Just as I was discussing on my other blog the Pakistani state’s inability to control or effectively coexist with the Islamic culture and religion within its borders, Islamabad announced a new deal allowing the Swat region to be ruled by Sharia law. This is yet another deal the Pakistani government has made with one of […]
According to the International Crisis Group, Tajikistan may be headed for economic collapse. http://www.rferl.org/content/Tajikistan_On_The_Road_To_Failure_Think_Tank_Concludes/1492820.html The country has been subsisting on remittance payments from migrant workers in Russia, but work is drying up quickly. Many are headed home. Some of the workers who have decided to stay are not making enough to send back, either from […]
I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but there continues to be breaking news regarding the closure of the US Manas base in Kyrgyzstan. Alexander Cooley at the Herald Tribune has an inside view of the US displacement from the air base and argues that the US did the prudent thing by walking […]
It is amazing how much the US media is now concentrating on the war in Afghanistan as the war in Iraq is dropping further and further onto the back pages. This also appears to be true in looking at US government entities as Afghan envoy Richard Holbrooke is seemingly everywhere and we do not even […]
Last week, I spoke in front of the San Diego World Affairs Council North Chapter (an affiliate of FPA) about the rising objectives and capabilities of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Here is my presentation in slides (go to the bottom of the page). I though some you might be interested in some of the articles […]
“In 1999, while taking a break from my PhD to try to get rich in the fine jewellery business, I nearly became the world's largest counterfeiter of Fabergé eggs”. So begins jeweller-turned-philosophy professor Clancy Martin's hilarious account of his aborted attempt to create an international criminal operation involving an oligarch-mobster and using a group of […]
Just what sort of person would confess to reading the FPA Russia blog? In the first of an occassional series, we caught up with Scott Spires, a Moscow-based linguist, translator, writer, and recreational Russia Blog user. FPA Russia Blog: How do you like living in Russia? SS: I love it, despite the occasional aggravations and […]
Newly appointed Afghanistan/Pakistan US ‘representative’, which gives him a bit more power than an ‘envoy’, stated during a Munich security conference that the war in Afghanistan will be a ‘long and difficult struggle,’ one which is 'tougher than Iraq.’ Not exactly breaking news, but it's important to know where Mr. Holbrooke stands and how he […]
_ FPA Russia blog sometimes gives the Guardian's Russian man Luke Harding a hard (ahem) time, but hats off to him for today's chilling and well-researched investigation into rising skinhead and neo-Nazi violence. Ultranationalist gangs, whose members are mostly in their early 20s or even younger, are responsible for over 300 brutal killings since 2004. […]
To mark 20 years since the beginning of political changes in Poland, BBC News asked its online readers: “Do you live in a former Soviet bloc country? What have 20 years of capitalism done for you? Do you think that your country has benefited from the end of communism?” Within hours, the forum was swamped […]
Adobe Creative Suite 3 + Cakewalk Sonar 7.02 + Adobe Premiere Elements 4.0 Well, it looks like the Kyrgyz government has indeed decided to officially order the removal of American forces from the Manas air base. US officials assert that negotiations were still on going, but Kyrgyz officials stated that the deal was as good […]
In a surprise move, Kyrgyzstan President Bakiyev, during a visit to Moscow, stated that he would close the American Manas Air Base in his country. Bakiyev argued that the US mission in the region was complete and voiced concern over several issues including; financial compensation, an incident where a Kyrgyz citizen was killed on the […]
It is being reported that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff will issue a report recommending that the Obama administration lower its expectations for a democratic Afghanistan and instead concentrate on regional stability and defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban. I have not seen the report myself, but Politico's David Cloud asserts that the report […]
Cheap bread and used cars: As Russia's economic tailspin rips away one by one the flimsy protective myths of the ruling clique – national rebirth, orthodoxy, regional hegemony, patriotism, assertiveness abroad – we now see in stark relief the true, rather more prosaic, foundations of Putin's popularity in Russia. As thousands of citizens called […]
Just as Iraq's provinces express their newly given right to participate in an election, the Afghanistan people will have to wait a little bit longer for their turn. The Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan has decided to postpone the country's presidential election until August 20th for the expressed reason of registering more voters, setting up […]