Archive of Casey Michel

Casey Michel graduated from Rice University in 2010 and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Northern Kazakhstan from March-November 2011. His writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated and Slam, but his abiding interests have now transitioned from sports to Central Asia. You can follow him on Twitter at @cjcmichel.

Casey has written 22 articles at Registan.


With Two Kazakhs Arrested After Boston, Eyes Now Turn, Unfortunately, to Kazakhstan

by Casey_Michel

On Tuesday morning, just before Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov were set to learn the charges they would face stemming from their actions surrounding the Boston bombings, The Economist published a pair of graphs summarizing the Pew Research Center’s survey on the overlap of religion and law within Muslim-majority nations. The entire survey, of course, [...]

8 comments Read the full article →

About the Central Asian Link to those Boston Bombers

by Casey_Michel

  This might be a bit redundant, seeing as the readership at Registan – unlike, say, those who work in front of the camera at CNN – are among those able to differentiate between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, but I thought it might be worth a quick run-down of how a substantial Chechen population came to [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

Nuclear Retention and Moral High Ground

by Casey_Michel
Thumbnail image for Nuclear Retention and Moral High Ground

While the rest of the United Nations was debating Palestinian statehood late last week, one high-ranking UN official dropped a piece of nuclear intrigue that went relatively unnoticed. According to RIA Novosti, Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev, former Kazakhstani foreign minister and current director-general of the UN office in Geneva, called attention to an as-yet unknown piece of [...]

Read the full article →

Court Decisions

by Casey_Michel

It’s not often that Kazakhstan’s backyard politicking come to the fore. It’s rarer yet when such sniping is aired in English, made available to that much larger of an audience. It’s political gossip at its finest – open and sharp, with accusations anted and points countered with language as colorful as the content is heavy. [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

All In A Name

by Casey_Michel

It’s a good thing, I suppose, that Kazakhstan has such lengthy history with the renaming process. As Kazakh nationalism swept two decades ago — as Russified names across the now-defunct USSR began to fall — the nascent nation began to turn its sights on stamping kazakhsha on the country’s commercial centers. Ust-Kamenogorsk became Oskemen. Petropavlovsk became [...]

Read the full article →

One More Down

by Casey_Michel

It’s now been 10 months since the riots of Zhanaozen and Shetpe seared Kazakhstan’s Mangystau province, presenting the largest and most debilitating unrest the nation’s seen in 20 years of independence. We’ve seen authorities tried and jailed. We’ve seen governors ousted and resurrected. We’ve seen persecutions of both workers present and leaders abroad, and we’ve seen any nascent opposition to Nazarbayev cowed and imprisoned. [...]

5 comments Read the full article →

Kazakshtan’s Mass Murders and the Questions that Remain

by Casey_Michel

A few months back, I wrote up a brief post on Registan examining a mass murder along Kazakhstan’s southern slope. A bizarre one-off, I figured. Something unfortunate. Something sad. A couple weeks later, though, a second slaughter took place in a nearby locale. And while such spates of killing in Kazakhstan are, thankfully, rare, it [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

A Wealth of Blame for Zhanaozen

by Casey_Michel

Last October, Zhanar Saktaganova was strolling a sidewalk in Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan. It was dark, late. Zhanar, only 29, had just come from sitting with the nearby oil workers, the ones striking for the previous five months, and, after a stopover in a nearby shop, was leaving with her friend. As two walked out of the magazin, Zhanar [...]

Read the full article →

Religious Repression and a Sudden Crack

by Casey_Michel

I know writings on Xinjiang aren’t exactly Registan’s raison d’etre — we’re all about post-Soviet space, y’all — but I thought I’d be remiss to not toss a link up to a bit of post-hijack analysis. I hoped to shine some light on Uyghurs via The Tuqay, and I trust our intelligent audience will be [...]

Read the full article →

‘The First Political Trial in Kazakhstan’

by Casey_Michel

Ten months later, the events of Zhanaozen still cloud the politics of Kazakhstan. There’s been, for better and often worse, little respite for the Nazarbayev regime — little let-up from dissident circles, little staunch in the demands from international councils for a proper examination of the events surrounding the riots of Kazakhstan’s 20th anniversary. Despite [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries