Analytical Articles

Shortly after the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war, the Georgian government declared the launch of a “new wave” of democratic reforms to better balance branches of government, strengthen judicial independence and private property, and increase media freedom. The cornerstone of this effort was to be a constitutional reform that would devolve power away from Georgia’s traditionally strong presidency. After sixteen months of development, deliberation, and discussion, Georgia’s parliament approved a set of far-reaching constitutional amendments on October 15, 2010. These will go into effect in 2013, after Georgia’s next round of parliamentary and presidential elections. 

In early October BP and Azerbaijan concluded a long-discussed deal, granting both partners a 50 percent share to develop the Shafag-Asiman gas site for 30 years in Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian Sea. This field is about 1,100 square kilometers in size and has never been explored before. The field holds an estimated 17,000 billion cubic meters (BCM) of gas and that size would put it on a par with the Shah Deniz field where BP has a 25.5 percent share. This deal has importance for both partners beyond the sheer size and fact of its announcement.

Despite the success of the October 20-22 U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, the recent confrontation between NATO and Pakistani forces along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier has complicated alliance efforts to supply their sophisticated and high-maintenance military forces in distant and land-locked Afghanistan. Allied planners must ensure the delivery of large quantities of food, fuel, munitions, and construction materials to their forces through Pakistan as well as Russia and a variety of transit countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus, each with their own distinct conditions and motivations.

Kazakhstan is well known for its mineral riches. The country is a top producer of uranium, chrome and zinc, along with several other metals. Reputation sings in Kazakhstan – the successful mining companies operating in the country, mostly on legacy Soviet mines, know that strong relations with both the local and national governments via intensive and expensive social projects lead to investment security and new opportunities. However, as the next generation of mining companies – smaller exploration and development companies such as Frontier Mining Ltd. – begins to break ground on undeveloped or underdeveloped fields, new political risks emerge. What will the Kazakh government expect of them?

On October 19, four Chechen militants stormed the Chechen parliament in Grozny, causing the deaths of six police officers and wounding 17. According to the Russian Interfax news agency, the militants arrived at the parliament by car and forced their way into the parliamentary compound; one of them blew himself up and two were shot dead. This attack is the second serious incident in Chechnya in recent months. In August, militants launched a massive attack on Chechnya’s pro-Russian leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s native village of Tsentoroi. These incidents in Chechnya indicate a split in the North Caucasian insurgency.

The Kazakh banking system has returned to solvency. A comparison of the macro-situation of October 2008 with that two years later shows that the national inflation rate has fallen from 18.2 percent to 6.7 percent, banks’ liquidity as a percentage of all their assets has risen from 14.1 percent to 22.6 percent, the volume of banks’ assets placed in the National Bank has risen from US$ 9.1 to US$ 10.5 billion, and the gross external debt of the national banking system has decreased from US$ 41.6 billion to US$ 17 billion. Although the national economy grew by only 0.3 percent in 2009, most Eurasian countries experienced GDP contractions that year.

Conventional wisdom has it that Azerbaijanis, the largest ethnic minority in Iran, have historically tended to identify themselves with the idea of Iranian statehood and Shiite religion rather than ethnic nationalism. Yet recent years have shown a growth of their Azerbaijani Turkic self-consciousness which has not least manifested itself in the form of “sport nationalism”. The numerous fans of the Tabriz-based Tractor Sazi football club have become advocates of the ethno-linguistic emancipation of Iranian Azerbaijanis, an emancipation sometimes bordering on separatism and irredentism.

Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan remain tense despite Islamabad’s decision to allow vital supplies for coalition troops in Afghanistan after an ISAF helicopter incursion into Pakistan that claimed the lives of four Pakistani soldiers and injured another two. Meanwhile, the usage of Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs) inside Pakistan’s tribal areas continues despite widespread public discontent in Pakistan. Islamabad has yet to condemn drone incursions and unlawful killings resulting from drone attacks. Meanwhile, militants are increasingly attacking targets in Pakistan such as its security forces and NATO supply caravans, traveling from the coastal areas to the Torkham border crossing.

On October 10, for the first time since independence in 1991 the voters in Kyrgyzstan went to the voting stations with great fear for their safety, amid widely circulated rumors about potential bloody incidents. The electorate was also deeply polarized in their views of the elections. One large group of voters was profoundly frustrated and disillusioned with the democratic experiment in the country. The other group was highly optimistic about the outcomes, claiming that the introduction of the parliamentary republic would finally put to an end the abuses, excesses and corrupt practices of the so-called super-presidential system, where the president played a disproportionally large and often destructive role in the political development of the country.

Presidents Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia held a two-day summit in early September, at the two countries’ Seventh Forum on Interregional Cooperation in Oskemen (settled by order of Peter the Great in 1720, called Ust’-Kamenogorsk from the mid-nineteenth century until 1992), the capital of the East-Kazakhstan province. While some agreements to implement existing agreements for joint energy development of the Khvalynskoe and Imashevskoe deposits were reached, the summit was mainly notable for being less superficial than other such meetings in the recent past.