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Kyrgyzstan’s Corruption Instigated Revolution

04-09-2010
What’s behind the revolution in Kyrgyzstan? Its people were fed up with the graft, nepotism and authoritarian ways of deposed president Kurmanbek Bakiyev. The irony is that Bakiyev rose to power riding the same wave of public discontent and revulsion. It enabled him to depose Askar Akayev, his equally corrupt predecessor, five years ago.
Today, however, the price of revolution is higher. Bakiyev’s shoot-to-kill orders on Wednesday left up to 100 people dead and 450 wounded in the capital of Bishkek. Only about five people died in the 2005 Tulip Revolution.
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The Dragon Looks West: China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

09-07-2006

In 1996, five countries—China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan—formed an organiza­tion, the Shanghai Five, to resolve border disputes among its members. With the addition of Uzbekistan in 2001, it became the Shanghai Cooperation Organi­zation (SCO), a grouping of Russia, China, and a number of under-developed and developing nations with little to bind them together save geography. Five years later, it has grown not only in size, with the granting of observer status to India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan, but also in influence. The group focuses primarily on the security issues of the Chinese trifecta of “terrorism, separatism and extremism.” SCO mem­ber states have conducted a number of joint military exercises, and in 2003 created a joint counter-terror­ism center in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

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