During the March 14 Astana summit of the leaders of all five Central Asian states (see EDM, March 20, 21), the minister of religious affairs and civil society of Kazakhstan, Nurlan Yermekbayev, and the chairman of the Religious Affairs Committee of the government of Tajikistan,... MORE

According to President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, 2011 was the last time the leadership of the five Central Asian countries all sat together at the same table to discuss regional issues (Tengrinews, March 15). On March 15, 2018, Nazarbayev, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, President... MORE

Since becoming independent in 1991, the countries of Central Asia, both individually and collectively, have been viewed by many outsiders and even some of their own people as the inevitable objects of politics rather than as potential subjects. The region is widely considered one of... MORE

On March 9, Shavkat Mirziyoyev landed at Dushanbe airport, the first president of Uzbekistan to conduct a state visit to Tajikistan since 2000. Embraced by his local counterpart, President Emomali Rahmon, he rode through Tajikistan’s capital city past thousands of flag-waving citizens (YouTube, March 10).... MORE

Despite popular misperceptions of religiosity in general and Islam in particular flourishing most strongly in poor rural areas, the Islamist revival of the last 30 years has been primarily an urban phenomenon. This has been the result of the loss of familial ties by those... MORE

The Secretariat of the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s (CSTO) Parliamentary Assembly is currently examining a bill on private military and security organizations (Private Military Companies—PMC) (RIA Novosti, February 5). If adopted inside the Moscow-led alliance, the individual CSTO member states will then be tasked with... MORE

Perhaps few places on earth are as wrapped in mystery and intrigue as the northern reaches of Afghanistan, where, 150 years ago, Russia and the United Kingdom played the great game against one another and where, most recently, Moscow and the West were locked in... 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

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