Central Asia is in transition, but it's not the much-ballyhooed transition from Soviet communism to Western capitalism that pundits and advisers spun into a cottage industry in the 1990s. That transition has produced decidedly mixed results. The current transition is one of perception -- from Central Asia as a place where the great powers play out their ambitions to Central Asia as a region to be assessed on its own merits. Recent travels by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev and Uzbek President Islam Karimov served to underscore that while a shift is under way, it is not proceeding at the same pace in all places.
A wave of violent incidents and terror attacks struck Uzbekistan on 28-30 March, leaving some 40 people dead. For now, questions outnumber answers.
Kazakhstan has far-reaching hopes for the future of its oil industry. At a 23 February press briefing, top executives at the state-owned KazMunaiGaz oil and gas company made it clear that those ambitions stretch from Turkey to China.
Nothing ruffles parliamentary feathers quite like the passage of a language law in a multiethnic country. The disputes over Kyrgyzstan's attempts to revamp its language legislation illustrate the twists and turns of a painful process.
Though the war on terror has rapidly established itself as a leitmotif of the early 21st century, it has been accompanied, and sometimes even drowned out, by a cacophonous debate over how the war should be waged.
