In Lenin’s birthplace of Ulyanovsk recently, a squad of United Russia officials barged into a school and broke into the kitchen. Throwing the lids of pots and manhandling the cooks, they proclaimed the food to be not healthy enough, and warned the school to change its catering company immediately. Hot on the heels of classifying […]
Afghanistan’s democratic gamble seems to have paid off handsomely for Hamid Karzai and all those who play private politics with him. For he must think politics in Afghanistan is a game; why else would he and his friends take the money and run? In the past year President Karzai has threatened to leave the safety […]
Last weekend, I was left alone with my 8 month old daughter so did I pass the time? By watching, a loud, violent documentary of the Afghan war, that’s how! I enjoyed and my daughter tolerated ‘Restrepo’, the story of U.S. Army platoon of the 173rd Airborne Brigade during much of its 15-month deployment in […]
On Thursday, February 17, Kyrgyz parliamentarians overwhelmingly voted in support of Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev’s proposal to name a 4,446 m (14,587 ft) peak in the country’s northern Tian Shan range after his counterpart Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In an explanatory note the MPs said it would “cement friendly ties between Kyrgyzstan and […]
Speculation in Baku was rife last week over the temporary closing on Monday of the Israeli embassy. Many news sources such as the opposition newspaper Yeni Musavat theorized that the reason for the closing of the embassy was security-related. In any case, the embassy was apparently closed for “technical reasons” and re-opened. The Israeli Foreign […]
The International Monetary Fund is worried about Afghanistan‘s economy . The under-reported, though devastating charges of fraud and malfeasance that surround the September 2010 run on Kabul Bank threaten to bring down the nascent Afghan banking sector. However, the fiasco has also had wide-ranging political effects in Afghanistan and within U.S. and NATO diplomatic circles—even if […]
In January 2011, Uzbekistan’s president Islam Karimov made a controversial visit to Brussels and met with both E.U. and NATO officials creating somewhat of an uproar among human rights activists. His European visit drew attention and sharp criticism towards renewed Western engagement with a state that violates human rights and personal freedoms, remains corrupt, brutally […]
Former Ambassador to Turkey, Marc Grossman, is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pick to replace the late Richard Holbrooke. Grossman, the new special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan brings with him decades of foreign policy expertise and a real hand feel for the politics of Islam and Islamist moderation–a real salutary capability that will surely […]
“The revolt that began in Tunisia and spread to Egypt”, writes Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books, “is a struggle against what Algerians call hogra, ‘contempt’, a struggle fed by anger over authoritarian rule, torture, corruption, unemployment and inequality, and – a lightning rod everywhere in the Arab world – deference to the US […]
Early morning February 7, 2011, Hikmatullo Saifullozoda, a 60 year old editor of the opposition newspaper Najot and a prominent member of the opposition from the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), was ambushed and brutally beaten by unidentified perpetrators near his home in the capital city Dushanbe. He is currently in a hospital in […]
On Friday, February 4th Kazakhstan’s president Nazarbayev announced that his country will hold presidential elections on April 3, 2011, almost two years earlier than previously scheduled for 2012. Nursultan Nazarbayev has held a grip on power in this Central Asian republic since before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. At the age of […]
On the heels of an Afghan Islamic Press piece that 40 Taliban soldiers have defected to the Kabul government, the Associated Press reports that at least 900 Taliban footsoldiers and leaders have defected from the Taliban. Lured, by a new integration program that promises jobs and educational training, insurgents have laid down their weapons to join […]
The New York Times published an excellent expose on how the resurgent Taliban has resurfaced and consolidated power in parts of Afghanistan from which the government had turned away. In the absence of a local consensus goverment the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the proper banner name of teh Taliban has established a shadow government that […]
Disturbing news out of Azerbaijan today, where a prominent defense attorney has been effectively disbarred and a young political activist was arrested on drug charges. Osman Kazimov, a well-known defense lawyer who has defended, among others, Said Nuri, was reportedly kicked out of Azerbaijan’s Collegium, a body that functions like an über bar association. By that […]
The Frontier Post is reporting a bit of good news from an Afghan Islamic Press newswire piece. At least 40 Taliban insurgents have switched allegiances in favor of their local government. Here, from Herat: “As many as 40 Taliban including their three commanders joined the government in Pasaband district of Ghor province, officials said […]