The Dictator's Daughter of Uzbekistan

Everyone loves a good piece of strange entertainment. That's one reason to even follow the news. The sheer weirdness of the story I'm about to share with you is not only amusing, but reflective of a bigger picture that has emerged in the Central Asian region and post Soviet states. 

Since the break up of the Soviet Union, newly independent countries in Eastern Europe, the Caucuses, and the Stan's have gone through there own traumatic history. In many of these countries, crazy dictators have seized power, running the place like gangsters, making Assad's Syria look like a liberal democracy. Okay, that might be taking it a bit far. But the point still stands: from Turkmenbassy's Stalinist personality cult in Turkmenistan, to everything else that cannot be crammed into this sentence, there is one more that must not be overlooked. The Dictator's Daughter: Uzbekistan's Gulnara Karimova. The daughter of President Islam Karimov.

Sarah Kendzior over at Registan just wrote an epic profile piece on Gulnara, titled Why Dictator's Daughters Still Can't Have It All. 

So beyond having to check it out for yourself, I'd like to offer one bit of pondering as to why Gulnara has lived a life where she has gotten everything she's ever wanted . . . except one thing: Western, Kim Kardashian-style fame. I think it's because this sort of status is one of the only things money can't buy. (Which might be saying something even more interesting about Kim Kardashian . . . and that she has some talent in being interesting enough for people to follow. Duh, right?)

It's so ironic: the dictator's daughter could have it all. But now she's going after a populous approval and a love of the crowd that can only be won with merit and grit. To that I say: read Sarah Kendzior's piece that fully gets into the subject.