The Caspian Region, Volume 1: A Re-Emerging Region

by Gammer,Moshe; Gammer,Moshe

• ISBN13: 9780714652474
• ISBN10: 0714652474
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In the 1990s, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, new states, most of them Muslim, emerged in Central Asia and the Caucasus. A need has thus arisen for information on the new area - what has increasingly been referred to as "the Caspian Region". This volume aims to draw attention to issues neglected so far. It deals with the water problem and negotiations in Central Asia, and with little-known conflicts, such as the issues of "Southern Azerbaijan", Ajaria and Javakheti and the various problems of multi-ethnic Daghestan. It also examines two attempts at unity in the Northern Caucasus. The volume also re-examines some of the established truths with regard to the states surrounding the Caspian Sea. Among the issues dealt with is the validity of the term "Caspian Region" and the question of who should be included in this new region. The collection questions the general belief that the Caspian region will be "a geopolitical centre of the 21st Century" as well as the axiom that thedissolution of the USSR has reopened the "Great Game", and re-examines the questions of democracy, of fundamentalist Islam and of the complex, ambivalent relationship between Islam and nationalism in the region.

Table of Contents

Maps	vii
Acknowledgement	viii
Preface	ix
Contributors	xiv
Abbreviations	xvii
Glossary	xx
PART I A NEW REGION OF INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE?
Oil, Pipelines and Security: The Geo-politics of the Caspian Region	3	(29)
Mustafa Aydin
Oil and Gas in the Economies of the Caspian Region	32	(23)
Paul Rivlin
PART II A NEW ROUND IN AN OLD GAME? RUSSIA, IRAN AND TURKEY
Islam in Russian Security Concerns	55	(18)
Flemming S. Hansen
Central Asia and Russia; Francophone Africa and France: Parallels and Differences	73	(31)
Moshe Gammer
Dancing with Wolves: Turco-Iranian Relations in Perspective	104	(15)
Anat Lapidot-Firilla
Iran's Internal Azerbaijani Challenge: Implications for Policy in the Caucasus	119	(24)
Brenda Shaffer
PART III BIRDS OF A FEATHER? CENTRAL ASIAN REGIONAL CONCERNS
Negotiating the Waters: Trans-Boundary Resource Management in the Aral Sea Basin	143	(22)
Elisa A. Chait
The Region of Earthquakes in the Centre of the World: The Ethnic Problems of the New Independent States of Central Asia	165	(16)
Yuri Kobishchanov
PART IV BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND AUTHORITARIANISM? THE STATES OF CENTRAL ASIA
Clientelism, Corruption and Struggle for Power in Central Asia: The Case of Kyrgyzstan	181	(22)
Vladimir (Ze'ev) Khanin
The Problem of Political Order in Contemporary Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan	203	(25)
Paul Georg Geiss
The Mahalla in Present-Day Uzbekistan	228	(16)
Boris Mathieu Petric
Index	244