Geography of Uzbekistan Kazakhstan, also yielded about 60% of the total volume of Central Asia's emissions of harmful substances into the atmosphere. Because automobiles are relatively scarce, automotive exhaust is a problem only in Tashkent and Farghona. The reduction of water in Uzbekistan has resulted in soil degradation, and the spread of the salt from the evaporated Aral Sea has contaminated the surrounding soil. The soil has lost much of its water due to the increased surface irrigation. The irrigation of farmlands with water from the Aral Sea has resulted in increased salinization of the soil, causing the farmland to be less productive
Terrorism in Uzbekistan violence could have been the work of the IMU, Al-Qaeda, Hizb ut-Tahrir, or some other radical Islamic organization. The deaths of many people during unrest in the Uzbek city of Andijan on 12 and 13 May 2005 has been widely characterised as a massacre by state forces. President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, while on a state visit to Uzbekistan after that event, told Uzbek President Islam Karimov that the Uzbek government's actions in quelling unrest helped "protect the peace of 26 million Uzbekistanis. A different outcome would have destabilized the region today." He said that because terrorists had taken over