Kyrgyzstan is probably the best known of any central Asian country, the one that has elicited the most academic publications, reports by NGOs or advocacy groups, and op-eds in the media. The country opened up massively to Western influence through development aid for civil society and for economic reforms, faced two revolutions in 2005 and 2010, and experienced bloody interethnic conflict in 2010. Kyrgyzstan is therefore commonly studied as a twin case: that of having been, for more than two decades, both an "island of democracy" in Central Asia--and the only country of the region to have...

The planned reductions in NATO troop numbers in Afghanistan through 2015 and a final withdrawal at the end of 2016 brings up numerous pressing questions about the security and national interests of not just Afghanistan, but of the broader region itself. The problem of a chaotic Afghanistan--or of an outright Taliban victory--is of great concern to not only immediate neighbors such as Iran, Pakistan, and the former Soviet Central Asian republics to the north, but also to those countries in the region with Afghanistan-related security or economic concerns, such as China and India. Further...

The South Caucasus has established itself as a corridor for transporting energy from Azerbaijan to Georgia, Turkey, and on to Europe, symbolized by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. This new infrastructure has created an east-west -Eurasian bridge- in which transnational extra-regional actors, especially the European Union and international financial institutions, have played a critical role. This book offers an original exploration of integration in the energy and transport sectors amongst Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, and the capacity of this to fundamentally change relations between...

In May 1992 political and social tensions in the former Soviet Republic of Tajikistan escalated to a devastating civil war, which killed approximately 40,000-100,000 people and displaced more than one million. The enormous challenge of the Soviet Union's disintegration compounded by inner-elite conflicts, ideological disputes and state failure triggered a downward spiral to one of the worst violent conflicts in the post-Soviet space. This book explains the causes of the Civil War in Tajikistan with a historical narrative recognizing long term structural causes of the conflict originating in...

Kazakhstan is one of the best-known success stories of Central Asia, perhaps even of the entire Eurasian space. It boasts a fast growing economy--at least until the 2014 crisis--a strategic location between Russia, China, and the rest of Central Asia, and a regime with far-reaching branding strategies. But the country also faces weak institutionalization, patronage, authoritarianism, and regional gaps in socioeconomic standards that challenge the stability and prosperity narrative advanced by the aging President Nursultan Nazarbayev. This policy-oriented analysis does not tell us a lot about...

Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature is a book about cultural transformations and trajectories of national imagination in modern Kazakhstan. The book is a much-needed critical introduction and a comprehensive survey of the Kazakh literary production and cultural discourses on the nation in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. In the absence of viable and open forums for discussion and in the turbulent moments of postcolonial and cultural transformation under the Soviets, the Kazakh writers and intellectuals widely engaged with the national identity, heritage and genealogy...

This collection features articles, short studies, and interviews by Alexandros Petersen (1984-2014) and constitutes a broad and prescient examination of Eurasian geopolitics. The author analyzes Western relations with the Caucasus and Central Asia, the expansion of Chinese influence, and Russia strategic interests.

This collection provides a broad analysis of Afghanistan and its neighbors in recent decades and investigates the various historical and political contexts into which the region has been placed. It examines the legacy of Soviet intervention, patterns of cooperation and conflict among regional states, and recent US strategic initiatives.

The planned reductions in NATO troop numbers in Afghanistan through 2015 and a final withdrawal at the end of 2016 brings up numerous pressing questions about the security and national interests of not just Afghanistan, but of the broader region itself. The problem of a chaotic Afghanistan--or of an outright Taliban victory--is of great concern to not only immediate neighbors such as Iran, Pakistan, and the former Soviet Central Asian republics to the north, but also to those countries in the region with Afghanistan-related security or economic concerns, such as China and India. Further...

This collection surveys the three South Caucasian states' economic, social and political evolution since their independence in 1991. It assesses their successes and failures in these areas, including their attempts to build new national identities and value systems to replace Soviet-era structures. It explains the interplay of domestic and international factors that have affected their performance and influenced the balance of their successes and shortcomings. It focuses on the policies pursued by key regional and international actors towards the region and assesses the effects of regional...