The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst

On July 16, 2010, Azerbaijan and the European Union (EU) started to negotiate for the signature of an Association Agreement. In the framework of the Eastern Partnership, launched in May 2009, it will provide a new basis for the relationship between Baku and Brussels. These negotiations will help updating the latter, highlighting both the changes of perceptions of Azerbaijan in Brussels and the new regional role Baku intends to play in the South Caucasus.

In recent months, the Russian government has stepped up its attacks on NATO governments for failing to curb Afghanistan’s exploding opium production and the resulting surge in Eurasian drug trafficking. Since Western troops occupied Afghanistan in late 2001, opium cultivation has soared and the Russian government argues that NATO should take more vigorous action to repress the cultivation of narcotics in Afghanistan. Russian officials have indicated that they will press for aerial spraying of herbicides on the poppy fields. Although sympathetic to Russian concerns, neither the Afghan government, nor its NATO backers, are prepared to take such risky action, which could greatly assist Taliban recruitment efforts.

Alexander Khloponin is no economic visionary. His economic values are based on open markets, free movement of capital, public-private partnership – in short, what might be termed the neo-liberal economic agenda. These economic values brought him success as governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai. Now, as President Medvedev’s representative to the North Caucasus Federal District, Khloponin proposes to use many of the same economic policies to bring prosperity to Russia’s most destitute region. However, these policies will hardly suffice to attract significant investment to a region which remains the base of an armed insurgency.

This spring, hundreds of young professionals, scholars and PhD students across Central Asia packed their books, research projects and CVs and headed for foreign countries to get professional training, education, or internships. This movement of highly skilled specialists has become a hotly debated issue among intellectuals in the region. One camp argues that it is a brain drain, as much needed specialists leave their home countries, contributing to shortages of highly skilled professionals. Others argue that it is a brain gain, because if even a few of them come back with world-class expertise, they will contribute to reforming national economies – and those who do not return will transfer remittances from developed countries to their nations.