CA Headlines Whistlestop Review

Regional - and late, judging by Registan's post :( Apologies... The country sections seem a bit fresher, on the plus side.

• The Christian Science Monitor has an article entitled "Islamist Gambit in Central Asia", which looks at the risks drugs traffiking and religious agitators pose to regional stability.
• RIA Novosti has an opinion piece on the state of geopolitics in Central Asia arguing that there is likely to be a paradigm shift, but in favour of institutionalisation rather than revolutions.
• The Eurasia Daily Monitor reports on Moscow's increasingly hard-line towards the US presence in the region, noting that many English-language reports lost something in translation and offering an interpretation of particular phrases used by Moscow, though it's up to you if you reckon it's insightful semantic analysis or just hearing what one wishes to in the midst of a Great Game fever-induced delerium.

Kazakhstan

• Kavkazcentre.org looks at political manoeuvring by President Nazarbayev, who appears to have his eye firmly fixed on the country's presidential elections, which seem likely to be held in December of next year (2006). Somewhat unsurprisingly, his latest gambit is apparently to invoke the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism (now you didn't see that coming did you...).
• Qatar's The Peninsula reports that the 17 militants shot dead near the Afghan border in Pakistan were all from Kazakhstan.

Kyrgyzstan

• AlertNet reports on a new drugs treatment programme, Atlantis, that is being used to address addictions amongst prison inmates.
• OSCE Special Envoy Alojz Peterle has said that Kyrgyzstan is more stable following the presidential elections, reports RFE/RL.
• Important information anyone looking to get a Kazakh visa in Bishkek: the Kazakh Embassy has moved to a new location on "Manas Avenue", according to KazInform - I'll post the full new address when I can find it.
• The Eurasia Daily Monitor reports that Kyrgyz experts are questioning the wisdom of the new government's decision to endorse SCO calls for a US withdrawal from the region, including Kyrgyzstan:

Atyrkul Alisheva, director of Institute for Regional Studies in
Bishkek, writes in Obshestvenny reiting (July 14) that it is not a question of
"to be or not to be" that is relevant in the current situation, but the way the
Kyrgyz government posed its request on the U.S. presence. Alisheva questions
Bishkek's diplomatic acumen in raising such questions and their ability to
predict long-term effects. She thinks that today Kyrgyzstan's stability is
important not only for the local population or the Central Asian region, but for
the greater world: "Any instability might be used by extremists, non-state
terrorist organizations for terrorist acts and to capture control." Alisheva
thinks that the U.S. military base in Kyrgyzstan represents a response to a
global challenge of terrorism and drug trafficking.

• RIA Novosti reports that the government website gov.kg was hacked on Monday, leaving the site currently disabled. No motive is clear yet, but political motivations have not been ruled out, not least because of crippling attacks on the country's ISPs during the parliamentary elections campaigns in February - March of this year (see the article "e-Revolution in Kyrgyzstan" in the DSCA Journal, pp. 17 - 21, for more details).
• Cameco has issued an update on its gold mining operations in Kyrgyzstan, which centre on the Kumtor mine.

Uzbekistan

• Andijan continues to remain highly controversial, with many different accounts of events on May 13 appearing. RFE/RL has an interview with Qobiljon Parpiev, who claims to have been among the protestors.
• Dr. Shirin Akiner of SOAS, London, has published what is entitled "An Independent Assessment" of the violence in Andijan. The overall tone is quite dismissive of human rights organisations' accounts and is generally closer to official versions of events. There's been debate about it on Registan and on Ben Paarman's site, both of which are well worth following up.