Kyrgyzstan

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 [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

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 [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

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 [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

Central Asia: An Exception to the “Cute Cats” Theory of Internet Revolution

by Sarah Kendzior

Last month Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at the Berkman Center of Internet and Society, gave a lecture on how his “cute cats” theory of the internet applies to the Arab Spring. For those of you unfamiliar with the theory, Cory Doctorow sums it up in an rapturous review of the talk in the Guardian: [...]

41 comments Read the full article →

Charting the Fall of the Soviet Union

by Joshua Foust

My think tank, the American Security Project, has teamed up with The Atlantic to run a 12-article series I edited about U.S. foreign policy 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, which happens on Christmas. There have been some really interesting essays in there that aren’t directly relevant to what we write about [...]

1 comment Read the full article →

Talking Kyrgyzstan, ethnic tensions, and base rights

by Joshua Foust

I gave an interview to WBEZ’s Worldview yesterday about issues going on in Kyrgyzstan. Full audio is here.

15 comments Read the full article →

The False Assumption of Chinese Domination in Central Asia

by Joshua Foust

There is a general assumption in most pop-studies of Central Asia based on the assumption that the region rarely has any agency of its own and is only to be understood as a pawn of the powerful countries on its periphery. The purest distillation of this trend is Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game, which more [...]

16 comments Read the full article →

Continuing to Not Read Too Much into Atambayev’s Manas Airbase Politics

by Joshua Foust

Joshua Kucera flags an interesting article by Columbia professor Lincoln Mitchell: The situation today is different. Atanbaev’s [sic] position does not appear to be a case of simply trying to line his pockets with more American money, but has expressed his view based on his country’s geographical and strategic proximity to Russia and a fear [...]

13 comments Read the full article →

Why the Economics of Southwest Kyrgyzstan Matter, And Afghanistan

by Joshua Foust

At my day job with the American Security Project, I recorded a podcast with Adjunct Fellow Nick Lockwood, expert on stabilization operations, population engagement and strategic communications. He travels routinely to Afghanistan, and more recently to places like Libya. The topic was primarily about my current research on the economics of southwest Kyrgyzstan, and why [...]

14 comments Read the full article →

How Do You Help?

Thumbnail image for How Do You Help? by Joshua Foust

When I was in Osh, Kyrgyzstan last month, I was overwhelmed by the depth of not just the despair, but the desperation that was evident with every single Uzbek I spoke to (save one). RFERL über-reporter Daisy Sindelair, who helped me wrap my head around some of the basic issues before I flew over, wrote [...]

11 comments Read the full article →

On Not Overreacting to Atambayev’s Comments About Manas

by Joshua Foust

The Associated Press dutifully repeats Kyrgyz President-elect Almazbek Atambayev’s worry that his country will face retaliatory strikes from an imaginary U.S. war with Iran. The base is subject of frequently extravagant rumors among local residents and politicians, who maintain that fuel dumps by U.S. planes devastate crops and cause illnesses. U.S. military officials have always [...]

9 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries