Central Asia Archive

For several years, Iranian officials have sought to strengthen their ties with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Iran became a formal observer nation at the July 2005 SCO summit, but the country’s leaders have continued to pursue full membership. In April 2007, the Iranian Foreign Ministry submitted an official application to this effect. Even before the seventh annual SCO summit convened in Bishkek on Aug. 16, however, the existing SCO full members announced that they would indefinitely postpone accepting new members. In the case of the SCO, a primary Iranian objective has been to keep other Eurasian countries from aligning […]

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad paid his first official visit to northern neighbor Azerbaijan last week (Aug.21-22), aiming to counter growing U.S. influence in the oil-rich country and forestall further advances on a move to allow American use of the Russian-operated Gabala Radar Station in Azerbaijan. Ahmedinajad and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev emphasized the ethnic, religious and economic ties between the two nations on the Caspian Sea, but security and defense issues were the focus of the talks. During the visit, during which five bilateral agreements were signed, both sides attempted to highlight the positive aspects of their […]

BAKU, Azerbaijan — In its latest effort to wean itself from dependence on the Middle East for its energy needs and to counter rival Russia’s influence in resource-rich Central Asia, the United States has signed an agreement with Azerbaijan to examine the feasibility of expanding the so-called Trans-Caspian Pipeline project to transport oil and gas from the region. The remote and isolated nations of Central Asia are the new playing field in the battle for control of the world’s dwindling resources of natural gas and crude oil, and Azerbaijan, wedged between Russia and Iran on the Caspian Sea, is a […]

SHYMKENT, Kazakhstan — While seven political parties are campaigning to win seats in Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament, common Kazakhs remain largely indifferent to the election, believing the results aren’t likely to bring change from a government whose commitment to democracy is lately in doubt. Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev dissolved the parliament’s lower house, the Mazhilis, June 20 and called for new elections. Ninety-eight deputies of the Mazhilis will be elected Aug. 18 in accordance with a system of party-list proportional representation that allocates seats among parties winning at least 7 percent of the vote. (The remaining nine seats of […]

On August 9, the Bush Administration issued its revised U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan. The main innovation is the explicit use of enhanced “sticks and carrots” to change Afghans’ behavior. Protracted infighting within the administration in recent weeks about timing and tactics had twice delayed the new strategy’s publication. Despite the extra editing time, senior Democrats and Republicans in Congress called the revisions inadequate given the magnitude of the problem. Preliminary assessments of the data the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime plans to release next month indicate that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by 15 percent during […]

On Monday, Presidents Bush and Karzai concluded their Camp David meeting with a press conference at which they stood united on every major issue. By Thursday, the bloom was off the rose: In a snub to both Bush and Karzai, Pakistan’s President Musharraf backed out of a tribal assembly that the United States had orchestrated, and a British commander made headlines when he said America’s counterinsurgency operations are undermining NATO’s efforts. Not once during their eight meetings over five years have the two presidents faced such challenges at home. Karzai finds his once-meteoric popularity waning in the face of his […]