CHINA FORCED TO EXPAND ROLE IN CENTRAL ASIA
By Ahmed Rashid (7/19/2000 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: President Jiang Zemin's visits to Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, his participation in the Shanghai Five summit meeting in Dushanbe, and the hard hitting Dushanbe Declaration to which China signed on demonstrates a new and more expansive Chinese foreign policy in the region. Only two weeks earlier, Iranian President Mohammed Khatami's visited China and was allowed an unprecedented visit to Xinjiang’s Islamic mecca Kashgar - the first foreign Muslim leader privileged to visit volatile Xinjiang. Despite China's repressive campaign against the Uyghurs and Iran's previous foreign policy of supporting oppressed Muslims everywhere, Khatami chose to praise Chinese policies in Xinjiang.
CORRUPT OIL PRACTICES IMPLICATE PRESIDENT NAZARBAYEV
By Dr. Louise Shelley (7/19/2000 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: According to the information released, the Justice Department has asked the Swiss authorities to provide information on suspicious bank accounts in their country that are thought to contain payments from western oil companies for Kazakh oil, diverted to the private accounts of Nazarbayev and two close associates. Allegedly $60 million dollars passed in the mid to late 1990s to accounts in Switzerland controlled by Nazarbayev, former Kazakh Prime Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin and Nurlan Balgimbayev, the former prime minister and now head of Kazakhstan’s state oil company.
Exxon Mobil corporation, the largest publicly traded oil company, is cooperating in the investigation but their other partners in Offshore Kazakhstan International Oil Co.
BAKU CASPIAN MEETING CREATED HOPES BUT NOT CONCRETE RESULTS
By Hooman Peimani (3/12/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Since the Soviet Union\'s fall, the inability of the five littoral states (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan) to agree on a legal regime for the Caspian Sea has created uncertainty about the ownership of many Caspian offshore oilfields and prevented their development, while creating a situation ripe for tension and hostility among the littoral states. This reality has created a major obstacle to their acceptance of a legal regime. Until 1999 Iran and Russia opposed dividing the Caspian Sea into national zones, in favor of dividing it based on the condominium principle.RUSSIA BEGINS OIL SWAPS WITH IRAN
By Robert M. Cutler (3/12/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Iran has been seeking since the mid-1990s to undertake oil swaps with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan as a way to increase its own exports. Such swaps involve Iran’s importing oil in the north on its Caspian Sea coast for domestic refining and consumption, while exporting compensatory quantities to the world market from its southern ports on the Persian Gulf. This has been part and parcel of Iran’s strategy not only for developing its own energy sector but also for situating itself as an important transit country for international trade flows in general.Visit also
Staff Publications
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, U.S. Policy in Central Asia through Central Asian Eyes, May 2023.
Analysis Svante E. Cornell, "Promise and Peril in the Caucasus," AFPC Insights, March 30, 2023.
Oped S. Frederick Starr, Putin's War In Ukraine and the Crimean War), 19fourtyfive, January 2, 2023
Oped S. Frederick Starr, Russia Needs Its Own Charles de Gaulle, Foreign Policy, July 21, 2022.
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, Rethinking Greater Central Asia: American and Western Stakes in the Region and How to Advance Them, June 2022
Oped Svante E. Cornell & Albert Barro, With referendum, Kazakh President pushes for reforms, Euractiv, June 3, 2022.
Oped Svante E. Cornell Russia's Southern Neighbors Take a Stand, The Hill, May 6, 2022.
Silk Road Paper Johan Engvall, Between Bandits and Bureaucrats: 30 Years of Parliamentary Development in Kyrgyzstan, January 2022.
Oped Svante E. Cornell, No, The War in Ukraine is not about NATO, The Hill, March 9, 2022.
Analysis Svante E. Cornell, Kazakhstan’s Crisis Calls for a Central Asia Policy Reboot, The National Interest, January 34, 2022.
Book S. Frederick Starr and Svante E. Cornell, Strong and Unique: Three Decades of U.S.-Kazakhstan Partnership, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, December 2021.
Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell, S. Frederick Starr & Albert Barro, Political and Economic Reforms in Kazakhstan Under President Tokayev, November 2021.