Is Turkmenistan's stability a myth?

[GlobalPost Moscow correspondent Miriam Elder recently traveled to Turkmenistan where she reported on the country's stability, below, as well as its new leader and the battle for its natural gas resources.]

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — On the surface, Turkmenistan is a sleepy country.

The capital, Ashgabat, is quiet as a ghost town, with pristine streets boasting massive newly built skyscrapers, swept to cleanliness by legions of women constantly shuffling straw brooms.

Yet underneath, storms are brewing.

The country sits in a rough neighborhood, sharing long borders with Afghanistan, Iran and Uzbekistan.

As one western diplomat put it: "They're stuck between snakes, scorpions and the Taliban."

That fact has not been lost on the United States, which has quietly been building a series of border posts in Turkmenistan, aiming, for now, to stop the flow of heroin trafficking to the country. A border post with Iran was opened in 2006, with Afghanistan in 2007 and with Uzbekistan in late October. At least two more are planned.

The issue is a sensitive one. Turkmenistan — named in official documents as Independent and Permanently Neutral Turkmenistan — has made neutrality the central pillar of its foreign policy, rejecting U.S. attempts to build a base in the country to service the war in neighboring Afghanistan and shutting Russian-manned bases soon after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Yet the potential threats to Turkmen stability are real. Sources in the capital say heroin flows freely throughout and through the country. With that could come other influences — arms traffickers, Islamic fundamentalists, the Taliban.

Turkmenistan is a mainly Muslim country, with a minority of ethnic Russians who tend to be Russian Orthodox. For now, Islam has been co-opted by the state and strict belief is not widespread.

The main bazaar on the outskirts of Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat. (Miriam Elder/GlobalPost)

A few years before his death in late 2006, Turkmenbashi, an eccentric dictator and the country’s first post-Soviet president, built a grand mosque on the outskirts of the capital. Its halls feature sayings from the president engraved alongside phrases from the Koran — something that would be considered blasphemous in other Muslim countries.

In forging a post-Soviet identity, Turkmenbashi instituted a strict nationalism, banning things seen as alien, such as opera, ballet and the circus. The current president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has rolled this back a bit, but has encouraged nationalism in other ways, by forcing children to wear traditional dress to school, for example.

"If they fail to buid this ideology, we know what ideology they will embrace," the western diplomat said.

Turkmenistan's much touted stability rests on the autocratic rule of its president, and a population left largely complacent by a heavily subsidized lifestyle.

Unemployment, officially, stands at 5 percent. International organizations, and Turkmens themselves, put the number closer to 50 percent.

"It's hard to find work," said one man moonlighting as a taxi driver. "But in Uzbekistan it's even worse. It's expensive there, you have to pay for everything."

More Dispatches:

• Latest