Caucasus

Chart of the Day

by Joshua Foust
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Chechens and Uzbeks, Sittin’ in a Tree

by Joshua Foust

There was a suicide bombing today in Quetta. Five suspects, including three women and two children, were approaching a check post in the residential area of Kharotabad when security forces discovered they had explosive materials. The forces tried to arrest the group, at which point, one of the females blew herself up to avoid arrest, [...]

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Two Items of Note

by Joshua Foust

I wrote a summary of the issues Uighurs face in China, and how that affects the regional security setting, for PBS this week. This latest bombing in Aksu is, in many ways, another symptom of China’s dysfunctional relationship with Xinjiang and the Uighurs who live there. According to Chinese sources, the attack targeted a man [...]

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Migrating Violence in the Caucasus

by Joshua Foust

I have a new piece up at PBS. Dagestan hasn’t had it as rough as Chechnya. The Russian army did not stage two separate, brutal offensives into its cities. Makhachkala has never faced the same devastation as Grozny, the Chechen capital declared by the United Nations in 2003 as the most destroyed city on Earth [...]

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Continued Troubles in the North Caucasus

by Joshua Foust

Two car bombs exploded today in Makhachkala, the capital of Daghestan. But what’s interesting here isn’t the tragedy of the bombs—that’s something that almost goes without saying, and is difficult to assess from the U.S.—but rather how Russia is responding to the various endemic insurgencies in the Caucasus. From the article: The Kremlin has pledged [...]

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An Aria di Dispiacere for Nabucco

by Asher Kohn

Many thanks to the good folks of Eternal Remont (“The floor of the Moscow Metro with a sweet candy coating.”) for bringing this to my attention: The director of the Nabucco Pipeline has given up on the uniting ideal behind the Nabucco Pipeline. “Nabucco is not designed to substitute Russian gas…Nabucco is designed to offer [...]

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Aliyev Must be Pandering for Votes…

by Asher Kohn

…because he just decreed that the Azeri people’s debt to the state owned gas company is kaput. Wait, did I say “decreed”? I guess this isn’t a vote thing after all. It’s just Caucasus economics. Aliyev looks great to his people (and his parliament). He gets to be a father of the people just like [...]

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Making Foothills out of Footnotes

by Asher Kohn

Partway through Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field (which is fantastic and will be reviewed when I’m finished) I came across the following footnote to an article by Thomas Tuttig on Loya Paktia: “‘Taliban release video of German who Targeted US Afghan Base’”[cited].…According to one source, it ‘appears the IJU is an [...]

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Army Major Disputes Story of Chechen Fighters in Afghanistan

by Joshua Foust

Some time ago, I discussed an article Philip Smucker wrote about the presence of Al Qaeda along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. I was mostly skeptical of this section in particular: Interviews with US military commanders and American radio intercepts of Arab and Chechen fighters as well as confirmed captures or kills of foreign fighters inside Afghanistan [...]

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The Caucasian Bottleneck

by Joshua Foust

Steve LeVine has spent the last few weeks seeing what some ripple-effects of the Georgian war were in the rest of Central Asia. He has a nice essay up at Business Week: Even before the Georgia mini-war, Russia was playing for keeps in the region. Starting in the 1990s, Russia often got its way by [...]

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Who even knows anymore?

by Michael Hancock-Parmer

Here’s a little wrap up of Caucasian mayhem. Sadly, the list of murdered journalists on Registan has a new member, as mentioned in the comments. Magomed Yevloyev [Магомед Евлоев] was a journalist, blogger, and owner of Ingushetiya.ru. Earlier this summer his site was shut down by court order for “extremism,” which equates to being in [...]

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