With the onset of spring fast approaching, Russia is preparing for a new, incoming wave of labor migrants. Government officials in Moscow, including the head of the Federal Migration Service, acknowledge that the Russian economy needs guest workers in order to promote a steady growth rate.
A reticent Richard Holbrooke completed a lightning tour of Central Asia on February 21, a trip designed to bolster regional support for NATO efforts in Afghanistan. Publicly, the Obama administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan received vague promises of support from Central Asian leaders.
US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, will kick off a Central Asian tour on February 19 in Kyrgyzstan.
In Bishkek, Holbrooke will hold talks with Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. The US envoy's exact itinerary has yet to be confirmed, Mark C. Toner, a spokesman for the State Department said during a February 17 press briefing.
The sudden cancellation of an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, along with the subsequent sacking of the chief of the Central Asian nation's culture agency, is stoking a debate over freedom of expression.
Central Asian states are no strangers to free-speech controversy, but the brutal murder of a journalist from Kyrgyzstan in neighboring Kazakhstan marks a new low in the region's media environment.
On paper, the US Department of Defense wants to turn the Northern Distribution Network into an engine for economic development in the Caucasus and Central Asia, one that helps regional companies and US-based firms alike.
Muhtar Yusupbekov has no regrets about his decision to send his 12-year-old son Muhammad abroad to Egypt to study. Muhammad, his father says, used to attend a local Russian-language school in his native Bishkek, but "he always had a passion to study religion, especially the Koran."
No country in the Caucasus or Central Asia saw its ranking rise in this year's Freedom in the World report, released January 12 by the democratization organization Freedom House.
Kyrgyzstan's political system has deteriorated over the past year, according to Freedom House, which characterized the country as "not free,"slipping from "partly free" in last year's report.
Umed Saidov, a 23-year-old Tajik, flew to the United States in the spring of 2009 with a single goal: to improve his English.
That skill would translate into better opportunities for him and his family back home. For now, Saidov, who studied in the northwestern US city of Seattle for four months before relocating to New York City, is taking it one step at a time.
