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In May 2025, the authorities in Moscow unveiled a life-size bas‑relief sculpture of Josef Stalin in the Taganskaya metro station. The next month, a statue of Lenin was pulled down in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. Between these two symbolic acts lies Kazakhstan, caught in a tug-of-war over the memory of Soviet-era repression. Tensions have sharpened since the war in Ukraine. In the background, Putin has accelerated the rehabilitation of Stalin, architect of the gulag archipelago. His busts are reappearing across Russia. Volgograd’s airport has been renamed “Stalingrad.” In occupied Melitopol, a new statue of the dictator was erected. “We’re witnessing a broad...

Terrorism, as diplomatic strategy, just suffered another humiliating defeat. On Thursday, Kazakhstan became the first country in Donald Trump’s second term to join the Abraham Accords, formalizing a relationship with Israel that’s existed since 1992. The announcement came thirty-three years after diplomatic ties began, which makes it roughly as groundbreaking as celebrating your silver wedding. But timing is everything, and this particular non-event delivers a verdict on the most consequential gamble in recent Middle Eastern history. Documents captured by the IDF in Gaza show Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar telling his inner circle on October 2, 2023, that an “extraordinary act”...

Abstract: The Scythians were a multitude of horse-warrior nomad cultures dwelling in the Eurasian steppe during the first millennium BCE. Because of the lack of first-hand written records, little is known about the origins and relations among the different cultures. To address these questions, we produced genome-wide data for 111 ancient individuals retrieved from 39 archaeological sites from the first millennia BCE and CE across the Central Asian Steppe. We uncovered major admixture events in the Late Bronze Age forming the genetic substratum for two main Iron Age gene-pools emerging around the Altai and the Urals respectively. Their demise was...

Donald Trump recently announced that the United States would help Pakistan develop its "massive oil reserves," suggesting it could export oil to India in the future. In response, Baloch leader Mir Yar Baloch has written an open letter to the US president, highlighting how encouraging the exploitation of Balochistan's oil reserves would make the US complicit in enabling ISI to enhance its global terror networks. In his letter, the Baloch leader warned against allowing Pakistan's radicalised military and rogue ISI, long accused of sponsoring Al-Qaeda and various proxy groups responsible for the deaths of thousands of US soldiers in Afghanistan,...

The move to develop the Amu Darya field aligns with the Taliban’s goal of self-sufficiency, but can the cash-strapped regime go it alone?In late July, Afghanistan’s Taliban-run government decided to pursue unilateral development of the Amu Darya oil field, at least for the time being. It seems unlikely the cash-strapped regime will be able to maximize the potential of the oil field without foreign investment, but it will still be able to collect millions of dollars in revenue by going it alone. The move aligns with the Taliban’s oft stated goal of self-sufficiency. However, international investors may be troubled by...

Kyrgyzstan has taken down a huge statue of the revolutionary Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, which was thought to be the tallest in Central Asia. First erected when Kyrgyzstan was part of the Soviet Union, the 23m-tall monument towered over the city of Osh for 50 years before it was quietly removed this week. Photos emerged on Saturday showing the communist revolutionary - who features prominently in Soviet iconography - lying on his back on the ground, having been lowered by crane. A statement from City Hall in Osh - the landlocked nation's second-largest city after the capital, Bishkek - said...

A centuries-old tomb uncovered in China reveals a stunning discovery that challenges everything we know about the Tang dynasty. Among the vibrant murals, a mysterious foreign figure stands out. A Panoramic View Of The Tomb. Photo courtesy of Jinyang Ancient City Research Institute | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel ========================================================================= In 2018, construction work on a road in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province in northern China, led to an unexpected archaeological discovery. Researchers uncovered a tomb from the Tang dynasty, dated to the year 736 AD, that contained detailed murals illustrating everyday life during that period. The tomb...

The upcoming summit in Samarkand will bring together for the first time the leaders of the five Central Asian countries and the European Union. Following years of reform and European assistance, the five Central Asian countries - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - are embarking on a strategic pivot towards Europe. The EU is seeking reliable partners in the current rapidly changing geopolitical reality. This is for political and also economic reasons, such as trade, investment and energy. On Thursday and Friday, the Uzbek city of Samarkand will host the first-ever high level meeting between the EU and the...

How did early hunter-gatherers manage to survive in some of the most inhospitable places on Earth, and could pieces of one of the world's oldest pots hold a clue?Prof Alice Roberts journeys to Asia, the world's greatest land mass, and attempts to replicate ancient survival techniques that appear to have been passed down through many generations. With little precedent and only the most primitive resources available, our ancestors' innovation and experimentation was vital for their success.This clip is from Incredible Human Journey (2009).What Turned Hunter-Gatherers Into Empire Builders? | 4:44BBC Timestamp | 785K subscribers | 6,728 views | November 13,...

Mystery of The Ancient Greek City Bizarrely Located in Afghanistan | 8:05Discovery Future | 24K subscribers | 13,393 views | October 12, 2024

In the wake of yet another foiled ISIS-inspired terrorist plot, this one by a Canada-based Pakistani seeking to kill Jews in New York on the anniversary of last year’s Hamas attack in Israel, everyone is loudly proclaiming: “ISIS is back.”And yet, this analysis is wrong.For someone or something to “be back,” it has to have left in the first place. This return can be surprising or expected, but in the end it is of note. With respect to the ISIS terrorist group, it has not “resurged” because it never went away in the first place.The group has been around since...

Newsweek reports that researchers from the Margulan Institute of Archaeology have discovered a face carved into a granite boulder at the top of a rocky outcrop in central Kazakhstan. The carving measures about ten inches long by eight inches wide, with well-preserved eyes, nose, and lips. A collapsed stone stele measuring more than six feet long and three feet wide was found nearby. It had been carved on one side with an image of a deer with large antlers. Archaeologist Sergey Yarygin said that the carved face and the stela are similar to others found at Bronze Age sites in...

The number of migrants flocking to the US-Mexico border from a country known as a hotbed of ISIS recruitment has skyrocketed under President Biden. More than 1,500 migrants from Tajikistan are known to have crossed the border between October 2020 and May 2024, according to leaked border dated obtained by The Post. At least 500 Tajiks have been caught so far this year. Over the previous 14 years there were just 26 Tajik nationals crossing the border. It’s unknown how many of the Tajik migrants were released into the US, but the vast majority of migrants caught at the border...

How Turkmenistan Became the Most Evil Country on Earth – Contents of this video ---------------------------- 00:00 - The World’s Strangest Dictatorship 07:07 - The Cotton Colossus 17:01 - Great Leader of the Turkmen 25:00 - A Dictators Marble Paradise 32:31 - Echoes of the Throne

The organization, CSTO, is a Russian-led security alliance that includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan “Radicals from Central Asia have accounted for a notable share of recent Islamic State-inspired or -directed plots and attacks in the United States, Europe, Turkey, and Iran,” Lucas Webber and Riccardo Valle wrote in a Hudson Institute analysis last year. In September 2022, ISKP – which vehemently opposes Russia’s support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria – claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at the Russian embassy in Kabul which left six dead. Despite repeatedly warnings from foreign sources – including the U.S....

Most are unaware that there were Ancient Greek kingdoms in China and that Hellenism spread all the way to Japan and Korea via India. However, the fact is that the Greeks were indeed in China, and, in addition to this, Hellenism spread to the entirety of the East Asian Buddhist world. In fact, the first anthropomorphic statue of Buddha was created by the Greeks. The famous Silk Road that connected Europe to China actually opened because of a war between Greeks of Alexandria Eschate. Alexandria Eschate, meaning “Alexandria the Farthest,” is located in the Fergana Valley in what is modern...

Turkey seeks Central Asia inroads with Russia distracted Nov 11, 2022 Turkey will lead a summit of Central Asian countries on Friday (11 November), aiming to strengthen economic ties with the region’s resource-rich ex-Soviet states while Moscow is distracted by the war in Ukraine. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will preside over the Organisation of Turkic States (OTS) summit in Uzbekistan’s historic city of Samarkand. Erdogan has for several years been pushing for closer cultural, linguistic and religious ties with several ex-Soviet countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February spooked Moscow’s neighbours in...

Just over a week ago, Chinese leader Xi Jinping embarked on a three-day trip to Central Asia to mark his sphere of influence. He has since been out of the public eye, skipping a high-level military meeting and the annual United Nations assembly.With China only weeks away from the 20th National Congress, where Xi is set to pursue an unprecedented third term, his absence has been long enough to attract attention from keen political watchers, with some even speculating that he has been placed under house arrest.By Sept. 24, Xi Jinping had become one of the top trending topics on...

For the last two years, there was no place like home for Chinese President Xi Jinping. He had not moved out of his home in Beijing and was not meeting any world leader, not even any prominent CCP leader. However, on September 14th, the tyrant leader finally moved out of his home for an SCO meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. After a hiatus of two years, Xi departed for Central Asia by a special flight and attended the 22nd Summit of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). But, despite being the founding member of SCO,...

Tehran (AsiaNews) – Iran will become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with the signing of the memorandum of obligation at a summit in Samarkand, on 15-16 September. “This year, within Uzbekistan's chairmanship, Iran, as an observer state will ... become a full-fledged member of the SCO,” RIA Novosti quoted Uzbek Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov as saying yesterday during a meeting in Moscow. Iran took one step closer to full membership on 17 September last year when its application was accepted 15 years after it was made. On that date, SCO began the country's accession, which usually...