Held up as regional model, Kazakhstan&#39;s stability falters
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The Christian Science Monitor - With one of the world&#39;s 10 largest oil fields, Kazakhstan lies at the heart of a second &quot;Great Game&quot; for Central Asia&#39;s energy resources being played out between the US, Europe, Russia, and China. Amid growing concern that an influx of resource wealth could be siphoned off by corruption and mismanagement, it&#39;s been hailed as the region&#39;s most stable country.
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Chechnya is often called a breakaway republic, but the militant separatists who have harried Russian forces for more than a decade and struck with bold attacks within and beyond the mostly Muslim region's borders are a relatively small segment of a population long tired of bloodshed.
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Kazakhstan on Thursday announced the suspension of satellite launches by Proton rocket from the Baikonur space centre after the failed launch of a Japanese telecommunications satellite, Interfax news agency reported.
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âPakistan is inherently unstable. Dealing with them is like playing with matches in a forest.â - Larry Pressler. That statement from Larry Pressler, made during his recent visit to India, coincided with
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A plan by Russian gas  giant Gazprom to build a skyscraper in historic St Petersburg  is an object lesson in how power and influence work in Vladimir  Putin&#39;s Russia.
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Pakistan's president mulls his options, but as his hold on power grows shaky, none of them look very good
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Blasts that rocked the headquarters of President Nursultan Nazarbayevâs Otan party were an attempt to destabilise Kazakhstan, the party said on Monday, shrugging off a police theory of an act of hooliganism.
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(SH) - Germany and before that West Germany seemed so stable and democratic it might have been too easy to take that state of affairs for granted.
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Asia News, KABUL - Hamid Karzai was cruising to victory in Afghanistan&#39;s first direct presidential elections, but by Wednesday the returns so far have underscored the ethnic fault lines that have often divided the country.
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Volume 1, Issue 138 IN THIS ISSUE: *Moscow slaps economic sanctions on Abkhazia *Will Ukraine crisis make Moscow tighten its grasp on Central Asia? *Kazakh election monitors found no problems with Ukrainian ...
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MOSCOW, Sep 25 (IPS) - A year after elections, little promise is in sight  for the development of free and independent media in the  autonomous republic of Chechnya.
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ALMATY, Jan 7  A ban on one of Kazakhstan's main opposition parties is part of a new clampdown on dissent in the authoritarian oil-rich Central Asian state to prevent a Ukrainian-style ''orange ...
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Make a baby. Win a car. Don't be surprised if the streets are empty and curtains drawn in this central Russian region Wednesday as residents take up an offer by the regional governor to help stem Russia's demographic crisis.
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GARDEZ, Afghanistan -- Three years after the US invasion, Paktia Province and the rest of southeastern Afghanistan illustrate the mixed results of an intervention that ousted the Taliban regime but has yet to capture Osama bin Laden or forge a stable, centralized state to keep out terrorists for good.
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Pyongyang&#39;s growing suspicion of external aid shows it is retreating further into its shell despite growing pressure to open up.
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The group developing a big Kazakhstan field may be reaching an accord with the irate state.
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RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Senior Palestinian officials struggled yesterday to stabilize the financial operations of the Palestinian Authority, as Yasser Arafat lingered at what an envoy termed a &quot;critical juncture between life and death.&quot;