The Journal of Turkish Weekly recently wrote an interesting piece concerning Central Asia's growing water issues, which I briefly touched on about a week ago when I reported on EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana's speech concerning climate change.  The Journal's outlook focus's on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan's "uneasy' water and energy relationship, mainly pertaining to the Syr Darya river basin, which overflows and threatens populated areas in Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan's Toktogul hydroelectric power station, which has failed to provide enough electricity during a harshly cold winter.

Kazakhstan's government has decided to build a reservoir on the river of Syr Daya near Koksaray village, hoping this will create a more efficient irrigation system and slow down the flooding.  The reservoir project is supposed to begin this year and cost over half a billion US dollars.  The Journal accurately warns that a similar project in Uzbekistan resulted in the loss of thousands of hectares of farm and meadowlands, leading to agricultural losses in the hundreds of millions.

The Journal advocates for an intergovernmental water and energy consortium between the CA states, where they can work on water issues that transcend their borders.  The good news is that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have a meeting in this regard set for this April.  I will do my best to keep you updated on its accomplishments or lack thereof.

In my short time as the lead writer for this blog, I have written much about NATO's mission in Afghanistan, as I believe the nation's stability and effective governance would do much for Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East regions.  On March 10th I discussed NATO troop levels and restrictions.  In light of the ongoing NATO Bucharest Summit, Foreign Policy has created The List: Who's Left in Afghanistan?, which nicely catalogs individual NATO nation troop levels, restrictions of engagement, and provides an outlook into possible changes to these in the near future.  The report is rather disparaging to the nation's who either have very low troop levels or major limitations as to what and where their troops can do and go.  The report specifically targets Germany, Austria, and Ireland for consternation.