Why President Trump Should Place Central Asia on His Agenda

Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Photo credit: Shutterstock.

For three decades Central Asia has remained largely peripheral to Washington’s strategic horizon. Yet Kazakhstan now supplies more than forty percent of the world’s mined uranium, while Turkmenistan controls one of the planet’s largest natural-gas deposits. No sitting US president has visited one of the region’s five countries – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. […]

Afghanistan’s Relations with Neighbors Under the Taliban: Exporting Instability

Afghan men consume drugs on a side street of a market in Afghanistan. Photo credit: Oliver Weiken/dpa

In the two years since they took over Afghanistan, the Taliban have ignited several diplomatic crises and security threats across the country’s borders. Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan have warned that the Taliban are hosting terror groups, and UN and other sources have noted increasing drug trade, border tensions and refugee flows.   Central Asian states, particularly […]