Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-76.182.10.8-20140416035309/@comment-192.160.117.141-20140423211550

Well, hold on.

http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/Zanzibar_Land#Unconfirmed_history

According to the citation, the novelization of MGS4 says exactly that. The novelizations are subcanon, but it's pretty plausible. In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Zanzibar Land is said to be situated between the Soviet Union, China, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; that essentially means it's in what's now Tajikistan. Tselinoyarsk is supposedly in the southern Soviet Union very close to Pakistan (Snake enters the region by flying through Pakistan airspace - at the time, it was a U.S. anti-Soviet ally), which also puts it in or very near to exactly the same location (northern Pakistan is not very wide). If Zanzibar Land is NOT in Tselinoyarsk, you could probably still travel from one to the other by helicopter within a day.

Coincidentally, Tajikistan has a subtropical climate, it contains mountains and deserts, and the country experienced a civil war between 1992 and 1997 (Metal Gear 2 was made in 1990 so they wouldn't have known that at the time, but Metal Gear Solid (1998) says that Zanzibar Land was formed in 1997).