Where in the world is Maksim Bakiyev?
While his father's regime was being overthrown back in Kyrgyzstan, Maksim Bakiyev -- who was the head of the country's Agency for Investment and Economic Development -- was on his way to the U.S. for...
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Ousted Kyrgyz present takes refuge in Belarus
This is interesting: Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko said Tuesday that "Bakiyev and his family are in Minsk under the protection of our state and me personally." His presence,...
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Xinjiang districts get sister Chinese regions
China's Xinjiang province is known mostly for being a hotbed of separatist violence and government crackdowns on free speech. But not all the news coming from Western China is bad: just days after...
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What the heck is Gerald Posner doing in Afghanistan?
Maybe it was all the excitement with the Russian spies last week, but somehow we missed one of the more intriguing things to grace the Wall Street Journal's letters page in a while: A full-throated...
View ArticleThe lost Ethiopians of Kyrgyzstan
A strange story of 80 men trapped in geopolitical limbo since the end of the Cold War: Tesgaye, once an aspiring fighter pilot, was one of 80 Ethiopian cadets sent to a Soviet military training...
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Armed conflict and religious education in Tajikistan
In a move aimed at punishing potentially naughty children citizens, the government of Tajikistan is trying to get its students studying abroad at religious schools to return home. Fearing a...
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China about to get bigger
Tajikistan has agreed to give up a chunk of its territory to neighboring China: Parliament voted Wednesday in favor of giving up around 1,000 square kilometers of land in the Central Asian nation's...
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Turkmenistan leader's latest obsession: horses
Judging from past experiences, Turkmenistan's autocratic president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, doesn't seem to be a lover of the animal kingdom. There was the time he reportedly fired one of his...
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Kazakh supremo's life recast as fairy tale
The squares out there who don't frequent the theaters of Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, probably haven't seen this year's movie and play about the life of Kazakhstan's authoritarian leader Nursultan...
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Who gets a visit from Putin?
Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't choose his foreign visits lightly. On May 31, Putin makes his first trip abroad since being inaugurated for a third term as president on May 7, to neighboring...
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Taliban cheers reopening of NATO supply routes
U.S. and Pakistani officials signed a memorandum of understanding today, finally reopening supply routes to Afghanistan after a seven month blockade. In a statement to the press, Pakistan Foreign...
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Kazakh website hosts vote for beautiful women in uniform
China's People's Daily may have taken some heat this week for publishing what the Shanghaiist described as a "leering" slide show of a "beautiful" journalist, but some news outlets in Kazakhstan have...
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U.S.-Pakistani relations -- according to 12-year-olds
The United States and Pakistan have not had the greatest year -- or decade -- from a diplomatic perspective. Just today, for instance, Pakistan and Iran launched a natural gas pipeline that Washington...
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News you might have missed: Iran considers annexing Azerbaijan (again)
Journalists have had their hands full this week with reports of Iran's fake time machine, not to mention the 6.3-magnitude earthquake that shook the country's south. But somehow, in all the...
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Turkmenistan's president won a horse race in the most embarrassing way possible
During a race on Sunday to mark the Day of the Turkmen Racehorse, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov and his horse Berkarar (Mighty), of the national Akhal-Teke breed, were the first to...
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Kyrgyz Sex Video: You Can Leave Your Mufti Hat On
Here's a story you don't hear every day: The grand mufti of Kyrgyzstan -- the highest Islamic authority in the country -- resigned Tuesday over a sex-tape scandal. The mufti, Rakhmatulla-Hajji...
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Chechen President Hands Out $1,000 to Children Named Mohammed
If you're broke, Chechen, and happened to give birth on Monday, you're in luck. Well, at least as long as you named your newborn baby after Mohammed (or one of his close associates). Monday was the...
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Kazakhstan Wants to Attract Big Pharma to Its 'Cannabis Klondike'
Despite a heavy-handed campaign against drug trafficking and related crime in the country, one Kazakh lawmaker thinks it's time to cash in on some 140,000 stubborn hectares of wild cannabis that can...
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Al Qaeda Core Down, but Terrorist Attacks Up, Says State Department
The Obama administration has spent years arguing that the killings of Osama bin Laden and numerous al Qaeda lieutenants have defeated what it describes as the "core" of the terror group. On Wednesday,...
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Hungry for Gas, China Muscles Onto Russian Turf
To see the future of Central Asia, just follow the pipelines to China. China has turned to Central Asia to satisfy its growing appetite for energy for 15 years now. According to a new report by energy...
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