During the Soviet era, the predominant sentiment in Western writing about Central Asia was one of outrage at the persecution of religious practice by Communist authorities. Any sign of continued religious observance in Central Asia was seen as evidence of the failure of the Soviet experiment, and of the resilience of an authentic Central Asian Muslim culture.
The US State Department evaluates human rights conditions of the eight nations of the Caucasus and Central in its twenty-second Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The country reports, released on February 25, describe conditions as "uneven" in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan; "poor" in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan; and "extremely poor" in Turkmenistan.
The State Department reports reflect both new priorities in the US government's human rights agenda, and old problems inherent in this type of reporting.
A prominent Kyrgyz human rights activist warned that Central Asia faces a summer of tumult, saying that repressive political regimes in the region are pushing discontent to dangerous levels.
Relations among the Central Asian States of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have deteriorated in recent months, as officials have bickered about border demarcation, border control, water usage and unpaid gas debts. Relations between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have become especially strained of late largely due to a dispute over the demarcation of their common frontier.
Much of the debate over Islam in post-Soviet Central Asia is cast in monolithic terms: Islam is contrasted to secularism, fundamentalism to democracy. In considering complex issues in mutually exclusive categories, we reduce each side to a homogeneous whole. Yet, Central Asia, in common with the rest of the Muslim world, is heir to a rich tradition of debate and contention.
Less than a month away from the scheduled March 26 Russian presidential elections, the world press (Russian media included) tries hard to solve the riddle of Vladimir Putin, Russia's acting president.
The resounding victory for reformist candidates in Iran's recent parliamentary elections may prove to be the turning point in Iran's nascent democracy movement. In any case, the election results deal a damaging, perhaps fatal blow to the country's hard-line clerics who have ruled the country for more than 20 years.
On their way to the polls on February 27, some residents of Tajikistan's capital passed an unprecedented variety of campaign posters, including those for the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), the most prominent alternative to President Imomali Rakhmonov's ruling party. But the posters appeared almost exclusively along the central boulevard, Rudaki, and there were no more than fifty of them.
