a neighbour who helps with shopping, a community that knows about a child who needs assistance. On the other hand, the mahalla is also a mechanism of social control and conformity, and it can reinforce stigma and exclusion just as readily as solidarity. For disabled people, the mahalla is simultaneously a lifeline and a site of judgement.

What I find most telling is that disability allowances in Uzbekistan are set at levels that make independent living impossible. They are supplementary to family support, not substitutes for it. The entire system assumes that disabled people live with and are cared for by families. Independent living – as a right – is not a design principle of the system.

In Uzbekistan, families often play a central role in care and support. Is this a strength, a burden, or both?

Both, without any doubt and I want to resist the temptation of romanticising family solidarity without naming its costs. When there are no community-based services, no personal assistance systems, no accessible housing, families have no choice but to become the primary support system. And in that context, families do extraordinary things. I have met mothers who have spent twenty years advocating for their child’s right to education, fathers who have rebuilt their homes to make them accessible, siblings who have become unpaid carers while working full-time.

But the word “choice” matters here. When families bear this burden because there is no alternative, it is not solidarity – it is structural neglect dressed in cultural clothing. And the cost falls most heavily on women, who are by far the primary carers in Uzbekistan. A woman who spends her life caring for a disabled relative often has a very low pension, no career, no independent income, no respite. She is made invisible by a system that counts on her labour without compensating or supporting her.

The vision I work towards is not one where families abandon disabled relatives the family bond in Central Asia is real and valuable. It is one where families who choose to provide care are genuinely supported, and where disabled people who want to live independently have the services to do so. These should be choices, not compulsions.

The Unequal Burden of Exclusion

How does the experience of disability differ for women, rural residents, or persons with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities?

Every additional axis of disadvantage compounds dramatically in Uzbekistan. Let me be concrete. A woman with a physical disability in Tashkent faces barriers – but she lives in the city where Sharoit Plus and IshPlus.uz operate, where there is at least some accessible infrastructure, some specialist services, some community. A woman with a physical disability in a remote district of Surkhandarya faces all of those same barriers, plus almost no services, greater family pressure to stay at home, less information about her rights, and fewer journalists or NGOs to notice if something goes wrong.

For persons with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities, the situation is the most serious and the least visible. These are the people most likely to be in boarding houses. These are the people whose voices are least present in public consultations on disability policy. In 2024 I wrote about a case in Syrdarya where a woman with a mental disability was filmed being mocked and abused in a residential care facility – the video went viral, but what struck me was not the exceptional cruelty of one act but how unsurprising it was to anyone who knew these institutions. Closed institutions breed abuse. That is not a bug; it is a structural feature.

Work, Dignity and Belonging

You have researched disability-inclusive employment. Why is access to work such a decisive issue for equality and citizenship?

Work is not only about income, though income matters enormously as disabled people in Uzbekistan are among the poorest population groups. Work is about dignity, belonging, identity, and citizenship in the fullest sense. When you work, you are visible. You have a schedule, colleagues, a place in the social fabric. You contribute and are recognised as contributing. When you do not work when you are told by a medical commission that you are “unemployable”, or when every employer turns you away because of stereotypes about your capacity you are consigned to a kind of social invisibility.

That is why I consider the Soviet-era concept of “unemployable” so harmful. It is not a medical finding – it is a social sentence. When we launched IshPlus.uz in 2021, we were directly challenging that logic. Within a year, 50 persons with disabilities had found jobs through the platform. When we scaled up with Eurasia Foundation’s support, 130 people found employment in just six months – persons with visual impairments, hearing impairments, physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities. Behind each number is a life that changed.

Are disabled people in Uzbekistan still too often seen as recipients of assistance rather than workers, experts and decision-makers?

Yes – and this is the core cultural battle. The dominant public image of disability in Uzbekistan is still the charity model: a person in need of pity, whose story should inspire gratitude for one’s own health. That image is present in media, in how government programmes are designed, in how businesses think about the 3% quota (as a burden to be minimised rather than an opportunity). Even some disabled people’s organisations reproduce it because they have learned to navigate a system built on those assumptions.

The shift I advocate for – and that the CRPD requires – is from seeing disabled people as objects of welfare to recognising them as rights-holders, experts in their own lives and in the design of the systems that affect them. “Nothing about us without us” is the foundational principle of the global disability rights movement, and it is still quite foreign to how policymakers in Uzbekistan approach disability reform.

Learning from Abroad

What lessons from Ireland and Japan could be useful for Uzbekistan, and what should not be copied blindly?

Ireland went through a serious deinstitutionalisation process, moving persons with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities out of large institutions and into community-based living. The process was painful and incomplete, and Ireland is still reckoning with the abuses that occurred in those institutions – but the direction of travel was right, and it shows what is possible with political will. The Irish independent living movement also developed strong models of personal assistance and direct payments that are worth studying for Uzbekistan.

Japan is fascinating because I have lived there twice now, in very different capacities. Japan has invested heavily in physical accessibility – its cities are among the most barrier-free I have experienced, the public transport system is genuinely wheelchair accessible, and there is sophisticated legislation including the 2016 Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities. JICA has also been active in Uzbekistan on disability rehabilitation for years, and those partnerships have real value.

But Japan also teaches the lesson of what not to copy. Physical infrastructure does not automatically produce social inclusion. Japan still has very high rates of institutional care for persons with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities. Stigma around mental health is acute. Employment discrimination persists despite legal protections. A disabled person with perfect ramp access to a building may still encounter assumptions about their competence the moment they walk in the door. The lesson is that hardware without software – accessibility without attitude change – is not inclusion. Uzbekistan can learn the infrastructure lessons from Japan and the deinstitutionalisation lessons from Ireland, while understanding that both countries are still on an unfinished journey.

Central Asia as a Producer of Knowledge

How can Central Asian researchers contribute to global disability studies, rather than simply being treated as case studies by scholars elsewhere?

This question matters to me personally and professionally. For a long time, Central Asia was studied primarily by Western or Russian scholars, and the region’s disabled people appeared in academic literature mainly as examples – illustrations of post-Soviet transition, of Islamic culture, of development deficits. Local researchers were rarely cited as theorists or methodologists; they were cited as informants or acknowledged in footnotes.

This is a form of epistemic injustice, and it limits the quality of the scholarship itself. The theoretical tools we need to understand disability in post-Soviet Muslim majority Central Asia – the intersections of Soviet institutionalisation, Islamic notions of compassion and charity, mahalla-based informal care, rapid economic transformation – cannot be developed from a distance by someone who has never negotiated those realities.

I try to practise a different kind of research: participatory, with disabled people as co-researchers and co-authors, not just subjects. I try to publish in accessible formats in Uzbek and Russian, not only in English-language academic journals. And I try to position my work as contributing concepts and frameworks to global disability studies, not just providing data points about Uzbekistan. The ambition should be for Central Asian disability studies to produce theory, not just cases.

Read also on Novastan: Sur scène, plus de handicap

Telling Better Stories About Disability

How should journalists report on disability – and how can success stories be told without falling into pity, charity, or “inspirational” stereotypes?

This is something I think about a great deal, because bad journalism about disability does real harm. The two dominant failure modes are the pity narrative – the disabled person as tragic sufferer deserving charity – and what the disability studies scholar Stella Young called “inspiration porn” – the disabled person as a heroic overcomer, whose story is meant to make non-disabled audiences feel grateful for their own lives. Both narratives make the disabled person an object, not a subject.

Good journalism focuses on systems, not just individuals. Good journalism also asks disabled people what they think, want, and advocate for, not just how they suffer or cope. It treats them as sources of analysis and expertise, not just of emotional testimony. And it avoids language and framing that frames disability as inherently deficient – “confined to a wheelchair”, “suffers from”, “despite her disability.” These phrases embed the medical model into the grammar of every sentence.

“Nothing About Us Without Us”

What would it take for disabled people’s organisations in Uzbekistan to be involved not as consultees, but as co-authors of reform?

First, financial sustainability. Uzbekistani DPOs are chronically under-resourced. The state allocates minimal social orders to civil society, and the NGO regulatory environment creates significant administrative burdens. A DPO that spends most of its energy on survival cannot invest in policy advocacy. Dedicated, multi-year funding for DPOs – from the state and from donors – is a precondition.

Second, genuine access to decision-making spaces. Consultation processes in Uzbekistan often invite DPOs to comment on documents that are already finalised, in rooms that may not be physically accessible, with materials that are not in accessible formats, without sign language interpretation. That is not co-authorship – it is the performance of inclusion. Real participation starts at the problem-definition stage, before solutions are on the table.

Third, and perhaps most fundamentally: a political culture that treats disabled people’s lived expertise as legitimate. Civil servants, international experts and academics need to internalise that people who live with disability know things about it that no policy paper can capture. That is not a soft or optional supplement to technical knowledge – it is essential knowledge. The CRPD principle of “nothing about us without us” should be operationalised as a procedural requirement for all disability-related legislation and programming in Uzbekistan.

Reasons for Hope

What gives you hope today in Uzbekistan, and what worries you most?

Hope: there is a new generation of disability rights activists in Uzbekistan who are young, connected, demanding, and tired of being patient. They use social media. They call out inaccessible buildings by name. The CRPD ratification also gives me hope, not because of what it has already changed, but because it shifts the terms of argument. Rights are no longer a Western imposition – they are a commitment the Uzbekistani state made to its own citizens.

I also worry about the pattern I observe across Central Asia: reforms are initiated from the top, which means they can be reversed or stalled from the top too. Genuine inclusion requires a society that demands it – a disability rights movement with political weight, public support, and allies across different sectors. We are building that, but slowly.

Dilmurad Yusupov can be followed at dilmurad.me and on social media as @d_yusupov.

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Interview by

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief at Novastan-English

Maya Ivanova, Contributor at Novastan

Thank you for reading this article! If you have time, we would appreciate your feedback, either through this anonymous form or by email at editorial@novastan.org. Thank you very much!

The post “Disability is a Mirror for the Development of Societies” – A Conversation with Dilmurad Yusupov appeared first on Novastan English.

Originally from Uzbekistan, conductor Aziz Shokhakimov has been leading the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra since 2021. At 38, this first Uzbekistani conductor in Strasbourg, passionate about French music, has followed an impeccable path. Interview.

In Strasbourg, Aziz Shokhakimov has been Music and Artistic Director of the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra since September 2021. In this role, he also works closely with the Opéra national du Rhin, as the orchestra regularly performs opera there. He already knew the Strasbourg ensemble well, having conducted it as a guest from 2014 before taking up its leadership.

Born in Uzbekistan and trained in the capital Tashkent, Aziz Shokhakimov did not so much choose conducting as grow up within it. At just eleven years old, in a children’s and then school orchestra, he learned the profession through practice, sometimes compensating for missing instruments by playing certain parts himself. This early start nurtured a visceral relationship with the collective: the orchestra as a living organism, made of listening, discipline and trust.

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In Strasbourg, a border city whose Franco-German fusion he admires, his presence is particularly visible in the orchestra’s major popular events. For the 2026 New Year’s Eve and New Year concerts, the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra brought together more than 3,800 spectators in a full Erasme Hall, around a programme entitled Florilège lyrique, which Novastan attended. Under the direction of Aziz Shokhakimov, the evening celebrated the voice, with two international soloists: Uzbekistani soprano Barno Ismatullaeva and tenor René Barbera. The Choir of the Opéra national du Rhin also took part, in a festive atmosphere greeted by long ovations.

Beyond the Strasbourg stage, Aziz Shokhakimov also appears in the documentary O’zbekistonlik, produced by Uzbekistan’s Club. The episode devoted to him, available on YouTube with English subtitles, is part of a series highlighting Uzbek personalities who have faced obstacles but managed to make their way to the highest level: a way of offering concrete role models and nurturing a positive collective narrative around Uzbekistanis abroad. From France, Aziz Shokhakimov sometimes describes himself as an “informal cultural ambassador”: someone who, through encounters, makes people want to look at Central Asia differently. Interview.

Novastan : To begin with, could you introduce yourself and look back at the major stages, the turning points, that shaped your artistic and professional path?

Aziz Shokhakimov : I am a conductor. I was born and grew up in Uzbekistan, and I received my musical training in Tashkent.

A decisive turning point in my professional life came in 2010, when I won second prize at the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg. It is one of the most prestigious competitions for conductors. From that moment on, I began receiving invitations in Europe, the United States and Japan. One could say that my international career really began with that competition.

Looking back, what were the moments that most clearly shaped you as an artist and as a conductor?

Honestly, I never felt that I consciously chose this profession. Becoming a conductor happened very naturally.

I began conducting at a very young age, when I was eleven. At first, it was a kind of experiment suggested by my teacher, Vladimir Borisovich Neymer. I first worked with a children’s orchestra, then with a school orchestra. We often lacked instruments: if there were no percussion instruments, I played the parts myself; if other instruments were missing, I would go to the piano.

In reality, I literally grew up inside the orchestra. Of course, later I received academic training at the conservatory, but my training as a conductor began in childhood, in contact with real musicians.

Has your artistic centre of gravity evolved over time?

Yes, absolutely. Over time, many things change: repertoire priorities, working methods, the way one achieves a result…

But I feel that since childhood, I have had an inner ear, a musical energy that has never left me. The tools evolve, experience deepens, but that inner drive, my fundamental relationship with music, has remained the same.

What was your first formative contact with music?

Music was part of my life from early childhood, because both my parents are musicians.

But a truly decisive moment came later, when I was playing viola in a youth symphony orchestra in the Volga region of Russia. There, I saw young people of different nationalities, religions and countries making music together, sharing the same scores, the same sound, with joy and commitment.

It made a deep impression on me. I was probably quite idealistic as a child, but that experience confirmed something important: music really has the power to unite people.

Which teachers, mentors or institutions most influenced your discipline and musical imagination?

All my teachers influenced me, each in their own way. But above all, Vladimir Borisovich Neymer, who was like a second father to me.

Good and bad teachers alike shape you: good ones show you how to work and how to treat others; bad ones mainly teach you what not to do.

I am convinced that one never stops learning. There is an Indian proverb I like very much: “No one is your friend, no one is your enemy – everyone is your teacher.” I try to approach every encounter as an opportunity to learn.

Do you still play an instrument? And have you sung or worked on your voice?

Yes, today I mainly play the piano. I played the viola for a long time, but the piano has become my main working instrument.

I also studied singing. First at school, then seriously at the conservatory. Not because I wanted to become a singer, but to understand vocal technique, breathing and how the voice works. For a conductor who works with opera and choirs, this knowledge is essential.

For readers who do not know Ortasaray, how would you describe the place where you grew up?

Ortasaray, when I was growing up there, was surrounded by nature. There was a lot of greenery, birds, fishing trips, mushroom picking in spring. From my home, we had a magnificent view of the mountains.

This connection with nature deeply influenced me. I still love mountains just as much, and whenever possible, my family and I try to spend our holidays there, whether in the Black Forest or in the Alps.

Unfortunately, the region has changed a lot since then, and much of that natural environment has disappeared.

Did the mountain landscape and the multicultural environment have a lasting impact on your sensibility?

Absolutely. The mountains shaped my relationship with space and silence, while the multicultural environment shaped my relationship with others.

In Ortasaray, I grew up among Kazakhs, Koreans, Russians and Turks. From childhood, I lived among several languages and cultures, and that seemed completely natural to me. I think that is also why it later became easy for me to adapt to different countries, without cultural conflict or inner resistance.

You move between several linguistic and cultural worlds. How do languages “live” in you, personally and professionally?

For me, language is not just a tool for communication: it is a way of thinking, a cultural framework and even, in a certain sense, part of music.

To understand German music, for example, knowledge of German is extremely important. Phrasing in Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart or Haydn often follows a linguistic logic. This influences articulation, structure and above all phrase endings.

In German, endings carry particular weight. In Russian or French, they function differently, and this can sometimes influence the way musicians intuitively feel form.

In rehearsal, language therefore often becomes an element of musical explanation. More broadly, I believe that the more languages one speaks, the more one opens up and develops culturally, both as a musician and as a person.

Before moving to Strasbourg, what image did you have of the city?

I already knew Strasbourg quite well before moving here. I had been conducting here since 2014, almost every two years, so I had time to discover the city, its architecture, its musical life, and I already had friends here.

I really like this city. You can feel the fusion between French and German cultures, which creates a very special atmosphere. Geographically, it is also a unique place: Germany and Switzerland are just nearby.

That is why I am sincerely happy to live here.

What surprised you most here, and what do you miss from home?

I am fascinated by the combination of French freedom and German precision. That is what makes Strasbourg so distinctive.

On a personal level, I miss my family most, even if I am not particularly sentimental. With technology, distance is less restrictive today, and I try to go to Tashkent regularly.

How do people perceive Uzbekistan?

Some people know Central Asia well, while others know almost nothing about it. But often, after meeting me, they become curious and start reading, searching, learning. In that sense, I sometimes feel like an informal cultural ambassador for my region.

And yes, Uzbekistan is more visible than before. The country seems more culturally open, and that changes the way it is perceived.

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Through your international engagements, which orchestras have made the strongest impression on you?

Every orchestra leaves something behind: a sound, an atmosphere, a human connection. But this season, I was particularly impressed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. I worked with them very recently, and I was struck by their enthusiasm, professionalism and commitment.

What piece of advice would you give to young musicians?

First, be honest with yourselves: are you really ready to devote your life to music? Music requires immense commitment and sacrifices: time, stability, sometimes even one’s personal life. You can never stop progressing; the moment you stop, you begin to fall behind.

There is a saying: “Choose a job you love, and you will never feel like you are working a day in your life.” There is some truth in that, but musicians work enormously hard. Love simply makes that work meaningful.

If you could correct one illusion about success in music, what would it be?

The illusion of quick success. Real success in music is not a single moment: it is a long process, built on daily work, doubts, mistakes and gradual progress. And for me, that is precisely what makes music so precious.

Interview by Mathieu Lemoine,
Contributor for Novastan

Edited in French by Anaïs Boulard

Translated by Maya Ivanova

Thank you for reading this article! If you have time, we would appreciate your feedback, either through this anonymous form or by email at editorial@novastan.org. Thank you very much!

The post From Uzbekistan to Strasbourg: Aziz Shokhakimov, a conductor between cultures and languages appeared first on Novastan English.

In 2025, the Uzbekistani NGO Istiqbolli Avlod received the Human Rights Prize of the French Republic. For its director, Nodira Karimova, this distinction is both an honour and a heavy responsibility. In an interview with Novastan, she discusses her fight to eradicate human and sexual exploitation affecting the most vulnerable populations, particularly in Uzbekistan.

On 10 December 2025 in Paris, the French National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) awarded the Human Rights Prize of the French Republic “Liberty – Equality – Fraternity” to the Uzbekistani NGO Istiqbolli Avlod. Alongside four other international organisations, the association was recognised for its commitment to fighting the exploitation and trafficking of children, whose number of victims continues to rise according to the latest United Nations data.

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Istiqbolli Avlod has been fighting human trafficking since 2001, with a particular focus on children and women. Its founder and director, Nodira Karimova, emphasises that irregular labour migration, especially to Russia, Kazakhstan and Türkiye for Uzbekistani citizens, is a gateway to human trafficking.

Observing that young victims of sexual exploitation are afraid of law enforcement and distrust the justice system, the association launched the project “Child-friendly justice – Do not fear the court” to promote a fair, caring and child-sensitive judicial system.

Interview.

Novastan : In December 2025, you received the Human Rights Prize of the French Republic. What does this mean for you and your work?

Nodira Karimova : This recognition is particularly important for us. First of all, it confirms that our long-standing work in the field of human rights protection, especially children’s rights, is visible and valued not only nationally, but also internationally.

It is also a sign of trust in the principles and values on which our organisation’s work is based: protecting human dignity, access to justice and support for the most vulnerable people. It may also help strengthen the confidence of partners, state institutions and the international community in our organisation. In short, it broadens our opportunities while placing a great responsibility on us.

Does human trafficking remain a serious problem in Central Asia today, particularly in Uzbekistan?

Uzbekistan is one of the most densely populated countries in Central Asia and one of the youngest in terms of demographic composition, with a predominantly young population. While this represents significant potential for the country’s development, it is also a major challenge: according to available estimates, more than 600,000 young people enter Uzbekistan’s labour market every year, and this figure could approach one million in the coming years.

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However, employment opportunities within the country do not always make it possible to provide jobs for all young people, especially outside the capital. Under these conditions, labour migration becomes one of the main ways for many people to earn a living. In the current situation, migration is largely unavoidable for Uzbekistan.

Despite the state’s efforts to expand access to employment, some young people without a profession or sufficient information continue to leave for work abroad informally, relying on advice from acquaintances.

Irregular migration often becomes an entry point into human trafficking and directly increases the risks of sexual exploitation for girls and women who are precarious and lack legal status abroad. Under these conditions, girls and women more often trust acquaintances or intermediaries who promise to find them a job, establish the necessary contacts and “solve all problems”, without realising the possible consequences of such offers.

It is also important to note that the risks of sexual exploitation do not exist only abroad. Sexual exploitation within the country, including the involvement and exploitation of underage girls in prostitution, also remains a serious problem and requires particular attention.

How do you interact with the authorities to combat this phenomenon? Do you consider the measures and policies adopted by the state to be effective?

Our organisation has established cooperation with state structures for more than 25 years, which has made it possible to build lasting partnerships and practical interaction. We submitted more than 20 proposals during the drafting process of the law on combating human trafficking, most of which were taken into account and included in the final version of the law.

In cooperation with the Ministries of Internal Affairs and Foreign Affairs, a referral mechanism for victims of human trafficking was created, particularly regarding their return to their country of origin and the legal assistance provided to them. We also often organise joint events, such as roundtables and conferences.

Also read on Novastan : Bilan de 30 ans de défense des droits de l’homme en Asie centrale

This cooperation is based on a series of memoranda of understanding and partnership agreements signed with key public institutions. These include the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Migration Agency and the Children’s Ombudsperson.

In addition, our organisation is one of the few non-governmental organisations to have signed a cooperation agreement with the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Uzbekistan. This makes it possible to establish more systematic and institutional cooperation in the areas of prevention, response and protection of victims’ rights.

It is important to note that the NGO Istiqbolli Avlod is part of the National Commission on Combating Human Trafficking and Decent Work, which enables us to take part in discussions on public policy, make proposals and raise issues based on our field experience. This helps establish dialogue between the state and civil society.

Do you consider the measures and policies adopted by the state to be effective?

The adoption of several legal documents, including the law on combating human trafficking, has been very important because they provide a normative basis. However, adopting laws is only the first step. The main challenge today is to move from regulation to the effective implementation of decisions, especially at the regional and local levels. In other words, the laws exist, but it is essential that they actually work in practice.

To what extent do geopolitical tensions and recent conflicts influence human trafficking?

From our organisation’s perspective, geopolitical tensions and armed conflicts have a direct impact on migration and, consequently, on the dynamics of trafficking. One of the most significant factors in recent years has been the war in Ukraine, which has changed traditional labour migration routes from Central Asia to Russia, including for Uzbek citizens.

Also read on Novastan : En Ouzbékistan, l’origine des transferts de fonds depuis l’étranger se diversifie

We are seeing more and more migrants choosing Türkiye as an alternative destination, for several reasons, including cultural, religious and linguistic proximity, as well as the possibility of visa-free stays for 90 days. However, many arrive without knowing the existing legislation on employment and the legality of their stay, and continue working informally after their permitted stay expires. Under these conditions, migrants often find themselves without legal protection and become vulnerable to exploitation, including sexual exploitation. The risk is particularly high for women.

What are the main profiles of victims?

In cases of sexual exploitation, the victims are often women aged between 25 and 35. Many of them are divorced women with children, who are also responsible for elderly parents. Economic pressure increases their vulnerability.

Their level of education is usually fairly modest. Women with higher education are very rare among the victims.

As for minors, many come from socially vulnerable families. It often happens that their parents are themselves abroad as labour migrants, or that the children have grown up without parental support.

For men who are victims of labour exploitation for economic purposes, they are generally men aged between 19 and 45, often from large families and rural areas, with little vocational training. They go abroad to provide for their families and may find themselves in situations of forced labour, restrictions on their freedom or debt bondage.

Are people in Central Asia more exposed to trafficking within the region or abroad?

Cases within countries also exist, particularly in terms of sexual exploitation involving minors, but they remain difficult to measure because many remain hidden. The phenomenon is both internal and transnational, but the risks linked to international migration are the most frequent.

Has the withdrawal of foreign funding from the United States and support for official development assistance, decided by President Donald Trump in early 2025, affected you?

Yes, these changes have had a significant impact. For many years, the US Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) were among the main donors supporting the fight against trafficking in Uzbekistan. These funds were used, for example, to finance the hotline and legal assistance for victims. Today, the reduction in international funding has made it more difficult to maintain these services.

Also read on Novastan :Les conséquences de l’arrêt de l’USAID en Asie centrale

The annual US report on human trafficking also played an important role in encouraging states to improve their policies. Unfortunately, today there are no longer any major active international projects in this field in Uzbekistan, which forces our organisation to seek new sources of funding.

How is regional cooperation evolving in Central Asia?

In recent years, Central Asian countries have shown greater cooperation and regional partnership. However, in practice, migration and human trafficking issues do not yet seem to occupy a central place on the common agenda.

From the point of view of NGOs, concrete cooperation remains limited and has often been linked in the past to projects run by international organisations.

Which achievements are you most proud of?

We are particularly proud to have publicly raised the following issue: a child must not be alone during an investigation or trial. We have shown that legal and psychological support for child victims is not only possible, but necessary.

This practice has become an integral part of our work and can be considered a good practice at the international level.

One of the most memorable moments was when, after a trial, a minor said: “This is the first time I feel that I am being believed”. At that moment, it became clear that our work is not only about legal protection, but also about restoring dignity and a sense of safety.

Why are children afraid to speak out?

This fear often results from a combination of factors: the family’s reaction, social stigmatisation, distrust of the police and threats from exploiters.

In some families, the police are perceived as a threat rather than as protection. Children grow up with this fear, while exploiters also use blackmail and the victims’ sense of shame to maintain control over them.

Also read on Novastan :La souffrance silencieuse des belles-filles en Ouzbékistan

A genuinely child-sensitive pathway begins with the family’s reaction. Adults must respond with support and seek to protect the child. From the first contact with the authorities, the child must be accompanied by a lawyer and a psychologist. Interviews should never take place without these specialists.

How do you identify children at risk when exploitation is hidden?

Identifying children at risk is one of the most difficult aspects of our work, especially when exploitation is concealed, for example through online recruitment, informal networks or cross-border movements.

We regularly organise information activities in neighbourhoods, known as mahallas in Uzbekistan, where we meet parents, teenagers and representatives of local communities. Particular attention is paid to the hotline, and we widely disseminate information about it so that children and families know where to seek help.

Also read on Novastan : En Ouzbékistan, une justice clémentes sur les violences sexuelles

We also distribute information materials in busy places, such as schools, medical facilities and public spaces. We hand out flyers and cards with the organisation’s contact details and organise information meetings and prevention discussions. But given the scale and hidden nature of the problem, we know that these efforts remain insufficient.

We also organise training for law enforcement agencies. However, there is an objective difficulty: high staff turnover. Officers often change and information work has to start again.

In practice, one of the most effective mechanisms remains word of mouth. Often, it is former beneficiaries or their families who pass on the information.

What kind of support is needed beyond the trial?

The trial is only one stage. After it, the child’s life continues, and this is where comprehensive support is essential. The first priority is to ensure the child’s own safety, which means not leaving them in an environment where there remains a risk of violence or pressure. In some cases, temporary accommodation in a safe place is necessary.

The second key element is psychosocial support, with long-term psychological assistance: working on self-esteem, guilt, feelings of shame and rebuilding trust.

Work with the family is also essential. Parents themselves may be in a state of shock or confusion. Then come the return to school, post-trial legal assistance, for example to obtain compensation, protect personal data or avoid further proceedings.

The main difficulty concerns the funding of long-term psychosocial support. A trial has clear timeframes, but rebuilding a child’s life can take years. Yet this type of support is the most difficult to finance and coordinate.

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After this prize, what are your priorities?

It is difficult to identify a single priority, because protecting children requires a comprehensive approach: prevention, legal support, training of professionals and interinstitutional coordination.

In the current context, one of our priorities is to find sustainable sources of funding in order to maintain and develop the mechanisms already in place.

If we had to name one reform we would like to see progress over the next 12 months, it would be the implementation of a mandatory interinstitutional protocol for cases involving child victims, with the guaranteed participation of a lawyer and a psychologist.

At the same time, we believe it is necessary to strengthen public information: to explain clearly that a child must never be alone in court. The mandatory participation of a lawyer and a psychologist must be seen not as an additional measure, but as a fundamental guarantee of children’s rights.

Emma Collet and Mathieu Lemoine,
Contributors for Novastan

Translated from French by Maya Ivanova

Thank you for reading this article! If you have time, we would appreciate your feedback, either through this anonymous form or by email at editorial@novastan.org. Thank you very much!

The post In Paris, an Uzbekistani NGO’s fight against human trafficking recognised with the French Republic Human Rights Prize appeared first on Novastan English.

Renowned for the quality of its grapes, Uzbekistan nevertheless saw its vineyards massively destroyed after the fall of the USSR, as part of measures aimed at limiting alcohol consumption. It took years of work for the Akhunov family to rebuild a wine collection that is now unique in Central Asia.

A report on the still-emerging renaissance of Uzbekistan’s wine industry.

A few turns of the key are enough. And already, through the half-open door, they begin to appear: touches of purplish colour diluted among the foliage. The oldest of these vines come from cuttings dating back nearly 80 years. Planted side by side, they rise towards the sky until they almost block it out. Over time, they have woven their web, forming a green setting around the precious bunches of grapes.

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With a determined step, 30-year-old Kamila Akhunova enters this green space, located just a few steps from the family property. The Akhunovs own a 21-hectare estate in the town of Qibray, Uzbekistan, about 20 kilometres from the capital, Tashkent. On this remote land, nearly 15 hectares are devoted to grape production. Their company, UzumFermer, produces 100,000 litres of wine per year.

Hidden from view, a veritable treasure cave of grape varieties is revealed. Here, grapes of every shape and kind grow side by side. Among them is a unique treasure: a Japanese grape variety called “Ruby Roman”, sold for nearly 10,000 dollars per bunch. A little further on, Kamila Akhunova presents another variety: “Jupiter”. “It is also a treasure because only five countries in the world have it. And on our continent, we are the only ones to have it.”

A unique collection in Central Asia

This unique sample of vine plants was “collected all over Uzbekistan, and is the only one that exists in the country,” Kamila Akhunova insists. “We went to former laboratories and old gardens to recover all these grapes.” It was a painstaking quest to build up this collection, after many years spent travelling across Uzbek soil. Today, she proudly looks over the 125 different vine varieties: “100 are for table grapes and 25 for standard wine.”

Behind this initiative is her father, Rachid Akhunov. Now 57, after studying physics in Russia and leaving behind laboratories and pipettes, this vine and grape enthusiast decided to dedicate himself to rebuilding this heritage. “For me, it was a real quest. During my travels, I began collecting all kinds of grapes,” he says proudly. “My father,” Kamila Akhunova stresses, “received the gold medal from the Uzbek president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, in 2016, as thanks for the revival of vine cultivation. We do not make wine with them; we simply present our collection to tourists.”

Although their quest to rebuild this collection is now complete in Uzbekistan, Kamila would like it to continue abroad. “We are waiting for the law to change so that we can import other varieties from all over the world, from France, Germany, Chile, Africa, Australia, New Zealand…” the young woman explains. In Uzbekistan, many regulations drastically limit the import of vines — plants and cuttings — by subjecting them to very strict health controls.

A family business

Kamila Akhunova’s passion for wine dates back to her teenage years. In 2015, at the age of 20, she decided to leave for Spain, to Barcelona, drawn by its crowded summer beaches and, above all, by the vineyards of the surrounding region. These are spread out less than an hour from the city centre, on hillsides. There, she immersed herself in the study of oenology at the Sant Ignasi Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management, part of Ramon Llull University.

“It was a very enriching experience for me. I discovered a profession that really interested me.” Her mother’s dream was for her to settle permanently abroad. “She wanted me to marry a foreigner and open my own business in another country.” But with her diploma in hand, and feeling nostalgic, she eventually returned to Uzbekistan. Back on her home soil, the young woman had only one goal in mind: to continue this adventure around wine.

It was around this time that her parents decided to look for land away from Tashkent. After travelling around the region, they settled on a wasteland a few kilometres from the Uzbek capital. “We found this place and rented it. Because in Uzbekistan, you cannot buy land; you lease it from the government, for a lease that can run from 15 to 55 years,” she explains. “There was nothing here at the time. No trees, no vines… It was abandoned land,” Kamila Akhunova recalls. The family’s objective was to build their holiday home here, their “dacha”, to rest away from the Uzbek capital.

It was her mother who first decided to plant vines. “As a landscape designer, she loves nature. At first, when she began planting them, it was just for the family. We also exported a little grape to Russia, but just for pleasure.” The year 2019 marked a turning point, when a new law allowed them to expand their land to 21 hectares, Kamila explains. Shortly afterwards, another law stipulated that “if you have a vineyard, regardless of the type of vine, you have the right to make wine.” No licence or documents were needed.

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It was an opportunity the Akhunov family seized. Kamila Akhunova’s father then planted more vines on the property, this time to produce wine and sell it. At first, “it was not professional wine, but rather homemade wine, table wine. It was ‘Rizamat’, made from a local grape. We also had ‘Jupiter’” – a wine made from a seedless muscat-type grape variety popular in domestic vineyards. Building on this momentum, the family business continued to develop, launching event organization and tastings for tourists alongside the vineyards.

A climate suited to vines

Then, very quickly, the Akhunov family decided to professionalize its activity. In 2020, they invested in highly sophisticated equipment from Italy. To train on these new machines, they brought in an expert for six months. “We found a professional oenologist in New Zealand, the director of a large vineyard there, who had a lot of experience in the field. She was Ukrainian, so she spoke Russian. It was perfect for us. She came here and lived with us. She was our teacher: she taught us everything.” After she left, other specialists, including some from France, took over to share their experience. It was also that year that Kamila’s family decided to create its own company.

If they chose to invest in vines, it is because in this Central Asian country, the climate is favourable to grape production. With more than 200 days of sunshine per year, Uzbek wines are distinguished by the intensity of their flavour. “It is very hot in summer and very cold in winter, but our temperatures are not too low. It is therefore an ideal climate for vines. Grapes like heat,” Kamila Akhunova says.

Cabernet Sauvignon, Jupiter, Pinot Noir, Bayanshiri, Riesling… Their production remains diverse. As for their vines, they are spread over two plots of land. One is near their property, the other in Parkent, a town about 30 kilometres from Tashkent. There, the vines cling to the mountainside. “What is very different in Parkent is the soil: the earth is black and rich, with many minerals. There is also a difference in temperature: it reaches a maximum of 28 degrees in summer, whereas here, in the plain, it gets very hot in summer.”

“Reviving the culture of the vine”

In this Muslim-majority country, viticulture nevertheless occupies an important place. Currently the leading wine producer in Central Asia, its earliest traces date back to Antiquity. “Uzbekistan is one of the countries that has preserved an indigenous grape variety — a vine variety originating from a specific region, where it has adapted over the centuries. Vines have been present there for a very long time. This dates back to the sixth century BC. There is therefore a long history between this country and wine. One could say it is a true heritage,” explains Benoist Simmat, a specialist in the history and economy of wine and author of the book The Incredible History of Wine.

Yet through the vicissitudes of history, this tradition experienced turbulent periods. In the nineteenth century, at the beginning of the Tsarist period, viticulture developed at an industrial level in the country. Dmitry Filatov, a Russian merchant, founded the country’s first winery in Samarkand in 1868, and trade developed around it. Factories multiplied, but this upturn was slowed by the advent of the Soviet Union.

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Measures were then taken to combat alcohol consumption among the population. In the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, launched an awareness campaign. This was accompanied by the destruction of many vineyards across the Soviet republics, including in Uzbekistan. It was not until the fall of the communist bloc and the country’s independence in 1991 that they began to be revived. “They were replanted after the country’s independence. The objective was to revive the culture of the vine,” Kamila Akhunova explains.

Yet the economic isolation promoted by former president Islam Karimov placed another brake on wine production. In 2016, the arrival in power of Shavkat Mirziyoyev marked a turning point, triggering the modernization of viticulture. He introduced measures encouraging the growth of this culture, such as increasing vineyard areas, rational land use and the promotion of wine tourism.

However, the import of vine plants remains restricted in the country. “They are afraid of phylloxera. It is an insect that eats vines, especially their roots,” Kamila Akhunova explains. “And because it would also attack cotton, which is one of our main crops, the import of vine plants is very limited. During the Soviet Union, it was completely prohibited.”

The first wine festival in Uzbekistan

Alongside wine production, the Akhunov family wanted to diversify. Tastings, cellar visits and estate tours… Many events are organized throughout the year on the property. “We do all kinds of events: weddings, conferences, photo shoots, Uzbek film shoots. Sometimes even Uzbek stars come here!” Kamila Akhunova exclaims. Navruz, Halloween, Victory Day, Christmas… major holidays are also celebrated on the estate.

The family is also behind the Tashkent Wine Festival. It has now been held every year on their land for six years. “We were the first to create this kind of festival in Uzbekistan. At first, we only had 200 people,” the young woman says proudly. Last September, they gathered nearly 1,000 people on the lawns of their property. Crowded among the vines and bunches of grapes were politicians, doctors, business leaders and ordinary tourists, each strolling around with a glass of wine in hand.

Among this year’s participants, Irina, a psychologist working in the capital, came specifically to discover the vineyard and enjoy the tasting. “It is a very good way to discover the different wines they produce here,” she explains. “I did not know that wine was produced in Uzbekistan. Some friends told me to come. It is a good discovery.” A little further away, a group of Russians working in Tashkent sing songs while tasting the precious beverage. What they appreciate is “the slightly sweet taste”. Their preference is for “Jupiter”.

“For us, this festival is a huge showcase for our products,” Kamila stresses. Over the years, the Akhunovs have managed to develop partnerships with companies, but also with the embassies present in the capital, such as the French embassy in Tashkent. “We were present at the 14 July ceremony. We also had people taste our wine during the Independence Day celebration at the American embassy.”

A “micro-market” seeking expansion

Today, the objective of the young woman and her family is to continue “developing wine culture in Uzbekistan and its export”. “We focus on quality, not quantity,” she explains. “We produce 200,000 bottles per year; that is not much. We do not want to increase production, because we want to control it. The large factories in Uzbekistan produce much more, but the quality is not exceptional. They sell bottles for 85 euro cents for export to China or Russia, whereas our prices range from 12 to 50 euros.”

Read also on Novastan : Au Kazakhstan, découverte des vignes des routes de la soie

“Wine exports and production in Uzbekistan remain fairly low. There are micro-markets: a local micro-market, a Russian micro-market which also includes the countries of Central Asia, and a tourism micro-market. Does that make it a market in its own right? Currently, no. Especially since globally, there is overproduction, particularly of red wine,” says specialist Benoist Simmat.

Yet year after year, wine production continues to increase in the country. In January 2024, Uzbekistan’s large wine companies produced 708,400 litres of grape wine — an increase of 26.4% compared with the same period in 2023, according to official figures from the National Statistics Committee.

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For now, the Akhunov family has only a few partnerships with Uzbek restaurants in Russia, Kazakhstan and Malaysia. “It is not a large quantity in terms of exports. They just buy a few boxes for their restaurants,” Kamila Akhunova explains. As for France, their bottles are displayed at the wine museum in Bordeaux, where a special section is dedicated to Uzbekistan. They are currently in discussions to supply an Uzbek restaurant in Lyon and would like to develop partnerships with Uzbek restaurants in Paris.

In this desire for international recognition, reforms aim to position Uzbekistan as a major player in the international wine market. Initiated in August 2023, one of them aims to establish a system of agro-industrial wine clusters. At the same time, the state has committed to strengthening financial support in this sector.

“Our objective is to take our country to a higher level in terms of production and export,” Kamila emphasizes. “Now that our quest to rebuild a collection of grape varieties in Uzbekistan is complete, this is our new mission.”

Louise Simondet,
Correspondent in Uzbekistan for Novastan

Translated by Mathieu Lemoine

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The post In Uzbekistan, one family wants to support the revival of wine production appeared first on Novastan English.

Two young figures can be seen in the courtyard of the Kalon Mosque in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. This mosque, with its striking blue dome, was built in the early 16th century on the site of the old mosque destroyed by the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993, this place of worship was decommissioned and converted into a warehouse during the Soviet era.

Credits :  Daria Novikova (Uzbekistan, @dasha.novasha)

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In Uzbekistan, the historic Timurid squares welcome back familiar silhouettes in the spring sky. Pushing their carts, to which a multitude of kites are tied, the kite sellers return, drawn by the fine weather. For a few sums, they will sell enough to make beautiful childhood memories.

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In the heart of the Chorsu Bazaar, located in the centre of Tashkent’s old town, passers-by can enjoy watermelons. Produced in abundance in Uzbekistan, the watermelon ranks among the country’s most popular fruits, alongside the melon. The quintessential summer fruit, we’ll have to wait a little longer before we can cool off with the refreshing taste of watermelon.

Credits : Daria Novikova (Uzbekistan, @dasha.novasha)

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