Very good article. You may be interested in the second part of this long article here, which shares your analysis and concern:

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal.html

I should also mention a couple other things that crimp my ability to blog as much as I’d like to. First, I really shouldn’t blog from work. Not that I can’t, but I shouldn’t. Second, my day job feels like a more formal version of writing for Registan.net a lot of the time. During the two hours of free time I have per day, it would feel too much like working to be blogging. (Not that I’m complaining about work at all. I love it, and I owe the position to blogging.)

Ian, you’re right about it being simple as highlighting a story. I shied away from that for a while, so I kind of need to relearn blogging to get back into that style of post.

The good thing about this discussion is that I’ve already gotten two offers from new contributors. But, I want to extend that offer out to even more. I especially encourage students to write. I can attest to how helpful blogging can be to getting a job in one’s field.

And D, I agree with Ian, it’s not really fair to criticise Josh for posting on what he has time for and what he is interested in. It’s a blog, not a special-interest publication. And if you don’t want to read stuff on Afghanistan and Pakistan, just don’t.

For those who criticize anonymously, go start your own blog. If you don’t want to foot the financial costs, I know neweurasia is constantly looking for more writers.

Steve LeVine, author
The Oil and the Glory

Similarly, I have found some stories on Alisher Saipov, but I’m afraid Nathan is far more versed in the internal politics of the former Soviet ‘stans, and I don’t have much to add beyond pointing out that it happened. Last I checked, we prefer analysis here, not simply acting like a news aggregator (though the news room does ably serve this purpose).

I’m afraid there is nothing to say about Uzbekistan’s sham elections we haven’t already said. run a search or read through the “Uzbekistan” tags. Nathan and I post on what we consider interesting. Frankly, there is a lot more interesting things (to me, at least) going on in Afghanistan at the moment than there is in Kazakhstan. Which is, if you think about it, good news for Kazakhstan, as it means there is no active disaster going on.

You can look at this, too, as a division of labor: Nathan and I, both living in large American cities, cannot hope to cover the intimate details of Central Asia with near as much precision as the good people over at neweurasia.net (to name one example). So for the newsy stuff, we tend to let them take the lead, while we focus on analysis.

I appreciate your frustration at our lack of comprehensive coverage, and I actually share it. Were I not, like Nathan, consumed with a day job that limits what I can post, I would dearly love to be far more wide-ranging in covering regional news, rather than simply trying to analyze what happens there from a mostly American perspective. If anyone would care to fund this blog sufficiently, I would gladly take on such role (this is a serious request). Until that time, I’m afraid we’re left with me covering what I happy to run across in the news of the moment that catches my eye, and with Nathan posting what he can when he can. And with our other contributors not posting at all, which is a shame.

Mr. Shroeder is in a good company at NordStream and, by extension, at Gazprom. There are several German officials with past ties to Stasi. There is a Die Welt article on that: http://pbtt.wordpress.com/germany/die-welt-gazprom%E2%80%99s-german-daughter-is-operated-by-former-stasi-spy/