Building on my theme of the possibilities and problems for an “Eurasian Spring”, neweruasia‘s Schwartz and I have co-written a three-part article series entitled, “Life After the Taghut”, for the new online magazine Fair Observer. …

Last week I gave a lecture at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven on whether or not an “Arab Spring”-style revolution could happen in Eurasia and more specifically in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. My answer was: probably …

The University of Ghent’s Bruno De Cordier reflects on ten years of hunting Osama bin Laden, and why his death may not be the end of his symbolism in the Muslim world, including Central Asia. “The reality [is] complex, but there is now a widespread sense that the United States’s ‘real nature’ is no better than the Soviet Union,” he writes.

The radical Islamist organization Hizb Ut-Tahrir is perhaps the most officially reviled ideological group in Central Asia and beyond, and yet despite ubiquitous repression, it remains very active. Bruno De Cordier, a scholar at the University of Ghent, believes that the organization’s persistence lies in its ideology. “[They] may be tapping into very real discontent and aspirations in the general population,” he writes, “[that] essentially represents a form or interpretation of alter-globalism.”

During Karimov’s recent visit to the European Union (EU) and NATO in Brussels, the protests by human rights activists in front of the European Commissions’ headquarters in the Berlaymont building were (relatively) well-covered by the …

Fingers continue to point at various hypothetical suspects to attribute blame for the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan this past June. One in particular has gotten attention: Islamism. But Bruno De Cordier, a scholar at the University of Ghent, doesn’t think so. “For all they have done at other times, fanning or using ethnic hatred has been neither an ideological line nor a shown practice of either the IMU or the IJU,” he writes.