Registan’s Caucasus News & Analysis Archive

At Registan, we are keenly interested in the Soviet successor states of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Registan.net was founded to shine a light on the region for western audiences and to add context to media reporting. In our nearly ten years of publishing news and analysis on the region, we have amassed an archive of thousands of items discussing these regions’ people, cultures, religions, politics, and foreign policies. All of our contributors who cover Central Asia or the Caucasus have lived or traveled extensively in the region, have a background in post-Soviet studies, and most speak one or more of the languages used in the region.

In addition to publishing a widely read and recognized weblog on Central Asia and the Caucasus, Registan offers research, analysis, and training services tailored to your individual needs. For more information on how we can help you and your organization better understand the region.

Photo Credit: Jonathan P

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, [...]

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Contextualizing Media Claims in Boston

Thumbnail image for Contextualizing Media Claims in Boston by Matthew Kupfer

Now that Dzhohar Tsarnaev has been captured, the long process of unraveling the mystery of the Boston Marathon bombing begins. Investigators, the press, and ordinary citizens will ask: Who were these young men? Why did they do what they did? What set them on this path? These are extremely difficult questions that give unclear, complex [...]

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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 [...]

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Malala Yousufzai and Madonna

by Alec Metz

Western celebrities and complex situations in Central and South Asia rarely do well together. Yesterday, the Huffington Post ran a story called “Crooners and their Dictators” that called a number of musical acts, from Seal to Mariah Carey, to task for their capriciousness (or stunning inability to google the guy who signed their million dollar [...]

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Guest Post: Hungarian-Azeri-Armenian Relations: The Axe Factor

by Joshua Foust
Thumbnail image for Guest Post: Hungarian-Azeri-Armenian Relations: The Axe Factor

This is a guest post by Péter Marton. The act Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant in the Azerbaijani army, came to Budapest in 2004 to study English at a seminar organized by the Hungarian National Defense University in the framework of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. There were participants of various nationalities attending the course, including [...]

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The Warming of the Caspian Cold War

by Casey_Michel
Thumbnail image for The Warming of the Caspian Cold War

The Caspian Sea first crept into the world’s cognizance sometime in 1873. Utilizing machinery constructed in nearby Bibi-Heybat Bay, jutting to the south of Baku, oil workers installed the world’s first offshore and machine-drilled wells, setting their engineering skills on the viscous black gold roiling underneath the Absheron peninsula. Gas-lit lamps and foreign nationals soon [...]

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The Decline and Fall of Matthew Bryza

by Joshua Foust
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While he was the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder advocated constantly for the construction of Nord Stream, an undersea natural gas pipeline that will travel from Russia, along the floor of the Baltic Sea, and end in Germany. It seemed like a great deal for Germany, to get a direct line to Russia’s vast energy wealth, [...]

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Focus on the “Social” in Social Media

by Nathan Hamm
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Earlier this week, Small Wars Journal published an article by Matthew Stein, a research analyst currently working at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, discussing the role of videos recorded and posted by citizen bystanders in the information battle to control the narrative over the police’s violent crackdown on protesters in Zhanaozen [...]

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Showdown! Who Wins?

by Nathan Hamm
Thumbnail image for Showdown! Who Wins?

Georgia’s president paid a visit to the race track recently. He offered to resign if Russia returns South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Sure, that’s interesting, but the more important question is whether Saakashvili or Berdimuhamedov would win on the track. So, who has your vote? or For those who need video: vs.

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Romney and Russia and Around We Go

by Casey_Michel
Thumbnail image for Romney and Russia and Around We Go

I don’t want to spend too much time dissecting Mitt Romney’s war-path to the presidency — the one that’s tarred anything he’s touched, and dropped his unfavorability numbers to record lows — because A) I’d hate to alienate any secret Romneycons among my friends, and B) while I do have enough time, I’d rather spend it transcribing [...]

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