Registan’s Uzbekistan News & Analysis Archive

Uzbekistan has been the most topic subject of coverage at Registan since our launch in 2003. Several Registan authors have lived, worked, and studied in Uzbekistan and have between them decades of experience in academia, government, and private industry dealing with topics related to Uzbekistan. We use that experience and expertise to report on, contextualize, and analyze current events in Uzbekistan. Our most current coverage of Central Asia news can be found on our front page. Inquiries about our Uzbekistan news and analysis, hiring Registan authors to consult on Uzbekistan, or any other topic, can be submitted via the contact form on our about page.

UNICEF’s Children’s Rights Window Dressing

by Nathan Hamm
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UzDaily carries a story today on cooperation between UNICEF and Uzbekistan’s parliament on children’s rights. The parliament’s Committee on Democratic Institutions, NGOs, and Self-governing Bodies met with UNICEF, MPs, government ministries, and a handful of NGOs to discuss “strengthening the protective environment around children, in particular, those who are at greatest risk and need protection.” [...]

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Guest Post: Will EurAsEC grow into Eurasian economic union?

by Joshua Foust
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The following is a guest post written by Azamat Seitov of the Regional Policy Foundation, Polit.uz. It was originally published there. *** The last of the EurAsEC summit in Moscow demonstrated that for all the optimistic public statements, the integration processes are not advancing well in practice. It was predicted that the summit will announce [...]

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Uzbekistan Seems About Broke — A Continuing Series

by Nathan Hamm
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Since the government of Uzbekistan’s economic and budget reports are unreliable, making proxy indicators about the only things that allow for any kind of realistic assessment of the government and country’s financial health. The latest sign of the Uzbek government’s poor financial health is the news that teachers and doctors in Vobkent district of Bukhara [...]

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Crisis Group on Ethnic Divisions in Kyrgyzstan

by Nathan Hamm
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International Crisis Group released last week a report on the growing ethnic divide in southern Kyrgyzstan. If you happen to be, like I am, a pessimist about Kyrgyzstan, this report will probably reinforce your pessimism. In more remote rural areas, the mood remains raw. Harking back to June 2010, some politicians refer to the brave [...]

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The Plastic President

by Nathan Hamm
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Pictures of Islom Karimov that do not look doctored seem to be rarer than sightings of him in public. The president has been rumored to be on the verge of death from cancer for about the last decade. With very little reliable information about him, photos and videos are some of the few ways to [...]

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Of Tea Leaves & Presidents

by Nathan Hamm
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Uzbekistan’s parliament decided last week to delay the next presidential election from December 2014 to March 2015. Upon first glance, this seems fairly inconsequential — a mere rescheduling of an inevitability. This seems like a safe bet. After all, Islom Karimov has deployed creative arguments to justify additional terms beyond constitutional limits, had his term [...]

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Just… Wow

by Joshua Foust
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Tara McKelvey reports on human rights in Uzbekistan, sort of: As I stood at the gate, I held my passport and a notebook filled with the names of both kinds: dissidents who had been outspoken about human rights abuses, along with others who were willing to talk as long as they could remain anonymous. The [...]

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Particular Concern

by Nathan Hamm
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The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom released its annual report this week, recommending the State Department list several states in Central Asia as “countries of particular concern,” places where the government commits or tolerates egregious violations of religious liberty. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are, of course, well-established members of this club. However, Tajikistan is recommended [...]

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The Denver Post’s Astounding Coverage of the Mukhtarov Case

by Joshua Foust
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The Denver Post has been following the saga of Uzbek refugee turned terror suspect Jamshid Muhtorov, since he settled in the U.S. in Aurora, a city next to Denver, Colorado (when I was doing my undergrad in Boulder, I would teach classes for the Princeton review in Aurora and Columbine, if you can believe it). [...]

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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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