Today’s New York Times featured two contrasting views of how the US should fight the Afghan insurgency and prevent international terrorism from breeding in the region. Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, while asserting that defeating the Taliban threat is ‘not achievable’, argues for a steady military drawback from the conflict, […]
What human rights? Activists say that the ruling regimes in Central Asia deny their citizens basic freedoms, like freedom of the press or assembly. I have always thought that that is beyond the point. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are considered part of the top 8 most repressive in the world. I believe them. Religious freedom is routinely […]
Iran is in the news, this of course is no surprise, but what is worth noting is that it involves US-Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan. After the fall the Taliban, which involved US-Iran partnering up in small, but significant ways, there has not been a healthy or productive relationship between the states regarding the stability and […]
As this blog has been insisting, regional ties are the answer to many of Central Asia’s problems, rather than the West or even Russia. This Radio Liberty article describes how the State Department groups the post-Soviet Central Asian states together with the South Asian states in a long-term effort to promote ties between US-friendly states […]
Over at the Afghanistan blog, I wrote a piece about the Sister City program between San Diego, California and Jalalabad, Afghanistan. This group does a lot of amazing work that should be recognized. Maybe we should have a ‘surge’ of Sister Cities!
The city of San Diego has many sister cities and one of them is Jalalabad, Afghanistan. As a new San Diegan, this was brought to my attention by San Diego-Jalalabad activist David Edick Jr. It appears that through this organization much good has come about with active citizens participating from both cities. Here is the […]
After reports that Kygyzstan was still waiting for Russia to send money, and Kyrgyz officials attempting to seem ambivalent, the money is in and the US has to leave by August 20th. I hope Kyrgyz officials decide to do something useful with their money, for example, by increasing funding of the Red Crescent, which is […]
In an Air Force One interview session, President Obama opened the proverbial door to negotiating with the segments of the Taliban. He was vague about who the ‘Taliban’ was and how to go about it, but its definitely on his Afghan policy workbench. Though he offered few details, Obama was well aware that such a […]
Not everyone in America or England knows this, but today is International Women’s Day, an official holiday in Russia. Ironically, while the USSR had long prided itself on its feminist stance and some well-deserved progress in gender equality, Women’s Day often felt more like a mix of Valentines and Mother’s day, an orgy of flowers, […]
Kazakhstan has been living it up the last decade, maintaining nearly 10% growth due to high LNG and oil prices. The government built an insane new capital, as seen above, while migrants from the other Central Asian countries came to work in Kazakhstan. Now the economy has been hit hard hard by the worldwide drop […]
Turkmenistan has agreed to allow non-lethal NATO supplies to be transported through its air space. This is a big deal because Turkmenistan is officially neutral and has been very cautious about getting mixed up into any other state’s affairs. The Turkmen president, Berdymukhamedov, announced the new agreements on his visit to Tashkent February 24-25th. According […]
The New York Times has reported that the Obama administration has widened the scope of missile attacks inside of Pakistan. The report details two specific drone attacks inside of Pakistani territory that directly targeted Baitullah Mehsud, an insurgent leader who mainly targets Pakistani forces, not the US/NATO/Afghan forces across the border, and his camps. The […]
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