By Brian Williams (2/12/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: In 1999, the democratically elected head of the de facto independent republic of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, asked the Kremlin for assistance in suppressing several Wahhabi militant formations based in Urus-Martan and the mountains of southeastern Chechnya. Far from assisting the beleaguered moderate president of Chechnya in expelling such radical Muslim field commanders as the Arab jihadi leader Amir Khattab, the Russians worked to undermine Maskhadov\'s secularist-national government vis-Ă -vis the Islamic militants. Ironically, when Amir Khattab\'s Islamic Battalion soon thereafter acted against Maskhadov\'s wishes in August and September of 1999 and invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan, the Kremlin cynically accused Maskhadov of being behind the invasion.By Roger N. McDermott (2/12/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Conscript service, according to President Islam Karimov, has tended to engender corruption within the armed forces since local officials are placed in a position of deciding \'whom to call for military service, and for whom to extend an induction term, or whom to completely omit, and sometimes for a certain gain, they arbitrarily decide to release someone from the army\'. In turn, this encouraged a culture of corruption to exist within the Uzbek armed forces, undermining discipline, and ensuring personnel upheaval and further constraining the forces\' ability to meet high levels of combat readiness. Reducing the length of conscript service from 18 months to one year, may go some way to addressing its widespread unpopularity amongst Uzbek youth, but it will not prove an instant remedy and it will perpetuate manpower problems, as Botir Mirzamuhamedov, head of the Uzbek MoDs conscription department, acknowledges.By Gulnara Ismailova (2/10/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: During the fall of 2002, the American pressure on Iraq increased gradually to a point where the probability of a military campaign being launched only several hundred kilometers from the Caucasus is extremely high. As late January, with the report of UN inspectors on Iraq, appears increasingly to be the moment of truth regarding an invasion of Iraq, the Caucasian states are pondering how to relate to this development. Georgia and Azerbaijan already strongly aligned themselves with the U.By Nasib Nassibli (2/10/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: In the aftermath of the Soviet Union\'s collapse, Iran confronted the appearance of new states on its northern borders with concern. Iran launched unprecedented diplomatic activity to protect its national security interests and to prevent undesirable geopolitical developments. Specifically, Iran initiated the signing of a plethora of bilateral and multilateral agreements to induce cooperation between the Caspian littoral states.The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst is a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Council, Washington DC., and the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. For 15 years, the Analyst has brought cutting edge analysis of the region geared toward a practitioner audience.
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