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This week on War & Peace, Olga Oliker and Hugh Pope talk to Ivan Safranchuk, Senior Fellow at Moscow’s Institute of International Studies, about the hopes and fears of Russia and Central Asia after the Taliban victory in Afghanistan.

This week on War & Peace, post-Soviet security expert Dr Erica Marat joins Olga Oliker and Hugh Pope to discuss the drivers of anti-establishment protests and the policing thereof across Central Asia and globally. 

This week on War & Peace, Olga Oliker and Hugh Pope are joined by Central Asia expert Noah Tucker to discuss how the region became a source of so many fighters for ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

While Kyrgyzstan’s 15 October elections are a rare milestone for Central Asian democracy, the campaign is exposing dangerous fault lines. In the largest city of Osh, the new president will have to face down robust local power brokers, defuse Uzbek-Kyrgyz tensions and re-introduce the rule of law.

China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative could potentially transform relations with over 60 countries across Eurasia, Africa and beyond. But to bring the concept to fruition, Beijing must overcome mammoth logistical obstacles, navigate fragile political situations and placate growing regional apprehension surrounding its ambitions.

China and Russia’s separate visions for Central Asia could transform the region’s political and economic landscape as well as relations between the two Eurasian giants. To the smaller, embryonic Central Asian nation states, the new geopolitical realities could offer both economic prosperity as well as worsening instability and conflict.

Since its creation in 2015, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) has kept only a few of its promises. Its limited economic success cannot mask the many tensions between Russia and its neighbours. Much of the EEU’s future success will depend on its members’ will to shift away from geopolitics a​nd focus on international cooperation, governance, social welfare and migration.

Jennifer Leonard, Crisis Group's Deputy Director in Washington DC, gave her testimony to the Helsinki Commission at the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, during the hearing Wanted: Foreign Fighters - The Escalating threat of Islamic State in Central Asia on 11 June 2015.

In this interview, Crisis Group’s Central Asia Project Director, Deirdre Tynan, speaks about the main findings of Crisis Group’s report, Syria Calling: Radicalisation in Central Asia, and explains that the Islamic State is fostering new links among radicals within the region.