Defense Minister of Afghanistan Abdul Rahim Wardak had an hour long conversation with noted interviewer Charlie Rose this past Friday evening. The conversation touched on everything that you might want to know about Afghanistan; how the Karzai administration intends to go work with President Obama impending draw down; what the interested reader and analyst concerned […]
Has former Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrossian been personally profiting from the Iranian narcotics trade? This is the conclusion that some people are drawing from a Wikileaks release on the Norwegian news site Aftenposten. The cable can be viewed here, and the story has gotten circulation on Armenian web sites, including PanArmenian.net, whose editors wrote the […]
Moments after seeing TV images of Vladimir Putin professing a liking for a then poorly rated white leopard as the Sochi Winter Olympics mascot, which was being chosen through a nationwide poll, my dad said: “Mark my words: that will be the one”. Funny how a lifetime spent living in Russia can develop one’s clairvoyance! […]
Uzbekistan is systematically sneaking electricity from Kazakhstan’s power grid beyond amounts agreed between the two parties, the Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company (KEGOC) claims. Kazakhstan has had tensions with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan off and on for the last ten years on electricity. Basically, there isn’t enough electricity for the latter two states during the winter. […]
Is the U.S. scaling back its military and political ambitions before the start of the July 2011 drawdown? The New York Times reported that the U.S military is withdrawing from its outpost in the Pech Valley, a post that it had previously thought crucial in its strategy to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda. So, […]
A History of Inner Asia by Svat Soucek is a scholarly work about the history of Inner Asia which includes the present day five independent states of Central Asia (in historic terms also known collectively as Russian or Western Turkestan), Mongolia (Outer Mongolia) and China controlled Sinkiang (Eastern or Chinese Turkestan). It is not customary […]
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 […]
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