By Emil Avdaliani
March 9, 2020, the CACI Analyst
Georgia’s long-awaited Anaklia project officially ended in January 2020. The country’s internal problems as well as geopolitical competition involving the U.S., China, and Russia doomed the deep-sea port. However, this same geopolitical competition could serve to keep U.S. interests in the project afloat, as Chinese and Russian investments in the port would be problematic for Washington. Moreover, after Georgia’s critical parliamentary elections this year, Tbilisi may become better positioned to support a new concept for constructing Anaklia.
By Sudha Ramachandran
March 7, 2020, the CACI Analyst
The Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, signed by the U.S. and the Taliban on February 29, is a major milestone in the almost two-decade long war between the two adversaries. While it could change the trajectory of the conflict, it is unlikely to bring peace to Afghanistan. Narrow self-interest of the two signatories drove the deal, rather than the objective of peace in Afghanistan. This and the flawed content of the agreement will in all likelihood lead to escalating violence in the coming months.
By Emil A. Souleimanov and Huseyn Aliyev
February 25, 2020, the CACI Analyst
In August 2019, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a 41-year old Georgia-born ethnic-Chechen former insurgent and a supposed enemy of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, was killed in Berlin. The assassination has raised renewed concerns about the involvement of Russian security services and Chechen loyalists in the systematic liquidation of political opponents and former insurgents outside Russia’s borders. While the involvement of Russian security services in assassinating “traitors” has become a widely-accepted fact following the 2018 Salisbury poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter, less is known about the persecution of dissidents or critics of Kadyrov’s regime outside Chechnya and Russia.
By Nurlan Aliyev
March 2, 2020, the CACI Analyst
In December 26, 2019 , the Georgian National Museum presented a new exhibition titled “Chinese Art in the Georgian National Museum,” dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, and a book on the theme by Georgian authors. Within this project, supported by the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Georgia, several exhibitions of works by Chinese painters take place in Tbilisi between December 2019 and February 2020. In recent years China’s growing economic presence in the South Caucasus has been accompanied by developments in cultural and educational relations between China and the regional 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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