Bruce Pannier writes the Qishloq Ovozi blog and appears regularly on the Majlis podcast for RFE/RL.
The topic of this week’s Majlis podcast is the Tajik civil war: How it started, what fueled it, how it ended after five years in an unusual peace deal signed in Moscow on June 27, 1997, and how that deal fell apart over the course of the last 20 years.
Let's recall how brutal Tajikistan's 1992-97 civil war really was. (The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL.)
The topic of this week's Majlis was the latest summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on June 9.
The topic of this week’s Majlis podcast was the Central Asians who made their way to Syria and Iraq to join with militant groups fighting in those two countries.
t looks like the new president of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyaev, is keeping at least one of his promises. Not long after independent Uzbekistan's founding president, Islam Karimov, died in September 2016, his successor said one of his priorities would be better relations with neighboring Central Asian states.
An RFE/RL correspondent says that in conversations with people in northwestern Afghanistan it became clear local militias were being formed in many areas to fight the Taliban and IS. (The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.)
With violence in northern Afghanistan increasing, Central Asian governments north of the Afghan border are surely weighing their options, including who they might call upon for aid if some element of instability makes its way over the border.
The media situation in Central Asia, generally, has been bad for many years now. But, according to recent reports by the Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders and the New York-based Freedom House the situation with media in Central Asia actually got even worse in 2016.
For most of Tajikistan's 25 years of independence, Mahmadsaid Ubaidulloev has been one of the most influential people in Tajikistan and was possibly the most powerful person in the country for a brief time.
With the dreaded annual Taliban spring offensive expected to start in earnest any day now, there are many nervous people on both sides of the Central Asia-Afghan border, and the situation is already more alarming and far more confusing than it was last year.
Beijing's security cooperation with the Central Asian states is likely to grow significantly stronger in the coming months.
Qishloq Ovozi takes a look at what has been happening recently in the northern Afghan provinces that border Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. (The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.)
The detention of Omurbek Tekebaev, the leader of Kyrgyzstan's Ata-Meken party, has provided opponents of President Almazbek Atambaev and his Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan (SDPK) with a fresh rallying point. , the leader of Kyrgyzstan's Ata-Meken party, has provided opponents of President Almazbek Atambaev and his Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan with a fresh rallying point.
Vladimir Putin makes a trip to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan on February 27-28. Two of the countries -- Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan -- are members of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), and Tajikistan is currently negotiating entry into the organization. The EEU is bound to be on the agenda when Putin meets with all three Central Asian leaders.
Turkmenistan's rubberstamp parliament is about to lose its rubber stamp, again.
Only when the rare crisis hits Central Asia does the area receive a lot of attention.
In the case of relations with, for example, China, Russia, and Mexico, there are already signals about the Trump administration's policy toward those countries. But what should the Central Asian states realistically expect from the new U.S. administration?
A recent spat between Turkmenistan and Tajikistan is probably the lamest dispute between two Central Asian countries I can remember, though I think I know the real cause of the problem.
The Turkmen government has been proudly proclaiming its UN-recognized status as a neutral country for more than 20 years now. Ashgabat's policy of "positive neutrality" is, since September 2016, even part of the country's constitution. But the policy is not always positive for Turkmenistan, and the current gas spat with neighbor Iran might be a case in point.
This past year in Central Asia proved every bit as interesting as it was predicted to be. (The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL.)
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