Georgia leads all countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia in the money it spends on lobbyists in Washington, DC, according to a review of US government records.
In terms of democratization, most of the post-Soviet states in the Caucasus and Central Asia remain stuck in the mud, according to an annual survey issued by US-based advocacy organization Freedom House. The exception to the rule in 2010 was Kyrgyzstan, which was deemed to have registered modest democratization gains.
A decade after its debut on the terrorism scene in the Pamirs as Central Asia's most aggressive militant group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) has undergone a transformation hundreds of kilometers to the southeast, in the mountains of Pakistan's restive Waziristan region.
As an economist at the University of Applied Sciences in Goettingen, Manuel Stark studies development models. Stark, who has spent time in South Korea and Mexico, compares developing countries in terms of politics, culture, and administration, to see what factors contribute to their economic success.
The US Defense Department has gained an inordinate amount of influence over the distribution of security assistance in Central Asia, exerting an “oversized impact” on US foreign policy in the region, according to a report released October 15.
The German city of Essen, representing the wider Ruhrgebiet region, is one of Europe’s capitals of culture in 2010. The EU-sanctioned designation is enabling Germany to showcase the social and economic transformation of an area that just a few decades ago threatened to become a Rust Belt.
The Pentagon is preparing to embark on a mini-building boom in Central Asia. A recently posted sources-sought survey indicates the US military wants to be involved in strategic construction projects in all five Central Asian states, including Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
When members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization convene June 9 in Tashkent for their annual summit, it is already apparent that expansion will be a major topic of discussion.
The early April upheaval in Kyrgyzstan is helping to define what the Collective Security Treaty Organization is, and is not. The Russia-led alliance is definitely not an instrument that can be depended upon by authoritarian-minded leaders in Central Asia to prop up their regimes during times of trouble.
