The latest installment of despotism and insanity has been revealed in a poem: “The New Turkmen Spirit.”

The poem, written by President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan and presented to his nation, begins with conceit and crescendos to a tone of authoritarian caution. The poem opens with the declaration that “I am the Turkmen spirit, reborn to bring you a golden age,” and includes the unambiguous and ominous warning: “My sight is sharp – I see everything … If you are honest in your deeds, I see this; if you commit wrongdoing, I see that too.” The spirit of Stalin is alive and well, it seems, in President Niyazov.

President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan — a Central Asian nation sandwiched in the region between Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, and which sits on the fifth largest reserves of natural gas in the world — is well-known for his hubris and his tyranny. Since he became president of the republic in 1991, President Niyazov has renamed some months of the year after himself, inscribed words from his own book next to verses of the Qur’an on a mosque, and has imprisoned over 40 opposition activists since November of 2002.

Given that Robert Templer, the Central Asia Division Director of the International Crisis Group, warned in March of 2003 that Turkmenistan could “become the next Afghanistan … and … a danger to the rest of the world,” we might do well to keep a wary eye on President Niyazov.

Mimi Hanaoka