By Jacob Zenn (the 05305/2014 of the CACI Analyst)
In 2014, U.S. troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, despite that the Taliban and allied Central Asian Islamist militant groups, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), remain strong in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Complicating the security landscape in Eurasia, since 2011 Syria has become a front where hundreds of Central Asian Islamist militants are fighting. If Central Asians in Syria and Afghanistan carry out their threats to launch attacks against the secular countries of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan may emerge as a safe haven, if not also a target, for attacks.
By Stephen Blank (the 05/02/2014 issue of the CACI Analyst)
The current Ukrainian crisis has focused attention on Russia’s drive to construct a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and a customs Union as part of it. But Ukraine is by no means the whole story, as reservations if not resistance to the project mount in Central Asia. Both Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have taken steps to resist Russian encroachments and to raise the price of their admission into this union. In January 2014, Kazakhstan's government launched a plan to re-privatize the crucial Kazakh banking sector, partly in order to shield it from the tactics used by Russian banks to buy up equity in distressed banks under EEU guidelines. Kyrgyzstan also displays an increased desire to force Russia to bargain for Kyrgyzstan’s adhesion to the Customs Union and EEU.
By Georgiy Voloshin (the 05/02/2014 issue of the CACI Analyst)
On January 29, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev approved his country’s new foreign policy concept for the period 2014-2020. As the document states, it was developed in line with the “Kazakhstan 2050” strategy made public by President Nazarbayev in December 2012 and further detailed in his recent address to the nation last month. The major goal of this strategic initiative is to ensure Kazakhstan’s entry into the elite club of the world’s 30 most developed countries by the turn of this century.
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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