Already unstable relations between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan worsened this week. Violence had erupted in early January 2013 in the Uzbekistani enclave of Sokh located inside Kyrgyzstan that resulted in property damage and hostages being taking. Since January 7, Bishkek continues to block access to Uzbekistan’s... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. According to the data released in December 2012 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kazakhstan’s stock of cumulative foreign investment abroad was around $20 billion at the end of 2011. The top five destinations for Kazakhstan’s Outward Foreign... MORE

News agencies reported on January 10 that the European Union had earmarked 2.1 million euros ($2.8 million) for Kyrgyzstan to administer and rehabilitate the country’s former uranium-producing site in Min-Kush in central Naryn province as well as the uranium tailings (waste by-products of uranium mining)... MORE

In 2012, Kazakhstan’s law enforcement agencies suppressed the activities of 205 missionaries representing the unregistered religious organization Tablighi Jamaat, Kazakhstani Senator Iran Amirov said. According to the Central Asian republic’s laws, the activity of any unregistered religious organization is prohibited. Therefore, Tablighi Jamaat missionaries had... MORE

On December 4, 2012, the deputy chairman of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, Kabdulkarim Abdikazymov, said to the press that Jund al-Khilafa was a “real threat” to Kazakhstan’s national security (Tengrinews, December 4, 2012). Similarly, on November 26, 2012, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on... MORE

Residents of Uzbekistan’s enclave of Sokh located within Batken province (southern Kyrgyzstan) attacked Kyrgyz border guards and took, according to different sources, between 30 and 40 citizens of Kyrgyzstan hostage in a series of events that began on January 5. Border guards from Kyrgyzstan were... MORE

Local elections in many of Kyrgyzstan’s major towns have strengthened the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan (SDPK), which is led by the country’s president, Almazbek Atambayev. Atambayev’s party will now hold a plurality of council seats in the capital Bishkek, where the mayor’s office is... MORE

According to the newspaper Izvestia, Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs requested that Russia provide the small Central Asian republic with direct assistance in the form of arms and technical support. Kyrgyzstan’s internal affairs ministry, which controls the country’s police forces, seeks from Russia two helicopters,... MORE

On November 16, Russian prosecutors charged nine citizens of Tajikistan and Russia with membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir and possession of grenades, rifles, TNT, millions of dollars’ worth of counterfeit money, and written materials promoting extremism (Interfax [Moscow], November 16). In the months prior, there were... MORE

Most of the non-Russian countries in the post-Soviet space have pursued foreign policies directed at defending their interests “in the framework of a limited geographic region,” two Russian analysts say. But under President Mikhail Saakashvili, Georgia has been an exception, regularly seeking to promote itself... MORE