Two Russian pilots have been incarcerated in Tajikistan, prompting a huge backlash from Russia’s political class, and all but drowning out Tajik views on the matter. Alpharabius gives his two somoni, including a little research about the pilots’ mysterious employers.

Hillary Clinton: rushed, unprepared, and unclear. Condoleeza Rice: careful, prepared, and very clear. But were both hypocritical and insufficient, just in different ways? Tajik civil society and journalists debate the two Secretaries of State’s visits to Tajikistan in 2005 and 2011. neweurasia’s Alpharabius reports.

Good news — sort of. Muhammad Yusuf Ismailov and Urunboy Usmonov have been found guilty, but with very commuted sentences. neweurasia’s Alpharabius reports. “The international community has succeeded in bringing sufficient pressure onto the situation to make the Tajik authorities rectify themselves,” he writes, “[But] in the end, this two-faced/face-saving sentencing just demonstrates further the weakness of the Tajik justice system.”

The trial of Nuri Zindagi reporter Mahmadyusuf Ismoilov has been momentarily adjourned due to “sickness” on the part of a judicial aide — although a friend of neweurasia’s Alpharabius caught the aide shopping. Were that not enough, prosecutors have opened a case against Ismoilov’s lawyer. Is this Tajik justice?

The BBC’s Urunboy Usmonov is not the only journalist in Tajikistan in trouble with political authorities: local reporter Muhammad Yusuf Ismailov (Makhmadyusuf Ismoilov) is facing 16 years in prison for reporting about corruption. neweurasia’s Alpharabius warns that Ismailov’s international obscurity makes him a softer target than Usmonov — and his case more dangerous for independent media in Tajikistan.

In an unexpected move, Tajikistan’s Supreme Court has commuted the sentences of 29 convicts originally sentenced on terrorism charges — and the decision, one of only two of its kind in the last five years, is very fishy, reports neweurasia’s Alpharabius. “But whatever the intention, the decision reeks of hypocrisy,” he writes.

There are Egyptian-sounding rumblings in Tajikistan, enough to make the government openly mull constitutional reform — well, sort of. neweurasia’s Alpharabius reports on the plethora of new laws curtailing Islamic religious practice and the slew of house demolitions that all seem to point toward a government that’s simultaneously nervous and ambitious, and the odd constitutional carrot the authorities are dangling in front of their people’s mouths.

Of the three newspapers targeted by Tajikistan’s Supreme Court judges in an historical multimillion lawsuit, one has disappeared from the market, while the two others became less brave and more self-censored in 2010. The Farazh …

This summer, my neweurasia boss Schwartz asked, “What are five things West can learn from the Central Asian people?” sparking a discussion among our readers that eventually became quite philosophical. Now, however, we have something …

Some people might be surprised to discover that I’m a religious person. I find great beauty in Tajikistan’s Islamic tradition, something very sublime. Here are some photos that I took which I feel capture my …