There’s actually a bright side to government dysfunction in Central Asia: when the state lacks funds to take care of basic necessities, citizens are learning to band together to tackle civic problems.
Mangistau, an oil-rich region on the Caspian Sea, is sometimes described as the motor of Kazakhstan’s vibrant economy. These days, it is also a hotbed of social tension.
Officials are touting new procedures for selecting judges as a significant step toward increasing transparency and promoting the concept of judicial independence in Kyrgyzstan. But, for some civil society activists, the approach is sowing more doubt than confidence in the system.
Kyrgyzstan is a fiscal train wreck waiting to happen. The Kyrgyz government is spending with abandon, even though it inherited an economy that was already in sorry shape. Foreign donors, meanwhile, are growing increasingly wary, as concerns mount about Bishkek’s reluctance to tackle transparency concerns.
For many in Osh, the anniversary of last year's ethnic violence offers a painful reminder of the severe strains weighing on society. But for Gulmira, an Uzbek, and her husband Saparbek, an ethnic Kyrgyz, the anniversary created an opportunity to promote reconciliation. The couple planned to gather, for the first time since the outbreak of violence, their suspicious Kyrgyz and Uzbek relatives.
In another grim sign for foreign investors in Kyrgyzstan, a parliamentary probe into operations at the Kumtor gold mine has some experts worried that officials are angling to nationalize one of the Central Asian country’s most valuable assets.
Until recently, Aksai, an ethnic Kyrgyz village on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, had seemed so small and insignificant that most cartographers failed to include it on their maps. But now it has become a flashpoint, with a recent standoff there underscoring the potential for interethnic violence along the poorly defined frontier.
For Turgunaly Tagaev, a villager in southern Kyrgyzstan’s isolated and impoverished Batken Province, the death of his brother, who lived a few kilometers away, was a tragedy. But his sense of loss turned into a sense of injustice and anger when border guards from neighboring Uzbekistan -- where his brother’s village is located -- kept him from the funeral.
