Our People > Charles Van Der Leeuw

Articles

Kazakhstan and Central Asia: international terrorism without borders

LONDON (TCA) — It has been no one less than Kazakhstan’s head of state and veteran politician Nursultan Nazarbayev who was lately quoted by Tass as stating that “the re-emergence of terrorist cells following the heavy blow dealt to Islamic State in the Middle East is a serious challenge for Eurasian states. […] International terrorism has acquired a catastrophic scope, it has no borders. Any part of the globe can become a target for a disastrous onslaught." Continue reading

6 years ago

Articles

China party congress subordinates regional, global engagements to national interests: what it means for Central Asia?

LONDON (TCA) — Rather than what one might have expected, China’s regional and global aspirations were not on top of the agenda at the Communist Party congress which took place this past week. Instead, domestic affairs dominated the event in the form of a consolidation of the hierarchic political and governmental power structure amidst speculations about a possible change in the denomination of candidates for succession within the system’s top ranks. Whatever the case, the message to neighbouring countries and beyond was: China comes first, the rest of the world will come as well — but later. Continue reading

7 years ago

Articles

Presidential election: Kyrgyzstan choses to keep its political establishment in place

LONDON (TCA) — It is a warm, sunny and lazy Sunday afternoon in the Kyrgyz capital and all is quiet. The ominous spectre of mass demonstrations, burning vehicles, charging security forces and shootouts invoked by western “revolution manufacturers” and mass media parroting them is as remote as remote could ever be. Kyrgyz people go or do not go to vote, with both categories expressing a pragmatic approach to politics: let things go on as they do, let leaders govern and leave business to the population. This overall attitude explains why hardly more than half of the voters bothered to vote in the first place. Continue reading

7 years ago

Articles

Afghanistan’s bloodshed: virtually everyone is profiting

OSH, Kyrgyzstan (TCA) — How far stretches the might of war profiteers in the global economy? Further than many people think, and Central Asia’s ex-Soviet republics bordering the world’s staunchest zone of large-scale bloodshed are particularly exposed to it. Continue reading

7 years ago

Articles

Business of politics, politics of business: fat cats in Kyrgyzstan’s presidential race

LONDON (TCA) — Has Kyrgyzstan managed to accomplish what failed to happen in Russia and Kazakhstan (though both of them came close) – namely the position of a plutocracy under the guise of democracy, with the country’s rich having become powerful as well? For a country where up to one-third of the population still lives just on or way under the poverty line, this is bound to raise eyebrows. The worst thing is that those wielding the sceptre in a my-turn, your-turn sequence of top state functions, are not industrial barons who could lift the country’s economy up to better levels, but self-made tycoons feeding on largely speculative business. Continue reading

7 years ago