... and great power competition on the rise, Russia keeps a vigilant eye on the -Stans
The latest months have been chaotic in Kyrgyzstan, where the fraudulent parliamentary elections held in October resulted in a popular uprising, as President Sooronbay ... ... collapse, Russia has been involved in the Central Asian political disorder first-hand. During the 1990s, a violent civil war struck Tajikistan, while the beginning of the new century started with the US military intervention in Afghanistan. Later on, new ethnic ...
... turning to radical Islamism, particularly in western Kazakhstan. Prisons have become breeding grounds for Islamic extremism (as in Kyrgyzstan and some Russian regions). All prisons in Kazakhstan have turned “green,” which is the term for institutions informally ... ... government’s policy of tolerance towards all religions and nationalities, is generally
helping
to maintain security in the country.
Tajikistan: Situation Under Control So Far
In recent years, the Tajik government has stepped up its efforts to counter extremist ...
The Working Group on the Future of U.S.-Russia Relations’ Report
Central Asia stands out as a comparatively “nontoxic” region where there are limited, but not insignificant, opportunities for U.S.-Russia collaboration both bilaterally and within multilateral frameworks: in the space industry, civil security, job-creation mechanisms and rural human capital, and knowledge sharing for instance. Any proposal of U.S.-Russia cooperation in a concrete domain will have to be made in a tri- or-multipartite...
... institutional competition, albeit in an implicit and relatively mild form. We have already mentioned the SCO’s rivalry with the EAEU, but this is not the only possible scenario.
For example, the BRICS organization (which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China ... ... not overlap entirely, and the composition of their participants is different (the CSTO comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), the two entities have obviously similar missions. This could actually have come in handy had they competed in resolving ...
... protection of human rights. Also, the European Endowment for Democracy is stepping up its activity in the region. The EU intends to link “pragmatically” the issues of economic assistance and humanitarian cooperation with the political changes in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. According to European experts, the
Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Kazakhstan
signed on December 21, 2015, also serves the aim to support democratic transition in Kazakhstan and promotes significant advancement ...
