As Turkey has recently concentrated on the debate over whether the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) Kurdish initiative to end the long running campaign of violence, the two key actors in the conflict, the Turkish military and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have entered the... MORE

This week Novaya Gazeta published transcripts of telephone conversations between the commander of the airborne troops (Vozdushno Desantnye Voyska or VDV) two star General Vladimir Shamanov, his son Yuri, VDV Colonel Vadim Pankov and others. The Prosecutors Investigative Committee (SKP), investigating General Shamanov's son-in-law Aleksei... MORE

Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was among the North Caucasus leaders drumming up investment in their republics at "Sochi-2009" -the eighth international investment forum held in the Black Sea resort over September 17-20. Delegations from 56 regions and 27 foreign countries -a total of 7,700 people-... MORE

The 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War in 1939 has been commemorated worldwide. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has denounced revisionism and attempts to belittle the Soviet victory. In Belarus, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka commemorated September 17 as the pivotal date in the... MORE

On September 13 experts from the Center for Military Analytical Research in Baku launched an unprecedented attack on the Azeri defense ministry, arguing that the country had stepped back from its cooperation with the United States and NATO. The controversy erupted over a semantic nuance,... MORE

The Deputy Chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Stavropol, Ismail Bostanov, was murdered in the city of Cherkessk on Sunday (September 20). Interfax quoted a law enforcement source in Karachaevo-Cherkessia as saying the attack took place when Bostanov's was stopped at... MORE

Chechnya's experience under the leadership of Ramzan Kadyrov -that is, the ostensible rule of law and order with the local police force seemingly in full control of the situation- could not leave the neighboring North Caucasus republics unaffected. The very public support that Moscow and... MORE

This week has seen little let up in the insurgent violence that has been on the rise across the North Caucasus for many months now.Unidentified gunmen shot up a police car in the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, Nalchik, on the evening of September 17, wounding one... MORE

Russian naval operations in August 2008 highlighted the security deficit in the Black Sea. As a littoral country, Russia misused the territory of another littoral country, Ukraine, as a staging ground for attacking a third littoral country, Georgia, using its Black Sea Fleet based in... MORE

Lieutenant General Hadi Khalid was the Afghan Deputy Minister of the Interior for Security from May 2006 to June 2008.  He lost his post after a dispute with the Karzai administration last year but remains one of Afghanistan's leading thinkers on regional ethno-political dynamics and... MORE