By Robert M. Cutler (8/1/2001 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: In mid-December 1997 the Turkish prime minister then in office, Mesut Yilmaz, signed an agreement with the erstwhile Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to build the so-called "Blue Stream" natural gas pipeline. Turkish press reports this spring led state prosecutors to examine the process by which the contract for construction of the Turkish segment was awarded, allegedly without tender. Political pressure forced the resignation, on April 26, of Cumhur Ersumer, the energy minister and a member of the Motherland Party, two days after the indictment on charges of corruption of fifteen government officials who, according to press reports, named Ersumer in connection with the probe.
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 worlds 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.
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.
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.
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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