On October 27, Tajikistan’s President Emomalii Rahmon formally inaugurated the Shahriston tunnel along the Dushanbe-Khujand highway (BBC Tajik, October 27). The 5,253-meter tunnel cuts the time required to drive between the capital of Dushanbe and Tajikistan’s second-largest city, Khujand (Leninabad), from eight to less than... MORE

The latest meeting of the Kazakhstani-US Energy Partnership Commission took place in Washington on October 15–16, 2012. The two delegation heads, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Oil and Gas Sauat Mynbayev and the US Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman, signed a Joint Action Plan for 2012–2013... MORE

A court of appeals in the Swedish town of Sundsvall will consider an appeal lodged by prosecuting authorities in a case of attempted murder of Imam Obidhon Nazarov in early 2013.Prosecutor Krister Petersson, who investigated the attempt on the life of Nazarov, a well-known Uzbek... MORE

When President Nursultan Nazarbayev visited Turkey earlier this month (see EDM, October 19), one of the issues he discussed with Turkish officials was the two countries’ joint leadership of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). Nazarbayev initiated the creation of... MORE

On the day preceding Nursultan Nazarbayev’s latest visit to Moscow (see EDM, October 19), the widely-read Russian daily newspaper Izvestia published an interview previously obtained from an unidentified high-level official of the Russian Space Agency (Roskosmos). In his conversation with journalists, the official claimed that... MORE

On October 10–11, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev conducted an official visit to Turkey, which focused on deepening economic ties between these already strong partners. The main event was the first meeting of the High Level Strategic Cooperation Council, which was established after Prime Minister Recep... MORE

On October 9 and 10, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev paid an official visit to Moscow to celebrate 20 years of good-neighborly relations with its northern neighbor. Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, had recently visited Kazakhstan earlier in mid-September. The majority of issues discussed during the bilateral... MORE

Despite the predictions of Kyrgyz and international analysts, the swift arrest and sentencing of the three Kyrgyzstani lawmakers who tried to capture the parliament building did not spark serious riots. On October 3, opposition party Ata-Jurt and parliamentary members Sadyr Zhaparov and Kamchibek Tashiyev galvanized... MORE

Kazakhstan has hosted the first Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) peacekeeping exercise on October 8–17, as the organization positions itself to play a more active role in defense and security among its members. The size of the forces, scenario for the exercise, as well as... MORE

The Nazarbayev Center was created in January 2012 to study and promote Kazakhstan’s history of statehood—its cultural, economic, humanitarian, and political development (Interfax-Kazakhstan, January 23). The Center includes an in-house think tank that conducts research, a library with 600,000 books and other items, and a... MORE