Central Asia Archive

Russia’s assertive approach to reclaiming a sphere of interest in the post-Soviet space has highlighted the security dilemmas facing Eurasian countries that find themselves outside of any regional military alliance. Although recent attention has focused on Georgia and Ukraine, the Caspian littoral countries have for several years considered themselves vulnerable to renewed Russian assertiveness and have complained about declining U.S. and European engagement in their region. In response to these challenges, as well as in pursuit of new opportunities for regional energy cooperation, Azerbaijan has partnered with Turkey and, at various times, Georgia, Iran and Turkmenistan in recent years to […]

Earlier this month, Tajik opposition leader Umarali Kuvvatov was shot dead in Istanbul. In an email interview, Lawrence Markowitz, an assistant professor at Rowan University, discussed the state of the opposition in Tajikistan. WPR: What is the current state of the Tajik opposition, both within Tajikistan and in exile? Lawrence Markowitz: Tajikistan’s political opposition has been significantly marginalized over the past 15 years. When the country’s civil war ended in 1997, a power-sharing agreement was struck that provided opposition groups 30 percent of the top positions in the central leadership and guaranteed competitive elections for seats in Majlisi Namoyandagon, Tajikistan’s […]

A little over a year ago, Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, weighed in on the most pressing political challenge facing Astana at the time: whether or not to change the country’s name. Before any consensus could be reached, however, unidentified men cropped up in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, saying little and admitting less. Twelve months later, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and amid an intermittent war in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and the central government in Kiev, it’s clear that the status quo ante will not return. In just a year, Kazakhstan’s geopolitical environs have shifted more rapidly than at any […]