By Suhrob Majidov (8/22/2012 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Negotiations on the extended presence of the Russian military bases in Tajikistan are ongoing since September, 2011 and both sides term the negotiation process “long and complicated.” Russian senior military officials regularly make media statements blaming Tajikistan for delaying the negotiations and demanding unacceptable conditions for the new treaty. In return, Tajik senior governmental officials either refrain from public statements or highlight the strategic partnership between Russia and Tajikistan and the constructive dialogue between two countries.

By Suhrob Majidov (8/8/2012 issue of the CACI Analyst)

On July 21, a Major General of the State Committee on National Security of Tajikistan (SCNST), Abdullo Nazarov was killed near Khorog, which is the major city of Gorno Badakhshan Autonomus Oblast (GBAO) in Tajikistan (known as the Pamir region). According to an official statement of the SCNST and the Tajik Ministry of Internal Affairs, the General was killed by a local criminal group.

By Georgiy Voloshin (8/8/2012 issue of the CACI Analyst)

On May 30, a Kazakhstani border patrol operating in the country’s east made a gruesome discovery: 15 people who had been recruited to guard the Kazakh-Chinese border in a remote mountain outpost were found dead. Their charred bodies were scattered around the ruins of what used to be the wooden barracks of the Kazakh border protection service. Speaking at an extraordinary session of Kazakhstan’s National Security Council the following day, President Nursultan Nazarbayev called this incident a terrorist attack and promised to mobilize all available personnel of the Ministry of internal affairs, the National Security Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate its circumstances.