The Cetre for OSCE Research at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (CORE/IFSH) successfully organized a summer school on the impact of the Afghanistan crisis on Central Asia and the Afghanistan policies of the Central Asian states. The summer school took place from 25 June to 1 July in Astana, Kazakhstan, jointly organized by the IFSH and the Center for International and Regional Studies at the Eurasian National University (ENU) in Astana, Kazakhstan. It was financed by the German Academic Exchange Service with funds from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The participants were mostly PhD Candidates from all of the Central Asian states including Turkmenistan. Moreover, two participants from Afghanistan were invited and had registered to participate in the summer school but had to cancel their participation at short-notice. The summer school was planned and organized by Sebastian Schiek, researcher at CORE/IFSH.
The summer school offered seminars by IFSH, ENU and external lecturers. The Head of the Center for European Security and Peace Studies (ZEUS) at the IFSH, Hans-Georg Ehrhart, gave two lectures on “Security Development Nexus: A Challenge for International Security Governance” and “COIN and State-building in Afghanistan: A Contradiction in Terms”. Anna Kreikemeyer, senior researcher at CORE/IFSH, conducted a workshop on “Power and Security in Eurasian Regional Organizations: The Example of the CSTO”. Our project partner was represented by Aigerim Shilibekova, Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at the Eurasian National University. Shilibekova gave a lecture on “External Actors in the Regional Security of Central Asia“. Moreover, two external lecturers, Alexander Knyazev and Abdulvohid Shamolov, offered seminars during the summer school. Knyazev has specialized for many years in political and socioeconomic developments in Afghanistan and their impacts on Central Asia. At the summer school, he offered two seminars „Ethnopolitical Aspects of the Afghanistan Conflict and the Risk of a Transformation of the Regional Order” and “Recent Developments in the Regional Security in Central Asia”. Shamolov is Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Political Science at the Academy of Sciences in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. He gave a lecture on socioeconomic developments in Afghanistan and their impacts on its neighbor, Tajikistan. Moreover, a controversial discussion took place with another guest of the summer school, Daniele Riggio, a Central Asia expertin the Public Diplomacy Program of the NATO.
Another advantage of the summer school was the pronounced high profile expertise of its participants, who came from all of the Central Asian states. Amongst the participants were post-docs, PhD candidates as well as advanced Master’s students. All participants were required to submit a research paper in advance of the summer school and present it during the participant panels. The majority of the participants took this as an opportunity to present and discuss their PhD projects. The papers presented offered a broad range of topics. Amongst them were research on transborder trade between rural regions in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, prospects of peace building with violent extremist groups, development assistance and drug fighting in the Soviet Union and Russia in a historical perspective, as well as the situation of the Turkmen minority in Afghanistan. Other papers examined the Afghanistan policies of the Central Asian states, the interdependencies between Islamic movements in Central Asia and Afghanistan as well as the Afghanistan policy of the CSTO.
Publication of some of the presented papers in the Kazakhstani social science journal ISPR is currently planned, as is online publication of all of the papers.
Contact
Sebastian Schiek