PUBLIC CONFIDENCE, TRUST AND PARTICIPATION IN POST-SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA
By Timur Dadabaev (5/31/2006 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: In the majority of Central Asian countries, what is desired by the population is often assumed based on the views of governmental officials. This leads to the lack of public confidence in their respective governments. The Asia Barometer survey in the fall of 2005 registered that in most Central Asian countries (except Turkmenistan) the public trusts their central government only to a degree.RUSSIAN CHECHNYA POLICY: “CHECHENIZATION” TURNING INTO “KADYROVIZATION”?
By Emil Souleimanov (5/31/2006 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Even with Vladimir Putin having made, as it turned out retroactively, a strategic wager on the Kadyrov clan, it appears that Moscow has never abandoned its tried and true system of checks and balances. For instance, Bislan Gantamirov, perhaps the most noteworthy “opposition leader” in modern Chechen history, along with some pro-Russian political figures, was long kept in Chechnya as a trump card that could be played as needed if the former mufti, Ahmad Kadyrov, were to become unmanageable. They had been promised a brilliant future in politics, but were told that their time simply had not yet come.THE CHANGING NATURE OF AZERBAIJANI ELECTIONS
By Alman Mir Ismail (5/17/2006 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: On May 13, Azerbaijan held “mini†parliamentary elections, re-runs in the ten constituency remaining vacant since last November due to the election fraud there and the subsequent annulment of the election results by the Central Election Commission and the Constitutional Court. These re-elections presented the government of Azerbaijan with another opportunity to prove to the international community and domestic voters that it is capable of pulling together its political will and to conduct free and fair elections. At the same time, it presented a new test to the international community, more specifically to the Council of Europe, where Azerbaijan’s commitments to democracy will be discussed in the June session.PAKISTAN-AFGHAN RELATIONS: HOSTAGE TO THE PAST
By Rahimullah Yusufzai (5/17/2006 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: When Pakistan won independence from British rule in 1947, Afghanistan was the only country in the world to oppose its membership in the United Nations. Kabul took the plea that the Pakhtun and Baloch people inhabiting Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan had not been given the right of self-determination and, as such, their territories were forcibly merged into Pakistan. This led to the Pakhtunistan problem, as successive Afghan governments publicly highlighted the rights of Pakhtuns and Baloch and demanded a separate homeland for the Pakhtun people.Visit also
Staff Publications
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, Greater Central Asia as A Component of U.S. Global Strategy, October 2024.
Analysis Laura Linderman, "Rising Stakes in Tbilisi as Elections Approach," Civil Georgia, September 7, 2024.
Analysis Mamuka Tsereteli, "U.S. Black Sea Strategy: The Georgian Connection", CEPA, February 9, 2024.
Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell, ed., Türkiye's Return to Central Asia and the Caucasus, July 2024.
Book Svante E. Cornell, ed., "The Changing Geopolitics of Central Asia and the Caucasus" AFPC Press/Armin LEar, 2023.
Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr, Stepping up to the “Agency Challenge”: Central Asian Diplomacy in a Time of Troubles, July 2023.
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, U.S. Policy in Central Asia through Central Asian Eyes, May 2023.