Registan’s Kyrgyzstan News & Analysis Archive

Several Registan authors have worked and studied in Kyrgyzstan and have between them decades of experience in academia, government, and private industry dealing with topics related to Kyrgyzstan. We rely on that experience and expertise to report on, contextualize, and analyze current events in Kyrgyzstan. Our most current coverage of Central Asia news can be found on our front page. Inquiries about our Kyrgyzstan news and analysis, hiring Registan authors to consult on Kyrgyzstan, or any other topic, can be submitted via the contact form on our about page.

Charting the Fall of the Soviet Union

by Joshua Foust

My think tank, the American Security Project, has teamed up with The Atlantic to run a 12-article series I edited about U.S. foreign policy 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, which happens on Christmas. There have been some really interesting essays in there that aren’t directly relevant to what we write about [...]

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Talking Kyrgyzstan, ethnic tensions, and base rights

by Joshua Foust

I gave an interview to WBEZ’s Worldview yesterday about issues going on in Kyrgyzstan. Full audio is here.

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The False Assumption of Chinese Domination in Central Asia

by Joshua Foust

There is a general assumption in most pop-studies of Central Asia based on the assumption that the region rarely has any agency of its own and is only to be understood as a pawn of the powerful countries on its periphery. The purest distillation of this trend is Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game, which more [...]

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Continuing to Not Read Too Much into Atambayev’s Manas Airbase Politics

by Joshua Foust

Joshua Kucera flags an interesting article by Columbia professor Lincoln Mitchell: The situation today is different. Atanbaev’s [sic] position does not appear to be a case of simply trying to line his pockets with more American money, but has expressed his view based on his country’s geographical and strategic proximity to Russia and a fear [...]

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Why the Economics of Southwest Kyrgyzstan Matter, And Afghanistan

by Joshua Foust

At my day job with the American Security Project, I recorded a podcast with Adjunct Fellow Nick Lockwood, expert on stabilization operations, population engagement and strategic communications. He travels routinely to Afghanistan, and more recently to places like Libya. The topic was primarily about my current research on the economics of southwest Kyrgyzstan, and why [...]

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How Do You Help?

by Joshua Foust
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When I was in Osh, Kyrgyzstan last month, I was overwhelmed by the depth of not just the despair, but the desperation that was evident with every single Uzbek I spoke to (save one). RFERL über-reporter Daisy Sindelair, who helped me wrap my head around some of the basic issues before I flew over, wrote [...]

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On Not Overreacting to Atambayev’s Comments About Manas

by Joshua Foust

The Associated Press dutifully repeats Kyrgyz President-elect Almazbek Atambayev’s worry that his country will face retaliatory strikes from an imaginary U.S. war with Iran. The base is subject of frequently extravagant rumors among local residents and politicians, who maintain that fuel dumps by U.S. planes devastate crops and cause illnesses. U.S. military officials have always [...]

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Kyrgyzstan Votes

by Joshua Foust

As I’m writing this, the polls in Kyrgyzstan have closed down, and now the international community—which sent many hundreds of observers—will crunch on its reports and tell us if Kyrgyzstan’s presidential election was fair or not. David Trilling has probably the best overview of the election itself—a grab bag of good things and bad things, [...]

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The Challenges Facing Southwestern Kyrgyzstan

by Joshua Foust
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Over at The Atlantic, I have a dispatch from my recent trip to Osh. An excerpt: “These NGOs mean well,” Adilya told me. She lost her shop when a gang of Kyrgyz men smashed in her windows, stole all of her inventory and cash, and set her home on fire. “But they hire mostly Kyrgyz [...]

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The Murdered Journalists of Central Asia, Still (sigh)

by Joshua Foust
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BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — On Abrahmanova St, between Chuy Avenue and Frunze St in Bishkek, across from the Hyatt Regency and over to the left, there lies a statue of Gennady Pavlyuk. Gennady was a Kyrgyz journalist on assignment in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 2009 when his hands were bound and he was tossed off the 6th [...]

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