PRESERVING THE STATUS QUO: KADYROV\'S STAKE IN “OPERATION SUCCESSORâ€
By Kevin Daniel Leahy (2/7/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: Over six years since its inception, the impact of Russia’s ongoing campaign in Chechnya on the Russian polity has been minimal. The conflict has found little resonance across Russian society at large, which, according to polls, tends to regard the conflagration as a vague, undefined irritant, altogether far removed from ordinary life. The Putin administration has proved remarkably adept at insulating Russian society from the tumultuous situation in the North Caucasus, and has successfully forged a broad political consensus on how the “Chechen problem†should be addressed.REBUILDING KAZAKHSTAN\'S AGRICULTURE
By Richard Promfret (2/7/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: At the time of independence, agriculture was a pillar of Kazakhstan’s economy, and in 1991 employed over a quarter of the workforce. Kazakhstan had been a pastoral economy, although in the 1930s forced collectivization created a sedentary livestock sector. In the 1950s and 1960s the Virgin Lands program brought 25 million hectares (ie.CONSOLIDATION OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN KAZAKHSTAN STRENGTHENS PRESIDENT\'S HAND
By Ryan Kennedy (1/24/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: One year after President Nursultan Nazarbayev established his dominance over the Kazakhstani political system by winning 91 percent of the presidential vote, his Otan (Fatherland) party, re-enforced its position in Kazakhstan’s parliament, the Majilis. On December 22, the pro-presidential Civic Party, with its 160,000 registered members, and the Agrarian Party, with its 102,000 members, voted to join the President\'s Otan party. This past summer, the Asar Party, led by the President\'s daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, made a similar decision to incorporate into Otan.BUILDING A BLACK SEA/CASPIAN NATURAL GAS BRIDGE: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
By Mamuka Tsereteli (1/24/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: After gaining full control over Armenia’s pipeline network and the Moldovan distribution network, as well as partial control over the Belarusian transit pipelines, Russia’s State-controlled gas monopoly, Gazprom, is getting closer to its ultimate goal to control all pipelines connecting the former Soviet Union’s states to other markets and potential suppliers. The same strategy is now being applied to Europe. Russia is the primary source for imported natural gas in most European states, and its role is set to increase in next decade, despite a potential shortage of the gas on the domestic market.Visit also
Staff Publications
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, Greater Central Asia as A Component of U.S. Global Strategy, October 2024.
Analysis Laura Linderman, "Rising Stakes in Tbilisi as Elections Approach," Civil Georgia, September 7, 2024.
Analysis Mamuka Tsereteli, "U.S. Black Sea Strategy: The Georgian Connection", CEPA, February 9, 2024.
Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell, ed., Türkiye's Return to Central Asia and the Caucasus, July 2024.
Book Svante E. Cornell, ed., "The Changing Geopolitics of Central Asia and the Caucasus" AFPC Press/Armin LEar, 2023.
Silk Road Paper Svante E. Cornell and S. Frederick Starr, Stepping up to the “Agency Challenge”: Central Asian Diplomacy in a Time of Troubles, July 2023.
Silk Road Paper S. Frederick Starr, U.S. Policy in Central Asia through Central Asian Eyes, May 2023.