Inspired by the Arab Spring, the Salafi-Jihadists of Jordan have taken to the streets for the first time and have been holding demonstrations in several cities, including Amman, Ma’an, Salt, Irbid and Zarqa, to demand the release of their imprisoned colleagues and the implementation of... MORE

In a scene reminiscent of a Hollywood action movie, Syrian Major General Abdulaziz al-Shalal snuck across the Syrian border into neighboring Turkey on the night of December 21, 2012, trekking across the dangerous Cilvegozu border and the town of Reyhanli in Turkey’s southern Hatay province... MORE

On January 9, Russia’s State Duma rejected Circassians’ calls for the Russian government to treat the Syrian Circassians as compatriots. In a response to a Russian parliamentary query, the head of the department of inter-ethnic relations of the Russian Ministry for Regional Development, Alexander Zhuravsky,... MORE

Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili signed a decree on January 21, stripping Minister of Defense Irakly Alasania of his dual position as deputy prime minister in the Georgian government https://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=25670). The decree appeared on the government’s website (https://www.government.gov.ge/index.php?lang_id=geo&sec_id=1) one day after Alasania revealed he had had... MORE

The Russian government’s requirement that human rights organizations receiving financial assistance from abroad register as foreign agents and the unwillingness of Russian businessmen to cross the Kremlin by making up the shortfalls is hurting human rights groups across the country. But in the North Caucasus,... MORE

On January 24, Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland welcomed the Russian government’s decision to allow the publication of a report on the North Caucasus by the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT).... MORE

The Russian Orthodox Church has reformed its organizational structures in the North Caucasus twice in the last few years alone. Thus, on March 22, 2011, Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia became part of the previously created Vladikavkaz and Makhachkala diocese (www.gazeta.ru/news/lenta/2011/03/22/n_1758529.shtml). Chechnya and Dagestan were thereby... MORE

News agencies reported on January 10 that the European Union had earmarked 2.1 million euros ($2.8 million) for Kyrgyzstan to administer and rehabilitate the country’s former uranium-producing site in Min-Kush in central Naryn province as well as the uranium tailings (waste by-products of uranium mining)... MORE

The start of 2013 was marked by a rapid deterioration of the security situation in Dagestan. The course of events in Dagestan in 2012 showed that the republican authorities not only failed to establish control over the situation in the republic, but that signs of... MORE

Last Thursday, facing a deteriorating ethnic situation in his own krai, Stavropol Governor Valery Zerenkov said that it was time to end “the policy of minimizing” such developments or ignoring them altogether. The authorities must start to report “objectively” about them, and “on the basis... MORE