evidence: The ethnically and culturally complex region of the Fergana Valley is divided among three countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The Kyrgyz and the Tajik parts of the Fergana Valley are geographically closer to Uzbekistan than to the capitals of their own countries. Tashkent is only two hours by car from Khujand (the main city in the Tajik part of the valley), while the trip from Khujand to Dushanbe takes about ten hours. From Osh in the Kyrgyz part of Ferghana to Uzbekistan’s border takes only 40 minutes, but travel to the capital Bishkek is ten hours. "The Fergana Valley is a knot of difficult problems: disputed border territories, interethnic tensions, the activities of Islamic radicals. The valley interlinks three Central Asia countries; a conflict in one part on the valley spreads to the other parts, which belong to neighboring countries. Therefore, stability in the Ferghana Valley determines stability in the whole Central Asia," believes Dr. Sergey Abashin, the head of the Central Asia Department of the Russian Institute of Ethnology (author’s interview, September 27). [...] The situation in the Tajik part of the valley (in north Tajikistan) is different from that in the Uzbek and Kyrgyz parts. During communism, power control was consistently in the hands of Tajiks from the North (from the Ferghana Valley). Moscow relied on them, because they were more assimilated compared to the rest of the population, due to the fact that the Russian Empire conquered the Ferghana Valley earlier than the rest of Tajikistan.