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 […]
Politics turns on public finance; public finance turns on politics. Afghanistan is no different than the United States, or the United Kingdom on those terms. So it comes as a dismaying shock that the government of Afghanistan might have to bail out its largest and most important private bank. Kabul Bank has taken losses as […]
Events in Tunisia and Egypt are being closely monitored and discussed by pro- and anti-government forces in Baku these days, with postings on web forums, Twitter, facebook, and blogs – not to mention established web sites and newspapers. Even in Egypt, the well-known “sandmonkey” blogger has tweeted about Azerbaijan, expressing thanks for support the protesters […]
“A block of stone moving forward and leaving debris behind it”. That’s how the sculptor behind Russia’s first post-Communist statue of a 20th century politician summed up his subject, Boris Yeltsin; and it’s probably the best description I’ve heard. While grotesque, it’s not altogether senseless for the Kremlin to unveil a monument to Yeltsin a […]
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