Bruce Pannier is a Central Asia analyst and appears regularly on the Majlis podcast for RFE/RL.
That the rights situation in Kyrgyzstan is growing worse is no secret. There have been plenty of examples just in the last few weeks that demonstrate the deterioration of the rights situation in the country, once held up by Western democracies as a model for neighboring states to follow.
Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is in Turkmenistan to open a new pipeline to bring Turkmen gas to Iran. For Turkmenistan, the important symbolism is to show its growing independence from Moscow in gas exports, while for Iran, the benefit goes beyond the additional gas.
Kazakhstan has taken on a new role as the world in uranium production. But the achievement has been tainted by news that rogue elements within the state nuclear company are working out an illegal deal to supply Iran with a large amount of purified uranium ore.
Uzbekistan is set to hold elections to an expanded lower house of parliament. And while they don't promise to be any better than the previous three, even if they don't have the "feel" of democracy, they at least "look" more like democracy in some ways.
Kazakhstan's leadership is considering an interesting -- and controversial -- plan that would rent Kazakh farmland to China. Kazakhstan has ample land but not enough famers; whereas China has the farmers but not enough land. But while it seems the two states have found an opportunity for neighborly cooperation, some in Kazakhstan fear China's ambitions could go beyond working Kazakh land on just a temporary basis.
A U.S. Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee held a special hearing on Central Asia on December 15 to discuss the Obama administration's policy toward a region that has grown in importance recently for many countries.
Moscow's near monopoly over Central Asian gas routes has now been broken.
Doubts hound the rights watchdog's decision to hand its chairmanship to Kazakhstan.
As Muslims around the world prepare for this year's hajj, those from Turkmenistan won't be among them. Fears of swine flu have led the Turkmen government to ban citizens from making the trip to Mecca. Instead, a delegation of officials and elders has embarked on a first-ever official pilgrimage to 38 "holy" sites within Turkmenistan itself.
When Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev put the finishing touches on his restructured government last week, he entrusted the country's future economic course to a person he has known for decades -- his youngest son, Maksim Bakiev.
Representatives of the CIS are holding a summit in the Moldovan capital today, but most of the Central Asian presidents won't be in attendance. The presidents of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan instead sent lower-level delegations. Focusing on the three Central Asian states that make up the CIS's southern frontier, we examine how, by skipping the summit, they might be exhibiting their discontent with Russia.
There was little information emerging from an informal summit of Caspian littoral leaders and it was unclear whether any formal conclusions were expected. But while there was silence in Kazakhstan, there was energy news coming out of neighboring Turkmenistan.
An interesting event is taking place in Kazakhstan's Caspian port city of Aktau starting September. The Caspian littoral states are holding a first-ever "informal" summit. But one of the countries -- Iran -- has not been invited. Also, there seems to be an unusual sense of urgency on the part of some of the leaders who will be in Aktau. At the same time, however, Kazakhstan officials have suggested there is no set agenda. So what's about to happen in Aktau?
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is coming to Russia looking for public support for the idea of forming a "gas OPEC," an idea that Russia, with the largest natural gas reserves in the world, has already been considering. Russian officials will certainly be interested in listening to Chavez's proposals, but are well aware that forming such a group may be more difficult than forming one based on oil exports.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has arrived in Turkmenistan for a two-day visit to the Central Asian nation.
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, sending a mushroom cloud high above northern Kazakhstan and a shadow of fear over the rest of the world. The nuclear arms race had begun in earnest. That initial blast, and the many that followed, continue to claim victims.
Kyrgyzstan's 2005 "Tulip" or "People's" Revolution was hailed by many as a promising triumph of democracy in the brief era of "colored" revolutions. But the years since have seen a regression on the country's path to democracy.
Officially, Dmitry Medvedev is in Mongolia to mark the 70th anniversary of the battle of Khalkhin Gol, when combined Soviet-Mongolian forces repelled a Japanese invasion. But the Russian president's two-day visit has far more significance on the economic front.
While Central Asia has been preoccupied with the threat of the swine flu pandemic, another deadly virus is already marking its return to the region. Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, a tick-borne illness, is starting to reappear, and has already claimed lives in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.
When a small band of armed "refugees" seized a village in Kyrgyzstan 10 years ago this week, they didn't appear to pose much of a threat. It has since become clear that the storming of the international stage by IMU gunmen dashed Central Asian hopes of escaping Pakistan- and Afghanistan-style Islamist insurgencies.
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