News Digest
SOUTH OSSETIAN LAW ENFORCERS REPEL ATTACK ON TSKHINVALI
By empty (2/4/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
South Ossetian Defence Minister Andrei Laptev said on Sunday that the republic’s Defence Ministry units managed to repel a fire attack on South Ossetia’s capital Tskhinvali. The southern outskirts of the South Ossetian capital were subject to heavy fire from submachine-guns, grenade launchers and mine mortars for two hours. The fire came from the Georgian villages of Ergeneti and Nikozi.ELECTORAL COM HEAD IN ABKHAZIA SEIZED BY MASKED ATTACKERS
By empty (2/3/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Unidentified attackers in Abkhazia\'s Gali district have seized the chairman of the district electoral commission for parliamentary elections, David Sigua, from his home. Sigua was seized at 05:00 Moscow time this Saturday, Abkhazian presidential envoy to the Gali district Ruslan Kishmaria said. Sigua\'s relatives said that five masked persons armed with submachine guns broke into his home in the central part of the city of Gali and took him out by force.NORTH CAUCASUS MINISTER SAYS WAHHABISM \'IS NOT A CRIME\'
By empty (2/2/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Speaking at a press conference in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria Republic Interior Minister Yury Tomchak said that \"wahhabism is not a crime, it\'s a religious tendency,\" according to \"Gazeta yuga\" as reposted on February 1 on kavkazweb.net. In a clear reference to the indiscriminate reprisals against young Muslims carried out by his predecessor, Lieutenant General Khachim Shogenov, Tomchak said that his ministry\'s efforts to apprehend Islamic militants out to \"overthrow the existing system\" should not be seen as a struggle with a specific religious tendency, but as an attempt to redress \"the damage inflicted by our colleagues.NUMBER OF ABDUCTIONS DECLINES IN CHECHNYA - DEPUTY INTERIOR MINISTER
By empty (2/2/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
The number of people abducted in Chechnya is decreasing, Col. Gen. Arkady Yedelev, Russian deputy interior minister and head of the operational headquarters in the North Caucasus, said in an interview published in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper on Friday.Visit also
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Joint Center Publications
Analysis Niklas Swanström and Leah Oppenheimer, "Invisible Ink: Looking for the Lost Trade between China, Russia, and Central Asia", ISDP Policy Brief, 13 March 2013. 
New Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr with Adib Farhadi, Finish the Job: Jump-Start the Afghan Economy, December 2012.
Conference Report Cheryl Benard, Eli Sugarman, and Holly Rehm, Cultural Heritage vs. Mining on the New Silk Road? Finding Technical Solutions for Mes Aynak and Beyond (in cooperation with the Alliance for the Restoration of Cultural Heritage) December 2012.
Article Svante E. Cornell, "The 'Afghanization of the North Caucasus: Causes and Implications of a Changing Conflict", in Stephen Blank, ed., Russia's Homegrown Insurgency: Jihad in the North Caucasus, Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2012.