The Caspian sea is one home of the sturgeon, a large, unprepossessing fish that provides the world with one of its most tasty delicacies: caviar. On August 11th, delegates met in Ashgabat in a regular meeting of the Commission on the Biological Resources of the Caspian Sea to discuss revising the quota system between the states […]
Between the news agencies and the blog posts from Tajikistan's residents, one can get a picture of Tajikistan that makes one wonder what people in Tajikistan are actually allowed to do: 1. Mosque leaders will be tested for religious capability by the state. 2. Unregistered mosques are being demolished. 3. A draft law that would regulate […]
New notes and data toward conclusions: but not conclusions. Read on and form your own. Over the weekend, I perused the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Drug Report 2007 that came out last month. I’m going to start in Afghanistan and then follow various trade routes. Since the opium market is a global market, this […]
In the margins of the SCO conference, a bilateral agreement between China and Kazakhstan has furthered Kazakhstan's trade relations and may potentially regularize Central Asia's energy market. Here's the trade portion of the Central Asia NewsNet article, (somewhat edited here). Note that higher energy prices increased the dollar volume: A. In 2006 [China-Kazakhstani] bilateral trade volume hit […]
News? What news? Kazakhstan had elections this Saturday after a short campaign season. President Nazarbaev's Nur-Otan party won over 80% of the legislative seats, and handily. The OSCE sent observers, who again found the elections to be ‘not free and not fair’. The observers noted that ballot-boxes were allegedly stuffed; that the short election season put Kazakhstan's minority […]
The party's over: The SCO Summit in Bishkek this past week wrapped up with barely a stir in the Western news, and after seeking in vain for a keynote sentence to sum it up, I learned there wasn't one. Joshua Kucera at his blog Istanbul – Beijing was able to cover the summit: his first […]
In previous Casual Fridays, we looked at yurts, a kind of nomadic architecture, and the great Islamic architecture in Khiva and other Central Asian heritage sites. I want to turn to some of the newest Central Asian architecture. I picked Astana because the capital of Kazakhstan moved here from Almaty in 1997-1998. Therefore it has been […]
Since almost all the news revolves and resolves around the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, I’m going to try to hit most of the non-SCO news here in the Central Asia Beat this week. Next week, I’ll try to wrap up SCO developments. . . Kazakhstan: –From RFE/RL Newsline, August 16: The Kazakhstan Today news agency, formerly […]
“If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably, after careful consideration of their relative merits, choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he […]
For the most part, one of those wait-and-see kind of weeks: Military News: –U.S. troop morale is down, as noted by high rates of suicides . –Now that Britain is pulling out of Iraq, they plan to focus more on Afghanistan. –Germany loses three soldiers; in roadside attack, and discuss their determination and their options. […]
According to files recently received by George Washington University's National Security Archive, the U.S. has been pushing Pakistan since the early and mid 1990's to close down its terrorist safe havens, and documents times and places where Pakistani troops trained and/or fought with Taliban or terrorist leaders. Of course this was before 9/11. Here is […]
Nick Fick wrote an article in the Washington Post on August 12th is making its way through the Afghanistan-watchers blog-land, and it joins with many who are looking at U.S. tactics of keeping ahead in Afghanistan, the actual-land. It begins with his experience of having a gun aimed at him indiscriminately at a checkpoint. The Article: […]
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