Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 10 – As of this month, Uzbekistan’s population has increased to more than 36 million, according to Tashkent’s State Statistical Committee, putting that country on course to surpass Ukraine and highlighting a major reason why Central Asia is becoming more important for Russia, China and the West.
Tashkent officials announced today that Uzbekistan’s population has just surpassed 36 million people, up from 20 million in 1991 (gazeta.uz/ru/2022/12/10/population/). At the same time, Ukraine’s population has fallen over the same period from roughly 50 million to just over 40 million (nv.ua/ukraine/events/skolko-ukraincev-ostanetsya-posle-pobedy-posledstviya-dlya-ukrainy-ekspert-poslednie-novosti-50289318.html).
That highlights a more general trend, the decline in the population of the three Slavic republics (Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) from 210 million in 1991 to 193 million now in contrast to the increase of the six historically Islamic countries (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) from 52 million in 1991 to 83 million today.
Obviously, the location of these six historically Muslim countries makes them important; but the shift in their relative size in terms of population makes them even more so, a development that is often ignored even in discussions of the region and one that by itself justifies their receiving more attention than they sometimes do.
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