Terrified political leaders watched the police who were assigned to protect them melt away. They fled as an angry mob of hooligans, riled up by sketchy allegations of rigged elections, stormed up the stairs of the government building that hosted the debates and deliberations of their venerable democracy. The rioters, reactionary right-wingers from the nation's... Read More

Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. Crossing Tajikistan from west to northeast – Dushanbe to the Tajik-Kyrgyz border – and then Kyrgyzstan from south to north all the way to Bishkek via Osh, is one of the most extraordinary road trips on earth. Not only this is prime Ancient Silk Road territory but now is being propelled as a... Read More

Was it people power? Was it a coup? Or was it just the toppling of a clan? With the same lightning speed with which it materialized, the March 24 revolutionary object called the Tulip Revolution has disappeared like a comet in the geopolitical cosmos. For four days, Kyrgyzstan had two parliaments. Then last Monday the... Read More

It all went down at the speed of light. In only a few hours on Thursday in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek, the palace was stormed, the tyrant fled and a new order was starting to take shape. Or was it? The revolution had traveled by bus - 500 winding kilometers from Osh, of Silk Road fame,... Read More