The expanded males’s Global Cup in 2026 has given enthusiasts the danger to cheer at the exploits of first-time qualifiers, a few of which many of us would possibly up to now have struggled to find at the map. Standout moments have already incorporated Curaçao’s goal-keeping heroics in incomes a draw towards Ecuador and Cabo Verde’s disenchanted by means of pegging again reigning Eu champions Spain.
However one tale has in large part long past underneath the radar: the participation of Uzbekistan. In accordance to a couple pundits, Uzbekistan will have to have collapsed into violent chaos years in the past. As an alternative, it has change into the primary central Asian state to play on soccer’s grandest degree. In the back of this lies a captivating story of geopolitics and peace.
Within the Nineties, overwrought geopolitical research portrayed the area as bad and in determined want of western salvation. This used to be specifically true of the USA. In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski, nationwide safety consultant to Jimmy Carter and an éminence grise of the USA overseas coverage established order, dubbed central Asia “the Eurasian Balkans” on what he referred to as the “grand chessboard” of great-power festival.
On the intersection of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan sits the Ferghana Valley. With its advanced patchwork of borders, enclaves and ethnic minorities, it turned into the point of interest of this discourse of threat. A 1999 coverage document written by means of American teachers warned that, with out US lend a hand, the valley may just change into “a breeding ground of terrorism” and “a hotbed of religious and political extremism”.
The Ferghana Valley sits at the borders of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Bennian/Shutterstock
Like maximum portions of the arena, Uzbekistan has had its issues. Fast financial expansion has resulted in critical city air pollution, and formative years unemployment is prime, due to the rising inhabitants. Like different international locations within the area, a loss of political pluralism limits its skill to successfully grapple with those issues.
However the dire situations predicted by means of western analysts have now not come to move. For my analysis on borders, nation-building and geopolitics within the Ferghana Valley, I interviewed policymakers around the area. All of them wired the area’s skill to attract on ancient cultural ties and practices of statecraft to control the tough transition from Soviet republics to unbiased international locations.
After Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan received their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the Ferghana Valley states inherited a collection of sophisticated and disputed borders at the beginning drawn as inside Soviet obstacles within the Twenties. Those have proved contentious – but lately the 3 international locations have made a chain of offers to switch territory and entirely delimit their obstacles.
The Khujand Declaration of March 2025 outlined the boundary between the 3 valley states and put an finish to a long time of anxiety. On the subject of world revel in, this counts as remarkably fast growth.
Resolving border tensions
It’s within the Ferghana Valley itself the place growth is maximum visual. I noticed border tensions ratchet up within the past due Nineties and early 2000s. However up to now decade, a brand new era of leaders has now not best resolved territorial disputes however driven a vital expansion in cross-border financial, social and cultural connections. They’ve reopened dozens of up to now closed border crossings, comfy pink tape and incentivised cross-border business. This has resulted in important will increase in regional business and has eased ethnic tensions.
In October 2025, the primary Ferghana Valley Peace Discussion board introduced governments and civil society in combination underneath a brand new platform for discussion. A key organiser of the development, Akramjon Ne’matov, the primary deputy director of the Institute for Strategic and Regional Research, an influential state-affiliated thinktank in Tashkent, emphasized that “the forum’s goal is to strengthen trust and good-neighbourly relations, promoting a shared vision of the region as a space of cooperation and mutual benefit”.
In step with Ne’matov, it serves as a powerful reaction to the imaginative and prescient offered in Brzezinski’s “grand chessboard”. This old-fashioned narrative used to be now not best wrong however risked turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It sowed distrust quite than fostering building.
Regardless of tasks just like the ill-fated Central Asian Union, central Asia has now not succeeded in developing formal EU-style regional establishments. Western teachers have automatically disregarded such makes an attempt as mere “virtual regionalism”. However analysis from St Andrews College presentations that casual preparations between authoritarian governments to appreciate every different’s sovereignty and now not permit unmarried exterior powers to dominate have resulted in the emergence of an efficient, casual regional order premised on private international relations, balance and coexistence.
Shared future
This digs deep into ancient notions of shared future. As a political candidate in Tashkent put it to me: “The important thing to keep in mind is that we are one home in central Asia, one culture.” Because the dissolution of Yugoslavia within the Nineties, and the wars in Armenia and Azerbaijan and Russia and Ukraine wars counsel, central Asia has arguably been extra a hit at resolving post-cold battle ethnic and border disputes than Europe.
Welcome to Ferghana: the doorway gateway to the strategically necessary Ferghana Valley in Ukbekistan.:
Priakhin Mikhail
In March this 12 months, I joined a sell-out crowd at an Uzbek Tremendous League fit, cheering on Ferghana Neftchi as they beat Tashkent Lokomotiv 3-1. The sport happened in an outstanding trendy stadium in Ferghana. This confounded the predictions of Nineties analysts who noticed the Ferghana Valley because the intended locus of all of the area’s ills.
Fellow enthusiasts have been already having a look forwards to the Global Cup – even if one wryly repeated to me a quip by means of comic Hojiboy Tojiboev that the Uzbek crew would “go there, eat ice-cream, and then come back”.
At the pitch, this primary foray onto soccer’s largest degree has been difficult for the “White Wolves”, because the Uzbek crew is understood. However clear of soccer, in our age of border closures and ratcheting geopolitical tensions, the west can be told so much from Uzbekistan about the way to set up regional tensions and plan shared futures.
