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... However, Russia experts and a Wagner defector who told the ICC that the Kremlin had ordered "atrocities" in Ukraine have noted several bizarre occurrences on the night of the terror attack. Former GRU Colonel Igor Salikov says that police units supposedly disappeared around the time of the attack, while Vlad's elite forces stationed nearby also failed to show. He claims it all points to a "botched inside job" by the FSB or a poorly executed response by Russian emergency services. Another key detail is the amateur way the four gunmen handled their Kalashnikov machine guns despite ISIS fighters undergoing...

An international team of researchers... In a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution... found that the indigenous populations of inner Eurasia are very diverse in their genes, culture and languages, but divide into three groups that stretch across the area in east-west geographic bands... This vast area can also be divided into several distinct ecological regions that stretch in largely east-west bands across Inner Eurasia, consisting of the deserts at the southern edge of the region, the steppe in the central part, taiga forests further north, and tundra towards the Arctic region. The subsistence strategies used by indigenous groups...

In Dushanbe, a young man, dressed as Santa Claus, was killed by a mob of young people, shouting accusations of "infidel," as a senior source in the Tajik Interior Ministry disclosed. "The young man had decided to congratulate his relatives dressed up in a Santa Claus outfit. When he approached the door of his house, he was attacked by a mob of about 30 young people, shouting, "Tu kofiri" ("Infidel"), who inflicted on Parviz numerous stab wounds from which he died in the hospital," - said the source. The authorities have admitted the fact that 24-year old Parviz Davlatbekov had...

A number of experts think the U.S. should abandon its “top down” strategy of building an Afghan national army and should switch to arming and paying local tribes to fight the Taliban. Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, appearing Thursday at a Capitol Hill conference sponsored by RAND, said he closely examined former Soviet counterinsurgencies in Poland and the Ukraine. In both cases, the Soviets successfully levered small, locally recruited militia forces to successfully battle numerically superior anti-regime insurgents. He warned of the perils of trying to police xenophobic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Pahstuns with an Afghan national army. A better...

August 11, 2009 MEANWHILE, IN TAJIKISTAN Interfax reports on the recent conviction of five members of the Tablighi Jamaat "for making public calls for a forcible change of the constitutional system of Tajikistan, a crime enshrined by Article 304 of the Tajik Criminal Code." The individuals sentenced were identified as Tajiks Khidoyatullo Alimov, Zielukhak Khakdodov and Saidakram Khakdodov, and two Russian nationals, Nasriddin Murodov and Mahmud Makhmadzhodzhayev. Reuters and Interfax both report on the death of an alleged IMU activist outside of Dushanbe named Lutfullo Tursunov, while RFE/RL casts doubt on that report, instead saying that one Shavkat Yusufov was...

OPERATION: ENDURING FREEDOM Taliban hunting an American? Opposition leader executed reportedly accompanied by U.S. agent By Toby Westerman © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com At the same time some 1,500 opponents of the Taliban – warriors and holy men – gathered in Peshawar, Pakistan, to lay plans for the next Afghan government, Taliban fighters located and killed one of their most influential opponents – and may be hunting for an American reported to have accompanied him. Abdul Haq, a well-known hero of the anti-Soviet guerrilla war and long-standing opponent of the Taliban, was found south of the Afghan capital, Kabul, captured and then killed, ...

WASHINGTON, Nov 01, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Already divided between north and south, war-ravaged Afghanistan appears to be moving toward a more permanent partition.The process of partition began long before the extremist Taliban militia was formed in 1994. According to some analysts it started with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.Created as a buffer zone between British India and the former Russian empire, Afghanistan survived the departure of the British from the subcontinent in 1947 because the fear of Soviet communism kept its various factions together.The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and its disgraceful ...

More than 10 million Afghans will... cast ballots to choose their president on Saturday, in the first direct election for head of state in the nation's 5,000-year history.... After the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan faced enormous challenges, the lack of a legitimate political system, the existence of warlords with private militias, the absence of effective national institutions -- and desperate poverty. Though none of these problems has been fully overcome, significant progress is now being made against all. Step by step, the Afghans are rebuilding an effective state and political system. At last year's Constitutional Loya Jirga (or political...