Casey Michel
Thursday, November 5, 2015 - 07:28
For almost two decades the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) stood as the lone mainstream Muslim party in post-Soviet Central Asia. But in August, Tajikistan's Justice Ministry decided to dissolve the IRPT citing a purported lack of membership.
Friday, October 2, 2015 - 06:41
Weeks after the Tajikistani government demolished its Islamic opposition, months after the crackdown against the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan began in earnest, the United States has finally offered comment.
Thursday, September 24, 2015 - 06:42
ISIS is recruiting around the world, but Russian rhetoric boosts the threat of ISIS to the region beyond reality.
Friday, July 10, 2015 - 06:57
Earlier this week, Eurasianet’s Joshua Kucera flagged an interesting, largely overlooked bit in last month’s U.S. congressional hearing on civil and political rights in Central Asia.
Monday, June 29, 2015 - 06:08
If the State Department’s recent “Country Report on Terrorism” confirms anything, it is the lack of import Central Asia maintains in D.C.’s policy circles.
Thursday, March 19, 2015 - 07:07
Central Asian governments have faced some difficult choices in responding to Russian revanchism.
Monday, March 9, 2015 - 10:22
Astana will attempt to mitigate some of the potential domestic costs by moving up the country’s presidential election, scheduled for late 2016, to this April. But while that may help squelch potential momentum for an already meager opposition, it will do little to stay the fallout for the country’s fiscal plummet.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - 06:42
Kazakhstan certainly didn’t help its case by enacting wide-scale arrests of protesters during Kiai’s visit, among them a Kazakh editor who was on a hunger strike to protest the country’s media repression.
Thursday, February 5, 2015 - 06:33
Uzbekistan, the scorched, double-landlocked nation in central Asia, stands known mainly for three things: boiling its dissidents, encouraging child slavery, and authoring the largest government-led massacre of the former Soviet space. The country is one of Freedom House’s 10 “Worst of the Worst” regimes and has been led since independence by President Islam Karimov, 77, who recently announced he’d be standing for yet another term. The regime’s designation and brutality are unlikely to improve anytime soon.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - 07:00
The numbers are still estimates, looser than ICSR’s attempts at some form of exactitude. And they don’t claim an apparently massive surge of fighters over the past 90 days. We may someday know just how many have uprooted to lend their services to ISIS. At the moment, though, claiming a number as specific as 360 from a nation as opaque as Turkmenistan seems something of a stretch.