The foreign ministers of the five littoral Caspian states—Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran—met in Moscow, on December 5, 2017, to try to finalize an agreement on the legal status of the Caspian Sea. After the talks, the Azerbaijani and Russian representatives, Elmar Mammadyarov and... MORE

In the last month alone, local authorities closed almost 100 mosques in the northern part of Tajikistan, the latest effort by Dushanbe to control Islam in the most fervently Muslim country in Central Asia. Yet, this campaign is exceedingly likely to backfire by driving both... MORE

From one perspective, China has enormous “soft power” in Central Asia, the ability, as Joseph Nye defined it (Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, New York, 1990), “to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion.” It can and... MORE

During Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s meeting in Washington with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, on January 16, a suggestion reportedly came up to transfer the venue of talks and negotiations about the war in eastern Ukraine from Minsk to Astana. An avalanche of opinions followed.... MORE

Against the backdrop of turbulent developments over the last two decades in neighboring Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan may arguably be called an island of prosperity in Central Asia. In his Address to the People of Kazakhstan, delivered on January 10, President Nursultan Nazarbayev reinforced this... MORE

When Uzbekistanis elected Shavkat Mirziyoyev as their president on December 4, 2016, they entered 2017 with a healthy dose of skepticism that real change would follow. Indeed, during his first public address as the interim head of state, Mirziyoyev, previous president Islam Karimov’s prime minister... MORE

The year 2017 proved to be an eventful one for Kazakhstan, even as its long-time president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who turned 77 last July, has yet to designate a potential successor to step into his shoes following the end of Nazarbayev’s more-than-25-year reign. The first part... MORE

Central Asia in 2017 recalls Charles Dickens’ observation in A Tale of Two Cities: it was truly the best of times, if far from perfect, and the worst of times, if far from disastrous. And depending on whether one focuses on the problems the five... MORE

Following bloody clashes between ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese in the city of Urumchi, in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, in the summer of 2009, Beijing resorted to both carrot and stick policies to secure stability in this volatile territory. On the one hand, the central... MORE

Uzbekistan’s leadership has been increasingly focused on its southern neighbor Afghanistan since Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power in late 2016 (see EDM, June 27). As President Mirziyoyev attested on December 5, he and his Afghan counterpart met five times already in the past year (Kun.uz,... MORE