Stories about Kazakhstan from August, 2007
Kazakhstan: Kashagan Showdown
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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: Journalists are popular traffic victims
Bonnie Boyd adds another name to the sad list of journalists getting killed in traffic accidents in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan: Artpologist
Daniel describes his efforts in putting up an art exhibition in Almaty. He has three weeks left and is working all day every day.
Kazakhstan: Glamour weekend
Beau Gordiner shares his experience of an unbelievably glamour weekend in Kazakhstan's southern capital Almaty.
Kazakhstan: Election (and Cycling) Races
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
Joshua Foust disagrees with an Economist article which argues that handing over the OSCE chairmanship to Kazakhstan would be an “ugly trade”.