The social and economic rehabilitation of Afghanistan is an essential guarantee of regional and international security and stability, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov told participants of the Istanbul conference on Afghanistan in Istanbul as he pledged Astana’s continued support for more robust international efforts to assist that country return to the peaceful life. READ MORE

When I was in Dushanbe, India’s defense minister just happened to be in the neighborhood, and popped in for a visit. READ MORE

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Beijing followed disclosure of a crackdown on Chinese spying and produced signs that Russia is now becoming the junior partner in its relationship with China, with fewer areas of agreement or cooperation, according to analysts in Moscow and Beijing. READ MORE

Yesterday's statement by the President of SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) Rovnag Abdullayev has put new emphasis on the issue of delivery of Azerbaijani gas to Turkey and the European markets. Baku and Ankara intend to build a new pipeline on the territory of Turkey, given the prospects of growth in production on the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, exactly by 50 billion cubic meters per year by 2025. READ MORE

International discussion about China’s rise has focused on its increasing trade muscle, growing maritime ambitions, and expanding capacity to project military power. One critical issue, however, usually escapes attention: China’s rise as a hydro-hegemon with no modern historical parallel. READ MORE

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin followed up his unsurprising Sept. 24 declaration that he would again seek the presidency with a more surprising call: to create what he called a "Eurasian Union." In a rare and lengthy newspaper piece published on Oct. 4, Putin announced his desire for Russia to again lead a multinational bloc of tightly bound, former Soviet republics. But major obstacles stand in the way of Putin's project, and the prospects of a new Eurasian Union emerging anytime soon in the former Soviet space are small. READ MORE

The territory between the Mediterranean and the Hindu Kush has been the main arena for the U.S. intervention that followed the 9/11 attacks. Obviously, the United States had been engaged in this area in previous years, but 9/11 redefined it as the prime region in which it confronted jihadists. That struggle has had many phases, and it appears to have entered a new one over the past few weeks. READ MORE

Latvia’s government approved the country’s new government, a three-party center-right coalition that does not include the leftist Russian party Harmony Center (BNS, LETA, October 25). This outcome was in doubt until almost the last moment. Western-oriented Latvia came close to being governed by a hybrid coalition that would have included Harmony, an openly Russia-oriented party, signatory to a cooperation agreement with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, and allied to certain local Latvian oligarchs. Harmony is also Latvia’s single largest party as a legacy of Soviet-era migration from Russia’s interior, followed by monolithic Russian voting in today’s Latvia. READ MORE

Kazinform Agency offers its readers the fact sheet by the the US Diplomatic Mission to Kazakhstan about the US-Kazakh relations. The United States of America and the Republic of Kazakhstan have cooperated on a broad range of nuclear security and nonproliferation topics for nearly two decades. READ MORE

When NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A) was stood up in November 2009, our mission was about teaming with Afghans to build a dynamic future for a secure and stable Afghanistan. With lessons from the Soviet experience and previous international efforts as our guide, NTM-A adopted a new mindset relying on teaming, transparency, and transition. READ MORE