With their tweedy manner, fancy degrees, thousand paged books and tenured positions, it was all too easy to forget that Russia historians are really just backstabbing, gossipy teenage egomaniacs at heart. Until now. It all started when a few Russia scholars, including Robert Service, noticed some mean reader reviews for their books on Amazon. They […]
Afghanistan is becoming a grave yard. Innocent people including women and children are losing their lives in every corner of the country. Sometimes they are shields to Taliban to fight with NATO and sometimes they are killed by NATO, mistaken for Taliban. People are losing hope. They do not trust foreign troops any more. In […]
In honor of the momentous events occurring in nearby Kyrgyzstan, this weeks Afghan-related map will be of the regional variety. It is an ethnicity map of Central Asia. Click on the previous link or the map to get a larger version. The map’s legend is in French, but can still be followed. Here’s a great […]
While Medvedev and Obama were negotiating nuclear quotas and ways to protect the world from atomic terrorism, back home, some wondered whether they would have been better off talking adoption quotas and ways to protect Russian kids from their American foster parents. That’s because more adopted Russian children have died at the hands of their […]
When it comes to Russia, Anne Applebaum suspects the worst at the best of times. She saw the nefarious hand of the Kremlin even behind her recent car breakdown. So if Applebaum, whose Polish foreign minister husband could easily have also been on that doomed plane, is lauding the way Russia has handled the aftermath […]
The recent events in Kyrgyzstan have not only raised the question of what actually happened there, but how we can understand it? The NYTimes and CNN have mostly been awful, with some exceptions: This opinion piece being the major one. On the other hand, Registan.net has been extraordinary. This article on how to understand media […]
This morning’s horrific plane crash that killed Polish president Kaczynski his wife and many senior staff en route to Katyn forest contained some tragic irony. Not least that, curiously for a president famous for his anti-Russian sentiments, Kaczynski insisted on continuing to use a safe but ageing Soviet jet for his official travels, long after […]
Unbelievable displays of ignorance like this make me wonder if those who accuse the US media’s post-Soviet reporting of bias are just giving it way too much credit. Here is Kyra Phillips, anchor of CNN’s afternoon newscast, on Kyrgyzstan, via Gawker: Kyra Phillips: Kyrgyzstan, impossible to spell, hard to say, good luck finding it on […]
And then there was one. Seven years after Saakashvili ushered the first of three coloured revolutions in post-Soviet Europe, February’s Ukrainian elections and now the Kyrgyz overthrow of the Tulip revolution have left him the last man (precariously) standing. While it is still unclear what the final outcome will be in Kyrgyzstan (although the opposition […]
The President Karzai-President Obama relationship was bound to be an uncomfortable one from the get-go, but things are getting ridiculous, and it is not helpful for either side. In case you haven’t heard, ever since Obama’s visit to Kabul last week, which included a personal meeting with Karzai, a diplomatic (more likely undiplomatic) row has […]
A state of emergency has been declared in response to massive protests over a spike in utility costs. Kurmanbek Bakiyev seems to have stepped down, left the country, and the opposition has claimed control over the government. 100 people have been killed, the police are firing live rounds into crowds, protesters have stormed parliament. Video […]
Throughout the world, there are 49 countries that have forced marriage or child bride problems. Forced marriage is simply breach of basic human rights. It is a form of domestic violence and child abuse that contributes to a society’s problems. Afghanistan is one of the Islamic countries where people hold strongly tight to customs and […]
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