Dr. Sean R. Roberts, Associate Professor and Director of International Development Studies Program at GW spoke about Central Asia, an area he has lived and worked in since 1989. Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. As a result, it has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people and goods between Europe and parts of Asia. Central Asia consists of the five former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.  Islam is the religion most common in the Central Asian Republics & their governments tend to be secular, authoritarian, and autocratic.  Several of the countries are resource rich and have large reserves of oil and natural gas. This leads to geo-political tension as the countries in Europe, as well as China, Russia, and India compete for access to these resources and the means to control the routes taken by pipelines under development.