Kurmanbek Bakiev seems to want to tie together the north and the south through his latest Prime Minister nomination. Agriculture Minister Azim Isabekov is from the same restless region as Kulov—Chu—and, given his relative lack of a record, should stir up less controversy.
Kyrgyzstan’s vaguely European-style democracy soldiers on.
Update: You have to love the Internet. I mistakenly misspelled President Bakiev’s first name above—”Kurmabnek” instead of Kurmanbek. By doing so I was denying him altruism (“kurman” in Kyrgyz) and physical strength (“bek”). Honestly, I had no idea, but I was informed of this when a reader sent me an email explaining what had happened… in French. Awesome.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
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 is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust