I love the International Crisis Group. I am constantly impressed with the quality of their research. They have a new report out on Central Asia governments and Islam, that seems to be based on solid sources and impressively detailed. It makes a case that I and most people I know have been arguing for a while – repressive government policies on religion and creating the threat of violent political Islamism, not preventing it. There is also a slightly older report on Hizb-u-Tahrir, that I have not yet read.

I have, by the way, now read the WHO health observatory document referred to in my last post. It is a nice little summary of the health systems of Central Asia and their major problems, but it’s short on detail and based on government numbers.