CA news run down...

Personally, all quiet this week, settling in and trying to catch up on sleep without being eaten alive by mosquitoes... Not quite so peaceful in Bishkek though with now ex-General Procurator Azimbek Beknazarov being sacked and then Bayaman Erkinbekov being assassinated on Wednesday evening. Everyday life feels OK, but politically the situation is most definitely tense. Still, onwards and, hopefully, upwards...

Regional

• Reflecting the increasing prominence of the theme of "them" and "us" and tit-for-tat arguments rather than actually discussing issues that has previously been noted by Nathan on Registan, the Tehran Times weighs in with an article entitled "Fighting for a Piece of the Pie in Central Asia".
• Similarly, the American Thinker appears to thinking in a slightly paranoid but oh-so-familiar Cold War way with its article entitled "An anti-American military confederacy may loom in Asia" calling for new thinking (please!) to stop the spectre of the SCO rising to challenge the US.
• Turkey's Zaman has a report on progress on a Turkey-Central railway, the Kars-Ahilkelek-Tiflis-Baku Railway Project, which is designed to connect Central Asia to Turkey and then on to Europe using a rail and sea combination to follow a route across the Caspian Sea.
• ReliefWeb has a report on a UNDP-funded project involving Uzbek, Tajik and Kyrgyz children designed to reduce conflict in the Ferghana Valley.
• AsiaNews has an optimistic report on the state of inter-religious relations in Central Asia, focusing on the position of the Catholic Church in Uzbekistan.

Kyrgyzstan

• The Zhogorku Kenesh has lifted Aidar Akaev's deputy's immunity, reports ISN. The son of the ex-president has yet to return to the republic, apparently because of fears for his safety, and he is even less likely to return now that he could face criminal charges carrying a jail term of up to 15 years. However, RIA Novosti reports that the Akaevs' laywer is planning to appeal the decision and Ferghana.ru notes that the Kyrgyz Parliament is to consider the case further.
• Development Gateway has a report on further cases on land seizures and squatting on the outskirts of Bishkek involving around 700 people on land opposite the US embassy.
• More promisingly is a report posted on Development Gateway that Bishkek is to get an additional 27 electricity substations to help ensure there is sufficient power for heating available this winter - due to coal shortages, it is anticipated that people will use electrical heating equipment instead.
• DG also has a report on plans to consider allowing dual citizenship in Kyrgyzstan in a draft of the new law "On Citizenship". It was noted that there is an increasing need to permit dual citizenship due to labout migration to Russia and also to ease the situation of the Russian minority.
• The question of the US's Ganci Airbase came up again last Wednesday, with President Kurmanbek Bakiev saying that the base can remain after the Afghan elections - originally taken as a cut-off point by the SCO - but that the Americans will have to pay more rent, according to a Reuters report.
• Rallies on varying sizes took place on Tuesday following Azimbek Beknazarov's sacking from the post of Procurator General, supposedly for authorising bail for a murder suspect contrary to regulations. A small group - around 70 - of Beknazarov's supporters rallied rallied outside the White House in Bishkek, and there were protests in his home region of Aksy as well. However, there were also rallies in support of the decision in Karasuu, reports Ferghana.ru, where Beknazarov was seen as defending the now-deceased deputy Bayaman Erkinbaev, thought to be responsible for the murder of Abdualim Zhunusov in a dispute over control of the town's main market.
• RFE/RL reports on Erkinbaev's assassination, which is thought to be connected to be connected to his business interests, which he himself has admitted have sometimes verged on the edge of what is legal (report in Russian only). Pravda also has a report on the killing, as does Gazeta.kg and Ferghana.ru.

Turkmenistan

• Turkmenistan.ru reports that the usually isolationist republic has been admitted to Interpol following a unanimous vote at the 74th meeting of Iterpol members in Berlin on September 21.
• More randomly, News Central Asia notes that Turkmenbashi, aka President Niyazov, has been elected an honorary member of the Bulgarian Falconry Association. Nice.

Uzbekistan - see Registan for much more detail on all stories noted here (and Central Asia more generally).

• The trial of people accused of starting the disturbances in Andijan earlier this year has begun in controversial fashion as could be expected, with many, including RFE/RL, viewing the proceedings as a Kangaroo Court of Soviet show trial proportions - the Moscow Time's report on the apparent confession of one of the defendants doesn't do much to diminish this impression either.
• Meanwhile Ferghana.ru has an interesting opinion piece arguing that the Uzbek authorities' main concern is to shut down all independent media outlets, reflecting a point of view expressed in an article in the Guardian earlier this week:

As far as official Tashkent is concerned, the role of foreign
media outlets in general boils down to proliferation of "maliciously false
information on the events, actions of the authorities and of the terrorists."
Tashkent is convinced furthermore that the informational war on Uzbekistan was
organized simultaneously with the terrorist attack.

• The BBC - one of the media agencies accused by the Uzbek government of being party to the "information war" against Uzbekistan - also has a report from Andijan on the 'climate of fear' surrounding the trial.
• On a related theme, Shirin Akiner's lecture at CACI, John Hopkins Univeristy, appears to have been equally controversial, as Laurence's account of the event over at Registan shows. The comments, especially Matt W's number-crunching proof that Akiner is either not very accurate or an excellent candidate for the new Dr Who, are especially worth a look.
• Military-wise, it appears that Uzbekistan has found a new ally in Russia if RIA Novosti's report on plans for Russia and Uzbekistan to hold joint excercises are anything to go by.
• Meanwhile the K2 base saga continues with the US set to pay rent of USD 23 million for use of the base, despite having been served notice (Daily Times, Pakistan). Getting it right by protesting the payment is the US Congress - Nathan has more over at Registan, including a range of views in the comments section.