Word: osmanov
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When Shevket Osmanov moved to his family homeland in 1987 after spending all his life in Uzbekistan, the welcome he received was less than effusive. "People were terrified of us," says Osmanov, who was part of the first wave of Crimean Tatars to return to the Crimean peninsula on Ukraine's Black Sea coast during perestroika in the late 1980s. "Ten days before Eid al-Adha [the Muslim Festival of the Sacrifice], they closed all the schools because there were stories that we were going to sacrifice children...
...Once back, though, the Tatars' troubles were hardly ended. The houses many had once owned or lived in were now occupied by Russian settlers. "I came and saw an old couple living in my parents' house," says Osmanov, standing in the old Tatar quarter of Simferopol, Crimea's capital. "I couldn't have tried to kick them out. What would have been the difference between me doing that and what happened...
...even after over twenty years struggling for their rights, the Tatars retain a faith in a better, peaceful future. "Dogs bark, but the caravan goes on," says Osmanov, quoting an Arab proverb. "We'll get there, despite these problems. God sees everything and in the end he puts things in their rightful place...
...water-injection platform being built by BP, which will be towed to an oil field 75 miles offshore, where the company expects to pump about 320,000 bbl. a day beginning in April 2008. "This is a time of big change," says Mushvig Osmanov, 26, an Azeri engineer for BP, standing atop the half-built platform, gazing at the crumbling old oil wells. "Suddenly we have Western styles and tastes...