As winter approaches, the Kyrgyz Minister of Energy Iliyas Davydov has announced that electricity will be rationed in the upcoming months. Last year, electricity outages reached 12 hours or more in some parts of Kyrgyzstan. Significantly, electricity shortages were largely caused by the poor management... MORE

While the Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev visited the U.S. base in Bishkek on September 11 to pay tribute to growing relations between Washington and Bishkek, more of his opponents are threatened with being physically removed for their criticism. Baktybek Beshimov, a member of parliament (MP)... MORE

Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov met on September 13 in the city of Turkmenbashi to discuss a possible resumption of Turkmen gas deliveries to Russia. The Russian side stopped taking deliveries through the Central Asia-Center pipeline in early April this year, exploiting its monopsony... MORE

Following disappointing presidential elections in July, the Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev is continuing to sideline his political opponents and silence the local mass media. Opposition leaders are persecuted with the help of ingenious techniques. Their relatives are threatened with administrative and criminal charges, while opposition... MORE

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has instructed the government to form a State Commission on Preparations for Kazakhstan's Chairmanship of the OSCE. Personally chairing an enlarged inter-departmental meeting on this subject, Nazarbayev described Kazakhstan's chairmanship of the OSCE in 2010 as a "national strategic project." The... MORE

Tajikistan's political future is difficult to predict: whether the country will be able to use its economic potential or become yet another failed state owing to its corruption and criminality largely depends on President Emomali Rakhmon's policies. Nonetheless, one thing has become clearer over the... MORE

Most analyses of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership focus either on Russian arms sales to China or on the joint military exercises conducted by Moscow and Beijing under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which limits the scope of the analytical framework to a... MORE

If implemented, the Burgas-Alexandroupolis and/or Samsun-Ceyhan projects would reinforce Russia's quasi-monopoly on oil transportation from Kazakhstan to international maritime ports. Approximately one half of Western companies' production from Kazakhstan is already being delivered through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's (CPC) existing pipeline, via the North Caucasus,... MORE

Having recently abandoned the pretense that they were running anti-narcotics sweeps rather than counterterrorist operations in eastern Tajikistan, the Interior Ministry and the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) announced on July 8 that counterterrorist operations in Tavil-Dara district were completed (Interfax, August 5; see... MORE

On August 10, Kyrgyz authorities detained Dilmurat Akbarov, the leader of the Ittipak Uyghur society, and his deputy Jamaldin Nasyrov. These leaders had organized demonstrations calling for an independent investigation into last month's riots in Xinjiang. They featured images and posters accusing Beijing of implementing... MORE