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.

Some History

by Michael Hancock-Parmer

In an effort to clear my brain while I construct some kind of cogent argument about the depth and nature of the relations  between Kazakhs and Cossacks in the middle of the 19th century, I will share some choice citations from the works I’ve been reading. I understand that I’m dropping these into a blog [...]

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Facing up to illiberal democracy

Kazakhstani ballot box (Wikipedia). by Christopher Schwartz

In the last two months, we’ve born witness to more incidents of illiberal democracy or democracy’s “doubles” here in Central Asia/Eurasia, from Kazakhstan’s parliamentary elections which many say was an experiment in pseudo-pluralism; to Turkmenistan’s surreal presidential election that has left those of us on the outside (and, indeed, many of those on the inside) [...]

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Jihad in Kyrgyzstan?

by Joshua Foust
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A previously unheard of group is declaring jihad against the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan: Мы не хотим быть рабами и жертвами праведной ответной атаки иранских ракет! Уже 10 лет нашу родную землю топчет сапог американского солдата. Центральный аэропорт страны, носящий имя Великодушного Манаса, превращен в склад и базу захватнической армии. Армия, которая ведет войну [...]

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Campaigning for Osh

by Nathan Hamm
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Several municipalities in Kyrgyzstan will hold city council elections on March 4. The election in Osh, where the council will have the power to choose the mayor, is the highest profile and is where Kyrgyzstan’s political elites are seeking to make one of the few major gains possible until parliamentary elections in 2015 (unless called [...]

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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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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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Turkestan Album

by Nathan Hamm
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For at least the last seven or eight years, the Prokudin-Gorskii collection of color photos of the Russian empire taken in the early 20th century, gets noticed and reported by journalists, history buffs, and photography enthusiasts. Less well known is that the Turkestan Album, a series of volumes on the people, architecture, history, and economy [...]

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Tengrism on Trial

by Nathan Hamm
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RFE/RL carries an interesting story about Kubanychbek Tezekbaev, an advocate of Tengrism who is on trial for inciting religious and ethnic hatred for saying in an interview last June that many mullahs in Kyrgyzstan are “former alcoholics and murderers” who are trying to paper over their pasts. Tezekbaev, who could be sentenced to five years [...]

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Kazakhstan’s Stability, Central Asia’s Stability

by Nathan Hamm
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Last week, the US Helsinki Commission held a hearing on Kazakhstan’s stability, looking at the violence in Zhanaozen and the recent parliamentary elections and questioning whether or not Kazakhstan is as stable as its government claims. The testimony, which can be found here is interesting and worth taking a look at. Included with the expert [...]

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Central Asia: An Exception to the “Cute Cats” Theory of Internet Revolution

by Sarah Kendzior

Last month Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at the Berkman Center of Internet and Society, gave a lecture on how his “cute cats” theory of the internet applies to the Arab Spring. For those of you unfamiliar with the theory, Cory Doctorow sums it up in an rapturous review of the talk in the Guardian: [...]

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