Coiffed, cheerful and multilingual, identical twins Fatima and Zukhra Rakhmatova do not immediately resemble agents of ex-Soviet Uzbekistan's long-feared security apparatus.
But the photogenic 30-year-old pair are frontline members of a newly formed, user-friendly Tourist Police deployed in the famed Silk Road city of Samarkand and other hotspots as a visitor boom sweeps the Central Asian country. The force, established in January, is viewed as part of a broader opening initiated by Uzbekistan's government. More than 2.5 million tourists visited Uzbekistan last year, a 24 percent increase on the previous year, according to the UzDaily news site.
"In the past I worked as a teacher and then as a wedding stylist. I even won a national prize as a stylist," recalls Zukhra Rakhmatova, one half of a sister act proficient in English, Russian, Farsi, Turkish and Japanese.
Foreign tourism, which grew by around a quarter during 60-year-old new leader Shavkat Mirziyoyev's first year in office emerged as a key battleground in a power struggle that pitted the new reform-touting president against regime hardliners. In February for instance, Mirziyoyev ordered the introduction of a 30-day visa-free regime for citizens of seven countries - Israel, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey and Japan - and relaxation of registration rules for citizens of 39 others. In cities like Samarkand, the changes were cheered by a population that endured long stretches of economic stagnation under Karimov.
"(We need to) open up of course!" said Malika Shakhimardonova, a chef at a mutton-grilling teahouse in the shadows of the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, completed on the orders of medieval conqueror Tamerlane in the 15th century.
"Let the tourists arrive to us like brothers and sisters!" said Shakhimardonova, whose kitchen is expanding. Many saw significance in the fact that Mirziyoyev's relaxation of visa restrictions came days after Rustam Inoyatov, 73, who led the notorious national security service for over two decades, was dismissed. Inoyatov was widely reported to have blocked a previous effort by Mirziyoyev to revamp tourism and to have insisted on retaining long-standing security measures, including a blanket ban on photography in the capital's metro.
Such bans, which occasionally saw visitors detained by police, were "rudiments of the Soviet Union" now consigned to the past, said the country's new 44-year-old tourism chief Aziz Abdukhakimov.
"We want tourists to take as many photos as possible. Put them on Instagram! It is the best advert for the country," he told AFP.
