Someone forget to send me my special issue blogger tea leaves for Kyrgyzstan, so, you know, I have no way of predicting what's going to happen there now that the revolution's come to town. Robert Mayer has some interesting things to say, though, both a bit of optimism as well as evidence that the opposition leaders—interim PM Kurmanbek Bakiyev and Felix Kulov—may turn out to be no less hardline than the outgoing guy. But so it goes.

By the by, this longer World Affairs essay on "Democratic prospects in Central Asia," might be of interest (short summary: they're bleak, those prospects), though annoyingly the author doesn't get into specifics about each country.