ABSTRACT
Uzbekistan is located between the large rivers of Amu-Daria and Syr-Daria and more than half of its territory is desert. It borders on Kazakhstan in the north and west, on Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan in the south, and Kyrgyztan in the east. It is the most populous of the Central Asian states with more than 26 million inhabitants, most of which are Uzbeks while the rest belong to a large variety of ethnicities, including Russians. The Uzbek language is a Turkish language, and Islam is the dominant religion.
