In my search for vital information on Central Asia, I stumbled across more threats of violence spreading in all poor regions of the world. This is absolutely nothing new: just hard to swallow when dug up in concentrated amounts. See impending instability in Tajikistan.
Not surprisingly, of course. First of all, the country sits in the middle of a political and social hot bed, both on a geostrategic (bordering China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekhestan) and ethnic level. The country, economically, depends primarily on returns from nationals working for a pittance in the surrounding regions. Many also depend on revenue from helping traffic cocaine out of Afghanistan. There’s some export of cotton and aluminum; which basically means that a small hiccup in the world economy can be felt. Hence, the recession spells worse and worse news. Unfortunately (or perhaps for the better), they aren’t doted with significant oil or gas resources, just a bit of coal.
In any case, the lengthy history of the region – and the vaguely romantic sounding names describing the peaks of the country’s mountain tops – makes this worth the research.
And, just received in my email inbox, Niall Ferguson now peppering Foreign Policy with bad omens. No more axis of evil:
The bad news for Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is that he now faces a much larger and potentially more troubling axis—an axis of upheaval. This axis has at least nine members, and quite possibly more. What unites them is not so much their wicked intentions as their instability, which the global financial crisis only makes worse every day. Unfortunately, that same crisis is making it far from easy for the United States to respond to this new “grave and growing danger.”
