*To read Part One, please click here. *To read Part Two, please click here. Kazakhstan’s state-founding President Nursultan Nazarbayev has been re-elected to what is widely assumed to be his final term in office (see EDM, April 30, May 8, 11). Observers generally tend to... MORE

*To read Part One, please click here. The re-election of President Nursultan Nazarbayev (see EDM, April 30, May 8) has renewed and bolstered the presidential institution’s popular mandate to tackle the urgent challenges confronting Kazakhstan. Some of these challenges are recurrent, but for the most... MORE

Sitting at a strategic crossroads between Europe and East Asia, Mongolia and North Korea are potential economic corridors for the wider Eurasian landmass. However, the realization of such corridors depends in large part on Chinese and Russian policy priorities, since both have long-standing geostrategic interests... MORE

On April 26, 2015, Kazakhstan held its fifth presidential election in a quarter-century of independent statehood (see EDM, April 30). Incumbent President Nursultan Nazarbayev was re-elected overwhelmingly for another five-year term, as pre-election opinion polls and Nazarbayev’s popularity ratings with Kazakhstan’s voters had foreshadowed. His... MORE

The Embassy of the Russian Federation in Uzbekistan has announced that between April 27 and May 8, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, embassy staff would distribute free “ribbons of St.... MORE

On May 2, Kyrgyzstan’s President Almazbek Atambayev appointed a new prime minister—the Central Asian republic’s 27th since it became a sovereign state in 1991—Temir Sariyev, who had previously served as economy minister after Atambayev’s election to the presidency in December 2011. Earlier, on April 23,... MORE

The government of Tajikistan has long sustained a shaky narrative purporting that Central Asia is in imminent danger of being overrun by militant forces. Long menaced by the specter of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the government has more recently added a new group... MORE

On April 26, Kazakhstan held an early presidential election, the fifth presidential election in its modern history since gaining independence in late 1991. Unsurprisingly, the incumbent, Nursultan Nazarbayev, won the vote by a landslide. According to the Central Election Commission’s official communiqué, he obtained 97.75... MORE

The Russian government is considering building a new water link connecting the Caspian Sea to the ocean via the Azov and Black seas. The new route is supposed to be the shortest and the cheapest way to carry Chinese goods via Central Asia to Europe.... MORE

The increasing presence of Islamic State (IS) militants in Afghanistan has raised fears in neighboring Uzbekistan. It is no longer a question of whether IS has a presence in Afghanistan, only its scope and intentions. Addressing a joint session of the United States Congress, on... MORE