Free Republic

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...

In 1965, a mural was discovered in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, when local authorities decided to build a road in the middle of the Afrasiab tepe. A tepe is a mound marking an ancient site, in this case pre-Mongol Samarkand. When it was found, the mural was weathered and its images obscured. But those who discovered it had the foresight to make a drawing of it, from which replicas have been made. A replica of this mural is now being shown as part of the exhibit "The Crossroads of Civilizations: The Asian Culture of Uzbekistan" until September of next year at the...

After Ukraine, Could Central Asia Be Next? Ukraine and Russia’s western flank is the first step of an attempt to restore a Russian Empire. Kazakhstan and its Central Asian neighbors look set to come next. /snip The world’s attention is understandably fixed on Ukraine right now and its remarkable defensive effort, led by a democratic champion in Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But we must also consider the bigger picture. It is not just Ukraine that now finds itself at an existential crossroads vis-à-vis Putin’s Russia. Central Asia, a vast and frequently misunderstood region stretching from the Caspian Sea to China, was long...

Central Asia Faces Financial Chaos As Russia’s Economy Collapses By Eurasianet - Mar 13, 2022, 10:00 AM CDT Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent its economy into a nosedive. Central Asian economies are highly exposed to Russia. A collapsing Russian economy risks mutating into a deadly pathogen for Central Asia. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Western sanctions in response have left former Soviet states in Central Asia facing economic chaos. Since Vladimir Putin launched his war on February 24, the ruble has collapsed by 50 percent with no bottom in sight. Russia has enacted currency controls reminiscent of the...

Genetic testing reveals awkward truth about Xinjiang’s famous mummies (AFP) 19 April 2005 URUMQI, China - After years of controversy and political intrigue, archaeologists using genetic testing have proven that Caucasians roamed China’s Tarim Basin 1,000 years before East Asian people arrived. The research, which the Chinese government has appeared to have delayed making public out of concerns of fueling Uighur Muslim separatism in its western-most Xinjiang region, is based on a cache of ancient dried-out corpses that have been found around the Tarim Basin in recent decades. “It is unfortunate that the issue has been so politicized because it...

One day in a spring, an elderly man walked alone on a stone road lined by young willows in Xuzhou in East China's Jiangsu Province. At the end of the road was a museum that few people have heard of. A Chinese theology professor says the first Christmas is depicted in the stone relief from the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220). In the picture above a woman and a man are sitting around what looks like a manger, with allegedly "the three wise men" approaching from the left side, holding gifts, "the shepherd" following them, and "the assassins" queued...

Moscow has categorically stated that it will not accept a US military presence in the Central Asian region. This reiteration has come at the level of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who told TASS that Afghanistan had been discussed at a meeting with Victoria Nuland, the visiting US Undersecretary of State, in Moscow on Tuesday. Ryabkov added: “We emphasized the unacceptability of a US military presence in Central Asian countries in any form whatever.” Prima facie, Ryabkov has squashed the disinformation media campaign by Washington that at the Russia-US summit in Geneva in June, President Vladimir Putin had offered...

The Jewish scholarly world is abuzz over the discovery of ancient Jewish scrolls in a cave in Afghanistan's Samangan province, Channel 2 reported on Friday. According to Arab Affairs correspondent Ehud Yeari, if validated the scrolls may be the most significant historical finding in the Jewish world since that of the Cairo Geniza in the 19th century. "We know today about a couple of findings," Haggai Ben-Shammai, Professor Emeritus of Arabic Language and Literature at Hebrew University was quoted as saying. "In all, in my opinion, there are about 150 fragments. It may be the tip of the iceberg." The...

Not just metals, hierarchical societies and fortified settlements: a new food also influenced economic transformations in the Bronze Age around 3,500 years ago. This is evidenced by frequent archeological discoveries of remains of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum L.), a cereal with small, roundish grains. A major study by the Collaborative Research Center 1266 at Kiel University (CAU) was published yesterday (13 August) in the journal Scientific Reports. It shows how common millet got onto the menu in Bronze Age Europe. Intensive trade and communication networks facilitated the incredibly rapid spread of this new crop originating from the Far East. "Wheat,...

After six months of protests in Hong Kong, the new year has brought more chaos, with Tsai Ing-wen winning an election in Taiwan and disease spreading in Wuhan. Perhaps President Xi Jinping should recognise that China needs new leadership. The new year has only brought more chaos: in addition to Tsai’s victory, China faces an outbreak of a coronavirus in Wuhan – which has now spread to Japan, and elsewhere – just as the Lunar New Year holiday is beginning. While a ceasefire in the trade war has ostensibly been declared, the phase one deal required concessions from Beijing and...

The jawbone of a little-known form of ancient human has been discovered in western China. Scientists say these people lived as long as 150,000 years ago, and they were part of a group called Denisovans. The Denisovans are a mystery. Up until now, their only remains — a few bone fragments and teeth — came from a cave called Denisova in Siberia. In 2010, scientists concluded from those fragments and their DNA that Denisovans were slightly different from us — Homo sapiens — and slightly different from Neanderthals, but that they lived contemporaneously. In short, they were a third kind...

Studies of ancient preserved plant remains from a medieval archaeological site in the Pamir Mountains of Uzbekistan have shown that fruits, such as apples, peaches, apricots, and melons, were cultivated in the foothills of Inner Asia. The archaeobotanical study, conducted by Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, is among the first systematic analyses of medieval agricultural crops in the heart of the ancient Silk Road. Spengler identified a rich assemblage of fruit and nut crops, showing that many of the crops we are all familiar with today were cultivated along the ancient trade...

Four cycling tourists, including two Americans, were killed in an attack in Tajikistan, authorities told ABC News. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in a Twitter post Monday. A group of seven cyclists was heading north in Danghara district, about 55 miles southeast of the capital Dushanbe, when they were struck by a car with five armed people onboard on Sunday. Tajikistan’s interior minister said that, after striking the cyclists, the people in the car got out and attacked them with a firearm and a knife. The two Americans, a woman and a man, were killed along with a Swiss...

As I walked into the department this bright brisk morning, coffee cheerily in hand, the live global seismogram display in the atrium caught my eye with an alarming event that had just happened during my bike ride into work. *gasp* that looks bad *gasp* that looks bad BIG earthquake, somewhere in the vicinity of Central/Southern Asia. Indeed, an earthquake deep (>200 km) beneath the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan had shaken a huge swath of Central and South Asia. The great depth of the earthquake meant less extreme shaking at the epicenter (nobody lives closer than 212 km from the...

With the risk of falling rocks, blind potholes and even carbon monoxide poisoning, it's easy to see where this treacherous road earned its nickname. Dubbed the Tunnel Of Death, the three-mile route is not for the faint-hearted – or the intrepid, for that matter. It was built to provide a safer journey for drivers travelling between Tajikistan’s major cities who previously had to contend with avalanches. But the £2.6billion project, constructed by Iran, appears to have offered an even more hellish alternative instead.