BY STEVEN A. BARNES In early March 2006, I visited a graveyard in the empty Central Asian steppe near Spassk, just south of the city of Karaganda, Kazakhstan. This cemetery held the unmarked remains of prisoners of the former Soviet Union’s Gulag—the notorious system of forced labor concentration camps and internal exile—and the multi-national [...]
BY SANDRA I. CHELDELIN AND SUSAN F. HIRSCH In 2004, in collaboration with a local NGO in Dushanbe, our faculty at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution launched a multiyear project to increase conflict resolution capacities of local actors in Tajikistan. We worked with government, religious and academic leaders, created a conflict resolution resource [...]
BY MARK N. KATZ Saparmurat Niyazov ruled Turkmenistan from its December 1991 independence that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union until his death in December 2006. Although Turkmenistan has enormous natural gas reserves, Niyazov—who styled himself “Turkmenbashi” (leader of the Turkmen)—kept most of his citizens impoverished, uneducated and in fear of his security [...]
BY JANINE R. WEDEL In the study of foreign policy, aid and nationbuilding, little empirical attention has been paid to the agency of the actors who serve as brokers among parties. Much more attention generally has focused on policies and end results. Yet, the reorganizing, more networked world of the late 20th and early 21st [...]
BY BRIDGET BUTKEVICH A dangerous trend in economics is identifying homogenous ethnic groups with better outcomes.1 I do not use the word dangerous lightly, since outside of academia, violence is the most common expression of intolerance towards diversity. Marketplaces the world over are bastions of diversity that allow for individuals to utilize their comparative advantages. However, [...]
BY MARK N. KATZ Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is clearly not a democrat. He has closed down independent television as well as other media outlets that have criticized him. He has not only waged a brutal campaign against separatists in Chechnya but has also rigged elections there. He has stripped away the assets of several [...]