Of the three newspapers targeted by Tajikistan’s Supreme Court judges in an historical multimillion lawsuit, one has disappeared from the market, while the two others became less brave and more self-censored in 2010. The Farazh …

This summer, my neweurasia boss Schwartz asked, “What are five things West can learn from the Central Asian people?” sparking a discussion among our readers that eventually became quite philosophical. Now, however, we have something …

Some people might be surprised to discover that I’m a religious person. I find great beauty in Tajikistan’s Islamic tradition, something very sublime. Here are some photos that I took which I feel capture my …

What’s going on in Tajikistan? Prison breaks, insurgent violence in Rasht Valley, and suspicious military operations are weaving a dangerous pattern, reports neweurasia’s Alpharabius. “Normally I hesitate to speculate, but my needle is itching in a bad way,” he writes, “Tajikistan’s carpet is unraveling at the seams.”

Russian’s anti-drug tsar, Viktor Ivanov, visited Dushanbe this past Friday to discuss Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan. After making a cryptic remark about the possibility of Russian soldiers returning to the border, neweurasia’s Alpharabius gets on the phone with ex-general Nuralisho Nazarov, the man who first proposed a Russian military withdrawal in 2004, to discuss why they left in the first place.

Medvedev’s speech at the conference yesterday was a moderate and diplomatic one, but the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was anything but:
“International terror organizations have settled down comfortably at the Afghan-Pakistan border, receiving …

Kyrgyzstan today has disturbing parallels to Tajikistan in 1992, explains neweurasia’s Alpharabius, including a weak reconciliation-style government and ethnic discontent. He offers his prescriptions for peace based upon Tajikistan’s terrible experiences during the Nineties: “As a good neighbor, I sincerely wish they will avoid the terrible fate that beset my own nation.”

As the region’s only two nominal liberal democracies, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have some striking (and unhappy) similarities. Could Dushanbe be the next Bishkek? neweurasia’s Alpharabius gets the opinions of some of Tajikistan’s top experts in this extensive editorial: “If the world powers helped Kyrgyzstan to avoid more bloodshed, no one knows how they would react to any insurgence in Tajikistan.”

The three judges who launched a multimillion lawsuit against three leading independent newspapers in Tajikistan have offered the defendants peace talks to finish what they describe as “the unprecedented and widespread media campaign against the whole justice system in the county”. neweurasia’s Alpharabius, who has been tracking the story since it started, gives the latest updates and his opinion on this latest development.

In the battle with the Tajikistan justice system, the country’s independent media has its own tried-and-true weapons. The human rights lawyer at the center of the lawsuit, Solehjon Juarev, has released another incriminating transcript of a Supreme Court judge. He may be trying to squeeze the Chairman himself. neweurasia’s Alpharabius reports.