Central Asia and South Caucasus Promote Chemical Weapons Disarmament
By Richard Weitz (the 16/10/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
The Central Asia and South Caucasus governments welcomed the decision of the Nobel Prize Committee to award the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) its annual peace prize. They also supported Syria’s formal accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Russian-U.S. agreement and subsequent UN Security Council Resolution that establishes a framework for eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons (CW) arsenal. While the Central Asia and South Caucasus states' experiences with eliminating the consequences of the Soviet nuclear weapons activities on their territory is well known, they have also had to manage the effects of the massive Soviet-era CW infrastructure that persists even to this day.
Russian Army Turns Down Conscripts from the North Caucasus
By Valeriy Dzutsev (the 16/10/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
The exclusion of North Caucasians from the pool of conscripts to the Russian military signifies steady a plummeting of the single national identity in the Russian Federation. As the insurgency warfare drags on in the North Caucasus, the Russian military is increasingly unwilling to draft ethnic non-Russians from the North Caucasus. Apart from security concerns, the government is wary of constant clashes between the North Caucasians and ethnic Russians in the army. The separation of the North Caucasians from the civil duty, mandated by the state, further increases the divide between ethnic Russians and North Caucasians.
Russia's Principled Caucasus Policy
Stephen Blank (the 02/10/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Five years after its war with Georgia, Russia is now moving to institutionalize its gains into enduring territorial-political structures. During September 2013, Moscow effectively blackmailed Armenia into joining the Eurasian Union and has now announced that it is going to sign a treaty with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, recognizing the “international borders” between them and Russia. As a result, Russian soldiers are now erecting fences effectively demarcating these territories from Georgia, if not formally annexing them to Russia. Both of these moves undermine the sovereignty, and in Georgia’s case the integrity, of these two South Caucasian states and demonstrate that Russia’s neo-imperial effort to create a closed bloc in the CIS is intensifying and accelerating.
Increasing Numbers of Central Asian Jihadists in Syria
Jacob Zenn (the 02/10/2013 issue of the CACI Analyst)
As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, jihadists from around the world continue to travel there to fight the government of Bashar al-Assad. In 2013, Central Asian jihadists have become more prominent among foreign fighters. There is also increasing evidence that fighters from Central Asia and the Caucasus who fought in Syria are returning to their home countries to carry out attacks. Central Asian countries now not only risk a revival of Islamist militancy in Central Asia after the war in Afghanistan but also as a consequence of the civil war in Syria.
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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.