The governance situation in Central Asia

For centuries, the roads that crossed the Eurasian continent, known as the Silk Road, represented the main route of exchange for the flows of people, goods and ideas from Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia. Central Asia was the hub of these movements and represented the geographical intersection of all these flows. The Great Game of the 21st Century XIX showed the interest – and also the difficulties – of the great colonial powers to control the Central Asian territories. Today, as independent states for less than two decades, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are once again setting the international agenda for various reasons: because they possess energy resources – limited, but still to be exploited – necessary for their European and Asian neighbours, and because they are an obligatory passage between the two extremes of the Eurasian geographical space.