Interviews / Turkmenistan
The COP26 [26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties], which is scheduled to kick off on October 31 in Glasgow and will continue for two weeks, is important for Central Asian countries: they can build relationships with sponsors, and those organisations and countries that can help strengthen the region’s response to climate change, says Charles Edmund Garrett British Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan in CABAR.asia analytical platform interview. (more…)
“A Central Asian regional identity might have been a very feasible identity project: shared language, religion, and Soviet experience—all of this could have been mobilized to build a shared identity. But, as we all know, this did not happen,” explains Helge Blakkisrud, Senior Research Fellow at Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) in an interview to CABAR.asia analytical platform.
“Afghanistan needs to find a good alternative to Pakistan as a trade partner. Therefore, Central Asian countries will be the best alternative for Afghanistan, considering its geographic and economic ties with South Asian countries”, says expert Mohammad Nasir Nasrat (Afghanistan) in an interview to CABAR.asia analytical platform. (more…)
“It is certainly possible for Russia, China and the United States to cooperate given their shared goals in the region. But this would probably not entail a large US military presence in the region, as both China and Russia perceive this military presence in Central Asia as a threat to their own national security,” says Professor Jennifer Murtazashvili in an interview to CABAR.asia analytical platform.
«The Central Asian governments need to get out of a mindset that still retains the Soviet legacy of separation of state and religion understood as the prohibition of religion interfering in affairs of the state, but under which the state has the right to control all, or the majority of, religious activities» – said Sebastian Peyrouse, research professor of the Central Asian Program at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Relations in the interview with CABAR.asia.
If the United Stated leaves Afghanistan, Central Asia could become a corridor through which radical movements will carry out hostile actions against Russia and China, said Kosim Bekmuhammad, a Tajik expert on regional issues.
Dr Troy Sternberg, British Academy Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the School of Geography, Oxford University (UK), on an interview with CABAR.asia told about why there are conflicts between residents and investors in the mining sector, the environmental threats of Central Asian countries and the role of water in nature.
Special representative of the French government for economic diplomacy in Central Asia Pascal Lorot told in the interview to CABAR.asia about the strategic role of Central Asian countries for France, priority directions of cooperation, as well as the countries it develops more actively with and why. (more…)
Edil Osmonbetov, a Kyrgyz political scientist and international relations expert, shared his views on the upcoming Tashkent summit of the heads of Central Asian states. (more…)
In addition to a large flow of labor migrants from Central Asia, there is a considerable number of people who were constrained to leave their native lands in foreign countries.. Scientists at the department of Politics of the University of Exeter have created and maintain the database of political exiles from the Central Asian countries. This project collects data on extraterritorial security measures undertaken by the five Central Asian states, as well as threats to human rights violations and problems faced by people in exile and opposition movements abroad. Analytical platform CABAR.asia has interviewed the leaders of this project, researchers Dr. John Heatershaw and Dr. Saipira Furstenberg about political exiles, reasons of forced migration from the region, and features of the database.