Central Asia

Chinese state media are touting the China-Central Asia Summit, held on Thursday and Friday in the historic northwestern Chinese city of Xian, as a counter to the Group of Seven (G7) gather of democracies in Japan this weekend.

Protesters who say they have lost loved ones to China’s genocide of Turkic people in occupied East Turkistan told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on Wednesday that the government of Kazakhstan threatened and, in some cases, arrested them in anticipation of Xi Jinping’s visit to the country this week.

Beijing has recently ramped up its use of established extradition treaties with Central Asian nations to target Chinese-origin Uyghurs and transport them back to China to face criminal proceedings for alleged offenses, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported on Monday.

An estimated 14,000 Russians have fled to Turkey since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last month, Turkey’s Hürriyet Daily News reported on Monday.

Afghanistan’s power supply may be cut off in the coming weeks if the Taliban fails to pay outstanding electricity bills due to the country’s main energy providers in Central Asia, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

U.S. Gen. Mark Milley allegedly asked his Russian counterpart last week to clarify an earlier offer by Russian President Vladimir Putin for the U.S. to use Russian military bases in Central Asia to monitor emerging security threats from Afghanistan, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Monday, citing unnamed U.S. government officials.

China and Tajikistan completed a two-day joint military drill in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe on Thursday designed to test the two nations’ anti-terrorism preparedness along their respective land borders with Afghanistan, the state-run China Daily reported.

The Russian armed forces will join China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for a joint military drill in northern China in early August, China’s national defense ministry announced Thursday.

China expects Afghanistan’s Taliban terror group to “be committed to friendly relations with all neighboring countries,” according to remarks made by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during a joint press conference with Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin in Dushanbe on Wednesday.

Afghanistan’s Taliban “won’t easily fall into the trap” allegedly laid by U.S. media to coerce the Sunni Islam-based terror group into publicly denouncing China’s genocide against Muslim ethnic minorities in China’s westernmost region of Xinjiang, China’s state-run Global Times argued Monday.

China wants to serve as “a mediator, or a ‘guarantor of security'” on the Afghanistan issue, China’s state-run Global Times reported on Sunday, in response to the Taliban’s growing dominance of most of the country.

President Biden is racing to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans awaiting U.S. visas for aiding the American war effort.

Chinese state media on Wednesday anticipated greater influence for Beijing in Afghanistan after U.S. and NATO withdrawal, suggesting China’s firm hand could restore order to bloody chaos after the “failure” of America’s twenty-year intervention.

The government of Turkmenistan held ceremonies in the nation’s capital, Ashgabat, this week to debut a series of “social and cultural centers,” at the heart of which will be a nearly 20-foot-tall statue of a golden dog.

Police have arrested a migrant from Tajikistan, wanted for being a member of Islamic State, who had been living in Greece for three years in a house given to him by an NGO.

The government of Turkmenistan banned the use of the word “coronavirus” in public and empowered police to arrest anyone wearing medical masks in public, Reporters Without Borders revealed on Tuesday.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan proposed at a summit in Kyrgyzstan on Monday that Middle East and Central Asian countries should stop trading in the U.S. dollar and instead use their domestic currencies.

Contents: Iran gives operational control of its Chabahar seaport to India; Comparing Iran’s Chabahar seaport vs Pakistan’s Gwadar seaport

Retired CIA station chief Scott Uehlinger, host of “The Station Chief” podcast, joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Friday’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss the New York City truck terror attack, which Marlow noted has put Central Asia on many Americans’ threat radar for the first time.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan has offered the United States “all forces and resources” necessary to properly investigate the case of Sayfullo Saipov, the 29-year-old arrested after allegedly barreling through a Manhattan bicycle lane, killing eight, and reportedly telling authorities he killed in the name of the Islamic State.

Moscow is trying to reestablish Russia as a superpower and extend its geopolitical sphere of influence by undermining the United States and capitalizing on the chaos in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Libya, and beyond, according to American military officials and analysts.

Beijing plans to expand its influence across the Middle East and other Muslim-majority regions in response to a propaganda video purportedly showing Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL)-linked jihadists threatening to attack China, Voice of America (VOA) has learned from some analysts.

Central Asia’s political rumor mill has been swirling with reports that Uzbekistan’s mysterious leader, Islam Karimov, may have died after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage last week.

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AP) — Central Asia’s autocratic leaders don’t want to be liked. They want to be adored.

Meet Arsenal tycoon Alisher Usmanov’s glamorous niece-in-law, an Uzbek ‘princess’ who dresses Russia’s oligarch kids in costumes costing £5,000, equivalent to the annual pay of 13 people on a minimum wage in her native Uzbekistan.

The government of Tajikistan has banned Christmas trees, gifts, and New Year’s “festive meals” as part of a greater attempt to minimize Western cultural influences within the country.

The government of Turkmenistan has recently issued the latest in a series of bizarre decrees from Central Asia, strictly regulating the naming of horses and criminalizing a failure to issue a horse a proper burial upon its death.

Contents: Violence flares in Central Asia’s Fergana Valley; Brief generational history of Uzbekistan; Rise of ISIS raises militant Islamist concerns in Central Asia

(Reuters) – Uzbekistan’s veteran leader Islam Karimov easily won another five years at the helm of Central Asia’s most populous nation in an election that Europe’s main security body criticized for lacking genuine opposition.