Stans

Now to signs of life today in Kyrgyzstans second largest city, Osh. After days of ethnic violence, thousands of Uzbeks have left the city, fleeing gangs of armed Kyrgyzs. ❋ Unknown (2010)

One of the "stans"--the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union--four of which are in the top 30 most-corrupt nations. ❋ Unknown (2006)

President Saparmyrat Niyazov has run this central Asian nation--the most corrupt of the "stans"--with an iron fist since he first took over the Turkmen Communist Party in the Soviet era. ❋ Unknown (2006)

Russia has been shorn of all the nations - the Baltic states, Ukraine, the "stans" - that made it an empire. ❋ Unknown (2010)

US control there - and in the Central Asian "stans" - would mean containing Russia and Iran, the dream for American strategists since WWII. ❋ Eric Walberg (2010)

Central Asia, where I traveled as a journalist for Time in the eighties and as a diplomat in the nineties, is made up of various stans, a Persian word that connotes a homeland for a people: Tajikistan for Tajiks, Kazakhstan for the Kazakhs, Turkmenistan for the Turkmens, Uzbekistan for the Uzbeks. ❋ Strobe Talbott (2008)

Uzbekistan is only one of the so-called stans or post-Soviet states in Central Asia. ❋ Unknown (2001)

Bilateral trade between China and Afghanistan is currently just a fraction of trade with other "stans" -- the turnover of $114.9 million in the year through July was 2 percent of Sino-Pakistan trade. ❋ Unknown (2011)

Bilateral trade between China and Afghanistan is currently just a fraction of trade with other "stans" -- the turnover of $114.9 million 75 million pounds in the year through July was 2 percent of Sino-Pakistan trade. ❋ Unknown (2011)

Police usually carry out spot checks on darker-skinned people from the Caucasus or the "stans" — people who often go to Russia as illegal migrant workers. ❋ Unknown (2010)

Another hint: you can't see Russia from any of these countries, but all those "-- stans" I've left filled in are a clue to the other one. ❋ Unknown (2009)

No one knows whether the Central Asian "stans" have enough gas to supply Russia, China, and Turkey, not to mention India and Pakistan. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Besides their own pipeline, Georgia and Azerbaijan offer a fragile strategic conduit between the West and the "stans" of Central Asia -- including Afghanistan -- an area that the Soviets once controlled in toto. ❋ Unknown (2008)

I also suspect the same is true for most people in Europe - maybe because we are rather nearer the "stans", and may have even been there. ❋ Glyn Moody (2008)

The Kremlin has won a bye on Chechnya and has new legitimacy in fighting terrorism in Central Asia-drawing the once wayward "stans" closer to Moscow. ❋ Unknown (2007)

For those who don't know, the countries in Central Asia and the Middle East that are known as the "stans" are so called because stan means "the land of". ❋ Tyson Lemons (2005)