By Stephen Blank (3/21/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)

BACKGROUND: Kazakhstan’s rising economic profile is the motor behind this process, and the foreign and domestic policies of the Nazarbayev regime intend to ensure the continuity of this growth and its international deployment. By 2008, The country’s GDP is expected to be double that of 2000, and GDP per capita is expected to reach $6,500 in 2007. Thus Nazarbayev aims to turn Kazakhstan into a regional locomotive of economic growth, a status that can only enhance its attractiveness to other major actors like Russia, China, America and the EU as a partner and that is actually what is happening.

By Andrew McGregor (3/7/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)

BACKGROUND: The Uyghur separatist movement is badly divided, with dozens of groups with different agendas claiming to represent the interests of the Uyghurs, a Turkic people. Some groups renounce violence as a political tactic while others embrace it. Until recently the Uyghurs were the majority in the Central Asian region they call East Turkistan (known to the Chinese as Xinjiang, or ‘New Territory’), but a massive and continuing migration of Han Chinese into the region has left the Uyghurs with only 45% of the population of 18 million.

By Stephen Blank (3/7/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)

BACKGROUND: Tehran’s capabilities for mischief-making include its ability to sponsor terrorist or insurgent forces throughout the Caspian littoral. Iran’s attitude toward the groups that it sponsors is wholly instrumental. Although they are maintained and kept on hand for when they may be needed, they are not activated until and unless Iran’s relationship with one of the neighboring states, either in the Middle East or in the former Soviet Union, deteriorates.