The Working Group on the Future of U.S.-Russia Relations’ Report
Central Asia stands out as a comparatively “nontoxic” region where there are limited, but not insignificant, opportunities for U.S.-Russia collaboration both bilaterally and within multilateral frameworks: in the space industry, civil security, job-creation mechanisms and rural human capital, and knowledge sharing for instance. Any proposal of U.S.-Russia cooperation in a concrete domain will have to be made in a tri- or-multipartite...
... Iran might play a role here.
The idea to build a gas pipeline across South Asia is nothing new. There is already the off-and-on Peace pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and further to India (known as IP Gas), as well as the TAPI gas pipeline (involving Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India). It should be noted that Iran and Turkmenistan, the gas producers for both projects, have already conducted the requisite work, and the relevant pipelines have already been laid. The problem is buyers and ...
... institution of expensive procedures and tests, like a Russian history and language test. Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from Central Asia have even been banned from Russia, apparently from fear of ISIS foreign fighters returning en masse. Thousands of Central Asians, most of them young and male, are now returning home. This, coupled with a strapped economy, could create instability.
In addition, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, which share a border with volatile Afghanistan, face some risk of Islamic violence spilling over as Western troops continue to pull out of the war-torn country. According to some sources, the number of deadly ...