The US State Department says reinstating American military aid to Uzbekistan is designed to assist Tashkent in protecting vital supply routes to Afghanistan.
In the 20 years since the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union became independent, the influence of the Russian language has been declining in these countries.
Just two decades ago, Russian was a tongue common to Central Asians, but now many young people cannot speak it at all.
Georgia’s democratization process is taking an ironic turn. Though eager to distance themselves from the Soviet era, a time when informants buttressed the Communist system, officials in Tbilisi are now turning average Georgians into tax-fraud snitches.
At first glance, human rights activists and the News Corp-owned New York Post do not seem to be natural allies. But they have teamed up to turn Gulnara Karimova, an aspiring fashion designer who is the daughter of Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov, into a radioactive commodity in the couture community.
A mere 30 kilometers from Kabul, Aynak is a strategic spot, well connected to the capital, but hidden in the folds of the surrounding hills. In 1999, al Qaeda identified Aynak as the place where four young men would train for the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Today, Anyak is again emerging as a pivotal spot, a place where the past, present and future are colliding.
It was a 300-person-strong rally, but 58-year-old Alexander Ankvab, de facto vice-president of the breakaway region of Abkhazia and candidate for its de facto presidency, saw no need to address supporters with a microphone. And perhaps there was no need.
Six Azerbaijani opposition activists have been jailed for up to three years over an antigovernment protest in Baku four months ago that was broken up by police, RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service reports.
Residents of one of Armenia’s most dilapidated villages are hoping a religious revival can improve their economic fortunes.
In early August, the town of Karakert, a churchless Armenian village founded during the 1950s to house factory workers, hosted a mass baptism. Residents, some of whom now refer to the town as “cursed,” hoped that the event could help reverse two decades of decline.
As it tries to project its authority across fractious Kyrgyzstan, the provisional government in Bishkek is having difficulty presenting a united front.
After moving fast initially to dissolve the Constitutional Court and disband parliament, the interim government's actions now appear "uncoordinated," said Ajdar Kurtov of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS) in Moscow.
