Stories about Central Asia & Caucasus from July, 2010
Georgia: Frozen conflicts, frozen happiness
With a little over a week to go before the second anniversary of the short war fought between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway territory of South Ossetia, Evolutsia turns its attention to another one of the country's two frozen conflicts, Abkhazia.
Wikileaks’ Japan data on Afghanistan
Richard Smart at the Tokyo Digital Journalism blog posted a summarized list of Wikileaks’ Japan data on Afghanistan. Raw data can be found on his blog.
Afghan Bloggers on Wikileaks War Logs
Afghan bloggers writing in Dari appear to be relatively quiet in the aftermath of the leaked military reports posted on Wikileaks. Here are reactions from two Afghan bloggers.
Georgia: Presidential faux pax
The Tbilisi Blues comments on the latest gaffe by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili when he called his prime minister a term considered politically incorrect in the West. The blog says that it is surprised at how many people have reacted to the remarks so strongly given that even losing a...
Armenia-Azerbaijan: Border
This is cinemelo comments on Border, a 2009 film from director Harutyun Khachatryan. Ostensibly a tale of life in rural Armenia, the blog says that the most telling images come from barbed wire fences which illustrate the filmmaker's connection with his country and his hatred of the war and closed...
Armenia: Doubts about reported suicide in the Army
Unzipped comments on news that a contract officer in the Armenian army has been reported dead. With mistreatment in the military common and of concern to human rights groups, the blog does not appear to believe the official story that Artak Nazaryan committed suicide and directs readers to a Facebook...
Armenia: Eating a way to peace
Ianyan says that food might represent the path to peace for cultures that place such significance in it. Referring to an Armenian bakery in the U.S.-Armenian Diaspora as well as responses to a recent guest entry on Armenian-Azerbaijani relations in the context of the still unresolved conflict over Nagorno Karabakh,...
Azerbaijan: Presidential tweets
A Twitter account for the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has been set up at @AzPresident [AZ] and @PresidentAz [EN]. The account will tweet links to presidential speeches, events attended, and video material.
Liveblog of global reactions to Wikileaks Afghanistan war logs
More than 90,000 classified U.S. military documents about the war in Afghanistan have been leaked. As an experiment, we are using Google Wave to live blog global blog and citizen media reactions to the war logs (#warlogs) made public today by Wikileaks, Der Spiegel, New York Times and The Guardian.
Azerbaijan: Youth activism and social media
Ali Resh uses online video tools to interview Baku-based Ruslan Asadov, along with now imprisoned video blogger Adnan Hajizade also a co-founder and member of the OL! Azerbaijani youth movement, live from Tbilisi, Georgia. Resh and Asadov speak about the use of new and social media in youth activism in...
Armenia-Azerbaijan: Moving the conversation forward
Le Retour (in 3 Parts), a blog by a Canadian-Armenian resident in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, comments on the three recent guest entries posted on The Caucasian Knot, the blog of Global Voices’ Caucasus regional editor, and summarized here. The blog looks forward to more conversations between Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
Armenia: More homophobic media reports
Unzipped: Gay Armenia continues to monitor the level of homophobia evident in the local media and comments on reports that members of the country's LGBT community meet next to the capital's municipality building.
Turkey: Armenians and Turks show Gay Pride
Despite a long history of animosity between Armenia and Turkey, Unzipped: Gay Armenia posts photographs of Armenians and Turks side by side at this year's Gay Pride rally in Istanbul. The blog says that the pictures are incredible.
Armenia: FrontlineSMS and health care for all
FrontlineSMS says that more than 50,000 alerts on health care service have been sent using its open source software by international development organization Oxfam. The post includes a video report.
Kyrgyzstan: Divergent discourses suggest more is yet to come
“Forgive one another, we’re all guilty”, begs a sticker and poster campaign doing the rounds in Kyrgyzstan following recent tragic events in the south which have claimed over 1,000 lives. The campaign's website, which seeks grounds for a common approach to the problem, has been largely eschewed by local internet users in favour of partisan efforts such as Osh Reality.
Azerbaijan: Amnesty International campaign for convicted bloggers
Having already recently marked the first anniversary of their initial detention, Amnesty International urges supporters worldwide to lobby the government in Azerbaijan to ensure that imprisoned video blogging youth activists Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli receive a fair appeal hearing in the coming months.
Armenia-Azerbaijan: Bloggers build dialogue
Although a recent conference held earlier this month highlighted some of the shortcomings and dangers of using new and social media in conflict resolution, there is no doubt that online tools have moved in to fill a gap left vacant by a usually politically polarized and propagandist media in the South Caucasus.
Armenia-Azerbaijan: There is only humanity…
Ianyan makes a guest post on Armenia-Azerbaijan relations in the context of the still unresolved conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh as part of a series of entries using new and social media to bring the two sides closer together. The blogger says that these new tools have...
Kazakhstan: Bloggers see China’s “weaponless invasion”
Posts about China-related topics are quite frequent in the Kazakh language blogs. Here are some of them, the most recent ones.
Azerbaijan: Caucasus Women
CauCasuSWomaN takes a look at the rights of men and women in Azerbaijan (and the Caucasus) in the context of actual attitudes to gender and says that education is key to changing existing values and perceptions.
Russia-US-EU: Great game revisited
Katinka Barysch at openDemocracy publishes an extensive analysis of relations between Russia and the West in former soviet space, in a Great Game revisited.
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