Greetings, gentle Registanis.  I spotted a couple interesting stories with similar themes.  The theme might best be titled, to borrow from the Daily Show, Clusterf@#$ to the Poor House [Central Asian Edition]  More after the jump. Bailouts Kazakhstan’s President Nazarbaev increased the grow...

Elena writes a history of the persecution of the oppositional movements in Kyrgyzstan....

Juan Cole with the latest updates on U.S. efforts in Pakistan: In a major blow for the US and NATO military effort in Afghanistan, the parliament of Kyrgyzstan voted Thursday formally to end US use of Manas Air Force base to resupply troops in nearby Afghanistan. With the effective closure of the Kh...

Facing the loss of a key airbase in Kyrgyzstan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have tried to assure us that "no base is irreplaceable." We'll soon find out if Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton are correct. Yesterday, the Kyrgyz Parliment voted overwhelmingly to cancel...

One of the side effects of Kyrgyzstan’s move to deny NATO access to Manas airfield is a renewal in punditry about US-Uzbek relations. Take, for example, Chris Flavelle at Slate , who is viewing history through a weird lens. Uzbekistan’s human rights record is so odious that even the Bush...

. AFGHANS DON'T LIKE BEING BOMBED THEY'RE STARTING TO LIKE IT WHEN WE GET BOMBED How Long Before A "Surge" Drives Them All Back Into The Arms Of The Taliban? A surge is what Dubya's advisors, er, I mean Obama's advisers, er, oh, well, they're the same people, pretty much, and they're recommending th...

A KC-135 Stratotanker, on the ramp at Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan. U.S. forces will soon leave the country, following a Kyrgyz decision to end the basing agreement (Wikipedia photo) Wanted: an airfield accessible by U.S. forces, capable of handling our largest cargo aircraft and located in close proximity ...

For some time now, NATO and Russia have engaged in on-again, off-again discussions about supplying Afghanistan via the Russian Federation. So consider this sequence of events: 1. An increasingly hard-currency strapped Kremlin offers Kyrgyzstan $2 billion in aid.2. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev a...

Image by Army.mil via Flickr Asia Times Online It may seem there could be nothing in common between the blowing up of a bridge in the Khyber, the usage of an air base nestling in the foothills of the Pamirs and the launch of a 60-pound (37.2 kilogram) satellite into the night sky that will circle th...

Almost a week ago the BBC carried this story concerning the latest outbreak of maternal/infant HIV, this time in Namangan, in the Ferghana Valley of eastern Uzbekistan. The Uzbek cases were discovered in October, and have reportedly been referred to prosecutors. But they have not been reported in th...