By Professor Stephen Blank (11/8/2000 issue of the CACI Analyst)

BACKGROUND: Most writing on international geopolitical rivalries in and around Central Asia focus on Russo-American competition. A growing literature also assesses Iranian, Chinese, and Turkish activities there. But there is also a visibly growing involvement of other major Asian states, not just in realizing a defense and security agenda, but also in the funding and development of major energy and infrastructure projects.

By Dr. Robert M. Cutler (11/8/2000 issue of the CACI Analyst)

BACKGROUND: Tashkent's attempts to attract foreign investment in the early 1990s were mostly unsuccessful. Western economic interest rose only in the middle of the decade. However, privatization was still largely limited to sell-offs of large state firms to foreign buyers, and to contract-signings with the largest Western companies for investment in the metallurgical and machine-building sectors.

By Dr. John C. K. Daly (11/8/2000 issue of the CACI Analyst)

BACKGROUND: The Aral Sea’s Vozrozhdeniie Island was the main open-air testing ground for Soviet biological warfare weapons. Weaponized agents included tularemia, epidemic typhus, Q fever, smallpox, plague, anthrax, Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis, Glanders, brucellosis, and Marburg infection. Numerous other agents were studied for possible use as biological weapons, including the Ebola virus, AIDS, Junin virus (Argentinian hemorrhagic fever), Machupo virus (Bolivian hemorrhagic fever), yellow fever, Lassa fever, Japanese encephalitis and Russian spring-summer encephalitis.