So of course I take a vacation right as Afghanistan hits the front pages around the world. President Obama held a press conference on Friday to announce a new US strategy in Afghanistan, which included a new outlook on the reasons and goals for our presence there. I will get into the pros and cons […]
Less than a year after Boris Yeltsin named him responsible for national economic reform, the Russian economy completely collapsed; his closest political ally, Anatoly Chubais, is one of the most hated men in Russia; under his leadership the Union of Right Forces party managed to eke out a liliputian 4% in the 2003 elections. With […]
On March 25, Turkmen President Gurbankuly Berdymuhammedov traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and discuss a series of issues. The two countries have generally good relations as Russia is Turkmenistan’s biggest trading partner. They discussed electricity, transportation, natural gas, agriculture, and communication systems. The most important deal to come out of […]
The Kazakh Prime Minister has compared the economic situation to wartime and told his cabinet that the “government will be ruling the economy manually”. He warned that “wartime regulations” may be a necessary step. Obviously, this is a bad sign. Four of the sixteen laid-off oil workers who are on a hunger strike have been […]
Every day I get emailed all the press briefings from the US State Department and yesterday, I found this in my inbox: The State Department has put up bounties of several million dollars, under the Rewards for Justice program, for three men with connections to Al Qaeda, Abu Yahya al-Libi, Baitullah Mehsud, and Sirajuddin Haqqani. […]
Ugh. That is the only word that really sums up the feelings of frustration regarding the latest report from unnamed American government officials detailing support given to the Taliban by Pakistani military intelligence officials. The US officials, which of course were not named because this information is supposedly not to become public, stated that Pakistan’s […]
The Kazakh government may not be able to continue the bailout of its biggest domestic bank, BTA, if any of its creditors ask for early repayment. The bank holds $12 million in foreign debt and will likely need to restructure it. So far, $2 billion in bailout funds has been injected into BTA In Uzbekistan, […]
Recent US policy in Afghanistan has involved a surge of troops, drone attacks, and now even a surge in these, but what about a diplomacy and civilian surge? Well, it looks like it may be here. President Obama is supposed to approve of a long, ongoing review of Afghanistan policy in the next week and […]
The US may be allowed to return to the Uzbek base of Karshi-Khanabad (K2) soon. They were evicted in 2005 after the massacre in Andijon in May and consequent international criticism. In recent weeks, Washington has spoken with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan about the possibility of a base, even after arguing that a base was not […]
The New York Times published an Op-Ed Chart detailing several key aspects of the stability and growth of both the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts from 2005, 2007, and 2009. The numbers for Iraq are looking amazingly improved, where as Afghanistan is facing smaller scale, but troubling downturns. All the Afghan indicators are on the rise […]
The people of Central Asia are celebrating the Persian New Year, Narouz, marked on the vernal equinox each year. The holiday is celebrated from India to China to parts of Europe, among the Turkic, Iranian and Kurdish peoples, along with a few others. Under the Soviet Union, the holiday was officially banned as it was […]
Murmansk and Boston, united for centuries by bitter arctic weather, alcoholism and vitamin D deficiency, grew even closer this week when my beloved hometown, once familiar mainly to Tom Clancy readers and WWII afficionados (nuclear icebreaker base, allied convoys), hosted a major political insurrection. It all started when Sergei Subbotin, the deputy governor, stood for […]
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