· August, 2007

Stories about Kazakhstan from August, 2007

Kazakhstan: Kashagan Showdown

  28 August 2007

Bonnie Boyd has a comprehensive background post on the current crisis involving the Kazakh government and the international consortium developing the country's biggest oil field, Kashagan.

Central Asia: Clan-tastic

  23 August 2007

Christine Quirk looks at how clans shape political behaviour and in how far they make it difficult to enfranchise groups who might have different viewpoints or are far down on the clan power structure.

Central Asia: Which port to choose?

  21 August 2007

As a landlocked region, Central Asia is reliant on other countries’ maritime infrastructure to integrate with world markets. On Registan.net, Kayumars Turkistani evaluates two potential seaports, Gwadar in Pakistan and Chabahar in Iran.

Kazakhstan: Sham elections

  21 August 2007

Arthur concludes that Kazakhstan's parliamentary elections which took place this weekend were seriously flawed, both because of irregularities on voting day itself and, equally important, because of skewed media coverage of the poll's contestants. Plus: Bonnie Boyd writes a great backgrounder on the elections.

Kazakhstan: No surprises

  20 August 2007

KZBlog reports that the ruling Nur-Otan party of President Nazarbayev has reason to celebrate their landslide in Kazakhstan's parliamentary elections while the opposition is refuting the poll result.

Kazakhstan: Elections

  18 August 2007

Sean Roberts analyses the importance of today's parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan, and finds that the real results of the poll will only be clear over the course of the next year.

Kazakhstan: Exhibition

  16 August 2007

The blogging artists of Artpologist have successfully opened their exhibition about the changing face of Kazakhstan's southern capital Almaty. Daniel has some thoughts on how it all went (photos here). Not bad at all, according to the first press reviews coming in.

Kazakhstan: Crisis and Elections

  16 August 2007

The upcoming parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan are a foregone conclusion and the hitherto booming banking sector is on the verge of sliding into a deep crisis. This and more in this week's blogosphere update.

Kazakhstan: Building a tent

  14 August 2007

Michael Hancock finds “Khan Shatyr” to be a manifestation of the widening gap between rich and poor in Kazakhstan: the huge tent which is being built in the capital Astana at the moment will mainly cater to a growing, but essentially small elite.

Kyrgyzstan: SCO summit

  9 August 2007

The members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will send their heads of state to Kyrgyzstan next week. While the Kyrgyz bloggers are amazed by the beautification of their capital ahead of the summit, Western bloggers ponder the significance of the SCO's growth.

Central Asia: Cultural intelligence

  9 August 2007

Nathan Hamm shares his thoughts on a New York Times article which argues that while knowledge of the nomadic social legacies of the Central Asian countries is important, an overemphasis on “cultural intelligence” can lead to misguided and stereotypical policy analysis of the region.

Kazakhstan: Election (and Cycling) Races

  6 August 2007

The two main issues in focus of the Kazakhstani blogosphere these weeks were the early parliamentary elections and a doping scandal involving a Kazakhstani cycling superstar: the leader of the promising "Team Astana" and a showcase member of the ruling "Nur-Otan" party, Alexander "Vino" Vinokurov.

Kazakhstan: Chairing OSCE

  3 August 2007

Joshua Foust disagrees with an Economist article which argues that handing over the OSCE chairmanship to Kazakhstan would be an “ugly trade”.