Tajiks are worrying that an Uzbek plan to build a new railway bypassing Tajikistan will further isolate their country, increasing hardship in the region’s poorest state.
Despite its long-standing close ties with and strong dependence on Russia, Armenia looks set to avoid joining a new Russian-led union of former Soviet republics.
Russia is rankling President Ilham Aliyev’s administration in Azerbaijan by backing a new lobbying group that is stacked with Diaspora power-brokers. Officials and analysts in Baku believe the Kremlin is trying to find a way to meddle in Azerbaijan’s internal affairs.
The lumbering and stubborn Bactrian camel might not be an obvious contender in a polo match, but a Mongolian initiative to save the two-humped beasts is taking a traditional sport of the steppes and giving it a new twist.
Georgia’s commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s operations in Afghanistan is helping a new generation of female soldiers break with age-old stereotypes about the role of women in this macho society.
Foreign donors and the Mongolian government are pumping millions of dollars into cleaning up Ulaanbaatar’s smoggy winter air, which the US Embassy calls one of Mongolia’s most critical environmental concerns. But as yet another relief project draws to a close, the city has little to show but more stubborn gray haze.
Are Armenia’s oligarchs using their financial and political power to block the world’s second-largest retail empire, the French-owned Carrefour Group, from entering the country’s largely monopolized foodstuffs sector? For Armenian consumers beset by high food prices and low incomes, the question has become a matter of principle.
In Turkey, when parents discover that their child is gay, violence and even murder can result. But one Istanbul-based organization is fighting to reverse that trend by appealing to the parents themselves.
