Carnegie Moscow Center
The recent resignation of President Bakiyev, in the wake of a popular uprising that removed him from power, has given Kyrgyzstan a chance to avoid becoming a failed state.
The conflicts in the Caucasus are often directly linked to changes in territorial borders. Creating an atlas of the Caucasus is a key to understanding the nature of the conflicts in the region.
The Tulip Revolution did not mark the emergence of democracy in Kyrgyzstan. To the contrary, since 2005, limits on political rights and freedoms and the strengthening of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s family rule have only increased.
In 20 years of religious freedom, the Russian Orthodox Church has been unable to create a workable system for preparing its clergy and lay workers to perform social service, including missionary work, charity and moral education at schools and universities.
The North Caucasus looks and feels more and more like Russia’s neighbor than a constituent part of the state. As the people in the region have become disappointed in local leaders and the Kremlin, many of them turn to Islam as their last hope to achieve structure and peace.
Alexey Malashenko and Johannes Regenbrecht gave a comparative assessment of the European and Russian strategies in Central Asia.
Although it is South Ossetia and Abkhazia that have been receiving most of the world’s attention this fall, Russia’s own north Caucasus region should not be ignored. In fact, Carnegie’s Alexey Malashenko predicts that this area of Russia is likely to experience serious turbulence in the coming year.