What do Turkmenistan and the San Juan Islands have in common?  They are connected by a breed of horses with a five thousand year history and a cause that spans the globe.

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Amrita Ibold’s Sweet Water Farm is not hard to spot.  The front pasture is studded with Akhal Tekes, ranging from palest cremello to buckskin to coppery chestnut, colors that in the Karakum desert of their birthland might have been camouflage.  Here in the Pacific Northwest they are like jewels sprinkled across the verdant April grass.

I pause for a minute to study them.  This is the breed I fell in love with as a teenager from a single picture in a horse book — a impossibly metallic golden palomino, attenuated and angular like an El Greco painting, an ancient and exotic breed from Turkmenistan, Asia.  For more about the Akhal Teke, you can read this May’s Breed Profile.

Because the “golden horse” is rare, with a world population of fewer than 4,000, as well as ancient, with a history spanning 5,000 years, those who own and breed Akhal Tekes take their custodial role even more seriously than most horse lovers.  Even as they promote the horses in the modern sports of eventing, endurance riding, show jumping and dressage, they collect authentic tack and costumes,  Some feel another call, to help the man who preserved the breed in its homeland, and promoted it to the world.  Now he languishes in a Turkmenistan prison.

His name is Geldy Kyarizov   His crime was to be too successful at his task.

But first the horses… What is so special about this desert breed that it inspires such passion in its admirers?  As we duck under an opening in the hand-built wooden fence, we are enveloped by curious, eager fillies: Kichi Gul , Ayal Pikira, Shirin Giz and Ovazli Gul

As they vie for attention, they are still careful and delicate in their movements.  They roll their white-rimmed, almond-shaped eyes towards me, busy with the camera, then swirl around Amrita like a pod of dolphins around a swimmer.  Yet they are most definitely horses, not so exotic under their winter woolies, until you notice the high carriage of the head, the hooded, swiveling eyes, and the narrow, almost tubular bodies on long legs, all adaptations of a desert dweller honed to a fine edge.  The ancient Akhal Teke must stay cool, spot predators at a great distance and run like a gazelle (there are leopards and reputedly tigers still ranging in the Kopetdag mountains of Turkmenistan).

The youngsters scatter when a gray mare drifts up to join us — Olimpic Gul, the dominant mare in the pasture, Olga for short.  As she caresses Olga, Amrita explains how it is that she fell in love with this exotic breed. Her journey also started with a picture in book.

As a girl, forced to move from a horse-rich life in Holland to a barren urban house in France, she locked herself in her room in protest.  There, in her books, she stared at the picture of the striking angular horse. The Akhal Teke had served the nomadic Teke raiders, sleeping with the family in their yurt.  Fast, hardy and capable of remarkable endurance, these horses were known to bond closely with their riders.  What better steed to carry a young woman out of a  self-imposed suburban imprisonment?

Ultimately Amrita emerged from her room and rode any horse she could find.  But she  certainly did not travel a straight line to caring for her herd of Akhal Tekes at Sweet Water Farm.

An under-motivated student who preferred to spend her time riding, Amrita left the Swiss boarding school chosen by her parents and went to Indonesia with a boyfriend.  “I wanted to walk around, I wanted to meet the people.”  This quest led to Nepal, where she took that idea to extremes – trekking alone in the Himalayas, living on radishes and rice, she nearly died of hypothermia before being rescued from a high mountain pass by a local farmer.  Later, she was stranded for 5 days without gas in the Great Australian desert until strangers rescued her.  Then there was the time at a farm in Ireland, employed as a caretaker, only the promised payment never arrived and she learned to eat barnacles.  Survival skills of a different kind were required in Florida, where she had to convince someone to give her an apartment when she had no money and no job.  Once she had a job, she bought a motorcycle and headed west.

Amrita tells the story of her life as a kind of unfolding flower, each petal curling back to reveal the next tale with its interwoven theme of connection and disjuncture.  Even now, years later, living on a farm, married with two children, the sense of a journey continues as we tour through the new house she and her husband are building beam by beam, hewn from island wood at the farm’s own mill.  The tiles that will surround the wood-burning stove are Turkish, though bought on E-Bay, where she also found some of the special tack and trappings that fill her “Akhal-Teke Museum.”

Many things, however, like the bottle of vodka with the President’s picture (an odd souvenir from a Muslim country), the traditional neck bands for the horses and the Turkoman tack were brought back from a trip she made in 2001, a trip that connected her directly with the man in the Turkmenistan prison.

At that time Geldy Kyarizov was at the height of his career, about to realize his lifelong dream of bringing the Akhal Teke studbook back to Turkmenistan, complete with a new lab capable of DNA testing to verify pedigrees that in many cases were largely oral tradition.  Control of the breed had long been ceded to Russia, but as their breeding and numbers of Akhal Teke grew in their homeland, in large part as a result of Geldy Kyarizov’s efforts, he such made a convincing case for the breed as a national symbol that President-for-Life Saparmurat Niazov agreed to finance its reinstatement.

To understand why the Akhal Teke breed has so many who claim to be its savior requires at least a cursory understanding of its history. Turkmenistan was annexed by Russia in 1881 as part of its power struggle with the British for control of the regions between India and Russia.  It then became part of the Soviet Union, and through in 1991 it was officially “liberated,” in fact its new President merely consolidated the power he had held as a Soviet appartchik into a dictatorship and personality cult that rivaled that of his idol Stalin.  The oil and natural gas reserves of Turkmenistan and its border on the Caspian Sea were valuable trading tokens in the international market, as was the potential oil pipeline to be built through the country,so the bizarre behavior of Niazov was shrugged off in large part by business and political figures in the Western world. The press focused on the seemingly ludicrous gestures, like the publication of his doctrine in a book called the Ruhanama, a text that attempted to create a sense of nationalist pride in a country stitched together from different tribal fabrics.  He added a portrait of the stallion given to him by Geldy Kyarizov to the national seal, and spoke of the Akhal Teke as a national treasure, second of course to himself, the great Turkmenbashi, whose image appeared everywhere.

Niazov also took great pains to put a modern face on his capital city in the form of vast structures, monuments and wide avenues reminiscent of the plans for Berlin Adolf Hitler’s architect Albert Speer.  For visitors, entering the totalitarian regime could be unnerving.  “They took our passports when we arrived.” Amrita says.  Among the delegations was Tony Watkins, who was there to set up a clinic at the new hippodrome that  Geldy Kyarizov, in his offical position of Horse Minister, or Atlary, since 1998, had succeeded in convincing the President to build. He was due to return in three days, and so was surprised to learn his passport would be held for a week. There was no argument possible.  If you came to Turkmenistan, you would do as you were told.

Not that that was so bad.  The week was filled with horse-related activities, which Amrita describes in the detail in an article she wrote about the trip.

The hot topic amongst the breeders, and one that Amrita and the other Americans and Europeans were anxious to debate with Geldy, was artificial insemination.  In a country about the size of California, with little in the way of human medical care and even less for horses, the idea of AI was, as Amrita put it, “like witchery to them.”

Only after a sleepless night, much soul-searching, and a long discussion with his wife Yulia Serebryannik, a doctor, did Geldy return with the acknowledgement that as President of MAAK, the official organization of the Akhal Teke breed, he would agree to change the official policy.  That would be a blow to those who had a vested interest in the thriving stallion export business from Russia, but would better insure the improvement of the breed.

As was characteristic, Geldy Kyarizov put the future of the horses first.  If there was one thing he wanted, it was international prominence for the Akhal Teke.  He had worked to save the remnants of the breed in its homeland from slaughter and neglect, and now it stood proudly on the national seal.  However restrictive and authoritarian the regime he must live under, he had worked within the system to achieve his dream since his youth in Communist-controlled Turkmenistan.

Now the international community recognized him as an authority on the Akhal Teke and his horses as some of the finest in the world, and his own country awarded him medals for his achievements. The hippodrome and its model lab would provide DNA testing to validate the pedigrees, artifical insemination would allow isolated breeders to continue striving for the best bloodlines, and the Akhal Teke would reign supreme again.

Gledy Kyarizov was riding high, and the punishment was not long in coming.  In January 2002,  the arrest of Geldy Kyarizov was followed by trumped up charges of theft and a trial broadcast on National Television.  Most of the charges were dropped, but a six year sentence was handed down for the rather dubious offense of misappropriating state property, having to do with some racing trophies. Whether Geldy was targeted because he had become inconvenient for the President, who wanted to stake his own claim to the Akhal Teke, or because of an ambitious underling seeking power, or others whose interests he had crossed, Geldy had simply become too visible.  “If you were too successful, you would be a threat to the president, who was very paranoid, and you would end up in prison.” Amrita said.

The arrest and imprisonment were part of the pattern of Niazov’s regime.  No-one retained power for long in his government, as there was only room for one sun in his sky. In a fashion also typical of the regime, Geldy’s brother was arrested and tortured, his family harassed, and his wife forced to pay fines. His horses were confiscated and sent to the Niazov State Stud. Then, after he was hospitalized for a heart attack, he was denied medication and returned to prison and his land was confiscated.

His wife and her sisters became increasingly desperate.  They were struggling to survive, as no-one would do business with them. They could not buy hay for the over sixty Akhal Tekes that represented Geldy’s dream, the finest and purest horses in the land, except for those he had given to Niazov.

The herd was slowly starving.  Julia contacted the visitors who had traveled from so far away because of the bond created by the horses, and others in the worldwide Akal-Teke community.

A network was formed, money was collected and sent to Germany, then Russia.  Here it hit a snag – those entrusted with its passage claimed they feared the money would be misused and not spent on the horse. .   Their condition was horrific, as pictures on ____ site show.  To imagine how bad the situation was, Amrita says, you have to think, looking at your horses and deciding, which ones shall I feed and which ones shall I let die?”

Pressure was applied to the Russian clog in the pipeline, and in the end the funds helped save most of the horses.  A monthly stipend kept things going, and though the three women struggled to care for the large herd, they were able to bring them back from the verge of starvation.   Still, Geldy Kyarizov was in jail, and it was clear that the government would prefer for him to die there. Things were going to get  a lot worse before they got better.

But on a spring day on the side of Cady Mountain  on San Juan Island, it is truly hard to keep your mind inside the notorious Ovadan Depe Prison where Geldy was sent in 2005.

Amrita is on her stallion, Pan Tau, and I am riding Dagjeir, a gelding who Amrita has evented but who is mature and mellow enough to handle her riding students as well.  If I closed my eyes, Dagjeir’s long, active walk could convince me I was on a thoroughbred, and his enthusiasm for jumping the numerous downed branches across the trail is boundless.  It is in the trot that he best demonstrates that rideability that makes the Akhal Teke desirable as an endurance mount – the gait is smooth and ground-covering at the same time. He is enthusiastic and sensitive, but not hot-headed or difficult.  We wind up at the edge of a meadow, and Amrita indicates I should go ahead of her.

Below us, we can see the green swath of the farm, and then a mile or so beyond, the jewel-blue waters of Puget Sound stretching towards Canada.  High on the hill. astride an Akhal-Teke – what could be better?  Perhaps the opportunity I had to ride Pan Tau back in the arena, and feel his supple, elevated canter!

Her horses enrich Amrita’s life and more than fill her days, but she cannot sit still and do nothing as Geldy languishes in prison.

The winter of 2006 had brought Geldy’s family and supporters close to despair again. The stud farm where the survivors of the herd were kept was being demolished around the horses, who stood shivering and blanketless.  On the 15^th of December, Yulia received a visitor  from the secret police who told her that her husband was dead.

Then five days later, President Saparmurat Niazov died suddenly of a heart attack.  There were whispers of hope that a new regime might undo some of the dictator’s most horrendous acts, but others said that little would change when one of his former underlings took power. But at least there was information – Geldy was alive – barely.  “He is like a walking dead body,” his wife Yulia reported, after visiting him on January 29, 2007.  “He is like a skeleton with skin.” He had been living on a daily ration of “one bowl of tea and a kind of wheat with stones in it.” Yulia brought him medication and can continue to send food to his new location.

Things are looking a little better, too, for the horses.  Yulia and her two sisters have found a pig farm for the horses.  There will be a lot of work to be done to make it habitable.  Of course they remain hopeful that Geldy will be released, though the president elected in February, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov was remarkable mostly for having survived so long in Niazov’s regime, and does not have the profile of a reformer.

Perhaps increased pressure from human rights groups like Amnesty International, as well as international efforts, will result in a better situation for all the victims of Niazov’s regime. Berdymukhammedov is currently busy negotiating with Russian president Vladimir Putin over new reserves of natural gas discovered in Turkmenistan.  He has taken no action so far on pardons or early releases.

Even if Geldy were to be released now, preparing the pig farm to house horses for the winter will be a daunting task.  Summer temperatures in Turkmenistan are far from the pleasant maritime climate of the San Juans – they can reach up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the capital of Ashgabat.

Perhaps for a country where children starve to death, and political oppression, secret police and torture are simply accepted as normal, shelter for a few horses might seem like a trivial concern.  But these Akhal Tekes are part of a shrinking reservoir of the original desert horse, part of the proud heritage of Amrita’s own horses.  Without them, the Akhal Teke is just an exile without a homeland, drifting farther and farther from its roots.

Amrita and the group continue to raise funds for Geldy.  She also has some other plans for the summer, including going to several events, including the Mothers Day Horse Trials at Northwest Equestrian Center, and the Horsin Around Days at Stanwood where she and fellow Washington Akhal Teke breeder Cathy Leddy will be presenting their horses.

Here are some links where you can learn more about Geldy’s situation.  For more about the Akhal Teke, you can read May’s Breed Profile, which also contains links to Akhal Teke sites:

http://www.gsuttle.free-online.co.uk/geldy_and_the_at.htm