By Stephen Blank (9/24/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

BACKGROUND: An ongoing trial in New York looks set to implicate Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev for corruption and bribery charges relating to the energy industry in Kazakhstan. Similarly in Uzbekistan, Western press revelations emerging out of the contest for custody of the grandchildren of President Islam Karimov by his daughter Gulnara in a New Jersey court reveal an astonishing accumulation of wealth by her through her or her father’s power over the state economy. Likewise, a New York court case is presently implicating Azerbaijan’s State Oil Company and potentially the leadership in that country in similar scandals.

By James Purcell Smith (9/24/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

BACKGROUND: Since December 2002, there have been increasing signs of a revival of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. In late 2001, this organization renamed itself the Islamic Movement of Turkestan (IMT), thus openly proclaiming its purposes of controlling the entire Central Asian region, disregarding the five existing nation-states and their boundaries. The Kyrgyz newspaper “Vecherniy Bishkek” reported on July 23 that bomb explosions in the “Oberon” market in the Bishkek on December 27, 2002 and in a branch of “Bakay bank” in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh on May 8 were directly linked to the Islamic Movement of Turkestan.

By Rafis Abazov (9/24/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)

BACKGROUND: In traditional Central Asian societies, the concept of keeping all political power within the extended family has very strong roots. This notion survived 100 years of Russian and later Soviet modernization. It was, therefore, natural for the debate about political succession in Central Asia to switched from procedure to personalities.