Aral Sea Aral Sea The Aral Sea () was an endorheic lake (one with no outflow) lying between Kazakhstan (Aktobe and Kyzylorda Regions) in the north and Uzbekistan (Karakalpakstan autonomous region) in the south. The name roughly translates as "Sea of Islands", referring to over 1,100 islands that had dotted its waters; in the Turkic languages "aral" means "island, archipelago". The Aral Sea drainage basin encompasses Uzbekistan and parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and Iran. Formerly the fourth-largest lake in the world with an area of , the Aral Sea has been shrinking since the 1960s after the rivers that
Terrorism and counter-terrorism in Kazakhstan suspects to neighboring countries, specifically Uzbekistan, where HRW says suspects face torture. The strongest criticism of the Nazarbayev administration's counter-terrorism operations comes from Harout Semerdjian of the University of California, Los Angeles. Semerdjian accuses the government of engaging in "semi-state terrorism" through unlawful arrests of journalists, arson, and other attacks on the press. The U.S. embassy criticized an act of arson in Kazakhstan in May 2002. Terrorism and counter-terrorism in Kazakhstan The threat of terrorism in Kazakhstan plays an increasingly important role in relations with the United States which in 2006 were at an all-time high. Kazakhstan has taken Uzbekistan's