It must also be noted that dictatorial regimes in Central Asia and Azerbaijan are not typical examples of authoritarian regimes driven by some sort of “big evil idea...
China's Muslim Hui Community: Migration, Settlement and Sects by Michael Dillon. Pub: Curzon Press, Richmond, UK, 1999. Pp: 208. Hbk: UK40.00.
The “stans” of Central Asia are stirring in ferment and revolt. For the rest of the world, the five repubics — Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan — are important only because like the oil producing countries of the Middle East, they sit atop vast reserves of oil and gas that the West covets.
President Bush and Condoleezza Rice, his Black secretary of state, are so desperate to defend their now-discredited campaign to establish democratic rule in the Middle East, and in Central Asia, that they are evoking the history of the civil rights movement in the US.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been striving to retain its control of the new Central Asian republics, among them Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The UShas been trying very hard to replace Moscow's influence with its own; it has succeeded in acquiring, for example, a military base in Kyrgyzstan alongside Russia's.
The presidents of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan met in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, on June 16 to reinforce their alliance against Islamic activism in the region...
Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia by Jennifer Siegel. Pub: I. B. Tauris & Co., London, 2002. Pp: 284. Hbk: $29.50.
It was a grisly reminder of the Uzbek government’s brutality in dealing with Islamic activists. The bodies of two Uzbek prisoners who had died under torture while in police custody were handed back to their families on August 8 for burial.
While America has couched its ‘war’ on Afghanistan in the language of morality, more sinister motives are at work: desire to control the Caspian Sea’s oil and gas, as well as the destruction or removal (‘neutralisation’) of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
When Moscow celebrated the 56th anniversary of the Allied victory over Germany in the second world war on May 9, there was no mention of its latest military challenge, the fighting in Chechnya, stepped up by the Chechen mujahideen on the arrival of spring...
From Bangladesh through Central Asia to Iraq, tens of millions of Muslims have been poisoned, many terminally, as a result of pollution from nuclear dust, pesticides and arsenic in water wells - all at the hands of western governments, international aid agencies and Russia, as the dominant power in the former Soviet Union.
The bogey of Islamic fundamentalism is so popular these days that even Uzbekistan seems to have discovered its utility. Last month, Uzbek foreign minister Abdulaziz Kamilov not only alleged that his government...
Uncle Sam’s globe-trotting habit is taking him to Central Asia this month; for military exercises. As if the region needed American ‘peacekeeping’ efforts, some 500 troops from the US 82nd airborne regiment will participate in what are dubbed as exercises in the spirit of ‘Partnership for Peace.’
There are more than 200 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and perhaps 50 trillion cubic metres of gas in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea Basin. Such riches could keep the lights burning in the west for a long time.
Old habits dies hard. This time-worn refrain is as applicable to Russia today as it was when it existed in its communist mutation. Moscow has traditionally used the bogey of non-existent threats to maintain its grip on countries that it perceives as falling under its sphere of influence.
With Greece, Armenia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia, China and others engaged, to varying degrees, in attacking Turkish interests or blocking Turkish influence in Europe and Central Asia, Turkey is not short of enemies.
China has succeeded in securing the full support of its Central Asian and Russian neighbours to contain the growing tide of Islamic revivalism in its north-western autonomous region of Xinjiang...
