Central Asia is at the forefront of China’s efforts to assert itself as a major world power. Since 1991, Beijing has emerged as the region’s main investor, creditor and trade partner, as well as an increasingly important security provider. But its growing influence has met opposition: in recent years, anti-China protests have erupted across Central Asia, threatening Beijing’s shaky regional hegemony.Bradley Jardine and Edward Lemon examine how Central Asians are pushing back agains...

Central Asia remains on the periphery, both spatially and in people’s imaginations. When the region does attract international attention, it is often related to security issues, including terrorism, ethnic conflict and drug trafficking.This book brings together leading specialists from a range of disciplines including geography, anthropology, sociology and political science to discuss how citizens and governments within Central Asia think about and practise security.The authors exp...

The southernmost and poorest state of the Eurasian space, Tajikistan collapsed immediately upon the fall of the Soviet Union and plunged into a bloody five-year civil war (1992–1997) that left more than 50,000 people dead and more than half a million displaced. After the 1997 Peace Agreements, Tajikistan stood out for being the only post-Soviet country to recognize an Islamic party—the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT)—as a key actor in the civil war as well as in postwar reco...