Bruce Pannier is a Central Asia analyst and appears regularly on the Majlis podcast for RFE/RL.
Rulers and leading Islamic clerics in Central Asia have lived in complicated symbiosis for more than 1,000 years. Both sides have often sought to increase their influence by using the other.
On this week's Majlis podcast, a discussion on water supplies and water use in Central Asia.
Afghan drug smugglers showed up in Tajikistan and nabbed a shepherd, possibly mistaking him for someone else. The resulting ransom situation is more common in the area than you might think.
On November 22-23, Uzbekistan hosted the Asian Forum on Human Rights in the city of Samarkand.
RFE/RL has just released a 10-part documentary film called Not In Our Name, which looks at some of the people from Central Asia who went to Syria and Iraq to join extremist groups there.
People in Turkmenistan have for many years remained stoic in the face of hard times. But recent economic woes are wearing down their patience, and some people appear to be doing and saying things they never did before.
Tajikistan's president has warned local officials in the eastern Gorno-Badakhshan region to bring order to the area, but that might be a tall order.
Tajik officials have announced that work has started to demine the border with Uzbekistan with help from Uzbek authorities. Dozens of citizens of Tajikistan have been killed and maimed by these land mines that Uzbekistan laid nearly 20 years ago.
A video posted to the Internet has rekindled a long-running debate in Kyrgyzstan, and more generally in Central Asia, about women's rights and the role of women in contemporary Central Asian societies.
Representatives of the Tajik government and members of banned Tajik opposition groups came to the OSCE's annual Human Dimension Implementation Meetings (HDIM) in Warsaw this last week.
One group that seems to have gained prominence since Shavkat Mirziyoev took over as Uzbek president: mob bosses. (The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.)
While the leaders of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan did sign an agreement on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, it was clear that some of the same issues that prevented an agreement that suited all five countries remained. (The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.)
Official actions bespeak concern over potential demonstrations, although listening to Kazakh officials one might think the country's president was so beloved there could be no reason to believe any challenge could threaten the current regime.
In better days, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov's public absence might not have been a problem. But these are bad times, and his country can use all the friends it can get. (The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.)
A successful Turkmen college student in Turkey was asked by the Turkmen Embassy to speak in parliament but has instead been sentenced to a long prison term. (The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.)
Many governments worry about what to do with citizens returning from combat abroad in the ranks of extremists. Kyrgyzstan, which suddenly ramped up its roundups of returning "jihadists," thinks it has an answer.
Reports say an Islamic State commander has been killed in northwestern Afghanistan, marking a rare bit of good news for Central Asians battling the spread of that militant group's brand of extremism.
Astana hopes its deployment of peacekeepers to Lebanon is less eventful than the last time Kazakhstan sent a sizable group of peacekeepers abroad.
Former Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev is back in politics and wasted no time criticizing his own pick to succeed him as president.
This latest session of the Majlis explored the ties Iran and Arabic countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have with the five Central Asian states.
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