I just finished watching Questar's Modern Warfare ‘Russia in Afghanistan’ documentary and it contained some great and dramatic footage of the ten year war, which ended in yet another defeat of a world power in the Hindu Kush. Many elements of this bygone war are strikingly similar to the current NATO/Afghan government led war against […]
Making predictions is a fool's man's game…thankfully I love that game! While one cannot foresee what exactly the future holds, some trends can be seen. For instance, it is hard to foresee any changes in the political leadership of all the Stans’, as they are all deeply entrenched and seem to have learned much from […]
In the second to last installment of our Central Asian Year in Review I want to discuss two things: Issues and events in the CA region that have lacked media coverage commensurate with their importance and common misconceptions about our subject area. Afghanistan is at the heart of both. The story that has received the […]
Today, in the second part of our Central Asia: Year in Review, we will discuss the global recession's impact on our region. A couple weeks ago, I went over Kazakhstan's sickening economy and their government's early efforts to stem the tide, while at the same time drawing a connection to how Kazakh and the rest […]
Don't you just wish you were in Russia? While we in the West are tightening our belts, those devil-may-care Russians are snapping up new Hermes ones for Christmas, throwing them into the back of their Hummers by the boxful! According to yet another article about Russian nonchalance in the face of global financial meltdown, […]
Just a few days ago I was jotting down some of the major happenings in the Afghanistan and Central Asian region this past year and a few significant items came to mind, but it was not until I went over my resources, news clippings, and former posts did I realize that there were stories everywhere. […]
The death of Russia's archbishop Alexy II was a deep personal blow for Putin. After all, “the patriarch, like the Prime Minister, was a former KGB agent codenamed Drozdov, according to Soviet archives opened to experts in the 1990s”. In fact, when Putin gave him a medal for Services to the Fatherland, it was not […]
New Orleans, an old colonial city known for jazz and southern hospitality, seemed like an unlikely place for Tsarist treasures. That is, until I came across an exhibition of Faberge antiques at the NoMA last weekend. I must have seen Faberge eggs in the Hermitage as a kid, but didn't remember them well. Unfortunately, there […]
My predecessor Bonnie Boyd completed a 2007 Central Asia Year in Review which you can find to your right and here. She made predictions regarding the CA region for 2008 and since that year is nearly come to pass, how bout we go over them? No, you don't want to? Well, too bad, I’m gonna […]
I have been little by little discussing an extensive review of the Afghanistan conflict by the Bush Administration and it finally looks like bits of the actual report have begun to surface. The review was headed by War czar Lt. Gen Douglas Lute and included many expert voices from inside and outside government and was […]
Yesterday morning, I attended a lecture and discussion led by Tatyana Zhukova titled ‘From Nomads to Central Asian Tigers’ about her home country of Kazakhstan at the World Affairs Council – San Diego. Zhukova, an ethnic Russian, worked for several years as an economic specialist for the US embassy in Kazakhstan and recently moved to […]
The rising political tensions between India and Pakistan are having a direct impact on Afghanistan and the rest of Central Asia. The two regional powers have traded influence in Afghanistan to try and outmaneuver the other and it is Pakistan's security apparatus's greatest fear right now that India currently has the upper-hand with US-backed Karzai […]
Today, I want to go over recent cooperative measures and conferences in our beloved Central Asian region. With Obama soon to be in the White House and multilateralism all the rage, I thought it was about time. In all seriousness, these cooperative efforts regarding such important transnational issues as terrorism, trade, drug trades, and disease […]
I just finished Barnett R. Rubin and Ahmed Rashid's Foreign Affairs piece on US/NATO Afghan and Pakistani policy, titled ‘From Great Game to Grand Bargain: Ending Chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan.‘ Rubin, who has a blog and a forthcoming book, and Rashid are two giants in the field and I was looking forward at what […]
Last Tuesday and Wednesday, with the latter in a joint news conference with the secretary general of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Afghan President Karzai voiced his displeasure with international NATO presence in his country and called for a timetable of withdrawal. In front of Scheffer, he used more careful language, calling for a 'timetable […]