First off the post below was one done a few weeks ago, but we had to put it back up for so it could be linked to the Brookings Institute newsletter, my apologies for any confusion. Today, will be a glorified link-dump, focusing on Iran in Central Asia, among other topics.
A. Iran
In light of Iran's most recent effort to join the SCO during the last Summit at the end of August, I thought I should go over a couple stories I’ve had linking the regional power to Central Asia. While, we are on the SCO, here is an article by Adrian Pabst tackling the great power issues surrounding Central Asia. It gives a curt geopolitical analysis of how the interests of Russia, China, and Iran have converged in Central Asia, mainly in their want to oust the US presence. The article was written before the Georgian/Russian conflict, but its analysis of growing Iran/Russian relations is solid and looks better by the day. One can't discuss a regional power neighbor to the CA states and not mention energy dealings. Iran has also been making a push for CA, mainly Turkmenistan, oil and gas reserves and supply routes. An Iranian state gas industry manager stated that they were ‘full scale ready for transiting, exchanging, and buying Turkmenistan's’ supplies, claiming that Tehran was the ‘most secure, most economical’ transit route. Just days ago, Iran's ambassador to Turkmenistan spoke out about the ‘necessity of waging a campaign against extremism and Salafism.’ Going further, he stated; 'the expansion of Salafism in Central Asia is surely a security threat to Iran, and we are coordinating with the Central Asian countries to impede its expansion.’ This quote could have come from the US ambassador to Afghanistan. Lastly, Iran and Uzbekistan announced that trade between the two nations had increased to $650 million and was hopefully to reach $1 billion in the near future.
Now quickly…
India in Central Asia
I’m not gonna discuss too much here as I plan on doing an update on India-CA relations next week, but here are two pieces, ‘New Delhi looks to Asia for Energy‘ and ‘India Looks to Central Asia for Energy‘, (geez those are similar titles) to give you a little background if you are interested.
SCO Summit
On Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, I will summarize, analyze, and (patronize?) the recently concluded SCO summit in Dushanbe. But here is the official summary by the organization itself to wet your SCO whistle.
FPA Blogs
Karin Esposito at Religion and Politics just did a great piece on radicalism and religious/women liberties in Tajikistan.
Joel Davis at US Role in World discussed a surge in troops in Afghanistan, which includes an important article by Barnett R. Rubin.
While I hope I provided some interesting stories and things to think about, if not, I’ll try harder on Monday.
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