AWAZA, Turkmenistan -- Just five years ago, Awaza stood as a tiny dacha retreat along the Caspian coast where Turkmen could take refuge from the daily hustle and bustle.
But the rustic mud-brick cottages that once dotted the seaside have been swept away and replaced with gleaming, high-rise luxury hotels.
Two days after the killing of a brother-in-law of Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, police in Dushanbe say little is known about who carried out the assassination and why.
Kholmumin Safarov's body was buried on June 15 in the southern district of Danghara, the first family's home region.
Just before Al-Qaeda achieved its defining moment with the terror attacks against the United States in 2001, it was in a gift-giving mood in Afghanistan.
On September 9, the terrorist organization paid back its Afghan hosts by taking out the Taliban regime's most powerful enemy -- Ahmad Shah Masud.
As the new school year kicked off on September 1, some 35 ethnic Uzbek children attending the Cholpon school in the district of Kara-Suu in southern Kyrgyzstan began their studies in a whole new language -- Kyrgyz.
As Tajikistan's Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) prepares to decide who will rule it for the next four years, a rift has reportedly emerged between party conservatives and so-called modern pragmatists.
The question is whether a change of strategy is in the cards, one that would move the IRP away from the moderation and anti-extremism espoused by current party head Muhiddin Kabiri.
Tajik national Husniddin Mashrabov, a 23-year-old migrant laborer, never expected to become a hostage to geopolitics when he crossed from Russia into South Ossetia.
But after two months stranded in the disputed Caucasus territory, that's exactly what has happened. He is a man far from home, in a country that is not really a country (at least by most accounts), with no place to turn.
