1. The terms ‘host’ and ‘kin’ states refer to the polities where a community currently reside and where the majority of co-ethnic live respectively. This does not imply any policy stance (assuming a kin state would inevitably act to support co-ethnics abroad), but simply reflects a state of affairs.

2. T. Kuzio, ‘The myth of the civic state: a critical survey of Hans Kohn's framework for understanding nationalism’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol 25, No1, 2002, pp 20–39. T. Kuzio, ‘Nationalising states’ or nation building: a review of the theoretical literature and empirical evidence', Nations and Nationalism, Vol 7, No 2, 2001, pp 135–154.

3. See, for example R. Brubaker, ‘National minorities, nationalizing states and external homelands in the New Europe’, Daedalus, Vol 124, No 2, 1995, pp 107–32; R. Brubaker, ‘Nationhood and the national question in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Eurasia: an institutionalist account’, Theory and Society, Vol 23, No 1, 1994, pp 47–78.

4. According to the 1989 Soviet census the number of people residing outside the borders of their alleged homeland (internal or external to the Soviet Union) amounted to a stunning 71,191,055 (Vestnik Statistiki, 1990–1991).

5. P. Kolstø, ‘Territorialising diasporas. the case of the Russians in the former Soviet Republics’, Millennium Journal of International Studies, Vol 28, No 3, 1999, pp 607–631.

6. D. A. Lake and D. Rothchild, ‘Ethnic nationalism, conflict, and war containing fear: the origins and management of ethnic conflict’, International Security, Vol 21, No 2, 1996, pp 41–75; D. Carment and P. James, ‘Two-level games and third-party intervention: evidence from ethnic conflict in the Balkans and South Asia’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol 29, No 3, 1996, pp 521–554; A. Heraclides, ‘Secessionist minorities and external involvement’, International Organization, Vol 44, No 3, 1990, pp 341–378; D. R. Davis and W. H. Moore, ‘Ethnicity matters: transnational ethnic alliances and foreign policy behavior’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol 41, No 1, 1997, pp 171–184; S. J. Kaufman, ‘Ethnic nationalism, conflict, and war spiraling to ethnic war: elites, masses, and Moscow in Moldova's Civil War’, International Security, Vol 21, No 2, 1996, pp 108–138; R. Cetinyan, ‘Ethnic bargaining in the shadow of third-party intervention’, International Organization, Vol 56, No 3, 2002, pp 645–677; S. M. Saideman, ‘Explaining the international relations of secessionist conflicts: vulnerability versus ethnic ties’, International Organization, Vol 51, No 4, 1997, pp 721–753; S. M. Saideman, ‘The power of the small: the impact of ethnic minorities on foreign policy’, SAIS Review, Vol 22, No 2, 2002, pp 93–105.

7. V. P. Gagnon, ‘Ethnic nationalism and international conflict: the case of Serbia’, International Security, Vol 19, No 3, 1994/95, pp 130–166.

8. The Trianon Treaty left two thirds of Hungarians and previously Hungarian lands cut off from Hungary. C. Chiva, ‘Ethnic minority rights in Central and Eastern Europe: the case of the Hungarian “Status Law”’, Government and Opposition, Vol 41, No 3, 1996, pp 401–421.

9. S. N. Cummings, ‘The Kazakhs: demographics, diasporas, and “return”’, in C. King and N. J. Melvin, eds, Nations Abroad: Diaspora Politics and International Relations in the Former Soviet Union (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), pp 133–152.

10. A. Diener, ‘Kazakhstan's kin-state diaspora: settlement planning and the Oralman dilemma’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol 57, No 2, 2005, pp 327–348.

11. K. Cordell and S. Wolff, eds, Germany's Foreign Policy towards Poland and the Czech Republic: Ostpolitik Revisited (London: Routledge, 2005); S. Wolff, Coming Home to Germany? (New York: Berghahn, 2002); S. Wolff, German Minorities in Europe (New York: Berghahn, 2000).

12. N. J Melvin, Russians beyand Russia: The Politics of National Identity (London: RIIA, 1995).

13. J. Chinn and R. Kaiser, Russians as the New Minority (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1996); P. Kolstø, ‘The new Russian Diaspora. An identity of its own? Possible identity trajectories for Russians in the former Soviet Republics’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol 19, No 3, 1996, pp 609–639; D. D. Laitin, Identity in Formation. The Russian-speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Melvin, Russians beyond Russia, op cit, Ref 12; N.J. Melvin, ‘The Russians: Diaspora and the end of Empire’, in C. King and N.J. Melvin, eds, Nations Abroad. Diaspora Politics and International Relations in the Former Soviet Union (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), pp 27–57; G. Smith, ‘The Russian Diaspora: identity, citizenship and homeland’, in M. Bradshaw, ed., Geography and Transition in the Post-Soviet Republics (Chichester: Wiley, 1997), pp 73–88; I. Zevelev, Russia and Its New Diasporas (Washington, DC: USIP Press, 2001).

14. External diasporas included, for example, Uzbeks living in Turkey or Saudi Arabia, Ukrainians in Canada, and so forth.

15. A. Bohr, Uzbekistan: Politics & Foreign Policy (London: RIIA, 1998). D. S. Carlisle, ‘Geopolitics and ethnic problems of Uzbekistan and its neighbours’, in Y. Ro'I, ed., Muslim Eurasia. Conflicting Legacies (Newbury Park, CA: Frank Cass, 1995), pp 71–103; M. B. Olcott, ‘Central Asia's catapult to independence’, Foreign Affairs, Vol 71, No 3, 1992, pp 1108–1130; M. B. Olcott, ‘Nation-building and ethnicity in the foreign policies of the new Central Asian states’, in R. Szporluk, ed., National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994); B. Rumer and E. Rumer, ‘The next Yugoslavia?’, World Monitor, No 37, November 1992; A. Tabyshalieva, The Challenge of Regional Co-operation in Central Asia. Preventing Ethnic Conflict in the Ferghana Valley (Washington, D.C.: USIP Press, 1999); N. Lubin and B. R. Rubin, Calming the Ferghana Valley. Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia (Washington, D.C.: Twentieth Century Fund, 1999).

16. S. Horsman, ‘Uzbekistan's involvement in the Tajik Civil War 1992–1997: domestic considerations’, Central Asian Survey, Vol 18, No 1, 1999, pp 37–48.

17. V. V. Naumkin, Radical Islam in Central Asia. Between Pen and Rifle (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). Since summer 1999 (when militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan organised incursions from Tajikistan through Kyrgyzstani territory into Uzbekistan) this type of operation has intensified. Also, until very recently it was not infrequent for Uzbek troops to spill over into Kyrgyz territory to arrest elements allegedly belonging to the Uzbek opposition.

18. Olcott, op cit, Ref 15; Carlisle, op cit, Ref 15; Rumer and Rumer, op cit, Ref 15.

19. Lubin and Rubin, op cit, Ref 15; A. Khamidov, ‘Osh anniversary events—a source of discontent in Kyrgyzstan’, Eurasianet, 19 October, 2000.

20. Nick Megoran was one of the rare observers in counter-tendency at the time. In his brief appropriately titled essay Megoran notes how emphasis on the conflict potential of the region—parallel to a downplaying of positive developments—risks turning into a self-fulling prophecy (N. Megoran, ‘Calming the Ferghana Valley experts’, Central Asian Monitor, 5, 2000, pp 20–25).

21. Here I am not suggesting that nations should be conceived as cohesive and bounded entities. I do subscribe to the constructivist view that identity is constantly produced, contested and reproduced, and that every community is home to different stances as to what being Uzbek (in this case) means.

22. Naselenie Respubliki Tadzhikistan 2000 (Dushanbe: Gosudarstvennyi Komitet Po Statistike Respubliki Tadzhikistan, 2002).

23. J. Schoeberlein, ‘The prospects for Uzbek national identity’, Central Asia Monitor, No 2, 1996, pp 12–20.

24. Ibid, p 14; A. Ilkhamov, ‘Arkheologiia Uzbekskoi identichnosti’, in A. Ilkhamov, ed., Etnicheskii Atlas Uzbekistana (Tashkent: Open Society Institute, 2003), pp 268–311, p 270).

25. A. Ilkhamov, ‘Archaeology of Uzbek identity’, Central Asian Survey, Vol 23, No 3–4, p 270.

26. On Sarts and their eradication, see J. Schoeberlein-Engel, ‘Identity in Central Asia: construction and contention in the conceptions of “Őzbek”, “Tâjik”, “Muslim”, “Samarqandi” and other groups’, Unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1994.

27. Ulus refers to the allotment of territory in which Cingghis Khan's empire was divided following his death.

28. F. Hirsch, Empire of Nations. Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp 317–318.

29. I am not suggesting here that at any stage national consciousness can be considered ‘formed’. This is not a discrete phenomenon but rather a dynamic process, and a highly heterogeneous one. Laura Adams's study of regional variations in the way Uzbekness is represented in national theatres well illustrates this point.

30. J. Critchlow, Nationalism in Uzbekistan: A Soviet Republic's Road to Sovereignty (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1991).

31. L. L. Adams, ‘Celebrating independence: arts, institutions, and identity in Uzbekistan’, (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 1999); L. L. Adams, ‘Invention, institutionalization and renewal in Uzbekistan's national culture’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol 2, No 3, 1999, pp 355–373.

32. For an excellent analysis of the complexities of local and national identities in Uzbekistan, particularly in Samarqand, see Schoeberlein, op cit, Ref. 23

33. Akiner identifies three main clusters that led to the formation of the Uzbek community in today's Tajikistan, depending on which of the various influxes of Turkic tribes they descend from: the first, now located in the southwest and fully sedentarised, the second, until recently semi-nomadic and settled in the centre-west, and the third and largest, particularly in the north (S. Akiner, Tajikistan. Disintegration or Reconciliation? (London: RIIA, 2001), p 9).

34. Fieldwork was conducted over a number of visits to the country in 2002, 2003 and 2006. Research was primarily concentrated in the capital city Tashkent and in Samarqand. Case selection is due to two factors: the capital has received special attention in the state-building process and its residents have been particularly exposed to the state rhetoric and practice of constructing a new state after independence. Samarqand has played a less central role in the state-building process and its multinational composition provides a particularly interesting vantage point from where to analyse the same process. For practical reasons it was decided that the sample would be purposive. The wide range of the responses given indicates that even such a sample well illustrates variation in the informants' responses. A total of seven focus groups (29 participants) were conducted alongside thirty individual semi-structured interviews.

35. There are typical comments that arose during the interviews and focus groups held in Uzbekistan.

36. One should report the fact that local Uzbeks emphasise how poorly informed they were on the fate of Uzbeks abroad and more generally on debates about ethnicity and nationality. Scarce information derives from a lack of public debate on the subject (in Uzbekistan's strictly controlled media) which in turn is a product of the sensitivity of the issue.

37. ‘Uzbekistan is a country with a great future’.

38. I. A. Karimov, Uzbekistan: natsional ‘naya nezavisimost', ekonomika, ideologiya, Tom I (Tashkent: Uzbekiston, 1996) cited in A. March, ‘The use and abuse of history: “national ideology” as transcendental object in Islam Karimov's “ideology of national independence”’, Central Asian Survey, Vol 21, No 4, 2002, p 372.

39. I. A. Karimov, Uzbekistan on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century. Threats to Security, Conditions of Stability and Guarantees for Progress (Tashkent: O'zbekiston, 1997).

40. For such a deterministic view of Uzbekistan as a ‘necessary hegemon’, see K. Alimov, ‘Uzbekistan's foreign policy: in search of a strategy’, in R. Z. Sagdeev and S. Eisenhower, eds, Central Asia: Conflict, Resolution, and Change (Washington, D.C.: Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 1995).

41. A. Djumaev, ‘Nation-building, culture, and problems of ethnocultural identity in Central Asia: the case of Uzbekistan’, in W. Kymlicka and M. Opalski, eds, Can Liberal Pluralism be Exported? Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

42. Ibid.

43. This is not the place for revisiting the causes of the Tajik conflict. This has been done elsewhere.

44. For an example of this kind of views with extreme nationalistic tones mixed with a virulent anti-Uzbek rhetoric see the work of the otherwise well-respected Tajik academic Rakhim Masov (1991 and especially 1995): R. Masov, Istoriya topornogo razdeleniya (Dushanbe: Irfon, 1991); R. Masov, Tadzhiki: Istoriya s Grifom ‘Sovershenno Sekretno’ (Dushanbe: Tsentr’ Izdaniya kul ‘ turnogo Naslediya, 1995).

45. Akiner, op cit, Ref 33.

46. For an analysis of the recent evolution in Russian–Uzbek relations, see M. Fumagalli, ‘Alignments and re-alignments in Central Asia: rationale and implications of Uzbekistan's rapprochement with Russia’, International Political Science Review, Vol 28, No 3, 2007, pp 253–271.

47. Horsman, op cit, Ref 16; Akiner, op cit, Ref 33.

48. For a brief review of border disputes in Central Asia, see Crisis Group, ‘Border disputes and conflict potential’, Asia Report No 33, 4 April 2002. Thorny issues include territorial claims (each country has exclaves located within the other's territory) and controversies over the supply and payment of natural resources (gas and water).

49. For an excellent study of the 1999–2000 Uzbekistan–Kyrgyzstan border conflict, see N. W. Megoran, ‘The borders of eternal friendship? The politics and pain of nationalism and identity along the Uzbekistan–Kyrgyzstan Ferghana Valley boundary 1999–2000’, Unpublished PhD dissertation, Cambridge, 2002.

50. Naumkin, op cit, Ref 17.

51. Crisis Group, ‘Repression and regression in Turkmenistan: a new international strategy’, Asia Report No 85, Osh/Brussels, 4 November 2004.

52. Interview with Arslan Joldashev, June 2003, Tashkent.

53. M. Y. Liu, ‘Recognizing the Khan: authority, space, and political imagination among Uzbek men in post-Soviet Osh, Kyrgyzstan’, Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2002.

54. Ibid, p 2.

55. Interview with Bakhodir Fattakhov, deputy at the national parliament (Bishkek, 14 June 2003).

56. Crisis Group, op cit, Ref 48.

57. D. P. Gorenburg, ‘Not with one voice: an explanation of intragroup variation in nationalist sentiment’, World Politics, Vol 53, No 1, 2000, pp. 115–142.

58. G. Smith, V. Law, A. Wilson, A. Bohr, E. Allworth, Nation Building in the Post Soviet Borderlands: The Politics of National Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).