After seven years of legal wrangling, trial postponements, and efforts by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev to control its political implications, the multimillion-dollar "Kazakhgate" bribery scandal is over.
Turkish Airlines recently started flying between Istanbul and the Azeri enclave of Naxcivan, but now something else is linking the two places: both are cracking down on street food vendors.
As RFE/RL reports, authorities in the enclave have started giving a hard time to people selling food on the street, most of them poor farmers who can't afford to rent government certified stalls. More disturbingly, some of the vendors who have protested the crackdown have been sent to psychiatric hospitals in punishment. You can read the full report here.
Meanwhile, in Istanbul, it looks like municipal authorities in some parts of town are also going after some of the city's unlicensed -- but, let's face it, very appealing -- food carts. According to one official in the city's heavily-visited Beyoglu district, the only kinds of carts that will be licensed are those selling chestnuts, corn and simit (a sesame-encrusted bread ring). So much for showing off the diversity of Istanbul's street food. You can read an article about this travesty here.
Two years ago last night, Georgian television broadcast soldiers firing rockets into Tskhinvali, the capital of the pro-Moscow breakaway province of South Ossetia. Tbilisi said it was restoring order in the region and briefly took the city. But a massive Russian response crushed the Georgian military as Russian troops pushed deep into uncontested Georgian territory.
Uzbekistan is chairing a meeting of the five Central Asian nations with Japan, the state news site gazeta.ru reported. This is the first such meeting of Central Asian foreign ministers with Japan's foreign minister since 2004. The meeting's agenda includes discussions on regional security and advancement of various economic programs.
Abu-Umar Ahmadov says most of the eight- to 16-year-old students in his evening and weekend classes on Islamic principles and ethics are sent to him by well-intentioned parents.
They merely want to keep their kids out of trouble.
How big a military does South Ossetia need? RFE/RL's Caucasus Report blog flags an interview with the territory/country's new defense minister, Colonel Valery Yakhnovets (the fifth consecutive Russian army officer to hold that post, incidentally) in a Russian newspaper:
Since the spring of this year, some 1,000 South Ossetian military personnel have been demobilized in line with what Yakhnovets termed a "political decision" on the part of de facto President Eduard Kokoity. Echoing concerns voiced by observers in Tskhinvali, Yakhnovets said further downsizing could lead to "social tensions."
In an apparent bid to mollify servicemen forced into early retirement, the South Ossetian authorities recently announced a program to provide them with loans to open their own businesses....
Yakhnovets also denied having criticized Kokoity's edict on downsizing the armed forces. He said that at the time of his appointment, manpower stood at 1,250 men, and that further cuts were inadvisable. Yakhnovets further suggested that the up to 1,000 military personnel who have already been demobilized could either enlist at the Russian military base in South Ossetia, or find employment in the construction sector.
These seem like very small numbers to me. When I briefly visited South Ossetia three years ago, it seemed like every other man on the street in Tskhinvali was in uniform. But perhaps they were Russian uniforms:
Latest Civilian Casualties In Afghanistan Mark Difficult Road Ahead by Mohammad Elyas Daee, Mohammad Sadiq Rishtinai, Abubakar Siddique KANDAHAR -- Abdul Ghaffar is a living portrait of the misery that has befallen a people caught in the crossfire of war.
Stark differences have emerged in how the Kyrgyz media have covered the origins and aftermath of the interethnic violence that erupted the Central Asian country in mid-June.
The Kyrgyz Ministry of Health has revised upward to 355 the officially-registered death toll for the conflict in southern Kyrgyzstan in June, noting that at least 2,326 were wounded. Yet NGOs continue to collect testimony that many more deaths have occurred, and that at least 60 people are still missing.
Turkmen Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov reported on his participation in the meetings of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Almaty and the international conference on Afghanistan in Kabul at a cabinet meeting this week, the State News Agency of Turkmenistan reported.
