ENDING POPPY GROWING IN AFGHANISTAN: IMPLICATIONS FOR TAJIKISTAN
By Ambassador Grant Smith (8/1/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Opium production in Afghanistan surged at the end of the 1990s, rising to 4600 tons in 1999, or 75 per cent of the world’s total, according to UNDCP estimates. This dramatically increased output was able to reach European markets not only through traditional routes via Pakistan and Iran, but also through the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, especially Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. In 1995, the flow through Tajikistan was in the form of opium, most of which went from the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan through the Gorno-Badakhshan region of Tajikistan to Osh, in Kyrgyzstan.
RUSSIA AND CHECHNYA: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
By Miriam Lanskoy (8/1/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: The war reached a stalemate months ago. The Russian armed forces can't crush the Chechen resistance and, so far, the Chechens have failed to force the Russians to withdraw from the republic. Even if the events of August 1996 repeat themselves, and the Russian military withdraws, Russia again may avoid an outright recognition of Chechnya's independence.
AFGHANISTAN: THE MAKING OF A QUAGMIRE?
By Stephen Blank (12/5/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Of the making of international quagmires there seems to be no end. Afghanistan is only the latest example where governments have failed or disintegrated due to their own belligerence, leaving the international community no choice but to reconstitute public order lest humanitarian disaster and war endlessly ravage it. As in many other previous cases, Afghanistan’s prognosis, despite the undoubted progress of the Bonn conference on establishing a future government, is guarded.
HYPER-TERRORISM VS. HYPER-POWER: COMING TO TERMS WITH ASYMMETRY
By Maria Sultan (12/5/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Asymmetry of firepower has always been both a goal in itself and a method of war for powerful states, who have felt the desire to have a leading edge over their adversaries’ capacity to fight. However, the logic of the use of asymmetry of power in itself understandably leads to an asymmetric response by the weaker party. The most obvious examples of different actors turning to fight such asymmetric wars, from the American perspective, is the Viet Cong, which in the early stages of the conflict was repeatedly defeated by overwhelming US power, but turned it into an eventual success due to its use of asymmetric methods of war, making use of terrain, local population, ambushes, i.
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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.