With the May 2010 pogroms in southern Kyrgyzstan, the semi-forgotten specter of ethnic violence and state disintegration has returned to Central Asia with a vengeance. In the two decades since Soviet collapse, commentary on Central Asian affairs has focused mainly on measuring how near or far the so-called “Stans” have come in embracing the standards of Western countries. This intrinsically optimistic vision has translated into measurements along three principal scales: authoritarianism vs. democratization, corruption vs. free market entrepreneurship, and Islamist fundamentalism vs. moderation or secularism. […]
Memo #:
132
Series:
2
PDF:
PDF URL:
http://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/pepm_132.pdf
