Aral Sea Bank's restoration projects, especially in the North Aral, were giving rise to some unexpected, tentative relief in what had been an extremely pessimistic picture. The future of the Aral Sea and the responsibility for its survival are now in the hands of the five countries: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. In 1994, they adopted the Aral Sea Basin Programmme. The Programme's four objectives are: The first phase of the plan effectively began with the first involvement from the World Bank in 1992, and was in operation until 1997. It was ineffectual for a number of reasons, but mainly because
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