The last week of 2013 was dominated by the news about three terrorist attacks—one in Pyatigorsk and two in Volgograd. These attacks overshadowed the tense situation in the North Caucasus itself.The last week of the year was the same as many previous ones and apparently... MORE

Georgia had a difficult year in 2013 by any standards. The conflict-ridden period of co-habitation between President Mikhail Saakashvili and Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili lasted until October 2013 and fundamentally destabilized the country’s fragile political and economic system. Co-habitation ended as Georgia elected Giorgi Margvelashvili... MORE

On December 5 and 24, 2013, Moldova’s Constitutional Court issued a ruling and the substantiating arguments (Moldpres, Unimedia, December 5, 24). These documents are widely interpreted to require the renaming of the state language, from Moldovan to Romanian. If so, any renaming of the state... MORE

In late October, central Beijing tasted terror when a flaming SUV rammed a crowd of tourists at the city’s iconic Tiananmen gate, killing the three alleged perpetrators and two bystanders. Authorities were quick to label the attack an act of jihadist terror. The ensuing media... MORE

2013 was a violent year for China and Xinjiang. On December 30, at 6:30 in the morning, a group of individuals believed to be Uighur attacked a police station in Shache County (or Yarkand) near Kashgar with “explosive devices” (Xinhua, December 30). According to official... MORE

President Xi Jinping has used the celebration of Chairman Mao Zedong’s 120th birthday on December 26 to legitimize his conservative policies—and the concentration of power at the apex of the party-state apparatus. While more than 100,000 people, mostly rural residents, converged on Mao’s birthplace in... MORE

Chinese President Xi Jinping honored the 120th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth on December 26, using the occasion to speak at length about the significance of the founder of the People’s Republic in Chinese and Party history (Xinhua, December 26). The speech was generally laudatory... MORE

On December 18, 2013, the prosecution filed charges in a new case against Tbilisi mayor Gigi Ugulava, the last major holdout official from the opposition United National Movement (UNM). The prosecution now alleges, in essence, that Ugulava had misappropriated 48 million lari (some $25 million)... MORE

The previous year, which ended so tragically for Russia with terrorist attacks in Pyatigorsk and Volgograd, was not an exceptional one for a country that has been mired in terrorism-related violence since the start of the second Russian-Chechen war in the fall of 1999.The terrorist... MORE

Two terrorist suicide bomb explosions in Volgograd (former Stalingrad)—on December 29 in the main city railroad station, and on December 30 on a packed city trolleybus—killed 34 people and injured more than 60. Russian officials believe the attacks were perpetrated by North Caucasian–based Salafi jihadist... MORE