Field Reports
GEORGIAN-NATO RELATIONS RECEIVE BOOST FROM BRUSSELS
By Kakha Jibladze (3/7/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
On February 27, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili met with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Brussels. The meeting followed a generally positive report from a NATO assessment team that spent five days in Tbilisi. According to Scheffer, while the “road” to NATO is “long and winding,” Georgia is “on track.KAZAKHSTAN SEEKS RUSSIAN ASSISTANCE TO MODERNIZE ITS ARMY
By Marat Yermukanov (3/7/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
After ten years of widely publicized military reform, Kazakhstan’s defense industry is almost non-existent. The deplorable state of the country’s defense system challenges the ability of Danial Akhmetov, newly appointed defense minister, to heal the wounds left by the crisis in the army.On February 16, a Russian-made MiG 31B interceptor jet fighter of the Kazakhstani Air Force crashed under unknown circumstances six kilometers north of Qaraghandy in Central Kazakhstan.
KYRGYZ MINISTRY OF JUSTICE, PARLIAMENT WANT TO LEGALIZE POLYGAMY
By Erica Marat (3/7/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Since then, Kyrgyzstan’s gender representation records has drastically worsened, placing the country behind all other post-Soviet states. In fact, Kyrgyzstan today is comparable with countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where parliaments do not feature a single female representative.The recent initiative by the Kyrgyz Ministry of Justice to remove polygamy from the criminal code, and make it a matter of moral judgment, is partly a result of poor female representation in the governing structures.
PROPERTY RIGHTS ROW TARNISHES GEORGIAN GOVERNMENT’S IMAGE
By Kakha Jibladze (2/21/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)
In December 2006, opposition leader Kakha Kukava, an MP with the Conservative party, started a campaign against alleged property violations on behalf of a group of business people in downtown Tbilisi who reportedly were forced to “give” their property to the government.The issue took on additional weight once the opposition television station Imedi broke the story of the Tbilisi city mayor’s office seizing apartments that the previous government had given to famous Georgians. Soon after, the city also started to seize and destroy small businesses and kiosks around the city.
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.