Joshua Foust

Will Astana Become the New Tripoli? No.

by Joshua Foust
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Earlier today, I wondered why Central Asia isn’t revolting against its leadership. It makes for some contextual thinking for Viktoria Panfilova’s December 19 article in Nezavisimaya gazeta (English translation here). She quotes a Russian analyst who has a startling thesis: [Th]is view is shared by Yury Solozobov, director of international projects at Russia’s National Strategy [...]

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Why Central Asia Isn’t Revolting

by Joshua Foust
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Scott Radnitz has a provocative take in Foreign Policy: On the surface, Central Asia would appear to be ripe for a popular uprising modeled on the Arab Spring. The “stans” are home to repressive governments, high unemployment, inequality, and widespread corruption. Over a year has passed since the wave of protests began to spread across [...]

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Correlation

by Joshua Foust
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2011 saw a substantial decrease in drone strikes in Pakistan. According to numbers assembled by the New America Foundation, strikes fell from a high of 118 in 2010 to 70 in 2011 — a 40% decrease (there were no drone strikes in December because of an errant U.S. artillery strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers). [...]

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Paula Broadwell’s Dishonest Portrayal of Tarok Kolache

by Joshua Foust
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Many readers will recall a writer named Paula Broadwell. Broadwell was responsible for a

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The Danger of Over-Generalizing

by Joshua Foust
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Frank Jacobs has a really interesting piece in the Opinionator about border areas and government control. But there exists another type of border, one that doesn’t reflect back our image. In vampiric asymmetry, it offers only the void. There are no barriers, no officials, no capitals on the other side. The world as we know [...]

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The Muhtorov Hearing

by Joshua Foust
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Former Uzbek human rights activist and accused would-be-terrorist Jamshid Muhtorov had a hearing yesterday over the decision to arrest him. And it’s kind of unsettling to read: A prosecutor told a federal judge this morning that Uzbek refugee Jamshid Muhtorov admitted he knew the Islamic Jihad Union was a combat organization that fights NATO and [...]

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The Failed Negotiation Opportunity

by Joshua Foust
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Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai have a typically penetrating story about dissent in the Taliban ranks over negotiating with the U.S.: Disclosure of the leadership’s secret talks in Qatar—confirmed and driven home by the group’s opening of a liaison office in the emirate’s capital, Doha—has devastated the insurgency’s ranks. The previously unified movement is splitting, [...]

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Turkmenistan’s Ridiculous, Predictable “Election”

by Joshua Foust
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In a surprise no one could have possibly predicted, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov swept the Turkmen presidential election this weekend. Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov won a new five-year term by capturing 97 percent of the vote, election officials said Monday, but a Western expert called the vote a democratic sham. All of Berdymukhamedov’s seven opponents praised his [...]

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Framing Politics and the NDN

by Joshua Foust

The AP report: Pakistan’s defense minister said Tuesday that the country should reopen its Afghan border crossings to NATO troop supplies after negotiating a better deal with the coalition. Pakistan closed the crossings over two months ago in response to American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two Afghan border posts. The closure [...]

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What to do with a problem like Uzbekistan

by Joshua Foust

The stars aligned and two interviews I gave over the last week for different-language’d public media have been published. The first is with Dutch Public Radio, and it’s about the U.S. decision to lift restrictions on providing certain kinds of military equipment to the Uzbek regime. (See more here.) The second is with VOA Uzbek, [...]

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