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Islamabad apparently bought peace with the TLP. As in its frequent mobilisations over the last few years, the TLP has once again forced the Pakistani state onto the backfoot and enhanced its own political clout. A relatively new phenomenon, the TLP, was founded in 2015 by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a firebrand cleric who died in November 2020. It now has a strong following among Pakistan’s Barelvi sect. At the heart of TLP’s ideology is the protection of the Prophet’s honour and a vigorous defence of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. In Pakistan, anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or the Prophet...

TEHRAN – Iran is set to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which currently consists of China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The SCO leaders will meet in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, September on Tuesday. President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran will participate at the summit. Iran’s membership of the organization is set to be endorsed in the summit. So far Iran has been an observer member. Mehdi Safari, the former Iranian ambassador to China and Russia, has said that with Iran's permanent membership in the SCO, the West will understand that the space for Iran...

For centuries, Bactria - a region shared by modern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan - was part of the Hellenistic world. Conquered by Alexander the Great, Bactria became the heart of a powerful Greek kingdom. And even after the Greco-Bactrian kingdom was overrun by nomads, its cities continued to thrive. This video explores their fates.The Lost Greek Cities of Central Asia | September 3, 2021 | toldinstone

Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) has reportedly gone missing after attempting a rogue evacuation mission to rescue five American citizens that President Joe Biden’s administration left behind in Afghanistan. According to the Washington Post, U.S. officials are now “unsure of Mullin’s location” after he requested help from the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan on Monday with his evacuation of a woman and her four children. From the report:

More than 1,000 Afghan soldiers have fled to neighboring Tajikistan after clashing with Taliban militants, officials have said. The troops retreated over the border to "save their own lives", according to a statement by Tajikistan's border guard. Violence has risen in Afghanistan and the Taliban have been making significant gains, particularly in the north of the country, in recent weeks. The surge coincides with the end of NATO's 20-year military mission. The vast majority of the remaining foreign forces in Afghanistan have been withdrawn early ahead of a September deadline...

More than 300 Afghan soldiers have crossed into Tajikistan as the Taliban captured more territory in northern Afghanistan, the Tajik Border Service said on July 3. The retreat is the third time in two weeks that Afghan soldiers have fled into Tajikistan, after the militants took control of several border areas and seized Afghanistan's main border crossing with Tajikistan in June. The Tajik Border Service said the situation became "complicated" after several villages and a border post in the northwestern part of Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province fell to the Taliban, forcing more than 300 Afghan soldiers to flee into Tajikistan's Shamsiddin...

At least 31 people have been killed, scores injured and 10,000 evacuated after a water dispute led to some of the worst clashes in years on a disputed Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border. Clashes started on Wednesday when people from both sides hurled stones at each other after surveillance cameras were installed at a water facility. Pictures published on social media showed some buildings on fire in the region, in a disputed area around the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan. Among the burned properties were a border post, more than 20 homes, a school, eight shops and a casino[!!], according to the Kyrgyz emergencies...

The Russian Foreign Ministry has displaced a wrong map showing Pamir and Wakhan areas, located in the northern province of Badakhshan, out of Afghanistan's territory. Two days ago, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a map which indicated a path from Pakistan to Tajikistan via Badakhshan's areas of Wakhan and Pamir. The map didn't include some areas of Pamir and Wakhan as part of Afghanistan's soil. But the Russian Foreign Ministry said in an explanatory statement that the map presented on the Website was schematic and may not provide an accurate representation of national borders. However, such acts by the officials...

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,...

In 2011, Tajikistan ceded 1,000 square kilometers of territory to China in return for some debt forgiveness. In July this year, an article in Chinese news outlets claimed that Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains historically belonged to China and should be returned. That article unsettled the Tajik government. How much territory is involved? An easy way to find out is to look up China’s borders on Google Earth and Google Maps. Google is infested with Chinese employees whose greatest loyalty is to their motherland. So on Google Earth, normally a border is marked with a yellow line. Where China wants some...

China is opening up another front in its relentless drive to expand its territorial claims. The latest target of the Communist Party’s seemingly insatiable expansionist agenda is the central Asian republic of Tajikistan. More than 90 per cent of the territory of this Muslim majority country is mountainous. Recent articles in the state-controlled Chinese media, which don’t publish anything without the prior approval of the Communist Party, have called for Tajikistan’s Pamir mountain range, which runs along the Tajik border with Afghanistan and China, to be ceded to China. According to a report in the Times of India, these include...

Matches played without any fans in attendance following World Health Organisation warnings that people in Tajikistan should avoid crowdsEhson Boboev scored in stoppage time to give Khatlon a 2-1 win over Istaravshan on Sunday as Tajikistan's league season kicked off on schedule despite most football around the world being shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. The match was played without any fans in attendance following World Health Organisation warnings that people in Tajikistan should avoid crowds, although the ex-Soviet Union state has not confirmed a single case of the coronavirus. Shirtless football fans pack the stands as Belarusian football...

The real reason for Ric Grenell’s appointment as Acting DNI becomes clear. – As Democrats and their corrupt media toadies were scrambling to find some way, any way, to kill off the surging Bernie Sanders campaign, Acting DNI Ric Grenell was moving quickly behind the scenes to finally, at long last identify and rid the Trump Administration of all the Deep State snakes in the Intelligence Community. Trendy Footwear for Men & Women Huge sale on performance footwear at Ariat.com Deep State hack Adam Goldman and two other fake reporters at the New York Times published a panicked piece about...

Overheard at Tajikistan Airport Security Checkpoint, Second Amendment: Image from Google maps, altered by Dean Weingarten In December of 2019, a long-time friend, missionary, and adventurer was standing in line to be checked for entry into Tajikistan, at the airport. Some of the adventures he has had over the years have been worthy of fictional men of action. In this case, he exercised discretion and did not become involved. The conversation he overheard is worth relating. Here is his account: We had just landed and were herded into line for passport control in the country of Tajikistan. I heard an...

"I Don't Know Why They Attacked Our Village": Persecution of Christians, February 2019 by During just the first two weeks of February, "[a]t least 10 incidents of vandalism and desecration of Catholic churches have been reported in France." — Catholicherald.co.uk, February 15, 2019; France. "The attack was so terrible that Haroon's kidney was cut into two pieces" from the stabbings....After he was rushed to hospital, "doctors were forced to remove his kidney." As is common in such cases, police and local authorities tried to pressure the family not to press charges against the Muslim youths.... — Persecution.org; International Christian Concern;...

In 990AD, the Archbishop of Canterbury named Sigeric the Serious had a more practical reason to walk to Rome. Having risen into his prestigious office, he needed to visit the Vatican to be ordained and collect his official garments. At the time he made the journey, there were many different paths to Rome. But Sigeric, who’d left from Canterbury, wrote down his route home through Italy, Switzerland, France and into the UK, cataloguing the towns he stayed in on his journey. The route he took now makes up the official Via Francigena. The only part that cannot be completed on...

Born in New York, Jay grew up in Monmouth County, attended the University of Delaware, and earned a master's degree from Georgetown University. It was at Georgetown that Jay met fellow unicorn-chaser Lauren Geoghegan. Austin, a vegan, spent his days advocating for sustainable living, worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) during the Obama administration, and owned a trendy micro-house he parked in Washington... In 2017, Jay decided to follow in Julian Roman's footsteps and tempt fate. At the time, Austin wrote on his bicycle blog that "[t]here's magic out there, in this great big beautiful world."...

Asked why they had quit their office jobs and set off on a biking journey around the world, the young American couple offered a simple explanation: They had grown tired of the meetings and teleconferences, of the time sheets and password changes. “There’s magic out there, in this great big beautiful world,” wrote Jay Austin who, along with his partner, Lauren Geoghegan, gave his two weeks’ notice last year before shipping his bicycle to Africa... Then came Day 369, when the couple was biking in formation with a group of other tourists on a panoramic stretch of road in southwestern...

Shortened title. Full tile: Bleeding-Heart Liberals Bike Through Tajikistan to Prove “Evil Is a Make-Believe Concept” — Are Stabbed Dead By ISIS A young American couple quit their jobs to bike across central Asia. he couple, Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, were posting about their adventures online. Jay wrote that “evil is a make-believe concept” in one of his last posts. The couple wanted to share their openheartedness with all of the people they met on their journey. In Tajikistan they were murdered by ISIS. Both cyclists were found with several knife wounds. ISIS posted a photo after killing the...

Authorities have identified four cyclists who were killed while riding in Tajikistan in an attack that has been claimed by the IS terror group. The victims had all kept online blogs documenting their intercontinental bike journeys. A couple from Washington DC who quit their jobs to cycle and had already toured three continents were among those killed in Sunday's attack. The other two were a Swiss citizen and a Dutch national. American couple Lauren Geoghegan and Jay Austin, both 29, had been travelling for over a year. In April, Mr Austin wrote during a bike tour of Morocco: "Badness exists,...