About this Collection
The countries of Central Asia represent a key geographic area of strategic interest for the United States and other major world powers, including China, the European Union, India, Iran, Russia and Turkey. In recent years, several geo-political events, such as the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan (2021) and Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine (2022), have intensified this interest.
Regional security threats and perceived economic opportunities have provided Central Asia’s countries with increased potential for strengthening existing alliances, as well as exploring new political partnerships. There is global concern about potential Taliban expansion into these countries. This is also true of China’s One Belt, One Road investment strategies in Central Asia. Scholars and policy makers require both timely and secured access to information from this region. Unfortunately, changing government cabinets and realigning of government ministries frequently results in dismantling of the websites of outgoing administrations. Securing this information from one political regime to the next is extremely important.
Identification and acquisition of publications from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan is difficult. This is especially true for their respective government publications. Web archiving provides a unique tool for the identification, acquisition and preservation of this vital research material.
The websites included in this collection provide a broad overview of national and regional politics, economics, social conditions and the state of religious freedom of these countries. This collection provides readers and researchers with developments in the countries’ government policies and key political figures and preserves this time sensitive and at-risk material for future scholars.
Collection Period: October 2021 to present (this is an ongoing archive).
Frequency of Collection: Sites in the collection were added to crawl primarily on a quarterly basis.
Languages: Collection material in Russian, with English, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and other languages.
Acquisition Information: Sites have been added incrementally since the project began and will continue to be added as they are identified.