Translation of Marat’s post from Russian-language blog.
Everybody knows that president Nursultan Nazarbayev personally determines the nation’s foreign policy. Thus, he is the first in a queue to be awarded for successes. But who should be the second one? Longtime foreign minister Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev? Or, say, current foreign minister Marat Tazhin? Or somebody from the […]

The Rakhat Aliyev’s most recent exposure in the media was dedicated to the U.S. Helsinki Commission’s hearings on Kazakhstan. The exiled former presidential son-in-law accused Nazarbayev of corruption, and this obviously impressed the participants of hearings - the  Aliyev’s interview was on the first page of Wall Street Journal. As reported, US lawmakers questioned […]

As Reuters report today in the wake of the U.S. Helsinki Commission’s hearing on Kazakhstan’s OSCE chairmanship, Washington urged Kazakhstan to show clear signs of democratic progress before the end of this year ahead of its chairmanship of Europe’s main human rights watchdog in 2010.Richard Boucher, U.S. assistant secretary of state for the region, […]

I wrote about this before on blogistan.asia, but I am still interested in the topic and therefore I will write here again.
Astana is something like a city of myth for many German newspapers and therefore often described as one of those unbelievable new cities built on oil and gas like Dubai and
Abu Dhabi. […]

Here is a new blog called “A Momentary Relapse of Reason”. It is in English and written by an American, who has just moved to Almaty, Kazakhstan nearly a year ago. Here’s a small self-presentation from the blog’s “About” section:
After graduating from with a BA in International Studies in 2006 I began looking for […]

Kazakhstan used to be a home for a number of Soviet “closed” factories, producing ammunition and missiles, not to speak about several test grounds for weapons of various kinds. After the collapse of the Union, many of them stagnated, conversed or were just plundered. But today one can confidently speak about the rise of […]

As we reported earlier, Arcelor Mittal’s enterprise in Kazakhstan has been facing severe criticism for the conditions of work on the mines. Hundreds of miners perished in repeated accidents on Mittal Steel Temirtau, but only in last year the authorities of Kazakhstan took a firm stand in this issue after a series of workers’ […]

On the 14th of June I visited in Berlin a panel discussion of the German Association for Eastern European Studies about the Central Asia strategy of the European Union. Members of the panel were Dr. Manja Hussner, a DAAD teacher from Tashkent, Dr Maksat Kachkeev, a Kirghiz lawyer from
Cologne, and Dr. Jenniver Sehring, „Mrs. […]