The apparent shift in U.S. Afghan policy away from the Northern Alliance and toward the Pashtun-dominated south (see yesterday's EDM) appears to be driven by two factors: internal and external. Internally, the Pashtuns, although a minority of about 40 percent of the population, have held... MORE

Early next week, on May 10, Ukraine's Security Service and Interior Ministry are to report to President Leonid Kuchma regarding responsibility for large scale infringements of election and other laws that occurred on April 18, during the repeat elections for mayor of the Trans-Carpathian town... MORE

Economics dominate Russia's relations with the European Union. Will Russia benefit, or suffer, from the expansion of the EU - and to what extent did these considerations influence Russian policy towards the enlargement? For political reasons, Russian commentators chose to interpret EU enlargement as bad... MORE

On April 8, 2004, U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in her testimony before the commission on the 9-11 attacks in the United States, spoke of "a new strategic approach to Afghanistan." She went on to say that "instead of the intense focus on the... MORE

The Berlin donor's conference on Afghanistan resulted in good news in the form of commitments of US$8.2 billion in aid pledges over the next three years. But the confidence resulting from the Berlin commitments could be undercut by the reluctance of donors - especially but... MORE

A series of terrorist acts that took place in late March and early April of this year in Uzbekistan took the lives of twenty-eight people. Sixteen terrorists were also killed in shootouts, and fifteen militants blew themselves up while detonating improvised explosive devices. Approximately fifty... MORE

On April 21, Russia used its veto power - for the first time in ten years - to block a draft UN Security Council resolution on Cyprus. A British- and U.S.-sponsored resolution would have guaranteed the security of Greek and Turkish Cypriots if they accepted... MORE

The head of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers, Valentina Melnikova, told Ekho Moskvy on May 4 that her organization estimates that about 25,000 Russian soldiers and policemen have been killed in Chechnya since 1994, when Moscow launched its first military campaign in the... MORE

A conflict between Georgia's federal government in Tbilisi and the leadership of the renegade republic of Ajaria has reached a dangerous point over the past two days. On May 2, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili demanded that Ajaria's strongman, Aslan Abashidze, disarm his "illegal units" within... MORE

Ramzan Kadyrov, the son of pro-Moscow Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov and the head of his father's presidential security service, told Interfax on May 3 that Aslan Maskhadov may be among a group of fighters surrounded by federal forces in Chechnya's Kurchaloev district and that the... MORE