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It is increasingly apparent that the US will maintain a sizeable military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014… Washington has also resuscitated the New Silk Road project, which is an important dimension to the post-2014 scenario…: Afghan-Pakistan trade and transit agreement…; Uzbek and Turkmen supply of electricity to Afghanistan; new rail connections being built between Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan; new rail line from the Uzbek border to Mazar-i-Sharif; progress in the negotiations over a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project; India’s iron ore project in Hajigak in Afghanistan; bids by American companies in the upcoming six mining tenders in Afghanistan (3 in copper, two in gold and one in lithium); creation of the Border Management Staff College in Dushanbe and the Customs Training Facility in Bishkek, and so on...
Melkulangara BHADRAKUMAR | 03.05.2012 |
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The Nabucco pipeline originally supposed to emerge as a rival to Russia's South Stream and as the first ever direct energy link between Europe and the resourceful Central Asia is about to face a major downscaling. The news immediately grabbed the headlines, but it would be naive to expect that Brussels will altogether abandon its ambitious plan for a southern energy corridor with a gas pipeline traversing the Caspian Sea as the key part...
Aleksandr SHUSTOV | 03.04.2012 |
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There are things that are indisputable. For instance, the existence of the most influential drug-trafficking networks in the USA that supply the world’s biggest (56%) army of addicts consuming about 86% of the world drug production. It’s a real big business... Afghanistan produced heroin’s share is fast growing bringing the highest profit... The biggest in the world heroin syndicate has been established in Afghanistan encompassing influential sectors of local and occupational powers. The country has been transformed into a drugs producing workshop. All air and ground routes out of it are illegal trafficking channels...
Dmitriy SEDOV | 17.03.2012 |
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The US military presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia bears an increasingly corrosive effect on wider Eurasian stability... At the moment virtually every small country in Eurasia, from Kazakhstan to Georgia, is more of a pawn than of a player on the chessboard of global politics and has to adapt to the strategies pursued by more powerful trendsetters. It must be bluntly taken into account that only two countries – Russia and China – can be regarded as such in the post-Soviet Central Asia.
Alexander KNYAZEV | 13.03.2012 |
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This month Washington whose commitment to fighting drug production in the US occupied Afghanistan is widely called into question rolled out a new plan of coordinating the activities of Central Asian republic's anti-narcotic agencies. The initiative was, however, promptly blocked as potentially counterproductive by Russia, the country hit hardest by the Afghan drug output... The US agenda behind the initiative is to gain stronger political and military positions in Central Asia, while Washington actually lacks the resolve to take practical steps towards suppressing Afghan drug production and trafficking...
Aleksandr SHUSTOV | 26.02.2012 |
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The permanently tense Uzbek-Tajik relations sank to a new low in November 2011 – January 2012... There is firm belief in Dushanbe that the rail blockade imposed by Tashkent on Tajikistan came as a response to the intensification of construction of the Rogun Dam... At the moment, Uzbekistan seems to regard the Rogun project as the key threat to its national security as the dam has a potential to reduce the availability of water resources downstream the Amu Darya...
Aleksandr SHUSTOV | 31.01.2012 |
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The US intelligence community launched its first drug attacks against Russia in the early 1990ies... The US “war on terror” and the NATO occupation of Afghanistan propelled the US drug offensive against Russia to an unprecedented level... Recently US Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) William R. Brownfield toured Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan...
Nil NIKANDROV | 10.12.2011 |
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The US design is to draw Uzbekistan and Tajikistan out of the orbit of the rest of the post-Soviet Central Asia and to bracket the two republics with Afghanistan and Pakistan within a new geopolitical formation hosting something akin to another Silky Way. Some of the key infrastructures of the route, particularly, the Mazar-e-Sharif – Termez railroad, are already in place...
Aleksandr SHUSTOV | 01.11.2011 |
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The coming visit of Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to China on October 11-12 will be aimed at giving stability to the Russian-Chinese strategic partnership in the economy. Energy industry traditionally tops the list of complicated and sometimes pressing issues of the Russian-Chinese partnership...
Igor TOMBERG | 06.10.2011 |
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A summit of Central Asia's anti-drug quartet – Russia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan – established last year to coordinate efforts aimed at suppressing the outflow of drugs from Afghanistan convened this September in Dushanbe. In a few days, the second meeting of the regional anti-narcotics conference was held in Kabul. Russia as a country for which the drug threat is a pressing national security challenge plays the key role in building and running both groups... The state of the drug problem in Russia is affected directly by the situations in Afghanistan and Tajikistan...
Aleksandr SHUSTOV | 28.09.2011 |
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