Framing Politics and the NDN

by Joshua Foust on 2/7/2012 · 3 comments

The AP report: Pakistan’s defense minister said Tuesday that the country should reopen its Afghan border crossings to NATO troop supplies after negotiating a better deal with the coalition. Pakistan closed the crossings over two months ago in response to American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two Afghan border posts. The closure [...]

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What to do with a problem like Uzbekistan

by Joshua Foust on 2/6/2012 · 0 comments

The stars aligned and two interviews I gave over the last week for different-language’d public media have been published. The first is with Dutch Public Radio, and it’s about the U.S. decision to lift restrictions on providing certain kinds of military equipment to the Uzbek regime. (See more here.) The second is with VOA Uzbek, [...]

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Kazakhstan needs religious patriots! (And already has them.)

by Wendell Schwab on 2/6/2012 · 0 comments

Last week, Kazakhstan’s Vice Prime Minister Erbol Orynbaev told the board of the Ministry of Education and Science that the country’s schools have a vital assignment: to prevent “ideological extremism” – presumably the type of extremism that led to the criminal acts done in the name of Islam in western Kazakhstan and Taraz last year – by [...]

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Geldy Kyarizov’s Deteriorating Condition

by Joshua Foust

A few weeks ago, I highlighted the plight of Geldy Kyarizov, a former horse trainer turned political prisoner in Turkmenistan. Amnesty International has just released an Urgent Action alert on his deteriorating condition: Amnesty International has received credible reports that Geldy Kyarizov is currently suffering from serious heart illness, enlarged liver and high blood pressure, [...]

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COMISAF Responds to Latest UNAMA Report: I Ain’t Happy

by Dan Smock

So yesterday I posted this here at Registan.  What will be interesting to see is how ISAF responds to this report, if it will at all. They’re certainly quick to point out how IEDs are a good thing, despite the fact that they are killing and wounding Afghan civilians in record numbers. Today I read this. Gen. [...]

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More IEDs, More Dead Civilians — ISAF’s 2011? Pretty Great Year

by Dan Smock

Some days I worry that I’m suffering from sleep apnea. Which, in turn, is causing me to lose oxygen to my brain. Which, in turn, is causing me to not fully comprehend what I read, particularly on the interwebs. Because, that, friends, is one of the few logical explanations for what I read today: Last year [...]

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Turkestan Album

Thumbnail image for Turkestan Album by Nathan Hamm

For at least the last seven or eight years, the Prokudin-Gorskii collection of color photos of the Russian empire taken in the early 20th century, gets noticed and reported by journalists, history buffs, and photography enthusiasts. Less well known is that the Turkestan Album, a series of volumes on the people, architecture, history, and economy [...]

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The Uzbek “Military” Waiver

Thumbnail image for The Uzbek “Military” Waiver by Joshua Foust

This B-52 is not a part of the “military aid” the U.S. will provide Uzbekistan. The Wall Street Journal reports: The Obama administration waived a ban on military assistance to Uzbekistan in a move to bolster ties with a nation that is part of a vital supply line to Afghanistan, but was cut off from [...]

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Tengrism on Trial

Thumbnail image for Tengrism on Trial by Nathan Hamm

RFE/RL carries an interesting story about Kubanychbek Tezekbaev, an advocate of Tengrism who is on trial for inciting religious and ethnic hatred for saying in an interview last June that many mullahs in Kyrgyzstan are “former alcoholics and murderers” who are trying to paper over their pasts. Tezekbaev, who could be sentenced to five years [...]

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Kazakhstan’s Stability, Central Asia’s Stability

Thumbnail image for Kazakhstan’s Stability, Central Asia’s Stability by Nathan Hamm

Last week, the US Helsinki Commission held a hearing on Kazakhstan’s stability, looking at the violence in Zhanaozen and the recent parliamentary elections and questioning whether or not Kazakhstan is as stable as its government claims. The testimony, which can be found here is interesting and worth taking a look at. Included with the expert [...]

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And Daveed Wins Everything, Forever

by Joshua Foust

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross ups the ante in his “friendly” sparring with me on the Mukhtarov arrest: Foust argues that “just because Mukhtarov said some scary things on the Internet, that doesn’t mean he committed any traditionally-defined crimes in doing so. To criminalize this sort of correspondence veers dangerously close to creating thought-crimes.”Again, the correspondence wasn’t criminalized [...]

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