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Has War in Afghanistan Ruined Central Asia?

While Central Asia’s international political profile has risen considerably since 2001, it has primarily been seen in the West through the prism of Afghanistan. The policies of Western governments towards Central Asia as a whole and as individual states have widely fluctuated, but in almost every case, been heavily shaped by policies toward Afghanistan. US [...]

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Usmanov, Devourer of Websites, Loves Facebook

Alisher Usmanov, the world’s richest libel tourist and oh yeah Uzbek-turned-Russian magnate of extractive industries, stands to profit massively from the upcoming Facebook IPO: As other investors were demanding tough terms, he said in an interview this week, he and his Russian business associates were willing to buy almost 10 percent of the company while [...]

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Focus on the “Social” in Social Media

Earlier this week, Small Wars Journal published an article by Matthew Stein, a research analyst currently working at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, discussing the role of videos recorded and posted by citizen bystanders in the information battle to control the narrative over the police’s violent crackdown on protesters in Zhanaozen [...]

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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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Making Sense of Jund al-Khilafah’s Claims

by yaqubjan
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Jund al-Khilafah (JaK), a Kazakh-led terrorist group based in Pakistan, issued its second statement on the Ansar al-Mujahideen online forum on April 1 claiming affiliation to Mohammed Merah. JaK’s first statement was released on March 22. On the day after Mohammed Merah was killed in Toulouse on March 22 JaK issued the following the statement [...]

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Kyrgyz MP Claims to Unearth New Uzbek Plot

by Nathan Hamm
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Jyldyz Joldosheva, a member of Kyrgyzstan’s parliament and of the nationalist Ata-Jurt party, continues to claim knowledge of well-financed plots by Uzbeks to attack Kyrgyzstan. Last April, Joldosheva claimed that wealthy Uzbek nationalists and separatists had financed the publication and distribution of book and video called Hour of the Jackal that accused the Kyrgyz of [...]

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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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Kremlin Ex Machina

by Nathan Hamm
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Russia clearly has influence and leverage in Central Asia like no other power. Russian remains the lingua franca of the region. The region’s economies connects to the world largely through infrastructure that flows through Russia. Household economies too, are kept afloat by opportunities to work in Russia. The Russian security and intelligence organs maintain robust [...]

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Another Peace Corps Rejection [UPDATED]

by Joshua Foust
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Update: I got in touch with a spokesperson at the State Department about this. The spokesperson disputed some points I made, specifically over the visa issue compared to a broad push against the Peace Corps, and offered the following: Six U.S. Peace Corps Volunteers departed Turkmenistan at the end of March 2012. They departed after [...]

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Karzai’s Misdirection

by Sekundar
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Going after President Karzai is something I’ve so far (more or less) avoided, but recently he stated “Sometimes I hear that some businessmen are fleeing and moving their businesses to outside Afghanistan… Curses be upon such businessmen that made tons of money here and now that the Americans are leaving they flee. They can leave [...]

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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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Romney and Russia and Around We Go

by Casey_Michel
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I don’t want to spend too much time dissecting Mitt Romney’s war-path to the presidency — the one that’s tarred anything he’s touched, and dropped his unfavorability numbers to record lows — because A) I’d hate to alienate any secret Romneycons among my friends, and B) while I do have enough time, I’d rather spend it transcribing [...]

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Squeezing Profits From Stones — Mining in Kyrgyzstan

by Nathan Hamm
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Toronto-based Centerra Gold has slashed its forecast for output from its Kumtor mine in Kyrgyzstan’s Issyk-Kul Province from about 600,000 ounces to about 400,000 ounces. The company said that the drop is caused by increased ice movement blocking access to high grade ore, exacerbated by a 10 day strike last month over payroll deductions for [...]

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