Government issues severe -stan warning

The Foreign Office this morning issued a general -stan warning alerting businessmen and tourists to studiously avoid anywhere ending in the -stan suffix.

A spokesman told The Rockall Times: "The general alert will avoid the need to issue an individual warning every time some effing former Soviet Republic or fundamentalist raghead state kicks off." Pressed as to the countries encompassed in the statement, the man from the FO stropped: "If I told you the complete list it would make a bit of a mockery of the concept of issuing a general warning, wouldn't it?"

He has a point. Extensive perusal of the Rockall Times' atlas revealed the following -stans you will not find in the Summer 2006 package holiday brochures:

• Afghanistan
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Pakistan
• Tajikistan
• Turkmenistan
• Uzbekistan

Kyrgyzstan has, of course, in recent months made headlines after thousands of ethnic Ubzeks took to the streets demanding the resignation of president Askar Akayev. What happened after that is unclear, because the media quickly lost interest when faced with a burgeoning crisis in Uzbekistan which seemed to promise a more newsworthy body count.

And so it proved — or did it? Western reports from the city of Andijan suggest that up to one million women and children were mercilessly slaughtered by troops loyal to president Islam Karimov during fierce fighting between Raghead Fundamentalists/unarmed protestors (delete according to political taste) and jackbooted representatives of tyranny/fearless frontline soldiers in the War on Terror™ (delete according to political expedience).

For its part, the government insists that the death toll is restricted to one dog which was accidentally run over by a Special Forces' armoured car. Sobbing refugees, however, paint a very different picture: that of a peaceful demonstration rent asunder by automatic gunfire, the sobbing of bereaved mothers, the distant sound of American self-righteous indignation.

Indeed, Condoleeeeza Rice was quick to condemn the apparent outrage, while taking care not to overly offend president Karimov lest he should suggest that the US might like to take the Uzbek airbase from which it has been conducting its aerial operations over Afghanistan and shove it up its running dog lackey capitalist arse.

Rice went on to issue a dire warning to three other -stans — Cubanistan, Iranistan and Sudanistan to "get with the democratic program or suffer the consequences". When pressed as to whether she had not omitted the Mother of all -Stans, Koreaistan, a visibly-shaken Rice muttered something about nuclear capability, China and ripe foreign market before moving swiftly on to answer the next probing question from the Newsweek correspondent: "Our sources suggest that guards at Abu Ghraib urinated on a copy of the Koran, flushed it down the john and then made Iraqi prisoners retrieve it with their tongues. Any comment?"

Back at the FO, meanwhile, our man dismissed the question of possible ethnic and religious unrest in the former republic of Tajikistan with a perfunctory: "Where the fuc*k is Tajikistan anyway and who gives a shit?"

Next week:

Special report: Tajikistan unrest threatens world stability. John Simpson huffs and puffs in riot-torn Dushanbe

Previously

• Kyrgyzstan teeters on brink of anarchy
• Ukraine: What every parent should know
• Chechnya: What every parent should know