By Sudha Ramachandran (11/26/2014 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The Indian government’s decision in late October to participate in the development of Iran’s Chabahar port will jump-start this long-delayed project. The port’s expansion will boost its emergence as a major transshipment hub and its strategic location is expected to transform the region’s geopolitics. But will this ambitious project realize its full potential given unrest in the Sistan-Balochistan province, where it is located, and the prospects of a civil war looming large in Afghanistan?

By John C.K. Daly (11/26/2014 issue of the CACI Analyst)

At a seminar in Dushanbe on November 11, Uzbekistan’s Environmental Protection State Committee specialist Muhammadzhon Hojayev proposed collaborating with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to conduct aerial survey studies of glacier melt in the Tien Shan and Pamir mountain ranges to assess the problem, as the last aerial surveys were done 14 years ago. The problem is accelerating; UN Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia Deputy Head Fedor Klimchuk told seminar participants, “The main reason of glaciers melting is climate warming and man-induced factors. Glaciologists say glaciers may disappear by the end of this century.”

By Stephen Blank (11/11/2014 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Kyrgyzstan is considered the least authoritarian state in Central Asia, but it is also the most crisis-ridden and least stable of these states. Its long-standing domestic weaknesses are compounded by its external crises and only Ukraine has achieved a similar level of instability among post-Soviet states. In both cases, recent revolts have been aided by direct Russian hands-on efforts at destabilization. Kyrgyzstan risks a turbulent 2015 as it faces a decline in Russian subsidies amid pressure to join the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), along with the interaction of several ethnic, economic, border, and international crises, which Kyrgyzstan’s weakening state will unlikely be able to handle.