Map of Amu Darya Delta and the lower Aral Sea

Lower Amu Darya River

The photo below shows the dense series of irrigation canals of the delta of the Amu Darya which are visible due to the reflection of sunlight off the surface of the water. The river provides life-giving water to crops on the Amu Darya Delta (dark green). The river originates thousand of kilometers to the southeast in the Pamir Mountains (Tajikistan/Afghanistan)  and flows across the arid Turanian plain and eventually deposits into the Aral Sea, an inland drainage basin. Before entering the Aral it forms a vast delta (see image below). The primary crops produced on the Amu Darya Delta is cotton and rice both water-intensive. The lower Amu Darya irrigated agriculture and relatively dense population. It is an ethnically mixed population being inhabited by Uzbeks, Karakalpaks, Kazakhs and Turkmen.

Photo: A satellite image of part of the Lower Amu Darya (River),

Map of the Mouth of the Amu Darya River 1881

Illustration : 'Bouches de L'Amou - Daria.' Amu Darya River Mouth Jacques Elisee Reclus 1881

Plate from 'Nouvelle Geographie Universelle La Terre et les Hommes VI : L' Asie Russe' by Jacques Elisee Reclus published in Paris by Hachette &; Cie. 1881 of the Khwarezm Oasis in Uzbekistan. Jacques Elisee Reclus was a renowned French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork La Nouvelle Geographie universelle. la terre et les hommes ('Universal Geography'). Over a period of nearly 20 years (1875-1894).

Kunya Urgench

Photo: Kutlug-Timur minaret and Tekesh mausoleum

INTRODUCTION

Just across the border on the left bank of the Amu-Daria River (50 Km SW of Nukus) is found the ancient fascinating city of Kunya-Urgench located in Dashoguz velayat of Turkmenistan.

Nowadays Konye-Urgench as it is known in Turkmen, is a quiet town but in the 12th century at the height of the powerfull Khorezm empire it was one of the most important cities in the Islamic world. The origins of Kunya-Urgench go back to the 6th or 5th centuries founded during the early Achaemenid period. In 712, Kunya-Urgench was invaded by Arabs and renamed Gurgandj. Being at the crossing of trade routes, the town prospered, becoming a major centre from the 10th-14th centuries. It was the capital of Khorezm from the 12th century and the second city after Bukhara in Central Asia.

The city, destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1221 but rebuilt, was described as the finest city of the Turks with fine bazaars and impressive buildings. It was once again ravaged by Timurid troops between 1372 and 1388 and never regained its position.  In the 16th century, the capital was transferred to Khiva, and the city was finally abandoned (the Amu Darya River changed its course at the same time).The city was newly colonised by Turkmen from 1831: however, the new development took place outside the old town, part of which served as a graveyard.

Today the area of the old town still contains a series of monuments dating mainly from the 11th to 16th centuries.  Most of it however is deserted with only the remains of its ancient fortified settlements, including a mosque, the gates of a caravanserai, fortresses, mausoleums and a 63-m high minaret all that is left of a once great city.

IBU BATTUTA

The great Moroccan traveller and Islamic scholar Ibn Battuta in 1333 visited the city when it was still thriving and reported that:

 "After journeying through this desert we have arrived at Khwarizm which is the largest, most beautiful and most important city of the Turks. It has fine bazaars and broad streets, a great number of buildings... the city is in the dominions of the Sultan Uzbek who is represented in it by the great Emir called Qutludumur. It was he who built the college and the dependencies annexed to it. As for the Mosque, it was built by his wife, the pious Khatun Turabak.”

Genghis Khan destroyed the city (along with many others towns in the territory of Khoresm) because of a short-sighted decision by the Khorezmshah, Mohammed II, who ruled from Urgench.

Ibn Battuta relates to the time when Genghis Khan came in 1219.

“It happened that Tankiz (Genghis Khan) sent a party of merchants with the wares of China and al-Katha (northern China) such as silk fabrics etc. to the town of Utrar (a city in todays Khzakhstan on the banks of the Syr Darya river about 100 miles north of Tashkent)....his governor in the town sent a message to him informing him of this event and enquiring of him what action he should take in regard to them. Jalal ad-Din (son of the King Mohammed II) wrote to him commanding him to seize their goods, mutilate them, cut off their limbs, and send them back to their country.......So when he carried out this action Tankiz made ready to set out in person with an army of uncountable numbers to invade the lands of Islam. When the governor of Utrar heard of this advance he sent spies to bring back a report about him and the story goes that one of them went into a mahalla  (an open area in an for large crowds to pray near a neighbourhood mosque) of one of the emirs of Tankiz disguised as a beggar. He found nobody to give him food and set up a position beside one of their men but he neither saw any provisions with him nor did the man give him anything to eat. In the evening the man brought out some dried intestines that he had with him, moistened them with water, opened a vein of his horse, filled the intestines with its blood, tied them up and cooked them on a fire; this was his food. So the spy returned to Utrar, reported on them to the governor and told him that no one had the power to fight against them.........”
            
In 1333 when he visited the city it had already recovered but it was later to once again fall victim to yet another invader, Timur the Great, known as Tamerlane.

The interior dome of the double-domed Turabak Mausoleum

Tamerlane who was not willing to see the  city potentially rival his grand capital of Samarkand, first invaded in 1379 and again in 1388 when he razed it to the ground and in a gesture of finality reminiscent of the Romans’ treatment of Carthage when they ordered the ruins to be covered with salt, ordered that barley be sown over what was left of Urgench.


UNESCO LISTING

In 2005 Konye-Urgench was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. In giving the city world heritage status they noted that "The tradition of architecture expressed in the design and craftsmanship of Kunya-Urgench has been influential in the wider region to the south and south-west (Iran and Afghanistan) and later in the architecture of the Mughal Empire (16th-century India)".

ARAL SEA SUMMER OF 2014

The The Summer 2014 has sadly marked yet another milestone for the Aral Sea that has been shrinking markedly since the 1960s. For the first time in modern history, the eastern basin of the South Aral Sea has now completely dried. The ast time it dried out was 600 years ago in a  desiccation associated with diversion of Amu Darya to the Caspian Sea in Medieval times.

This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite shows the sea without its eastern lobe on August 19, 2014.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the government of the former Soviet Union began large scale diversion of  the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya—the region's two major rivers—to irrigate farmland. The diversion began the lake's gradual retreat. By the start of the Terra series in 2000, the lake had already separated into the North (Small) Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and the South (Large) Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. The South Aral had further split into western and eastern lobes. The eastern lobe of the South Aral nearly dried in 2009 and then saw a huge rebound in 2010. Water levels continued to fluctuate annually in alternately dry and wet years.

The desiccation in 2014 has occurred as there has been less rain and snow in the Parmir and so less water released into the watershed as well as continued high irrigation withdrawals.

Source:http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=84437&src=share

IBRD to assist Uzbekistan strengthen Water Resource Management in South Karakalpakstan

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (part of the World Bank) will allocate a loan worth $260.72 million to improve water resource management in South Karakalpakstan.

The loan used to fund a project to rehabilitate existing irrigation networks and improve water management practices to make them sustainable and financially effective. In addition its aims to eliminate the current dependence of farmers in South Karakalpakstan on energy-inefficient pumping by developing a gravity off-take from the Tuyamuyun reservoir and dismantling pumping stations.

The aim is to improve water resources management and irrigation management in South Karakalpakstan by making it more effective and thus increase the areas areas agricultural productivity and ability to resist the effects of climate change. Further to strengthen existing institutions and capacities, and improve performance of public irrigation and drainage service delivery and the promoting crop diversification away from cotton and towards higher value crops.

The South Karakalpakstan Water Resource Management Improvement Project area is located less than 100 km from the city of Nukus in the north, the capital of Karakalpakstan, and about 20 km from the city of Urgench in the west, the capital of Khorezm Oblast. Almost the entire drainage system of the South Karakalpakstan Right Bank system has been already been successfully rehabilitated at a cost to date of some US$ 60 million equivalent.
The newly constructed main drain and the rehabilitated on-farm and inter-farm drainage system are to be improved.

The project should save some 10 million cubic meters of water resources annually (reducing the cost of mechanical watering savings $2.39 million a year) by eliminating farmers need to use energy intensive pumps to lift water from the Amu Darya River. 

Aral Sea and the Amu Darya River

The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth largest inland water body with a surface of 67,300 square kilometers. It supported a lucrative muskrat pelt industry and thriving fishery, providing 40,000 jobs and supplying the Soviet Union with a sixth of its fish catch.

The Aral Sea is fed by two of Central Asia's greatest rivers, the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the north. The former is the longest river in the region, snaking through 2,414 kilometers of steppe.

In the 1950s and 60s, the  Soviet Union built an enormous irrigation network, including 20,000 Km. of canals, 45 dams, and more than 80 reservoirs, all to irrigate sprawling fields of cotton and wheat in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Many of the canals were poorly built, allowing water to leak or evaporate. From the Qaraqum Canal in Turkmenistan, the largest in Central Asia, it is said that up to 75% of the water went to waste.

Of the 47,750 km of interfarm irrigation channels in the basin, only 28% have antifiltration linings. Only 77% of farm intakes have flow gauges, and of the 268,500 km of onfarm channels, only 21% have antifiltration linings, which retain on average 15% more water than unlined channels.

The Amu Darya had lost so much of its flow that it no longer reached the Aral Sea. Today, it ends around about 110 kilometers away.

Photo: Corbis

Pictured above is the Amu Darya a little ways upstream from where it now ends. Deprived of a major source of its water, the inland sea shrank rapidly. In just a few decades, the Aral Sea has been  significantly reduced in size. It is now a series of smaller water bodies, with a combined volume one-tenth its original and much higher salinity due to all the evaporation.

The future of the Aral Sea, and the responsibility for its survival are now in the hands of the five countries: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. In 1994, they adopted the Aral Sea Basin Program.

The Program’s four objectives are:
- To stabilise the environment of the Aral Sea Basin
- To rehabilitate the disaster area around the sea
- To improve the management of the international waters of the Aral Sea Basin
- To build the capacity of institutions at the regional and national level to advance the program’s aims

Source: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/photos/rivers-run-dry/#/freshwater-rivers-amu-darya-1_45139_600x450.jpg

Salt Issues on Farmland in the northern amu darya delta

A salt encrusted field near Kungrad.

Salt coats much of the farmland in the northern  Amu Darya river delta lands. Excessive irrigation combined with existing climatic and geographic factors have caused salt to leach upwards and accumulate above the ground.

A history of the Amu Darya

The Amu Darya (Amu river) is 2,580 km long and drains some 466,200 sq km of land. It is formed by the junction of the Vakhsh and Pandj rivers, which rise in the Pamir mountains of Central Asia.

It flows generally northwest, marking much of the northern border of Afghanistan with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan before flowing through the Kara Kum desert of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and entering into channels that flow into the Aral Sea basin (not the sea itself) through a large fertile delta.  It flows swiftly until it reaches the Kara Kum where its course braids into several channels. The Amu Darya provides much needed water for irrigation, but this heavy draw on its water particularly in the last 50 years (as irrigated lands have expanded) has prevented the Amu Darya from replenishing the Aral Sea. The Kara Kum Canal c.800 km long carries water from the Amu Darya near Kelif across Southern Turkmenistan to Ashgabat and supplements the flow of the Tejen and Murgab rivers. The Amu Darya is paralleled by the Trans-Caspian Rail Road, which lessened the river's importance as a transport route.

The Amu Darya in ancient times was known in Greek and Latin as the Oxus and in Arabic as the Jayhunand. It figured importantly in the history of Persia, Sogd and Bactria and in the campaigns of Alexander the Great and was long regarded historically as the southern boundary of Transoxiana.

The Amu Darya rises in a number of turbulent headwaters; the Panj whose tributaries include the Vaksab, the Pamir Darya, the upper Morgab, and the Kulab Darya which is the source of the river. In the 9th/15th century the upper course of the river was thought to be the Vaksab, though today it is considered to be the Morgab.

The headwaters have been explored only since the 19th century, and the details provided secondhand by the 4th/10th-century Arab geographers do not accord with what is now known. Estakri named six streams, of which only the Vaksab is readily identifiable; others count the “river of Kundoz” (Dergam, Aq Saray) among the headwaters. The last stream to join the river (on the right), 1,175 km from its mouth, is the Sorkan Darya; several other rivers end in the desert before reaching the Amu Darya.

North of Balk the river enters the desert and flows on without tributaries, losing much water through evaporation. The Qara Qum lies on the left bank, to the southwest; and the Qızıl Qum stretches to the northeast, from the right bank.

The Amu Darya then flows in a northwesterly direction towards the Aral Sea; the river-mouth widenin near modern city of Nukus. The Khanates of Khiva and Bukhara lay along the lower course of the river to the 19th and early 20th centuries; in the south, the Amu Darya marked the Russo-Afghan frontier since the treaties of 1886-93, from Basaga in the west 1,100 km to Qaḷʿa-ye Panj in the east. Parts of the lower course of the river today serve as a boundary between Turkmenistan and Uzbekekistan.

The middle reaches of the Amu Darya are 3,570-5,700 m in width and from 1.5-8 m in depth, and are often in spate from April or May to July. The land along its banks, particularly the left bank has been periodically cultivated since the medieval period.

The mountainous upper reaches sometimes freeze over in winter, as do the delta and the lower course from the end of December to the end of March, to a depth of 30 cm on average.

Beyond the town of Kalef, the Amu Darya has changed its course over the centuries.

According to Ptolemy (in the 2nd century A.D.) and Biruni, the river flowed in a westerly direction from modern Kark/Kerki, not northwesterly as at present, and evaporated in the Qara Qum desert.

An ancient river bed can be detected, and still today the Amu Darya occasionally betrays a tendency to break its banks here and spill out to the left. But geological research has shown that the 350 m narrows near the modern town of Pitnyak are so old that the river cannot possibly have shifted its course there since the beginning of the known historical period.

Medieval irrigation canals, beginning just beyond the narrows, were built in the Khorezm region; canals still branch out in various directions, as far as the Soltan Uiz (Oways) Dag, and the rich agriculture of the region depends upon them.

Here, too, are located Janbas Qala, Toprak Qala, and the other pre-Islamic fortresses that were excavated by S. P. Tolstov starting in 1936.

In the 19th century it was suggested that the Amu Darya had flowed through the Ozboy into the Caspian Sea at the time of the Mongol conquest of Gorganj in 618/1221, and had turned back towards Lake Aral only about 1575.

W. Barthold tried to substantiate this thesis with historical evidence, but was disproved by Soviet geologists, who have shown that the Ozboy could never have been the lower reach of the Amu Darya, if only because of their relative size. Other evidence, including traces of the agricultural exploitation of the Ozboy bed in the medieval period, also contradicts Barthold’s view.

But still today the Amu Darya, particularly when in spate, sometimes extends a lateral channel (daryalıq) into the depression of Sarı Qamıs. The historical proofs adduced, themselves subject to varying interpretation, are not sufficient to outweigh the geological facts, yet certain zoological parallels between the Amu Darya and the Ozboy point to a connection between the two river systems, so the “Ozboy problem” is still being argued out amongst scientists.

Arab geographers refered to changes in the lower courses of the river near the Aral Sea; because of the silting up of river beds, the medieval Khwarazmian capital, Kat, was deserted, and the town of Gorganj was abandoned several times. These changes explain the rise of Khiva as the regional capital and the shifting dimensions of the delta (in Turkish Aral) that gives the sea its name.

In the 19th century the Russians settlers started to enlarge the use of the Amu Darya waters for large scale irrigation (for agricultural use) starting the process that has today resulted in the significant lowering of the level of the Aral.

Bibliography :

General: W. Barthold in EI1 I, pp. 339-42.A. Z. V. Toğan in İA I, pp. 419-26. Le Strange, Lands, pp. 433-45. Barthold, Turkestan3, pp. 64-179. B. Spuler, “Der Āmū Darjā. Eine Fluss-Monographie,” in Jean Deny Armağani, Ankara, 1958, pp. 231-48 (with more detailed bibliography). Idem in EI2 I, pp. 454-57. Bol’shaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya II, 1950, pp. 304-06 (with a map of the river). The upper reach: J. Markwart, Wehrōt und Arang, ed. H. H. Schaeder, Leiden, 1938. J. Wood, A Journey to the Source of the River Oxus, 2nd ed., London, 1872 (with a historical and geographical introduction by H. Yule). I. P. Minaev, Svedeniya o stranakh po verkhov’yam Amu Dar’yi, St. Petersburg, 1879. The Özboy problem: M. J. de Goeje, Das alte Bett des Oxus, Leiden, 1875. W. Barthold, Nachrichten über den Aralsee und den unteren Lauf des Amudarja, Leipzig, 1910. V. Lochtin, Reka Amu-Dar’ya i eyo drevnee soedinenie s Kaspiĭskim Morem, St. Petersburg, 1879. D. D. Bukinich, Starye rusla Oksa i Amu-dar’inskaya problema, Moscow, 1906. S. P. Tolstov, “Arkheologo-etnograficheskaya ekspeditsiya v Khorezm 1955/56 gg.,” Sovetskaya Arkheologiya, 1954-55, pp. 106-33 (also deals with the former course of the Oxus and Jaxartes). Geographical and geological information: Zapiski Imperatorskago Russkago Geograficheskago Obshchestva po obshcheĭ geografii IV, IX and XVII, XIV, XX, XXIII, St. Petersburg, 1877-81. L. A. Molchanov, “Proizkhozhdenie presnovodnykh ozyor Uzboya,” Izvestiya Gosudarstvennogo Gidrologicheskogo Instituta 13, 1929, pp. 43-57. A. S. Kes’, “Ruslo Uzboya i ego genezis,” Trudy Instituta Geografii Akademii Nauk SSSR 30, 1939. S. P. Tolstov, A. S. Kes’ and T. A. Zhdanko, “Istoriya srednevekovogo sarykamyshskogo ozera,” in Voprosy geomorfologii i paleografii Azii, Moscow, 1955, pp. 37-75.

Threats to the Aral Basin

Irrigation/Drainage canals in the delta

Alongside the Amu Darya are a dense series of irrigation and drainage ditches which are visible in the adjacent photo, The waterways clearly visible due to the reflection of sunlight off the surface of the water. The Amu Darya flows to the northwest from the bottom left hand corner of this photograph to the top providing life-giving water to crops on the Amu Darya Delta (in dark green). It originates many hundreds of kilometers to the southeast in the more temperate Pamir Mountains, flowing across the arid Turanian plain to eventually run into drainage channels that flow eventually into the Aral Seas.

The Amu Darya before entering the Aral Sea forms a vast delta, which dominates these images.

Water is utilized intensively in the delta to irrigate cotton and other crops such as rice. The delta continue to lose arable land to soil salinisation as a result of rising groundwater levels that accompany the intensive crop irrigation.

Further as a consequence of the diversion of vast quantities of freshwater from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers for irrigation the water volume of the Aral Sea has dropped by more than 90% in the last 50 years.

Aral Basin

The Amu Darya and Syr Darya combined flow is equal the Nile and accounts for some 90 percent of water use in Central Asia. Long-term average flow is the Amu Darya is 79 cubic km / year and 37 cubic km / year in the Syr Darya.

Water flowing in the two rivers comes almost entirely from glaciers in the Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan, which, standing above the surrounding arid plain, collect atmospheric moisture which otherwise would probably have escaped somewhere else. Without its mountain water sources, the rivers would contain little water because it rarely rains in the lowlands that characterize most of the river.

Whilst water inputs (general precipitation and glacial meltwater) come from near the river's source in the mountains of Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It is the countries downstream Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan that most depend on its regular spring and summer water discharges for their agriculture.

Continued Dam Construction - A Looming Problem

Over the last few years, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have increasingly hoarded water in their alpine reservoirs to generate electricity in the winter.

Tajikistan

In Tajikistan the Nurek Dam an icon of 1960s Soviet infrastructure ingenuity is at over 300 m the tallest Dam in the world. It located not far from Dushambe the capital of Tajikistan fuels nine hydroelectric turbines producing 3.0 gigwatts, or 40% of Central Asia’s power needs and 98% of Tajikistan’s.

Just up-river from Nurek is another dam project, Rogun, that has been in the works – and then stalled due to major geological problems *1 and then the collapse of the Soviet Union and then the Civil War - for over 30 years.

Rogun Dam Site

Despite widespread opposition by its neighbours the Tajik Government has started raising 1.4 billion dollars from Tajik citizens* 2 to complete the dam. It is however estimated that for the project to be delivered in full they would need to spend something like double that amount. As Tajikistan’s whole GDP is less than 2 billion a year the project will likely require significant overseas funding if it is ever to be completed.

Notes:

1. Soviet Geologists worried that the base of the dam is very fragile and water seepage undermining the base was a very real possibility, some believed that even a small earthquake could cause a catasrophe. Should any accidents occur during or after the construction of the Rogun dam, it could flood large areas of arable land as far afield as Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

2. The Tajik government has been seeking to collect funds for the construction of Rogun through the issue of stock (shares) and has made it mandatory for citizens and businesses to purchase them. The stock price ranges 100, 500, 1000 and 5000 somoni ($23 to $1,150) (www.centrasia.ru, December 24, 2009). Citizens who buy shares also will be allowed to turn any funds they have generated outside of the official system (ie. money from the black economy) into legal income.

Nurek Dam








Recently the Uzbek Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev sent a letter to his Tajik counterpart warning Dushanbe of potential damage by the Roghun power plant to Central Asia's "frail environmental balance. He called on Tajikistan to conduct a thorough review of the Soviet-era project, designed "some 40 years ago” based on "outdated” technical expertise. He pointed out that Tajikistan has to examine the possible impact of the Rogun plant on Amudarya water volumes, "as the very survival of millions of people” depends on it. Further he mentioned that the Rogun power plant is located in an area with a track record of "several major earthquakes of up to magnitude 10.0.”

Kyrgyzstan

In Kyrgystan another Soviet era dinosaur is also being restarted. The former Kyrgiz Government  pushed ahead with the Kambarata Dams and hydropower stations projects (I & II) on the Naryn River. Again this dam site is located in a seismic area and is also being developed without proper planning or consideration for the rights of the downstream countries. As it now stands with the country now almost totally broke revealed after the recent turmoil, it has only 16 million Euro in its treasury, so  like Tajikistan it will not be able to complete the construction of the planned dams without external financial and technological support. Given this Kyrgyzstan would be financially much better off using its ample coal resources for their energy needs.

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan the US government also has plans to build more dams within the Amu darya catchment. The fertile plains of the Amu Darya basin, account for about 40% of mountainous Afghanistan’s irrigated lands. Whilst it is reasonable for the existing infrastructure to be upgraded, new irrigation projects are not needed. One major driver is that the far north of Afghanistan is one of the very few safe areas that the U.S aid agencies can operate. Further such Irrigation projects as they can generate income and be able to service US loans which of course are tied to providing work for US agribusiness and construction companies. Sadly the cost to others downstream is unlikley to be considered after all in truth the US has little real interest in Central Asia.

New Afghan Dam in the Amu Darya catchment area

Conclusion

The three countries affected downstream are understandably very worried about these new dam projects that will further disrupt the water flow and increase evaporation and therefore considerably effect an already fragile agriculture cycle in the lower aral basin. The loss of vast quantities of water to evapouration and the retention of water for hydroelectricity generation is of particularly concern to Uzbekistan whose western areas (particularly those of Khoresm and Karakalpakstan) and also that of Turkmenistan whose northern areas, are already very water stressed.

They fear that these dams will not only curb water flows down a waterway on which their agriculture largely depends, but that they will only release water in winter, when the there is the greatest need to generate electricity, rather than storing it for the warmer seasons when they need to irrigate their fields.

Central Asia is already facing environmental problems in the aftermath of the Aral "catastrophe.” The inland sea has almost dried up over the past four decades after the Amudarya and other rivers that fed the sea were diverted by Soviet era irrigation projects, by building more dams in the catchment will cause even more problems to millions of people downstream.

The current position of Uzbekistan is that these hydroelectric schemes should not go ahead unless a proper study is carried out into their environmental impacts and human cost throughout the region.

The World Bank, IMF, ADB and others should now follow Russia's lead and not participate in new energy projects in Central Asia unless the concerns of all states in the region are considered.

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan need broad based development not expensive dams if they are going to solve their deep rooted structural problems.

The Lower Amu Darya

Amu Darya (Pontoon Bridge - Mangit)

Nukus City

Nukus is the capital of the Karakalpakstan Autonomous Republic (Qoraqalpoghiston) located in Western Uzbekistan near the head of the Amu Darya (river) delta, west of the Kyzyl Kum desert, in the Khorezm oasis some 1,255 km west of the nation’s capital, Tashkent. It is a beautiful modern city, the centre of economical and cultural life of the republic. Flying into Nukus it is striking how the huge expanse of endless desert plains suddenly changes into irrigated fields, growing quickly into an ever denser carpet of green contrasting the grey and barren surroundings. The population is approx. 271,400 (2010 estimate).

Many centuries ago the ancient city Shurcha was located in what is now the north-western part of Nukus (not far from our house). According to historians, the town was one of the defensive fortresses, protecting the border of the ancient state of Khorezm and allow the control of the Amu Darya waterway. At the end of the 19th century, when Russia incorporated the Khiva Khanate, Petro-Aleksandrovsk (Turtkul) became the centre of the Amu Darya division. The first records about the modern city are dated from the second half of the 19th century. At that period of time it was a little (aul) village made up by rows of yurts surrounded by high clay wall.

It had been decided to build a large military fort on the site of village, which was completed in 1874. (Note: Armin Vamberi the great orientalist an historian  from Hungary, who travelled through the country in 1883, in his accounts of the trip mentioned the fort of Nukus located on the banks of the Amudarya). Soon the population of the fortress, mostly consisted of Kazakhs, began to grow and hospitals, schools and administrative buildings were built around the fortress.

When the Soviet authority came to power, Turtkul stayed the administrative centre of the Karakalpak autonomous region. But in the 20ies the threat that the Amu Darya would erode Turtkul town area caused the move of the capital to Nukus. The once tiny Nukus settlement by 1932 had achieved the status of a city, while in 1939 it replaced Turtkul as the capital of the Kara-Kalpak A.S.S.R. (now Qoragalpoghiston). Today, in spite of the fact that the sands of Kyzylkum desert approach closely the city walls, the streets and avenues of Nukus are buried in verdure, the squares are decorated with flowerbeds. Today it is the economic, administrative, political and cultural centre of Karakalpakstan. The city is decorated with modern buildings, boulevards, public gardens and parks.  The present city has a number of food-processing and other light industries, the Qoragalpoghiston branch of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Nukus State University, two museums, and a theatre.

The famous Art Museum of Karakalpakstan named after Savitsky is located in the city. Its unique collection of Avante Guarde paintings by Russian and Uzbek artists attracts and amazes visitors from around the world. Besides the museum Nukus and the surrounding area has many unique archaeological, historical and cultural monuments. Near Nukus, on the outskirts of Khodjeyli town there lies the ancient necropolis Mizdahkan. Locals believe that it contains  the tomb of Adam or Gayomarda (Gayamaretana) the first man according to Zoroastrian mythology.

Source:
http://www.sairamtourism.com/en/uzbekistan/city/nukus

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/422217/Nukus
http://www.advantour.com/uzbekistan/nukus.htm