Registan.net

I’ve been putting off buying Ahmed Rashid’s latest polemic on Afghanistan (he covers Central Asia about as much as I do). It’s not that I don’t think it’s any good, though like Jihad it easily could be an over-praised piece of crap, nor is it that I’m necessarily tired of his galling racism that goes […]

Given the current trendy thinking in counterinsurgency circles, Giustozzi was bound to make a splash by trying to catalogue the resurrection of the Taliban in 2002-3 and how it came to dominate swaths of Afghanistan in 2006-7. In a broad sense, he does an admirable job of doing exactly that—by tracking the pathetic record of […]

Today is a fine day for celebrating Central Asian culture. I had real Uzbek plov for lunch, and Kazakh language classes like I have everyday, after which I had a chance to speak with some Turkmen and Uyghur teachers, and now I’m all set to review some of the work of Kyrgyzstan’s greatest literary […]

This book was written entirely in the passive voice. The passive voice was used to avoid assigning causation or personhood to various events. As a result, we learn that places were invaded, people were slaughtered, armies were founded, but no one can say by whom.
Good grief, that is exhausting. How is it a book almost […]

Here follows my review of Apples Are From Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared by Christopher Robbins. This book was informative, but precious little of the information was first-hand knowledge. My primary complaint is that the reader is really taken on a ride as Christopher Robbins tells us other people’s stories. This is […]

Over the last ten years, Russia has emerged from one of the unfortunate victims of the 1998 financial crisis to become a strong, almost fearsomely assertive country. Much of this is thanks to Vladimir Putin, a man who has won and maintained near mythical popularity by doing his best to “make Russia strong.” While this […]

Read the obituary at Global Voices Online.

Chingiz Aitmatov {Чыңгыз Айтматов} passed away this week in Nuremberg, Germany. On May 16th, Aitmatov suffered kidney failure. His health steadily declined, and he was reportedly in a coma before he passed on June 10th. His funeral was held yesterday, June 14th, in Bishkek. Thousands […]