Archive of Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua's writing has appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust

Joshua has written 1849 articles at Registan.


Russia’s Civil Society Crackdown Should Raise Concerns

by Joshua Foust

This post is adapted from UN Dispatch. One week ago, Russian journalist Mikhail Beketov died from heart failure while choking on a piece of food during lunch. He was badly traumatized five years ago when assailants beat him so badly that several fingers and one of his legs had to be amputated. He was confined to a wheelchair. [...]

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Tracking Russia’s Systemic Abuses

by Joshua Foust

Over at UN Dispatch, I’ve been running a series about how Russia systemically abuses its people. I wrote the first during a trip to Moscow, about why the authorities are raiding western NGOs: The bill itself doesn’t contain anything egregious – it rightly identifies Russia as a human rights abuser and puts in place specific [...]

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Kazakhstan’s Gilded Cage

by Joshua Foust

For Foreign Policy, I asked why Kazakhstan, which is in the process of oppressing its civil society in a way it never did in the 90s, is getting such good PR. The international respectability has come, too, if a little more slowly. In 2010, Kazahkstan chairedthe Organization for Stability and Cooperation in Europe — the first post-Soviet state [...]

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Ben Emmerson’s ISI Shuffle

by Joshua Foust
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The UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights, Ben Emmerson, conducted a three-day visit to Islamabad, Pakistan last week. And despite his stated purpose to investigate drone strikes, he didn’t actually talk to any of the agencies responsible for those strikes, or even visit strike sites: During the course of the visit the Special [...]

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Kazakhstan’s long quest for nuclear power relevance

by Joshua Foust
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The former Soviet states in Central Asia are often derided as backwaters. But Kazakhstan, the largest, is also taking a leading role in global nuclear security. The same country where Moscow once exploded hundreds of nuclear weapons has spent the last half-decade aggressively expanding its uranium mining industry… and just this week, negotiations over Iran’s [...]

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A lazy, ridiculous slur

by Joshua Foust

Washington Free Beacon writer Adam Kredo thinks I’m somehow connected to Chuck Hagel and Chevron and Kazakhstan and… oh well, just read it. When Kazakhstan’s riot police slaughtered dozens of striking oil field workers last year, Atlantic Council affiliate Joshua Foust rushed to discredit the reports. Foust, a member of the Atlantic Council’s Young Atlanticist [...]

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The Inherent Contradictions of Kazakhstan’s National Narrative

by Joshua Foust
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The Kazakh government has a very appealing line it likes to sell to foreign audiences: “we are a young but maturing country, the most successful in our region, the most international in outlook, and the strongest and most stable.” Indeed, regime-supporting American wonks have largely bought that line hook, line, and sinker, regardless of any [...]

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The Two Toms Talk Paula-Petraeus

by Joshua Foust

Good evening! I’m Tom, and I’d like to share with you some of my time-untested flat-worlded, hidden market fisted, al Qaeda supply chain dance party happenings! Bon soir to you, Tom! I’m also Tom, and I’m in a bit of a pickle. This sounds bad, Tom. What happened to your latest book? Oh Tom, my [...]

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The DC Game and Paula Broadwell

by Joshua Foust

I’ve avoided crowing too much about the Paula Broadwell affair. The little commiseration I did took place over at my perch at PBS, and suffice it to say regular readers here will know I had identified her deficient personality quite a number of years ago. While it’s been refreshing to see how the downfall of [...]

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Guest Post: Kyrgyzstan’s New Law on “Bridenapping”

by Joshua Foust
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This is a guest post by Altynai Myrzabekova, a journalist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Meerim Turganbaeva was 18 years old and had just finished high school when she was kidnapped by an acquaintance – whom she had only met once – and his friends. Meerim’s new spouse was from the next village over, Kaptal-Aryk, in [...]

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