ISN Security Watch Prognosis for 2008

Security Watch, the news and current affairs analysis service of the International Relations and Security Network (ISN)  has published a detailed political forecast for 2008. The prognosis is a collaborative initiative of independent journalists, academic researchers and Security Watch correspondents from various parts of the world, and is coordinated by the ISN.
Featured Topics:
1. Defining moment [...]

Collaborative Governance

Deriving  value from informal network knowledge pools instead of experts, is a trend that is likely to continue growing rapidly in 2008. Open source technology, social collaboration tools and a mindset change are quickly transforming the ways of traditional top-down communication, management and decision-making. Pioneer initiatives such as Wikipedia, My Space and Facebook, to name [...]

Santa Claims Kyrgyz Mountain

Kyrgyz tourist authorities were quick to spot a business opportunity after the Swedish logistics company, Sweco, identified Kyrgyzstan as the perfect place for Santa Claus to deliver presents from. With 90% of mountainous terrain and peaks soaring up to 7000 meters, Kyrgyzstan is still remote and under-explored, and many of its peaks remain un-named. According to BBC News, a [...]

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): Issues for Congress

The Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress published a new recommendation report earlier in December on the benefits of open source intelligence (OSINT) collection and management over traditional clandestine methods. The report argues that although unclassified information has often been slighted by the intelligence community (IC), a consensus has existed since 2005 that [...]

Kyrgyzstan: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

On Sunday, 16 December, President Bakiyev’s party Ak Zhol won absolute victory in the first proportional elections in Kyrgyzstan. According to the Central Election Commission, Ak Zhol won 48% of the vote against the two main opposition parties, the Social Democratic Party of former Prime Minister Atambayev and the Ata Meken party, led by former [...]

Entering the blogosphere

I’m starting this blog as a complement to my course on Intelligence Communications. In the course of the next 7 weeks, I’ll be posting news updates, intelligence summaries and analyses on Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan-US bilateral relations and related information on other Central Asian countries. I am also taking this opportunity to learn more about blogging as [...]