Documentary filmmaker and visual anthropologist Almira Saifullina explores how landscapes preserve traces of Soviet violence, forced displacement and family memory. In this interview with Novastan, she discusses her new film project DALA, the legacy of Karlag in Central Kazakhstan, the risks of aestheticizing historical trauma, and her earlier work in Mongolia and Uzbekistan.

Novastan: Could you introduce yourself to Novastan’s readers? How would you describe your path into cinema, visual anthropology and documentary research?

Soutien à Novastan

Almira Saifullina: My name is Almira Saifullina. I am a documentary filmmaker and visual anthropologist.

My journey began with a passion for documentary photography at a young age. With the first money I ever earned, I bought a camera and started photographing the world around me. My first conscious attempt to explore people’s lives through a camera came in 2011, when I travelled across Uzbekistan and created my first photo series. Looking back, I think that was my first step into documentary filmmaking and visual anthropology, although at the time I did not know those disciplines had names.

I continued searching for my own language and tools, and in 2014 I enrolled at the Moscow School of New Cinema. There I met friends and like-minded collaborators with whom I began making films. In 2022, after several years working in documentary cinema, I realised that I wanted to give a new form to my visual method and expand the boundaries of how knowledge and art can be produced. I enrolled in a master’s programme in Visual Anthropology in Berlin. That experience gave a new impulse to my work.

You have lived and worked in different cities and countries, including Kyiv, Kazakhstan, Moscow and elsewhere. How has this personal geography influenced your perspective as a filmmaker?

I was born in Kyiv, where my father was completing postgraduate studies. Three months later, however, we left because of the Chernobyl disaster and returned to Karaganda, in central Kazakhstan, where my family comes from.

After that came many moves across Kazakhstan: Almaty in the 1990s, Astana in the 2000s, then Moscow, and later the wider world. I have had a fairly nomadic biography, moving between cities and countries since birth.

I think this path has allowed me not to become trapped within a single locality. It has given me a broader view of the world and made me more open to different cultures. At the same time, there are disadvantages. I cannot describe myself as a filmmaker of one particular country, nor can I fully claim any place as my own in every sense. I do not possess a deeply local insider’s perspective. In that sense, it is a double-edged sword.

How did Kazakhstan become part of your biography and creative imagination? What does it mean for you to film and research Kazakhstan today?

Kazakhstan is my homeland and a place of constant return. My family lives there, and my ancestors are buried there.

For the past several years, I have been working on a new film with the working title DALA, which is my first film shot in Kazakhstan.

At the same time, it is a difficult project because I do not have the same distance that I had when filming in Mongolia or Uzbekistan. Many things pass directly through me. They affect me emotionally and draw me into the history of my own family.

Yet I also feel an absolute artistic and personal necessity to make a film in my homeland, however emotionally demanding that may be.

In some ways, I am glad that I am making a film in Kazakhstan now, after having gained substantial experience in documentary cinema. It allows me to engage with complex themes while focusing more on meaning and less on the practical challenges of production.

You studied economics at Moscow State University before turning to filmmaking and later studying directing at the Moscow School of New Cinema. How did that transition happen? Were there any films, directors or artistic discoveries that particularly influenced your decision to pursue cinema?

Since childhood, I have been drawn to art and to expressing myself through it. Studying economics at Moscow State University was more of a compromise shaped by circumstances than a genuine passion for economics.

When I moved to Moscow in 2005, however, I discovered auteur cinema. Someone introduced me to the Mir Iskusstva cinema, which at the time was a gathering place for young people who wanted to study, watch and even make a different kind of cinema. They screened masterpieces from around the world.

I spent nearly all my free time there. Those films were a revelation.

The real turning point came when I discovered the work of Artavazd Peleshian. Through his short films, I felt the magic and power of cinema. They awakened in me an irresistible desire to work in film and to make the invisible visible.

What did the Moscow School of New Cinema give you in terms of artistic method, discipline and freedom? Were there teachers, directors, films or exercises that changed the way you observe people and spaces?

More than anything, the Moscow School of New Cinema gave me close friends and like-minded collaborators. They became my greatest source of inspiration.

Together we explored cinema, dramaturgy, cinematography and editing. We experimented with form and language, discussed ideas endlessly, and learned by making films together.

I studied there at the very beginning of the school’s history, what I consider its golden period. It was a fortunate moment when we were not yet concerned with industry questions such as funding, distribution, professional status or careers. We existed entirely within the space of art and ideas. We dreamed about cinema and searched for ourselves through it.

We supported one another and worked on each other’s films with complete commitment and enthusiasm. It was a very special environment. It gave me an important foundation, and the discoveries that emerged from that collective experience profoundly shaped the way I observe life and transform it into cinema.

Your work sits at the intersection of documentary cinema, visual anthropology and practice-based research. Do you see yourself primarily as a filmmaker, a researcher, an anthropologist, or someone who moves between these roles?

First and foremost, I see myself as an author.

Filmmaking, research and visual anthropology are different angles, different tools and different methods. Yet they all follow the same trajectory. I observe the world, study it, live through it and reflect on it. Then I materialise that knowledge in one form or another so that it can be shared with others.

For me, a film is not an illustration of research that has already been completed. The process of making a film itself – observation, filming, being present in a space, building relationships with participants, and later working with the material through editing- becomes a form of research.

Very often, it is during filming or editing that I begin to understand things I could neither see nor articulate beforehand. Cinema is therefore not only a form of expression for me; it is also a way of producing knowledge.

I move between these different roles and sometimes blend them together, but for me they are all parts of the same process. I believe that the intersection of anthropological inquiry and documentary filmmaking is where some of the most interesting forms and subjects are emerging today. In many ways, that intersection is not the future anymore- it is already the present.

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Your current project DALA focuses on Soviet forced deportations, labour camps and industrial experiments in Central Kazakhstan. How did this project begin?

This project grew out of my interest in the history of my home region, Karaganda and the wider Karaganda oblast. I would regularly travel there, filming the steppe and sites of memory, visiting former Gulag camp territories. For a long time, however, this remained more of a personal historical interest.

In 2022, I began to see this history from a different perspective and realized that it concerned me much more deeply than I had previously understood. My own family arrived in Central Kazakhstan as a result of forced displacement. The family of my great-grandfather, who was a mullah, was deported from Orenburg to the Karaganda steppe. I grew up in a region whose population was largely shaped by deportations, exile, labour camps and the industrialization that followed.

Over the last two years, together with my cinematographer, I have travelled across the steppe in search of camp remains, former camp settlements, buildings, burial sites and other traces of this history. Gradually, these journeys became more than a process of collecting material. They turned into a way of understanding how the violence of the past continues to exist within the contemporary landscape, within family memory and within the very structure of the region itself.

DALA means “steppe” in Kazakh. Why did the steppe become the central image and space of the project?

Because the steppe is a blank canvas upon which people and historical events have drawn their own picture. It is like a guiding thread, a silent protagonist that follows you everywhere, a place where you inevitably encounter things you would often rather avoid.

The steppe is a silent witness to what human beings do. It is a place of life and death, suffering, memory, cruelty and violence, but also of humility and mercy.

In the film, the steppe becomes more than an image or a backdrop. It becomes a space of inquiry. We move through it in search of camp remains and historical artefacts that have sometimes almost completely merged with the landscape itself.

You describe the steppe as a kind of archive. What can the landscape tell us about violence, memory and history that documents or official archives often cannot?

The steppe offers a direct, physical encounter with history.

When local historians show you how a transit camp was organized, how the camp system functioned, where prisoners were transported from and to, when you enter a prison building and find yourself inside a punishment cell, or stand inside a barrack where prisoners once lived, you immediately gain a different understanding of historical events, their significance, the conditions people endured and the realities they experienced.

No document can provide that kind of experience.

It is a form of immersion into history through space and through one’s own body.

At the same time, the landscape does not speak directly. Very often, what you see is simply steppe, ruins or an ordinary house. You need to search, listen to local residents and regional historians, and compare what you see with archival sources and testimonies. Only then does the landscape begin to reveal itself as an archive.

For readers unfamiliar with this history, could you explain what the Karaganda camp system, or Karlag, was? Why is it so important for understanding Soviet repression in Kazakhstan?

It is important to understand Karlag not as a single camp surrounded by barbed wire, but as a vast and highly complex system of camp branches, farms, industrial enterprises and settlements spread across a significant part of Central Kazakhstan.

Karlag was established in 1931 and reported directly to the central Gulag administration in Moscow. Its administrative centre was located in the settlement of Dolinka, near Karaganda.

The territory of Karlag stretched roughly 300 kilometres from north to south and 200 kilometres from west to east. By the early 1950s, the system included more than two hundred camp branches and facilities.

In many ways, Karlag functioned as a state within a state, with its own administration, production system, agricultural sector, transport network, prisons and vast numbers of forced labourers.

Prisoners and special settlers were used as labour for the development of agriculture, construction, mining and the coal and metallurgical industries of Central Kazakhstan. Karlag was therefore not only a system of punishment and isolation. It was also one of the key instruments of Soviet industrialization and the colonial development of the region.

Karlag is essential to understanding Kazakhstan’s history because labour camps, mass deportations and forced labour all played a role in creating the modern face of the region: its cities, mines, factories, roads and multi-ethnic population.

This is not a separate chapter of history that existed somewhere outside ordinary life. In many respects, it is one of the foundations upon which contemporary Central Kazakhstan was built.

What traces of Karlag and other forms of Soviet violence remain visible today: buildings, ruins, archives, graves, family stories, silences, industrial landscapes?

There are many traces, although not all of them are immediately recognized as traces of violence.

The former Karlag administration building in Dolinka still stands and now houses a museum. Individual prison facilities, barracks, agricultural buildings, camp settlements, railway stations through which prisoners arrived, and transport routes have also survived.

There are mass graves, the Spassk Memorial, and “Mamochkino Cemetery”, where women prisoners and children connected to the Karlag system were buried.

Yet much of this history is not preserved in museums or memorials.

Some former camp buildings are still inhabited. Others have become ruins or have nearly disappeared into the steppe. Sometimes all that remains of a camp site is a foundation, part of a wall, fragments of wire, a few trees or a subtle change in the landscape that would be impossible to identify without the explanation of a local historian.

There are also Soviet archives, personal files, photographs, letters, memoirs of former prisoners and special settlers, family archives and oral histories passed down through generations.

Family memory often preserves things that official documents do not: how a person arrived in Kazakhstan, what happened to them, how the family survived, what they chose to forget or what they were afraid to discuss.

And, of course, one of the most important traces is the industrial landscape of Central Kazakhstan itself. Mines, factories, railways and workers’ settlements are now seen as natural parts of the region, even though many were created or developed through the labour of prisoners and special settlers.

The traces of Karlag are therefore everywhere. They often remain invisible precisely because they have become part of everyday life.

How do people living in these places today relate to this history? Is it present in everyday life, or does it remain marginalized and largely invisible?

This is a densely populated region, so I would be cautious about making broad generalizations.

Most people know the history of the region to some extent. For many, the history of repression, deportation, exile and subsequent industrial development forms part of their own family history.

A significant proportion of the region’s non-Kazakh population still lives there today: Germans, Koreans, Chechens, Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars and many others. Yet the reasons why these communities arrived in Kazakhstan differ greatly, and it would be inaccurate to reduce all of these histories solely to repression and deportation.

I would say that this history is present in everyday life in a fragmented way.

Some people know in great detail how their family arrived there and preserve documents, photographs and stories. Others know only fragments. Still others view the mining towns, workers’ settlements and multi-ethnic character of the region as something entirely natural, without questioning how these realities came into existence.

As a result, the past is simultaneously everywhere and almost invisible. It exists in surnames, family histories, buildings, cemeteries and the layout of cities, but it is not always explicitly recognized as the product of specific historical policies.

How is Kazakhstan engaging today with the memory of Soviet repression? Are there museums, archives, research centres, NGOs or memorial initiatives supporting this work?

In recent years, Kazakhstan has undertaken substantial state-led work in this field.

A State Commission for the Full Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression was established. Hundreds of thousands of people have been rehabilitated. Large numbers of archival documents have been declassified, collections of materials have been published and a unified electronic database has been created.

There are state museums dedicated to Karlag in Dolinka and ALZHIR near Astana, as well as regional museums, archives and research projects. Every year on May 31st, Kazakhstan commemorates the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression and Famine. Numerous memorials and monuments dedicated to victims of repression and the Asharshylyk famine have also been erected.

It would therefore be incorrect to say that the state is doing nothing or that this history is completely silenced. On the contrary, it has been officially acknowledged, and a tremendous amount of material has been collected and made accessible in recent years.

However, in my view, this remains insufficient, particularly when it comes to drawing lessons from this history and critically examining contemporary social and political processes through the lens of how the Soviet system, and especially Stalinist repression in the 1930s-1950s, shaped present-day Kazakhstan.

I believe there is a need for more civic initiatives devoted to working through this difficult past. This work should not be confined to official history, state archives, museums and commemorative dates. It should also exist within civic discourse.

Memory should not be preserved exclusively within state institutions. It should remain a living and open space where difficult questions can be asked.

What remains the most difficult aspect of this work of memory today: access to archives, recognition of victims, public interest, political sensitivity or passing memory on to younger generations?

Perhaps the most difficult challenge is transforming documents, museums, monuments and official commemorations into a living public engagement with the past.

Archives can be opened, victims rehabilitated and monuments erected, but that does not necessarily mean that society has truly reflected on what happened.

The consequences of repression remain present in families, in the fear of speaking openly, in attitudes toward the state, and in lost histories and identities.

The subject remains politically sensitive, but that is precisely why honest and open engagement is so important for Kazakh society.

For younger generations, it is not enough simply to transmit facts. We need to create spaces in which this history can provoke genuine questions.

How can filmmakers represent sites of historical violence without aestheticizing suffering or turning memory into spectacle?

I do not yet have a definitive answer to that question. In many ways, I am still working through it as part of this film.

The risk of aestheticization is particularly high in the steppe because the steppe is inherently beautiful and cinematic. A camera can very easily transform a site of violence into a beautiful landscape and thereby obscure what actually happened there.

I do not want to reconstruct suffering, artificially intensify emotions or turn camp ruins into scenery.

I am more interested in sustained observation of space and material traces, in working with archives, with the voices of descendants and with silence itself.

I hope that the final form of the film will emerge through the process of filming and editing.

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Your film My Father Genghis Khan was shot in Mongolia. Why did you turn to Mongolia, and what made you realize that this experience could become a full-length film?

I first encountered Mongolia through a photo essay published in Russian Reporter magazine by the renowned photographer Sergey Maximishin. It told the story of a ballerina from a ger district. Her name was Baska. She attended ballet school in Ulaanbaatar and then returned home to the ger settlements on the outskirts of the city.

I was struck by the contrast between the different realities in which she lived, particularly on a visual level.

Through Maximishin, I got in touch with her. We initially became acquainted remotely. I then invited my classmate and cinematographer, Leonid Nikiforenko, to travel with me and make a film. At the time, it sounded like a complete adventure, but we both believed in it and decided to go.

When we arrived in Mongolia and saw everything with our own eyes, it became clear that our protagonist was not only Baska herself, but also the reality surrounding her and the people living within it.

Watch the trailer here: My Father Genghis Khan

Everything looked incredibly cinematic. We felt a strong desire to film, and as often happens in such situations, the film seemed to come to us on its own – or rather, into our camera.

We filmed not only in Ulaanbaatar but also in provincial areas where nomadic ways of life remained much more visible in everyday life.

What did you observe in Mongolia regarding the transition from rural or nomadic life to Ulaanbaatar? How visible was this shift in housing, infrastructure, work, air pollution and family life?

We filmed the documentary ten years ago, and I am sure many things have changed since then. At the time, however, there was a strong sense that Mongolia was undergoing rapid economic, political and social transformation.

At the same time, there was also a feeling of uncertainty, as though many people were struggling to keep pace with these changes.

This was particularly visible in Ulaanbaatar, where large numbers of former nomads were moving and attempting to adapt to urban life. Such a transition inevitably created numerous social challenges: a radically different way of life, unemployment, and the difficulties of adjusting to both city life and permanent settlement.

People arriving in the city rarely moved directly into apartments. Instead, they first set up their gers on the outskirts, in the now well-known ger districts. Many lacked sewage systems, reliable heating and other forms of urban infrastructure. This situation contributed significantly to the severe air pollution affecting the city.

In the provinces, life seemed to change more slowly. There, it was still possible to immerse oneself more deeply in nomadic culture, which remained an important part of everyday life, even as it continued to evolve under the influence of modern civilization.

Many people associate both Kazakhstan and Mongolia with nomadic life, yurts and the steppe. Beyond these images, what deeper similarities did you notice between the two countries?

When I first arrived in Mongolia to make the film, I saw a picture that strongly reminded me of Kazakhstan in the 1990s and early 2000s.

It was largely an intuitive and visual impression: new architecture rising in the middle of the steppe, a fascination with large-scale projects, fragmented infrastructure and a broader atmosphere of transition.

Both countries were experiencing rapid urbanization, the expansion of their capitals, internal migration and a pronounced divide between the centre and the periphery.

At the same time, Mongolia followed its own distinct historical trajectory. It was never formally part of the Soviet Union, although it was strongly influenced by it. In my view, Mongolia had more opportunities to preserve aspects of its traditional way of life.

In everyday life, Buddhism and shamanism are far more visible there, as is the direct connection to the land and to nomadic culture.

Kazakhstan, by contrast, underwent far more extensive industrialization, collectivization and forced transformation of traditional lifestyles.

As a result, the apparent similarity of the steppe landscapes conceals very different historical experiences.

In Mulberry, you portray Bukhara through the story of Bekhzod, a young man entering adulthood through marriage and traditional rites of passage. Why Bukhara, why Bekhzod, and what did his story reveal about masculinity and patriarchy in Uzbekistan?

I first came to Bukhara in 2011, and this remarkable city resonated deeply with me. I returned several times afterwards.

Sometimes certain places create the feeling that you are coming home. That is exactly what happened to me in Bukhara, and it made me want to make a film there.

From the beginning, I was drawn to the image of the mulberry tree standing in the courtyard of the Kalyan Mosque, as well as to the local culture and daily life that I wanted to explore beyond the usual tourist routes.

Watch the trailer here: Mulberry

By chance, I met Bekhzod. He helped me find my hostel in the old city. Later, I realised that he would become my guide into Bukhara’s inner life.

By following Bekhzod and the events unfolding in his life, I gradually discovered the film’s central theme, its conflict and its narrative direction.

For me, Bekhzod’s story became a story about constrained choices and predetermined life paths within a patriarchal society, where men, especially young men, can become just as trapped by traditional norms and social hierarchies as women, although in different ways.

This pressure rarely appears openly. It is seldom discussed publicly and often remains internalized, sometimes even unconsciously. Yet it exerts a significant emotional burden.

How did you film in Bukhara given the strong separation of male and female spaces in certain contexts? How did you gain access to rituals, family interiors or religious spaces such as mosques?

I spent roughly four years with Bekhzod and his family, and during that time we developed close and trusting relationships.

I entered the family circle as a guest, which meant I was invited to family celebrations, wedding rituals and religious ceremonies. Quite quickly, the protagonists stopped paying attention to the camera.

Access to mosques during religious rituals was indeed more complicated because I am a woman filming men. I tried to work discreetly and respectfully, remaining sensitive both to the events themselves and to the people involved.

Another friend from Bukhara, whom I met during the making of the film, also helped me obtain filming permissions when necessary.

For Novastan readers interested in discovering your work, where can they watch DALA, My Father Genghis Khan, Mulberry and your other films? Are they available online, at festivals, through private screeners, streaming platforms or upon request?

Work on DALA is still ongoing, so the film is not yet available for viewing.

My Father Genghis Khan can already be watched online, and I hope that Mulberry will soon become available on one of the online streaming platforms as well.

At the same time, readers are always welcome to contact me directly. I am happy to share viewing links to my films upon request.

Interview with Almira Saifullina by Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English, and Maya Ivanova, Contributor for Novastan-English

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The post Almira Saifullina: “The steppe is an archive of violence, memory and silence” appeared first on Novastan English.

Some books are interesting because they tell a story. The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini is interesting because it captures an entire world at the moment before it disappears.

Through the eyes of a clever, frightened and observant boy in late nineteenth-century Bukhara, Sadriddin Aini turns childhood into history. Village schools, sandstorms, canals, cholera, hunger, superstition, poetry, cruelty and humour all pass through the same narrow lanes.

The result is more than a memoir: it is a portrait of old Central Asia, and a quiet explanation of why that world could not remain unchanged.

Why the past refused to become propaganda

Originally published in Tajik as Yoddoštho / Ёддоштҳо between 1949 and 1954 in Stalinabad (now Dushanbe), The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini, appeared in English in 1998. Published at a time when Soviet writers were often expected to celebrate factories, production and Stalinist progress, Aini instead returned to childhood. That choice matters because the book is not a nostalgic retreat into the past. It is Aini’s attempt to explain how a child of old Bukhara became a modern writer, reformer and Soviet-era national figure.

Also read on Novastan: “Hafiz Saifullaev’s prose marks a fruitful turning point in Russian-language Tajik literature”

The book begins in rural Bukhara, among village celebrations, halva workshops, shifting sands, irrigation canals, family disputes, religious lessons, fasting, fairs, harvests and death. Aini writes about the physical struggle of everyday life: villagers fighting sandstorms, digging canals, enduring hunger and disease. But he also captures the mental universe of the time: fear of demons, belief in exorcism, the authority of religious teachers, the prestige of Persian poetry and the weight of inherited customs.

One of the most striking things about the book is that it does not read like simple Soviet propaganda. Aini certainly condemns the old order. Poverty, superstition, arbitrary power, clerical abuse and social cruelty appear throughout the book. However, the book does not present history as a clean march from darkness to socialism. Lenin is absent; Saadi is present. Poetry often matters more than ideology.

That ambiguity made Aini’s work powerful, but also politically delicate. Aini was not an anti-Soviet dissident, and Yoddoštho was published in the Soviet Union. The memoirs could be read as anti-feudal, anti-clerical and pro-enlightenment, which made them acceptable to Soviet editors. Yet his writing sat uneasily within Soviet nationality policy. It preserved a Persianate world of Islamic learning, village ethics, oral memory and Bukharan social complexity. It helped build modern Tajik identity while also describing a shared Central Asian past that did not fit neatly into Soviet national borders.

Bukhara between Tajik and Uzbek memory

The renewed relevance of The Sands of Oxus lies in the fact that Central Asia is once again debating its past. Jadidism, Bukhara, colonialism, Soviet modernisation, Islamic heritage, national identity and the relationship between Uzbek and Tajik cultural histories are all being reconsidered.

Aini stands exactly at that intersection. He was born in what is now Uzbekistan, wrote across Tajik and Uzbek contexts, and described Bukhara, a city central to both national narratives. His memoirs are therefore not only personal recollections. They are an archive of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Central Asian life: village customs, schools, professions, beliefs, family structures and social hierarchies.

This is why the book speaks so strongly today. It recalls a Central Asia before national borders hardened, when Persianate culture, Turkic speech, Islamic education, local identities and imperial pressures overlapped in complicated ways.

In Tajikistan: a national classic

In Tajikistan, Aini is foundational. He is not simply a writer, but a national institution: the father of modern Tajik prose, a builder of the literary language, and a figure through whom Tajik Soviet and post-Soviet identity have been narrated.

For Tajik readers, Yoddoštho is more than an autobiography. It is almost a national archive. Through Aini’s childhood, Bukhara becomes part of a recoverable Tajik past. Village life, old schools, artisans, religious figures, intellectuals and reformers all become elements of a literary homeland.

The book therefore carries emotional and cultural weight. It preserves a world that Tajik national memory claims as central to its own formation.

In Uzbekistan: a shared but sensitive legacy

In Uzbekistan, Aini’s reception is more layered. He belongs to Uzbek literary history as well: he lived in Bukhara and Samarkand, wrote in Uzbek contexts, and engaged with the Jadid and Soviet transformations of the region.

Yet his legacy is sensitive because his work also helped define a distinct Tajik literary identity, often by presenting Persian-speaking Bukhara as a central part of Tajik cultural history. In a country where Bukhara is one of the great symbols of Uzbek heritage, this creates a complex overlap rather than a simple national ownership.

Today, as Uzbekistan revalorises Jadidism and revisits its early modern intellectual history, Aini can be read in a new way: not only as a Soviet Tajik monument, but as a Bukharan intellectual whose life crossed the Uzbek-Tajik divide.

Before borders hardened

Beyond Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, The Sands of Oxus is less of a national classic, but it remains an important regional text. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, Aini does not occupy the same canonical place as national literary figures such as Abai, Chingiz Aitmatov or Makhtumkuli. Yet his memoirs illuminate a shared Central Asian problem: how traditional authority, religious education, rural poverty, imperial pressure and Soviet modernisation interacted before borders and national canons became fixed.

Also read on Novastan: Central Asia through the lens of… Behzod Boltayev

The book is therefore valuable not only for Tajik or Uzbek readers, but for anyone interested in how Central Asia entered the twentieth century.

A past too complex for Soviet ideology

The Sands of Oxus is not a fast book, but it is a rewarding one. Its power lies in detail: a schoolroom, a sandstorm, a canal, a death, a rumour, a poem, a beating, a feast. Through these fragments, Aini turns childhood into a map of pre-Soviet Central Asia.

The book refuses to belong neatly to one category. It is Tajik and Bukharan, Persianate and Soviet, autobiographical and political, nostalgic and accusatory. That refusal is exactly what makes it so relevant today. At a time when Central Asian states are reassessing Jadidism, Soviet rule, colonial legacies and the ownership of cities such as Bukhara, Aini’s memoirs are a reminder that the region’s past cannot be divided cleanly into today’s national narratives. They show a world where Persianate culture, Islamic learning, rural poverty and early reformist politics overlapped before Soviet borders turned shared histories into competing national legacies.

Maya Ivanova, Author for Novastan-English and Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English

The post Bukhara Before the Border: Aini and the Politics of Tajik-Uzbek Memory appeared first on Novastan English.

Few works of literature are as politically alive as the Kyrgyz epic Manas. It is not simply an old poem, nor only a heroic tale recited by specialists. In Kyrgyzstan, Manas is a national reference point, a school subject, a monument, an airport name, a political symbol and a language of identity. It tells the story of a people gathering around a hero, but it also helps explain how modern Kyrgyzstan imagines itself: independent, mountainous, resilient, threatened from outside, and always searching for unity.

A story too large to stay in the past

The origins of Manas are difficult to date precisely because the epic was transmitted orally for centuries before being written down. Kyrgyz tradition often presents it as a very ancient work, sometimes linked to events of the ninth or tenth century; Western scholarship has been more cautious, pointing out that the earliest references are much later and that parts of the plot may reflect political realities from later centuries. In 1995, four years after independence, Kyrgyzstan turned Manas into a state-building event: the UN General Assembly formally recognized the year as the millennium commemoration of the Kyrgyz national epic.

What is certain is that Manas belongs to a living oral tradition. It was performed by manaschi, epic reciters who chant the story without musical accompaniment and who are respected not just as performers, but as carriers of memory. UNESCO describes the trilogy of Manas, Semetey and Seytek as a work that expresses the historical memory of the Kyrgyz people and tells of the unification of scattered tribes into one nation.

What the epic is about

At its core, Manas is a heroic epic about unity, warfare, migration, leadership and survival. The central figure, Manas, is a warrior who gathers and defends the Kyrgyz people against powerful enemies. The wider trilogy continues through his son Semetey and grandson Seytek, turning the story into a multi-generational saga of struggle, succession, loyalty, betrayal and renewal. The trilogy is a narrative about Manas’ uniting the forty scattered Kyrgyz tribes against attacks by powerful neighbours and leading his people through the Altai and toward the Alai region.

Also read on Novastan: « Manastchy » : l’âme kirghize dans toute sa poésie

The epic is enormous, but its political grammar is clear: a people survive when they unite; a leader is legitimate when he protects the community; enemies are both external and internal; and identity is forged through memory, sacrifice and struggle. This is why Manas is not read merely as literature. It is often treated as a national code.

Why Manas matters so much to Kyrgyz people

For Kyrgyz people, Manas is important because it offers a deep narrative of origins and continuity. It links modern Kyrgyz identity to a heroic past, to nomadic culture, to the mountains, to clan memory and to the idea of unity among the “forty tribes”, a motif also echoed in the forty rays of the Kyrgyz flag. This matters especially because Kyrgyzstan, like other post-Soviet states, had to build a national story after 1991. Manas offered something older than the Soviet Union and broader than a modern state border. It gave independent Kyrgyzstan a heroic genealogy, a cultural anchor and a language of sovereignty. In a young state marked by regional divisions, political upheaval and economic vulnerability, the epic’s promise of unity has remained attractive.

Manas in school and education

Yes, Manas is studied in Kyrgyzstan. It appears in school education and in higher education through literature, cultural history and “Manas studies” or Manasovedenie. In schools with the Kyrgyz-language teaching Manas is studied in eighth grade, in schools with the Russian-language teaching – in ninth grades and the eleventh grade in courses on Manas studies.

The epic is also used more broadly as a source of moral and civic education. Research on Kyrgyz education links Manas to the upbringing of schoolchildren and youth, especially through themes of cultural heritage, wisdom, moral values and national identity. At university level, the University of Central Asia has offered a “Manas Studies” course examining the epic’s role in the formation and development of Kyrgyz society and national identity.

Also read on Novastan: Le président kirghiz a signé le décret pour renommer Djalal-Abad en Manas

This educational presence is important politically. Teaching Manas is not just about preserving folklore. It is about shaping citizens through a national story.

Manas in everyday life

In Kyrgyzstan, Manas is everywhere. It appears in statues, street names, school lessons, cultural festivals, public ceremonies, tourism branding, official speeches and national iconography. Performances by manaschi remain part of social gatherings, celebrations and ceremonies. Traditional Manas performances take place at social gatherings, community celebrations and ceremonies, preserving the practice as a living form rather than a museum object.

The epic is also physically present in Bishkek. The statue of Manas on Ala-Too Square places the hero at the symbolic centre of the capital. Streets, institutions and cultural initiatives carry his name. Bishkek’s main airport was named “Manas” at the suggestion of Chinghiz Aitmatov, in honour of the hero of the Kyrgyz national epic. Manas functions as the country’s most recognisable national symbol. Even people who have never read or heard the full epic know Manas as the emblem of Kyrgyz strength, unity and sovereignty.

The political uses of Manas

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Manas acquired a new political function. Kyrgyzstan was no longer a Soviet republic but an independent state, and nation-building had to reconcile two potentially competing ideas: Kyrgyz ethnic identity and citizenship in a multi-ethnic country. For ethnic Kyrgyz, independence meant becoming the titular people of a sovereign state. For many Russians, Uzbeks, Germans, Jews and other minorities, it could also create a sense of sudden displacement within a country they had long considered home.

President Askar Akayev therefore used Manas carefully. He presented the epic as a unifying source of national values, but avoided turning it into an openly exclusionary ethnic ideology. This was politically important after the Kyrgyz-Uzbek clashes in the Ferghana Valley and amid fears that Russians, Germans and Jews would leave the country in large numbers. Drawing on the Soviet-era recognition of Manas as cultural heritage, Akayev promoted seven principles inspired by the epic as a basis for independent Kyrgyzstan’s national ideology. These principles softened the epic’s more divisive themes, including ethnic conflict, religious antagonism and hostility toward China, and instead emphasised ethnic pride, friendship among nationalities, hard work, respect for nature, humanism, nobility and forgiveness.

Also read on Novastan: L’épopée de « Manas » : encyclopédie de l’histoire et des mœurs kirghizes

This political use has continued in different forms. After 2010, the promotion of Manas intensified partly because of heritage politics, including concern over China’s 2009 UNESCO inscription of the Manas tradition associated with Kyrgyz communities in China. More recently, Manas has returned as a tool of state symbolism under President Sadyr Japarov. In September 2025, Japarov signed a law renaming Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan’s third-largest city, as Manas. 

This is where the epic becomes current affairs. Invoking Manas allows political leaders to wrap infrastructure, centralisation, regional development, sovereignty and national unity in heroic language. It can inspire cohesion, but it can also serve as political theatre: a way to claim legitimacy by presenting contemporary decisions as continuations of an ancient national mission.

A national epic, but also a political risk

The political power of Manas lies in its flexibility. It can be used to promote unity in a divided country, cultural pride in a globalised world, and sovereignty in a region shaped by Russian, Chinese and broader geopolitical influence. But the same flexibility can also narrow public debate.

When leaders invoke Manas, they borrow the authority of the nation’s deepest cultural symbol. That can make ordinary political choices appear sacred or inevitable. A city renaming, a state-building project, a moral campaign or a geopolitical message can be presented not merely as policy, but as loyalty to ancestral memory.

Also read on Novastan: Un conteur récite l’épopée de Manas pendant plus de 14 heures pour battre le record du monde

This is the double edge of Manas. As an epic, it preserves a people’s imagination. As a political symbol, it can elevate power above criticism.

Why Manas still matters today

Manas remains valid today because Kyrgyzstan still faces many of the questions the epic dramatises: how to hold a diverse society together, how to defend sovereignty between larger powers, how to balance regional identities, how to define leadership, and how to transform memory into a future rather than a museum.

Also read on Novastan: Manas, de la tradition orale au jeu vidéo

The epic’s message of unity is still powerful, especially in a country with strong regional identities and a history of political upheaval. Its warnings are also still relevant. Manas shows that unity cannot be reduced to slogans. It depends on justice, loyalty, wise leadership and the ability to hold a community together without erasing its differences.

That is why Manas should be read not only as a monument of Kyrgyz culture, but as a living political text. It is the story Kyrgyzstan tells about where it comes from. It is also one of the languages through which power in Kyrgyzstan still explains where the country should go.

Maya Ivanova for Novastan

The post Manas and the Making of Kyrgyzstan appeared first on Novastan English.

Dilmurad Yusupov is an Uzbekistani researcher, civil society activist and international development consultant advocating for the rights and inclusion of persons with disabilities. He co-founded NGO Sharoit Plus, a grassroots disabled people’s organisation in Tashkent, and launched IshPlus.uz, Uzbekistan’s first disability-inclusive recruitment platform. After completing a PhD in Development Studies at the University of Sussex, he is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Tokyo College, the University of Tokyo, where he further researches disability inclusion focusing on employment of persons with disabilities.

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From Economics to Disability Rights Advocacy

Novastan : You are an Uzbekistani researcher and disability rights advocate whose work has taken you from Central Asia to Europe and now Japan. How has this international journey shaped the way you understand disability, inclusion, and citizenship?

Dilmurad Yusupov : Every country I have lived in has given me a new pair of glasses and forced me to take off the previous ones. I started as an economist when I studied at MGIMO in Moscow, then did a master’s in development economics at Waseda University in Tokyo. I was initially trained to look at the world through numbers and aggregate indicators. But with my first work experience while working in Uzbekistan with Japanese international development organisations such as the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) my whole worldview has shifted entirely. I started working as JICA project assistant on disability inclusion projects along with persons with various impairments: wheelchair users, deaf men and women, parents of children with intellectual disabilities – and it struck me that no statistic was capturing what I was seeing: the humiliation at an inaccessible government office, the mother who had never left her flat in years because she had no help with her son, the university graduate who was told he could not work because his medical commission had classified him as “unemployable.”

I went to Sussex to do a PhD specifically because I needed different tools: ethnography, participatory methods, critical disability theory. And now in Tokyo, I am back in Japan, but as a researcher looking at how Japan designs employment support for persons with disabilities, trying to extract lessons for Uzbekistan. The journey has taught me one fundamental thing: disability is not a personal or medical problem. It is a social and political question. Where you are born, what kind of state you live in, whether your community sees you as a full human being – these things determine your life far more than your physical condition.

Reform Beyond the Headlines

When you look at Uzbekistan from abroad, what progress becomes more visible, and what gaps become harder to ignore?

Distance gives you a strange kind of clarity but the progress is genuinely visible. Uzbekistan has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2021. The National Agency for Social Protection and its “Inson” Social Services Centres have been established since 2023. For the last couple of years there have been new presidential decrees on employment. We have a 3% employment quota for companies with more than 20 employees, some effort to improve physical accessibility. I see more Uzbek women and men with disabilities present in public life speaking at forums, running NGOs, appearing in media. Ten years ago that was rare. The disability rights conversation has finally begun in our country as well.

But from outside, the gaps also become impossible to ignore. Boarding houses closed institutional facilities where persons with disabilities, including children and adults with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities still exist and still confine people. The medical model of disability, inherited from the Soviet era, is still dominant in how the state assesses, classifies, and relates to disabled citizens. And there is a persistent gap between legislation and lived reality that frustrates everyone working in this field. It still often feels like laws exist on paper but a wheelchair user still cannot enter their district administration building. Disabled people’s organisations and other related NGOs still lack organisational capacity to advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities and still look at the problem through charity perspectives.

Can disability rights be used as a lens to assess the depth of Uzbekistan’s broader reforms since 2016?

Absolutely, and I would argue it is one of the most revealing lenses available which I have been applying in my work a lot. The reforms of the President Shavkat Mirziyoyev era have been substantive in some domains: economic liberalisation, somewhat cautious opening of civil society and media space, increased engagement with international institutions. But reforms that only benefit people who are already relatively advantaged tell us little about the depth of transformation.

Disability inclusion tests the genuineness of reform because it requires changing entrenched institutions, not just policies. It requires breaking the paternalistic logic of Soviet social protection which assumed that the state knows best, provides a minimal subsidy, and keeps “abnormal” people out of public life. If Uzbekistan’s reforms are real, we should see deinstitutionalisation people leaving boarding houses and living independently in communities. We should see more disabled people in parliament, on advisory committees, in leadership of public institutions. We should see the disability assessment system overhauled from a purely medical examination into a needs-assessment that actually enables meaningful participation. These things have not happened yet. The reforms are real, but they are still mostly skin-deep when it comes to disability.

The Soviet Legacy Lives On

To what extent are current disability policies still shaped by Soviet-era institutions and assumptions?

Enormously. My research thesis is essentially built around this question. The Soviet system treated disability as a medical deficit as the “loss of working capacity” caused by a health condition. The response was twofold: medical rehabilitation to return people to “normal”, and segregation for those who could not be normalised. That logic shaped the entire institutional architecture: the Medical and Social Expert Commission that classifies you as a “first group”, “second group” or “third group” disabled person; the specialised boarding schools and care homes; the sheltered workshops. These institutions are still with us, physically and conceptually.

What has changed since Soviet times is that disability is now more explicitly framed in rights terms, especially post-CRPD ratification. But the assumption that disability is primarily a medical issue, something to be fixed or managed rather than accommodated is still deeply embedded in how civil servants think, how families behave, and even how disabled people themselves have been taught to understand their own lives. One of the most painful aspects of participatory research is when the person with a disability internalises that logic: “I can’t work because I’m disabled,” rather than “I can’t work because there are no accessible workplaces.”

Uzbekistan ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2021. What has changed in practice, and what remains mostly on paper?

The ratification mattered. It was a political signal, and it created a reference point that activists and DPOs can use to hold the government accountable. Some things followed: new legislation on employment support, some amendments to the law on social protection, the development of national action plans. I celebrated the ratification publicly in 2021.

But the CRPD requires a paradigm shift from the medical model to the human rights model of disability and that shift has not happened at the institutional level. The legal definition of disability in Uzbekistan still essentially conflates disability with impairment. The Medical and Social Expert Commission (MSEC) system still divides people into those who can and cannot work based on a medical assessment. There are still no independent living, services personal assistance, accessible housing, supported decision-making which the CRPD requires.

The pattern I observe is common across many countries that ratify international conventions: the ratification is real, the rhetoric changes, some laws are amended, but the deeper bureaucratic, cultural, and financial changes that would actually transform disabled people’s lives get deferred indefinitely. The CRPD is a powerful tool but only if disabled people’s organisations have the political standing, resources and access to use it. That is the real bottleneck in Uzbekistan.

Read also on Novastan: Comment les femmes handicapées sont discriminées au Tadjikistan

What Disability Reveals About Society

What does the treatment of disabled people reveal about the relationship between the state and citizens in Central Asia?

It reveals a deeply paternalistic social contract. The state’s implicit message to disabled citizens has been: “We will provide you with a modest benefit and manage your needs, but you will not be a full public subject.” That logic is not unique to disability it shapes how the state relates to many categories of citizen. But disabled people make it especially visible because they depend on state services and infrastructure so directly.

The mahalla, the neighbourhood community, institution is a fascinating case study in this. On the one hand, mahalla networks provide real informal support to disabled people and their families: a neighbour who helps with shopping, a community that knows about a child who needs assistance. On the other hand, the mahalla is also a mechanism of social control and conformity, and it can reinforce stigma and exclusion just as readily as solidarity. For disabled people, the mahalla is simultaneously a lifeline and a site of judgement.

What I find most telling is that disability allowances in Uzbekistan are set at levels that make independent living impossible. They are supplementary to family support, not substitutes for it. The entire system assumes that disabled people live with and are cared for by families. Independent living – as a right – is not a design principle of the system.

In Uzbekistan, families often play a central role in care and support. Is this a strength, a burden, or both?

Both, without any doubt and I want to resist the temptation of romanticising family solidarity without naming its costs. When there are no community-based services, no personal assistance systems, no accessible housing, families have no choice but to become the primary support system. And in that context, families do extraordinary things. I have met mothers who have spent twenty years advocating for their child’s right to education, fathers who have rebuilt their homes to make them accessible, siblings who have become unpaid carers while working full-time.

But the word “choice” matters here. When families bear this burden because there is no alternative, it is not solidarity – it is structural neglect dressed in cultural clothing. And the cost falls most heavily on women, who are by far the primary carers in Uzbekistan. A woman who spends her life caring for a disabled relative often has a very low pension, no career, no independent income, no respite. She is made invisible by a system that counts on her labour without compensating or supporting her.

The vision I work towards is not one where families abandon disabled relatives the family bond in Central Asia is real and valuable. It is one where families who choose to provide care are genuinely supported, and where disabled people who want to live independently have the services to do so. These should be choices, not compulsions.

The Unequal Burden of Exclusion

How does the experience of disability differ for women, rural residents, or persons with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities?

Every additional axis of disadvantage compounds dramatically in Uzbekistan. Let me be concrete. A woman with a physical disability in Tashkent faces barriers – but she lives in the city where Sharoit Plus and IshPlus.uz operate, where there is at least some accessible infrastructure, some specialist services, some community. A woman with a physical disability in a remote district of Surkhandarya faces all of those same barriers, plus almost no services, greater family pressure to stay at home, less information about her rights, and fewer journalists or NGOs to notice if something goes wrong.

For persons with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities, the situation is the most serious and the least visible. These are the people most likely to be in boarding houses. These are the people whose voices are least present in public consultations on disability policy. In 2024 I wrote about a case in Syrdarya where a woman with a mental disability was filmed being mocked and abused in a residential care facility – the video went viral, but what struck me was not the exceptional cruelty of one act but how unsurprising it was to anyone who knew these institutions. Closed institutions breed abuse. That is not a bug; it is a structural feature.

Work, Dignity and Belonging

You have researched disability-inclusive employment. Why is access to work such a decisive issue for equality and citizenship?

Work is not only about income, though income matters enormously as disabled people in Uzbekistan are among the poorest population groups. Work is about dignity, belonging, identity, and citizenship in the fullest sense. When you work, you are visible. You have a schedule, colleagues, a place in the social fabric. You contribute and are recognised as contributing. When you do not work when you are told by a medical commission that you are “unemployable”, or when every employer turns you away because of stereotypes about your capacity you are consigned to a kind of social invisibility.

That is why I consider the Soviet-era concept of “unemployable” so harmful. It is not a medical finding – it is a social sentence. When we launched IshPlus.uz in 2021, we were directly challenging that logic. Within a year, 50 persons with disabilities had found jobs through the platform. When we scaled up with Eurasia Foundation’s support, 130 people found employment in just six months – persons with visual impairments, hearing impairments, physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities. Behind each number is a life that changed.

Are disabled people in Uzbekistan still too often seen as recipients of assistance rather than workers, experts and decision-makers?

Yes – and this is the core cultural battle. The dominant public image of disability in Uzbekistan is still the charity model: a person in need of pity, whose story should inspire gratitude for one’s own health. That image is present in media, in how government programmes are designed, in how businesses think about the 3% quota (as a burden to be minimised rather than an opportunity). Even some disabled people’s organisations reproduce it because they have learned to navigate a system built on those assumptions.

The shift I advocate for – and that the CRPD requires – is from seeing disabled people as objects of welfare to recognising them as rights-holders, experts in their own lives and in the design of the systems that affect them. “Nothing about us without us” is the foundational principle of the global disability rights movement, and it is still quite foreign to how policymakers in Uzbekistan approach disability reform.

Learning from Abroad

What lessons from Ireland and Japan could be useful for Uzbekistan, and what should not be copied blindly?

Ireland went through a serious deinstitutionalisation process, moving persons with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities out of large institutions and into community-based living. The process was painful and incomplete, and Ireland is still reckoning with the abuses that occurred in those institutions – but the direction of travel was right, and it shows what is possible with political will. The Irish independent living movement also developed strong models of personal assistance and direct payments that are worth studying for Uzbekistan.

Japan is fascinating because I have lived there twice now, in very different capacities. Japan has invested heavily in physical accessibility – its cities are among the most barrier-free I have experienced, the public transport system is genuinely wheelchair accessible, and there is sophisticated legislation including the 2016 Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities. JICA has also been active in Uzbekistan on disability rehabilitation for years, and those partnerships have real value.

But Japan also teaches the lesson of what not to copy. Physical infrastructure does not automatically produce social inclusion. Japan still has very high rates of institutional care for persons with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities. Stigma around mental health is acute. Employment discrimination persists despite legal protections. A disabled person with perfect ramp access to a building may still encounter assumptions about their competence the moment they walk in the door. The lesson is that hardware without software – accessibility without attitude change – is not inclusion. Uzbekistan can learn the infrastructure lessons from Japan and the deinstitutionalisation lessons from Ireland, while understanding that both countries are still on an unfinished journey.

Central Asia as a Producer of Knowledge

How can Central Asian researchers contribute to global disability studies, rather than simply being treated as case studies by scholars elsewhere?

This question matters to me personally and professionally. For a long time, Central Asia was studied primarily by Western or Russian scholars, and the region’s disabled people appeared in academic literature mainly as examples – illustrations of post-Soviet transition, of Islamic culture, of development deficits. Local researchers were rarely cited as theorists or methodologists; they were cited as informants or acknowledged in footnotes.

This is a form of epistemic injustice, and it limits the quality of the scholarship itself. The theoretical tools we need to understand disability in post-Soviet Muslim majority Central Asia – the intersections of Soviet institutionalisation, Islamic notions of compassion and charity, mahalla-based informal care, rapid economic transformation – cannot be developed from a distance by someone who has never negotiated those realities.

I try to practise a different kind of research: participatory, with disabled people as co-researchers and co-authors, not just subjects. I try to publish in accessible formats in Uzbek and Russian, not only in English-language academic journals. And I try to position my work as contributing concepts and frameworks to global disability studies, not just providing data points about Uzbekistan. The ambition should be for Central Asian disability studies to produce theory, not just cases.

Read also on Novastan: Sur scène, plus de handicap

Telling Better Stories About Disability

How should journalists report on disability – and how can success stories be told without falling into pity, charity, or “inspirational” stereotypes?

This is something I think about a great deal, because bad journalism about disability does real harm. The two dominant failure modes are the pity narrative – the disabled person as tragic sufferer deserving charity – and what the disability studies scholar Stella Young called “inspiration porn” – the disabled person as a heroic overcomer, whose story is meant to make non-disabled audiences feel grateful for their own lives. Both narratives make the disabled person an object, not a subject.

Good journalism focuses on systems, not just individuals. Good journalism also asks disabled people what they think, want, and advocate for, not just how they suffer or cope. It treats them as sources of analysis and expertise, not just of emotional testimony. And it avoids language and framing that frames disability as inherently deficient – “confined to a wheelchair”, “suffers from”, “despite her disability.” These phrases embed the medical model into the grammar of every sentence.

“Nothing About Us Without Us”

What would it take for disabled people’s organisations in Uzbekistan to be involved not as consultees, but as co-authors of reform?

First, financial sustainability. Uzbekistani DPOs are chronically under-resourced. The state allocates minimal social orders to civil society, and the NGO regulatory environment creates significant administrative burdens. A DPO that spends most of its energy on survival cannot invest in policy advocacy. Dedicated, multi-year funding for DPOs – from the state and from donors – is a precondition.

Second, genuine access to decision-making spaces. Consultation processes in Uzbekistan often invite DPOs to comment on documents that are already finalised, in rooms that may not be physically accessible, with materials that are not in accessible formats, without sign language interpretation. That is not co-authorship – it is the performance of inclusion. Real participation starts at the problem-definition stage, before solutions are on the table.

Third, and perhaps most fundamentally: a political culture that treats disabled people’s lived expertise as legitimate. Civil servants, international experts and academics need to internalise that people who live with disability know things about it that no policy paper can capture. That is not a soft or optional supplement to technical knowledge – it is essential knowledge. The CRPD principle of “nothing about us without us” should be operationalised as a procedural requirement for all disability-related legislation and programming in Uzbekistan.

Reasons for Hope

What gives you hope today in Uzbekistan, and what worries you most?

Hope: there is a new generation of disability rights activists in Uzbekistan who are young, connected, demanding, and tired of being patient. They use social media. They call out inaccessible buildings by name. The CRPD ratification also gives me hope, not because of what it has already changed, but because it shifts the terms of argument. Rights are no longer a Western imposition – they are a commitment the Uzbekistani state made to its own citizens.

I also worry about the pattern I observe across Central Asia: reforms are initiated from the top, which means they can be reversed or stalled from the top too. Genuine inclusion requires a society that demands it – a disability rights movement with political weight, public support, and allies across different sectors. We are building that, but slowly.

Dilmurad Yusupov can be followed at dilmurad.me and on social media as @d_yusupov.

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Interview by

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Maya Ivanova, Contributor at Novastan

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The post “Disability is a Mirror for the Development of Societies” – A Conversation with Dilmurad Yusupov appeared first on Novastan English.

Kyrgyz director Tolomush Zhanybekov turns his camera toward the people and places often left outside the frame: cemetery guards, pensioners selling their belongings, children facing humiliation, brothers bound by care and solitude. Born in Balykchy and based in Kyrgyzstan’s contemporary film scene, he builds a cinema rooted in roads, bazaars, industrial landscapes and social margins.

His films The Road, Birdsong, Balyk and Barakholka reveal a Kyrgyzstan far from the usual images of mountains and nomadic traditions. Through silence, fragile encounters and carefully chosen locations, Tolomush Zhanybekov explores loneliness, vulnerability and the quiet dignity of people living on the edges of public attention.

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In an interview with Novastan, the young filmmaker discusses his childhood, his relationship with cinema, the places that shape his work, the ethics of filming vulnerable people and the emergence of a new generation of Kyrgyz directors seeking to show an authentic, unvarnished Central Asia.

Novastan : Could you tell us about your journey into cinema? When did you first feel that you wanted to become a director?

Tolomush Zhanybekov : Since childhood, my main friend was the television. I hardly ever left the house: I watched all kinds of films and, figuratively speaking, spoke with the screen. Stories for my own films were constantly being born and developing in my head. Most likely, the desire to become a director came from that childhood solitude.

You were born in Balykchy, and several of your films seem very closely connected to specific places. Could you tell us where The Road, Birdsong, Balyk and Barakholka were shot, and why you chose those particular locations?

My graduation film, The Road, was shot in the city of Balykchy, where I was born and grew up. It is a very textured, visually rich place. Birdsong was shot in the village of Kaji-Say, in the Issyk-Kul region. In Soviet times, it was a thriving industrial town where coal was mined, and there was a uranium tailings site nearby. Today, there is a persistent feeling that time froze there somewhere in the 1990s. Balyk and Barakholka were shot in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.

For readers discovering your work for the first time, could you briefly present each of these films in two or three sentences: what is it about, where does it take place and what drew you to this story?

The Road: The story of a 65-year-old cemetery guard. He lives and works far from the noise of the world, and in this silence, alone with those who have passed away, he paradoxically feels much more comfortable than among the living.

Birdsong: A documentary about two brothers. The elder brother finds it difficult to go outside, and the only person who looks after him is his younger brother, who goes to the village centre every day in search of casual work. Their meeting at the end of the day is the most important thing in their lives. Since childhood, I had been interested in what it means to have a brother, how such relationships work, how brothers support one another and what they talk about. One day, in a small village, I met these protagonists and understood that I had to make a film about them.

Barakholka: A documentary about pensioners. Every weekend, near my home, they set up a street market where they sell their old, vintage belongings. I have always been fascinated by watching them, their daily lives and the past they are selling off.

Balyk: A short fiction film about a teenager who stutters heavily, which makes it difficult for him to communicate with others. It is partly a personal story, as I faced this problem myself.

For readers who do not know Kyrgyzstan well, how would you describe places such as Balykchy, Bishkek, Barakholka or Kaji-Say, geographically, socially and personally?

Balykchy is the city of my childhood, in northern Kyrgyzstan, surrounded by picturesque but harsh landscapes. A place of winds and memories.

Bishkek is the city where I grew up. It is a noisy capital, where people from all regions come in search of a better life, creating a bubbling social melting pot.

Read also on Novastan: Kirghizstan : les déchets radioactifs continuent de polluer les eaux de Kadji Saï

Kaji-Say is an abandoned industrial trace of a bygone era, squeezed between the mountains and Lake Issyk-Kul, where history itself seems to have come to a standstill.

Barakholka is not just a market, but a living open-air social archive, where people’s destinies are revealed through old objects.

How important is location to you in the process of making a film? Do you first find a place and build a story around it, or does a character appear first, after which you look for the right space?

In my work, location is a fully-fledged character. It conveys the atmosphere of the film in its own right. Sometimes I see a textured place, and a plot immediately begins to take shape within it. And sometimes I work the other way around: first the image of a character is born, and then I look for a space that could organically receive that character or emphasise their inner state.

Your films often focus on people who usually remain outside public attention: children, pensioners, solitary figures, people living or working in difficult social conditions. Why are you drawn to these kinds of protagonists?

In contemporary Kyrgyz cinema, these layers of the population are undeservedly neglected. They are rarely shown on screen. Mentally, all my characters are united by a deep inner loneliness, and it is precisely this vulnerability, this invisibility to the wider world, that attracts and moves me most.

In The Road, the road seems to be something more than just a physical space. What does it mean to you?

You are right. During my student years, I first came face to face with death: every autumn during my four years of study, someone in my family died. This tragic cycle forced me to think constantly about death and even, subconsciously, to wait for it. It may sound naive now, but at the time I desperately wanted to make sense of and understand a person’s departure. From these experiences came the metaphor of the road as a path between worlds, a transit from life into non-being.

Silence and atmosphere also play a very strong role in The Road. Is silence important in your cinema?

Yes, absolutely. To return to the previous question: to make sense of such fundamental things as life and death, silence was vitally necessary for me. In addition, as a director, I feel very close to a pure visual language. I like it when thoughts, feelings and dramaturgy can be conveyed to the viewer without unnecessary words, through pauses and the atmosphere of the frame.

Birdsong was your first documentary film. What pushed you towards documentary cinema?

By nature, I am a contemplative person. Since childhood, I could sit for hours and openly observe people, although now, of course, I do it more carefully and tactfully. Documentary is the foundation of cinema. It always contains genuine organic life, living human faces and real stories that cannot be artificially constructed within the framework of a fiction script.

How did you meet the protagonists of Birdsong, and how did you manage to build trust with them?

I was walking through the centre of the village and sat down at a bus stop, observing the local residents. From a distance, a man wearing a kalpak approached me. We began talking. From what he told me, I understood that he lived with his elder brother, was constantly looking for any kind of casual work and spoke about him all the time, with immense tenderness and anxiety. I suggested that he appear in a film, he agreed, and I immersed myself in their fragile, closed world.

Read also on Novastan: Vie et mœurs des déchets uraniques centrasiatiques

The trust between us probably emerged on the level of pure energy. My original intention was to make this film with great love and respect for them. I think the viewer feels that warmth through the screen and through the way the camera angles were chosen.

When you film real people, especially vulnerable people, how do you decide what can be shown and what should remain off camera?

It is always an extremely difficult inner dilemma. In documentary cinema, you very quickly become close to your protagonists. They become dear to you, and subconsciously there is a strong desire to protect them, to defend them, to show them from their best side.

During filming, I gather a lot of material. At the editing stage, when the final story is being built, I always mentally put myself in their place: how would I feel if this personal information became public? Here it is critically important to sense the fine line between artistic truth and ethics, to understand what needs to remain for the dramaturgy and what must be hidden from the viewer’s eyes forever.

In Balyk, the main character is a boy who lives between school, work at the market, loneliness and humiliation. Where did this story begin?

The word Balykchy means “fisherman” in Kyrgyz. In childhood, our family lived by cooking and selling fish. In addition, during my school years, I stuttered very badly. I remember that in the lower grades we had speed-reading tests: we had to read as many words as possible in one minute. In second grade, my classmates read between 40 and 65 words, while because of my stutter I managed only nine.

It was an enormous stress and trauma. At home, alone, I could read completely normally. I would memorise texts in advance, but as soon as I stood in front of the class, everything collapsed. The plot of Balyk grew out of these painful personal memories.

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What does the title Balyk mean to you? Is the fish a symbol in the film?

Yes, the fish is a key symbol here. When you cut or kill a fish, it does not make a single sound. Its “facial” expression does not change; you cannot read pain or emotion in it. My main character is locked in the same way in his muteness and loneliness in the face of a cruel outside world. He suffers silently, like a fish.

The market in Balyk is not only a workplace, but an entire social world. What did you want to show through this environment?

I wanted to capture our authentic bazaar. It is a unique space, always incredibly interesting to be in and to observe: all kinds of types, destinies, tragedies and comedies collide there. Moreover, the East is historically and culturally tied to bazaar culture. It is its heart and the mirror of society.

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Balyk is a Kyrgyz-French co-production. How did this international collaboration come about, and did it influence the development of the film or its reception?

In 2024, a Script Lab for authors from Central Asia was organised in Kazakhstan as part of the Post Space film camp. My mentor was Katya Khazak, a producer from France. At that time, I already had a rough cut of Balyk. I showed her the material, she liked the film very much and offered to help complete it at a high international post-production level.

Our project was supported by the European fund Creative Europe MEDIA. Thanks to this collaboration, we shortened and significantly improved the editing, and carried out professional sound correction and colour correction. This greatly raised the artistic level of the film.

Could you explain the title Kesilish joldogu pensionerlerdin maekterinen (Barakholka)? How would you translate it into English or French?

In English, the title translates as: Conversations of Pensioners at a Crossroads. The title contains a double meaning: the physical crossroads of the streets where they stand, and the crossroads of life at which they find themselves in the twilight of their days.

Why did you decide to film pensioners at Barakholka? What did you want to convey through their conversations?

I wanted to reveal their deep social loneliness, but at the same time to show their desperate, touching attempt to remain part of society, to be among people. Through their everyday conversations, sometimes sad, sometimes paradoxical, an astonishingly sincere and unembellished life emerges.

The outside view of Kyrgyzstan often focuses on mountains, nomadic traditions and impressive landscapes. Your films, by contrast, turn more towards everyday life, urban or semi-urban spaces, roads, markets and social margins. Is this a conscious choice?

Yes, it is an entirely conscious artistic choice. Our country is incredibly full of contrasts. Of course, we have majestic mountains and postcard landscapes, but there is another side of reality too: the everyday life of ordinary people, urban outskirts, the underside of society. This underside is still very little explored and rarely conveyed in cinema, and it is precisely this that I want to reveal to the viewer.

How would you describe the current generation of young Kyrgyz directors?

We are a generation of sincere and, in a good sense, naive directors. There is an enormous, pure desire burning in us to make films despite any difficulties and to rediscover for the world an authentic, non-ceremonial Central Asia.

Also read on Novastan: « Kourmanjan Datka » : l’épopée féminine, nationaliste et historique de la reine de l’Alaï

What are the main difficulties independent filmmakers face in Kyrgyzstan today: funding, distribution, education, censorship, access to audiences?

I would say that the main problems are specialised education and an acute lack of infrastructure for film production. Making films in co-production with other countries is especially difficult. We still lack the legal and technical foundations for easy international partnerships.

Do you feel part of a broader Central Asian cinema, or do you primarily see your work in the context of the Kyrgyz film scene?

I think I feel more like part of a broader regional, Central Asian cinema. Our countries have very similar historical backgrounds, common social problems and a mentality that is close in spirit, so we understand each other’s pains and joys very well.

What would you like international audiences to better understand about Kyrgyzstan through your films?

I do not have any specific educational or didactic goal. My task as a director is simpler and, at the same time, more difficult: to tell human stories honestly. If, through these local stories, foreign viewers can empathise with the characters, then the universal language of cinema has worked.

For Novastan readers who would like to discover your work: where can they watch your films? Are The Road, Birdsong, Balyk and Barakholka available online, shown only at festivals, or can they be watched on request?

Unfortunately, the films are not freely available online for now. They are currently in an active period of their life, so legally they can mainly be seen at film festivals.

Are there any upcoming screenings or festivals where viewers in Kyrgyzstan, France, Europe or online will be able to see your work?

No screenings are planned for the very coming months. The main wave of screenings and festival premieres is expected closer to autumn, when the new global film season traditionally begins.

Also read on Novastan: « Centaure » : film poétique et critique sur la société kirghize

If readers discover your work through this interview, which film would you advise them to start with, and why?

I would recommend watching them in strict chronological order, starting with the 2022 work. That way, viewers will be able to see not only the stories of the characters, but also my personal evolution as an author, the development of my directorial language and my cinematic thinking as a whole.

What are you working on now, and would you like to make a feature film in the future?

Right now, I am working on my next short film. At the same time, I am taking a big step forward: I am writing the screenplay for my debut feature film.

Interview by

Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief at Novastan-English

Maya Ivanova, Contributor at Novastan

Thank you for reading this article! If you have time, we would appreciate your feedback, either through this anonymous form or by email at editorial@novastan.org. Thank you very much!

The post Through roads, markets and silence: Tolomush Zhanybekov films Kyrgyzstan’s unseen lives appeared first on Novastan English.

In August 2022, the French historian and writer Stéphane Dudoignon published “Hymnes de sang” (or “Hymns of Blood”) – a collection of short stories by Tajik writers from the Perestroika era translated into French. He is using this opportunity to tell of a time of optimism and intellectual upheaval in Dushanbe before the civil war.This article was originally published on Novastan’s French website on 21 September 2022.

It is a collection of short stories about a Tajikistan which is no longer recognisable. “Hymnes de sang,” which appeared this summer from publisher Les Indes Savantes, contains short stories by various Tajik authors.  Each of them questions the governance of the USSR in Central Asia in its own way. Through their works Janibek Akabir, Muhammad-Zaman Saleh, Bahmanyar, Qadir Rustam and Rahim Saidar ask what the future of an independent Tajikistan could look like. The eight short stories in the collection were selected and translated by Stéphane Dudoignon about 20 years ago, when he met with Tajik authors in a writers’ collective in Dushanbe. Those authors eventually became his friends.  “I loved it, landing there, playing billiards, drinking vodka, and discussing literature with people who had lived there continually,” he says. Read more on Novastan: Who is Manizha, the Tajik-born singer representing Russia at the Eurovision? Dudoignon travelled regularly throughout Central Asia during the late Soviet era to further his research into reformed Islam.  He also worked as a film importer for French businesses and therefore came into contact with the “creative intelligentsia,” that is, members of the intellectual circles in the USSR.

Reckoning with Dominance

The historian decided to honour his friends with the publication of these short stories, but they also possess a “thematic unity around the culture of political domination.”  In lyrical, symbolic, or even grotesque registers, the writers probe their inheritance from Russian and Soviet rulers.  What unites them is a certain “reckoning with these rulers, who were particularly bloody in Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s,” as Dudoignon states. In the short story “Hymns of Blood,” which gave the collection its name, the writer Muhammad-Zaman Saleh tells of the rule and forced Arabisation of Baghdad over the remote Khorasan Province by the Abbasid Caliphate between the 8^th and 9^th centuries. This, according to the historian, is a clear metaphor for Moscow’s rule over Central Asian societies.  On the other hand, the short story “Genghis Khan” by Qadir Rustam tells of villagers contemplating to overthrow a tyrant, denouncing the burden of Soviet “little bosses” who dominated Tajikistan in the 20^th century. Such topics are approached with surprising optimism as the authors attempt to portray paths to emancipation, especially through culture. Persian-Central Asian identity, which is being resurrected by many, is seen as a tool which can help to rebuild a modern and independent Tajik nation.

A lost freedom

The time from 1987 to 1992 “was a very special time in Tajikistan, especially with literary magazines such as ‘The Way of the East’ in Dushanbe, in which writers regularly published for a large readership.” While censorship in the collapsing USSR steadily decreased, the then-numerous bookshops and kiosks in Tajikistan overflowed with new ideas and trends, and were the scene of literary experimentation. “This is difficult to imagine today in Tajikistan,” laments Stéphane Dudoignon, as the country suffers under the dictatorship of President Emomali Rahmon, who blocks any deviating artistic expression. Many of the authors featured in “Hymnes de sang” left Tajikistan or Dushanbe during the civil war.  Some died in exile, such as Rahim Saidar, who passed away in Moscow.  As a result of their departure, the intellectual and cultural activity in Dushanbe vanished.  

Written by Emma Collet 

Translated from French to German by Florian Coppenrath 

Translated from German to English by Mari Paine 

Edited by Maya Ivanova

For more news and analysis from Central Asia, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Linkedin or Instagram.

The post “Hymns of Blood” – Tajik short stories from Perestroika appeared first on Novastan English.

The border region of Kostanay has turned into a sanctuary for Russians wanting to flee mobilisation. The journalist Almas Qaısar traveled for Vlast to Kostanay to speak with Russian refugees and local residents about what’s happened in the city.  We have translated the article with permission from the editors.

The closer you go to the city centre of Kostanay – where all the administrative buildings, shopping centres, restaurants, and public offices are found – the more people with suitcases and travel packs appear on the horizon. Aside from their conspicuous clothing and their neatly trimmed hair and beards, the Russians are distinguishable by their confused faces.  They congregate mostly around three places in the city centre: a shopping centre, a service centre, and a McDonald’s.  Even though they’ve already made it across the border, they continue to discuss the situation at the border checkpoint. Russians sit at a table in McDonald’s. Across from them is a group of ethnic Kyrgyz who arrived with them. “A Kalmyk acquaintance of mine was turned back at the border! And that coming from a Kazakh border agent,” says one young Russian in astonishment.  He just received access to the Internet. “He must have tried to cross the border at the wrong place. That or he had his papers messed up,” responds his conversation partner while eating a burger. “I’ll find out in a minute,” he says. Over the next half hour, he chats with his acquaintance over the phone to find out the details of the situation. Each of those who made it to Kostanay has a dozen acquaintances trying to cross the border.

Dostonbek

“We decided to flee from mobilisation and not to wait to be shipped off,” says Dostonbek (all names in this article have been changed), who originally comes from Kyrgystan. “I received Russian citizenship eight years ago. I worked there for more than 15 years in a shopping centre.  My family stayed there.” He explains that they originally wanted to fly from Moscow, but the tickets sold out quickly and the prices were very high. Now he is on his way to Bishkek. “But it is difficult to live there, the salaries are low, credit is unimaginable. Granted, we’re spending a lot of money here. That guy over there – he planned his wedding in 13 days,” he says, pointing to a younger man.  “He invited 300 people!  So much money will be wasted,” Dostonbek laughs.

Stepan

An increasing number of Russians gather in McDonald’s. Some have occupied the seats along the wall to charge their devices and try to work on their laptops. Others attempt to relax. Outside it is cold and dreary: Kostanay has become cold and a frosty wind is blowing. “I am 32 years old and I wasn’t affected by the first wave of mobilisation. They are taking everyone arbitrarily. Why am I here? We started a criminal war which I don’t want to take part in.  I am against this war.  I don’t want to kill any people.  That’s not the reason I studied, built my house, and raised my children,” says Stepan.  He was born in Kazan. Earlier he worked as a software developer at an IT company. As mobilisation was announced, his family stood by in shock. “No one knew what to do.  Many initially thought that it would pass us by. But there was less and less time to think about it. Four days after mobilisation was announced we decided to flee. We were afraid that we wouldn’t make it out in time. People were already being turned away at the border,” he adds. He and his family set off in their car and waited 18 hours at a border checkpoint. They had the possibility to drive through Orenburg but people stood there “for three days without water or food.”  They planned to drive through Georgia, but a military recruitment point had already been set up. Read more on Novastan: Kazakhstan’s gradual divorce from Russia“There are people in their 50s and 60s. There are cars full of six young people. Three of them were turned back at border control. There are families with small children and babies. We don’t know why they send people back. Yesterday at the border someone who was recruited, who had served in the army, was let through. But one man who was categorized as disabled, who had never served, and who had no military experience, they didn’t let through,” explains Stepan. He says he made it through Kazakh border security in two hours. “There were no difficulties with them. They laugh and joke.”  Out of the 20 people in his division, 16 have already left Russia. Out of 10 close friends, seven have fled. The rest hope not to be recruited. Thanks to some acquaintances and volunteers, Stepan was able to find accommodation in a holiday camp about one and a half kilometres outside of the city. “It’s only a holiday camp with one oven. We paid 25 000 Tenge (£44.71) for the night. The whole camp is full of Russians. We still have a long way before us – we’re going to Almaty,” he says. Stepan wants to stay in Almaty because he has relatives there. He has his savings, but “no one is going to just sit around,” he says. “Money is always getting tighter. We will help to develop their country. If our country doesn’t need us,” he says with frustration. “Of course we want to return to Russia. Our home is there. My wife and I have discussed trying to move to Europe if the situation worsens – and in my opinion it won’t get better and it will continue for a while.” He adds: “It’s very difficult right now for my wife. I don’t have any time to reflect.”

Igor

A stream of people weaves through the centre. Suddenly a megaphone at the crosswalk announces that Beeline (a TV and internet provider) will be cutting access to Russian television stations. Nearby, between suitcases and bags, stands Igor. He speaks with a friend from Kostanay. “Here there’s a collapse of arriving Russians,” he jokes.  Igor didn’t take it very seriously at the beginning of mobilisation. But as rumours began to spread in Russia about the borders being shut, he decided to flee. In the span of a couple of days, he and his friends thought through the options and decided on Kazakhstan. Before mobilisation he lived in Vologda and worked, like many other Russians, as an IT specialist. In his opinion, the popularity of the profession lies in the fact that they can work from anywhere in the world. The most important thing is to have internet, electricity, and a laptop. “Even as I sat in traffic in Chelyabinsk Oblast along the border, I worked,” says Igor. First he had taken a high-speed train to Moscow, then a flight to Chelyabinsk. His daughter and wife remain in Vologda. “We had a certain amount of luck. We met a Kazakh citizen who, for a relatively high amount of money, helped us to cross the border. On the 27^th he queued on the Russian side. We were in Chelyabinsk and he stood in the queue. When we arrived at the border, he was already close to the checkpoint. Instead of waiting 15 hours, we only waited seven. We halved our waiting time,” Igor says. He’s sitting with his things and is searching for accommodation. There were problems with his Russian bank cards, which don’t work here. Now Igor is on the hunt for an employer abroad, especially in Europe or the USA. “Depending on the offer, you can either stay in Kazakhstan, make yourself legal, and bring your family here, or, if your employer offers a relocation programme, then you go where you’re moved.  There’s also an option in Poland – I have a job interview on Monday,” he said. Igor would enjoy staying in Kostanay, but he can see that the city’s economy can’t handle the influx. “It’s going to get even bigger. And it will become more difficult,” he says with certainty.  He’s going to go to Almaty, as some of his friends from Vologda already fled there and are looking for a large flat. “To be honest, I hope that things improve for the better in Russia. It’s all so sad. I didn’t want to leave. I want things to change. We hope for the best, but are preparing ourselves for the worst,” he concludes.

David

When Russians talk about their country, you can sense their internal conflict. But many of them are also confident that they can come to terms with life outside Russia’s borders. Part of this is due to the fact that mainly people with savings have come to Kostanay. David met the requirements for mobilisation and therefore decided to flee the country. “I’m not going to go there and solve someone else’s problems in another country under the pretext that someone attacked us. Everyone understands that no one attacked us,” he said. David lived in Yekaterinburg and was self-employed. He had a management position and saved his money. His wife and child stayed in Russia. His path is leading him to Almaty, where he has friends. He intends to stay in Kazakhstan, but must first acquire legal status. He says that he’s felt welcome wherever he’s gone. He has heard from various people how they handed out fruit to those stuck in traffic at the Kazakh border, and how patrolling police officers approached them and asked if they had food and lodging. “We couldn’t imagine something like that in Russia,” he adds. “My family is there. I hope that there will be some improvement. It’s difficult to talk about. The situation in Russia wasn’t particularly rosy. Overnight they announced it. People are leaving everything and going abroad. At the border with Kazakhstan there’s a huge influx. I understand the strain on Kazakhstan. I hope that there won’t be any conflicts between Russians and Kazakhs. It’s important to be understood. And that our people remain conscientious about everything,” David concludes.

Vasily

Vasily is a musician who studied computer science, and he was about to begin his first job. Prior to mobilisation, he participated in various protests and was active as an observer at voting stations. “I fought as hard as I could. When mobilisation was announced, it was clear to me that I had a choice: prison or moving. I don’t want to kill anyone in Ukraine,” says Vasily. He bought tickets on the first day of mobilisation. Together with a friend, they walked through the traffic to the border control point. There they spent an hour in the rain. Out of 300 people, only 10 got through. Then they paid money to someone driving a car who was already close to the border, and they drove with him. “As we arrived in Kazakhstan, we were welcomed with open arms. The taxi driver was a very nice man. He told us how to move forward and what we should do. Then my friend was able to contact an acquaintance who helped us to find a flat for the night. Now we’ve found a place that we can stay at for longer. Originally I thought I had money for six months. I had saved up for years and years. I had other plans for the money, but what’s a person to do?  My wife stayed behind to work, so maybe she’ll chip in if something happens. I’ll probably stay in Kostanay for four months – if the hustle and bustle settles and it’s not so expensive,” he adds. Afterwards he doesn’t plan on staying in Kazakhstan longer. He believes that the political situation in Russia has entered a critical phase: “Either it’s going to come to a worst-case scenario or something will solve itself.”

The locals’ opinion

The local residents have greeted the new arrivals in various ways. Companies have begun to advertise for their offices and businesses to draw in Russians. In shopping centres, signs have gone up advertising shops where you can buy SIM cards and exchange currency. Volunteer initiatives help people to find flats or accommodation in shelters. However, all of them declined to comment. For others, Russians have become synonymous with “cool cars,” traffic, and increasing rent prices. “Yes, they’re coming and coming. Nothing has changed for me. The only thing that’s changed is that the Russians are here now. But that doesn’t make a difference,” say some residents. Others have more understanding for the newcomers. Toktasyn is a pensioner. He lives a couple of kilometres away from Kostanay in an aul, or a type of traditional village. He came to the city for a visit and has noticed the influx of Russians. He believes they need help. “Let them come. They’ve come before. Into the new country [editors’ note: this is a reference to forced resettlement of Russian farmers during Soviet times]. Where else could they go? If they go there, they’ll die. We have to help, it’s getting colder now. Where are they going to go?  They left everything behind and came here,” he says. Andrei, who works as a taxi driver, is also of the opinion that “they’re doing the right thing by fleeing mobilisation.”“No one wants to die and kill. I only drive Russians now. There were guys from Ulan-Ude with us. That means they’re coming from so far away. Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg. Very young guys. 18 to 22 years old. There were also guys who were basically kids. Why should kids die in this war? Better to come over here,” he says. Azamat weaves through the bus station, surrounded by the purple of twilight. There, at a covered bus stop, stand people with suitcases. After a while they make their way to a group of taxi drivers advertising trips to Karaganda, Astana, and Almaty. Azamat doesn’t work as a taxi driver. He merely walks around and helps people. “Look at that girl over there,” he says, pointing at a young girl in a pink coat. “She’s so young, she could be my daughter. So young and what a challenge all this is for her. These are innocent people. Who wants to walk away and leave behind brothers, sisters, parents, and children? No one wants to kill people.” He says that every day about 200 people arrive. According to him, the city benefits from the newcomers. “Everyday necessities, rent, taxis – that’s all profit. They don’t make things worse for Kostanay” he says. A flock of migrating birds cuts through the sky behind the departing Russians.

Originally written in Russian by Almas Qaısar for Vlast

Translated from Russian into German by Amina Akhrorkulova for Novastan

Translated from German into English by Mari Paine

Edited by Maya Ivanova

For more news and analysis from Central Asia, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Linkedin or Instagram.

The post Destination Kazakhstan – A report from Kostanay, where hundreds of Russians have been taken in appeared first on Novastan English.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) invested 690 million dollars in Uzbekistan in 2021. The two partners have cooperated exceptionally well in the sectors of green energy and the economic development of the country. This article was originally published on Novastan’s French website on 7 February 2022. On 27 January, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) announced that it had invested nearly 690 million dollars (approx. 571 million GBP) in 22 projects in Uzbekistan during 2021. The Kazakh media outlet Kapital.kz reports that for the second year in a row, Uzbekistan received the largest financial contribution from the EBRD in Central Asia ahead of Kazakhstan, in which the Bank invested 630 million dollars (503 million GBP) during 2021.

“I am very proud of our commitment and our determination to deliver solid results, in spite of setbacks linked to the pandemic. We are privileged to live in an Uzbekistan in the midst of reformation and to be able to contribute to its success,” said Alkis Drakinos, Director of the EBRD’s Investment Operations in Uzbekistan.

Investments in a sustainable and green transition

The funds from the Bank encouraged the production of renewable energy, green loans and a modernization of essential infrastructure, as well as supported small domestic enterprises. In particular, investment in the green sector was the most significant, notably with 24.8 million dollars (20.5 million GBP) invested in helping to construct and to put in operation a 100 megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic plant near Samarkand, in the country’s south-east. The French business Total Eren, linked to Total Energies, has been tasked with the construction of this plant. Read more on Novastan: Uzbekistan: Total Eren’s solar plant fully funded As one of the country’s first renewable energy projects in the private sector, this plant is expected to help diversify the array of energy, which is currently dominated by fossil fuel power stations. In addition, a loan of approximately 70 million dollars (57.8 million GBP) has enabled the restoration of water sanitation and waste management infrastructure, allowing 170 000 people living in the region of Namangan, in the north-east of Uzbekistan, access to clean drinking water.

Investments to conform with Paris Agreement targets

The proportion of sustainable investments within the total funding grew by 29% during 2021. This comes under the EBRD’s Green Economy Transition (GET) approach, a program scheduled to run between 2021 and 2025. It echoes recent commitments by the Bank to hold all its investments to the targets set in the Paris Agreement. As such, it has granted loans of 10 and 25 million dollars (8.3 and 20.6 million GBP) to HamkorBank and UzPromstroybank to support small businesses in the private sector which are investing in green and energy-efficient technologies. In addition, the EBRD has continued to invest in the development of small- and medium-sized businesses. In 2021, this approach impacted 49 projects. The EBRD aims to promote women-lead businesses and, it says, to support companies which have integrated new technologies into their practices. Finally, it invested 10 million dollars (8.3 million GBP) in the pharmaceutical and cotton-producing sectors.

A recent yet strong relationship between the EBRD and Uzbekistan

More broadly, this significant support by the European Bank is a recent development. In 2017, the Bank was allowed by memorandum to get involved in the country and open a new office in the capital, Tashkent. Regarding its relationship with Uzbekistan, the EBRD recognizes the need to reinforce democratic institutions in the country, to develop the role of civil society, to provide greater freedom to mass media and to promote female entrepreneurship. In addition, the Bank wishes to continue monitoring progress accomplished in eradicating forced and child labour in sectors including the cotton industry. Read more on Novastan: Uzbekistan fully liberalizes cotton production The Uzbek media outlet Uzdaily states that this new cooperation was acknowledged on the 31 January by the Vice Prime Minister Sardor Umurzakov. The Uzbeks welcomed the development in cooperation between the EBRD and both private businesses and commercial banks in Uzbekistan. Since the beginning of the partnership, the EBRD has invested more than 3.2 billion dollars (2.65 billion GBP) in 106 projects, 48% of the investment portfolio being in support of the private sector. The total amount of financing from commercial banks in the country, allocated by the Bank in the form of lines of credit to small and medium-sized enterprises, was 450 million dollars (372.2 million GBP). In spite of this track record, Uzbekistan and the EBRD do not seem to want to leave it at that. The Uzbek Minister of Foreign Trade has referred to new opportunities such as a prospective opening of new offices for the Bank in various regions of Uzbekistan, arrangements for the 2023 annual meeting of the EBRD governing board to be held in Samarkand, as well as the participation of the Bank’s management in the Tashkent International Investment Forum.

Written by Natacha Marbot

Translated from French by Chloe Henshaw

Edited by Maya Ivanova

For more news and analysis from Central Asia, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Linkedin or Instagram.

The post EBRD sets investment record in Uzbekistan appeared first on Novastan English.

Many Central Asian migrants have joined the Russian army since partial mobilisation was announced in Russia.  They are being pulled into Russia’s war in Ukraine against the advice of their countries’ consular organs.This article was oroginally published on Novastan’s French website on 19 October 2022.

On 21 September, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the mobilisation of 300 000 reservists, called up from a pool of 25 million potential fighters.  Some of these are seasonal workers and precariously employed migrants from Central Asia. Russia amended their federal law “On Conscription and Military Service” in 2013 so that every young person with Russian citizenship is required to perform mandatory military service, even when they have already served it in their land of origin.  According to reports by the Kyrgyz news portal Kaktus, recruitment of Central Asian migrants has taken place in the Sakharovo migration center in Moscow since 21 September. This marks a turning point in the war, as the government is no longer hiding their desire to recruit foreigners to expand the ranks of their army. There are no official figures for how many Central Asian citizens have been recruited to fight in Ukraine.  According to Radio Azattyq, the Kazakh branch of Radio Free Europe, the overwhelming majority of Central Asian migrants come from three countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

High salaries and Russian passports as bait

Russian recruitment authorities want to mobilise migrants from Central Asia and do so by promising high salaries and Russian citizenship.  In some cases, the authorities use subterfuge.  “They told us that there was a lot of construction happening in Kherson and that we have to go there.  And that we could expect salaries of 220 000 rubles (£3065.94),” one witness told Eurasianet.  “Some from our group went but it turned out they had been taken along to fight.” The lure of profit and citizenship is an effective mode of manipulation. The use of migrants and refugees in war is, according to an article in the American journal Foreign Affairs, a widespread phenomenon. Their lives are used like chess pieces in the game of war. The Russian human rights activist Valentina Chupik spoke with Central Asian media agency CABAR about her experiences with Tajik migrants in an interview. According to Chupik, many have said that they have received anonymous calls from law enforcement officials with offers to join the Russian army and receive Russian citizenship within three months. Furthermore, one of the Tajik migrants questioned said that some of his friends and relatives had decided to serve in the army in order to earn more money to send home to their families. Even before partial mobilisation was announced, people with a Central Asian background or nationality were recruited. In fact, an investigation by MediaHub discovered that in Uzbekistan, certain online platforms advertising security-related jobs in Russia actually sent workers directly to a military base controlled by the private Wagner Group.  This Russian mercenary group is used in wars worldwide, including in Ukraine.  Ukrainian intelligence agencies say that “Central Asian recruitment campaigns for mercenaries” have been in operation since the beginning of the war.

The embassies react

The embassies from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan have called on their citizens not to involve themselves in the war in Ukraine. They claim that involvement is a criminal offense according to the domestic laws of their respective countries. The risk of being sucked into the war is particularly high for young men from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan who have already acquired Russian citizenship. With a diaspora of 650 000 Kazakhstanis, 1.9 million Uzbekistanis, and 104 000 Kyrgyzstanis (numbers from 2002), able-bodied men from these groups could be subjected to forced recruitment. For Turkmen, Tajik, and Uzbek citizens, participation in a foreign conflict can lead to imprisonment upon returning home.  Particularly affected by this are the 1.2 million Tajik migrant workers (number from 2021) in Russia.  

Originally written in French by Matthieu Petrov 

Translated into German from French by Robin Roth 

Translated from German into English by Mari Paine 

Edited by Maya Ivanova

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The Turkmen authorities have announced the launch of an instant messaging and email platform developed by domestic companies. These new applications will provide the Turkmen people  with alternatives to Western websites − the majority of which are blocked in Turkmenistan – but it also risks facilitating mass surveillance of internet users. This article was first published on Novastan’s French website on 29 March 2021. On 12 November, the official Turkmen government news agency reported that on the previous day, the Deputy Prime Minister for Transport, Communications and Trade, Bairamgeldi Ovezov, had presented the two new digital innovation projects to President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. According to US media outlet Eurasianet, Tmchat is an instant messaging service for creating group chats, making video calls and sending files. It is a local equivalent to WhatsApp or Telegram. The free Android application was developed by the Turkmen telephone operator Altyn Assar. According to Eurasianet, the second project, Sanly.tm, is a standard email service with a storage volume of 1GB. It was developed by the country’s leading internet service provider, Türkmentelekom. Local media outlet Business Turkmenistan reported that the two applications were presented to the general public in early December by Türkmenaragatnaşyk − the government agency in charge of promoting new technologies in the country − on the 25th anniversary of Turkmenistan’s permanent neutrality policy.

This launch campaign, however, does not reflect the country’s digital infrastructure. According to the NGO Freedom House, Turkmen internet remains one of the slowest and most expensive in the world. The government also employs mass surveillance on the few foreign platforms still authorized in the country. In reality, there is a paradoxical relationship between the Turkmen authorities and new technologies, which over the past few years have sparked uncertainties for the public and opportunities for the authorities.

With forced digitalization come contradictions

Tmchat and Sanly.tm are not the Turkmen government’s first attempts to develop internal digital services: since 2018, Ashgabat has announced the launch of nearly ten applications, social networks and messaging services created by Turkmen companies. And for a good reason; Turkmenistan’s digitization is considered a strategic priority for its President, asserts Eurasianet. Last December, he publicly demanded that the country’s engineers master “innovative technologies” such as 5G and Big Data as quickly as possible. Read more on Novastan: In Tajikistan, government control still slows down internet After Arzuw, Yashlyk and Iminami − copies of Facebook or its Russian equivalent VKontakte − failed to gain popularity, at the end of 2018, Turkmenistan launched its first messaging company called BizBärde, and more recently a video hosting site called Belet. The official Turkmen Portal then presented this YouTube replica as a platform for online access to major local and international channels, including the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, as well as most Russian media. However, the cost of using this platform is 10 manats (2.3 euros) per month, a significant amount in a country where the average salary was no higher than 200 euros (170 GBP) per month in 2020. This frantic search for alternatives is mainly due to the fact that Western and Russian platforms are all but impossible to access in Turkmenistan. The specialized site Coda Story reminds readers that the most popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube), messaging services (Messenger, Telegram), and also IT development sites like Github are theoretically inaccessible from Turkmenistan. The government is indeed projecting its political isolationism into the digital sphere, drastically limiting access to foreign and independent sources of information, as well as access to platforms where anti-regime protests could be organized. The latest victim of this censorship is Wikipedia: according to the NGO International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), the online encyclopedia was blocked last March after comments criticizing the President of Turkmenistan were made by the American Embassy. These comments were published several years ago by WikiLeaks, and had been posted on Berdimuhamedow’s Wikipedia page in Russian. This presents a contradiction that does not work in the favour of locally developed services, such as BizBärde, Belet, and soon perhaps Tmchat and Sanly.tm. The Turkmen people are increasingly wary of government-sponsored platforms, which therefore remain largely unused by the population. According to Turkmen Portal, the app’s developers have announced that they will wait until they reach 10,000 users before expanding to the iOS platform, which remains too expensive for the time being. Altyn Assar, probably aware of internet users’ hesitation, hastened to praise the security of his messaging service: in addition to the possible setting of a two-factor authentication (2FA), all the data would be stored on servers − reliable and inaccessible to third parties − in other words, to law enforcement agencies.

Content blocked, malicious codes, and wide-spread or targeted surveillance

This public mistrust is the product of numerous surveillance scandals and arrests of opposition members, who have spoken out on platforms still accessible in Turkmenistan. Eurasianet recalls that the government tightly controls the online activity of journalists, bloggers, students and key activists within its territory. Several opposition members, once exiled in Russia, have reportedly returned to Turkmenistan with the help of Russian domestic intelligence, as reported by independent Turkmen news outlet Chronicles of Turkmenistan. The population has long relied on VPNs to access foreign resources and partially hide their identity when using the internet, but soon after the establishment of a new government cybersecurity service in September 2019, these applications started to be targeted by authorities, reports the NGO IPHR. The only messaging service still tolerated in the country is IMO, a subsidiary of the Chinese company Joyy. Read more on Novastan:Turkmenistan: according to the authorities, there are no restrictions on the use of the Internet Today, the Turkmen government controls the digital sector, which relies on offensive technologies acquired from foreign companies. The Canadian Citizen Lab and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) have revealed that the Ministry of Communications and the Turkmenistan Secret Police (MNB) are using malware sold by European companies, including FinFisher, sold by the German-British company Gamma Group for wiretapping, de-anonymization and remote control of computers. According to the American media outlet Radio Free Europe, the Turkmen government has more recently held talks with the German company Rohde & Schwartz about the acquisition of technologies that would allow certain sites to be blocked or make eavesdropping possible. 2020 and the global pandemic have only accentuated this struggle for internet control. Radio Free Europe states that VPN users are being targeted and more online resources have been blocked, while Ashgabat continued to proclaim that no cases of Covid-19 have been identified in the country.

Is digital technology serving the diversification of the Turkmen economy?

The “made in Turkmenistan” stamp used in the branding of these applications is another step towards full control of the digital space by the regime of Gourbanguly Berdimuhamedow. By eliminating Western, Russian or Chinese platforms and then replacing them with national services, Ashgabat consolidates its ability to block content that it deems unfavourable, track down opponents under their true identity and spread official discourse without obstacles. In short, it is a shift from offensive and costly methods to techniques that are certainly “softer” , but cruelly more effective as Turkmen internet users sign up to online platforms for “free” . Defining Tmchat and Sanly.tm as just a way for the ruling party to gain social control would risk masking the government’s second ambition in the field. In a period of economic crisis worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic, Turkmenistan is banking on the creation of a digital industry capable of attracting foreign investors who look to outsource in low-cost labour markets, following Belarus’ example. Ashgabat hopes that this policy of “digital development of the economy” will eventually make it possible to generate a new source of foreign income, in particular by boosting its tourism sector and increasing hotel bookings, bus services, and other forms of transportation, says Chronicle of Turkmenistan. However, the government is still struggling to create the right conditions for this political project to grow. The country undoubtedly lacks qualified specialists in programming, system and network administration, and even cybersecurity. Blocking resources that are useful to computer science students − in particular Github and other digital libraries − considerably reduces the likelihood of progress in the field. It is also difficult to go abroad to study, and the few people who decide to return to Turkmenistan, cannot have their degrees recognized as equivalent. Little hope remains that Turkmenistan will become the new El Dorado for digital companies in the near future. Despite a general drop in internet prices, announced on February 8 by Business Turkmenistan, a fixed and unlimited connection at Türkmentelekom still amounts to 170 manats, around 40 euros, a month. This sum does not guarantee speed: according to Speedtest‘s measurements, the country ranks 175 (out of 175) for the speed of fixed internet lines, with only 2.77 megabits per second (Mbit/s) in download going down in February 2021, compared to 53 Mbit/s in Kazakhstan and 82 Mbit/s in Russia.  

Written by Vadim Alinov

Translated from French by Alice Coveney

Edited by Maya Ivanova

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Nurlan Duishobekov is a graphic designer and video illustrator. He studied graphic design in the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. His work took place in Almaty, London, New York and Los Angeles displayed at Coffee Festivals. The artist has been covered by various Media, including National Geographic. A portrait.This article was originally published on Novastan’s German website on 12 January 2021. Sunday morning, a tangy smell of coffee and hot croissants and lounge music fill the environment in the Bishkek Café. Nurlan shows a slight smile, which radiates warmth and tranquillity. A young man with coffee-coloured eyes, which at first glance goes unnoticed. But inside him burns the bright fire of art. He drank a sip of his coffee slowly and talked about his daily routine. “I get up in the mornings, then I work, and in the evenings, I study in Online Format. It can seem boring, but I enjoy the time”.

My father is my idol

Nurlan never studied painting, but he was taught by his father Duishobek Kapassovich Alayev, who from 1992 to 2006 worked at the Kyrgyz Republic National Academy of Arts. In 2001, he was appointed associate professor there. He was also an artist and painted landscapes in his studio. “Since my childhood, I grew up in a creative atmosphere, communicated with students, saw them with colours on canvases and on their hands in the spacious corridors of the academy. My father was my main inspiration”, Nurlan said nostalgically, while the snow gently taps on the window. In 2006, Nurlan lost his father and stopped painting. Four years later, he studied Economics at the Kyrgyz National University. But during an internship at the tax office, he realised that he did not want to pursue this direction. “In my time, young people mostly studied finance or business, everything else has been seen as a disgrace. Today, young people choose their profession more consciously. But I do not regret my studies. In a way, it is also a useful experience”.

From Business to Art

Like most students in the capital, the young man also worked part-time during his studies. At the Café shop chain ‘Sierra Coffee’, he first became interested in Latte Art. With the warm atmosphere, the cosy room, the changing faces, he one day had an unusual and quite crazy idea: coffee itself as a colour to use. In his free time, he began painting with coffee on paper. “I first tried to paint with espresso coffee, then with various other types. Finally, instant coffee seemed to be the cheapest and the best suited.”, he recalls.

Engulfed in his routine, the young artist did not show his paintings for a long time. Painting was only a hobby for him, he painted for himself, because the process gave him peace and joy in his life. But one day his colleagues noticed his painting and saw that he had a potential. “When my boss found out about my passion, he kindly offered to hold an exhibition in the café, which I categorically refused. This idea was then offered to me again and again, until I agreed. The exhibition was the first experience. I felt unsure of myself, but as the people came and said that they found my paintings very beautiful, it was an indescribable inspiration”. Read more on Novastan: Finding links between electronic and folk music in “Waiting for the Sea” Nurlan later became active in the art world. On a warm day in May 2018, the young artist took part for the first time in a big social-cultural action, ‘Night of the Museum’. Then he realised that other people also use coffee to paint. “I like painting with coffee, it conveys warmth and comfort. Today, there are no borders, no sensors, no prohibitions, no requirements that one should only work with gouache or watercolours. Today, people use also unconventional means instead of common colours, like cinnamon, sugar, resin, or others”, said the coffee artist, with his paintings on the table mirroring his thoughts. In one painting, a grandfather is sitting on a bench and seems particularly pensive.

International Success

Later, Nurlan took part in a worldwide art competition on coffee painting and his paintings were first exhibited in New York and Los Angeles and later also in London. Along the development of digitalisation, Nurlan was also interested in computer graphics and design. He designed posters, flyers, and other advertising products for a café in Bishkek. He completed a graphic design course in Bishkek and now continues a Master’s degree at the Higher School of Economics. “My idea of the student timetable has changed fundamentally during my time as a student. Computer graphics is quite a new field in Kyrgyzstan”, commented Nurlan. Opposed to Kyrgyzstan, this field is far more demanded in Moscow.

Nurlan also works occasionally as an artist in different projects. He had the opportunity to participate in the UNICEF-Project “Protecting the rights of children affected by migration”, where he made the illustrations of the heroes for the book series. “These stories of young people are so powerfully written, there is so much adult pain in them”, explained the artist. Nurlan also illustrated the book ‘Muratbek and his way to music’, about the life of the greatest composer and Founder of the Kyrgyz National Conservatory, Muratbek Begaliyev.

I was closer to my mother

In 2018, Nurlan also lost his mother, another turning point in his life. “I was closer to my mother, she raised me mostly. She did not limit me and supported my creative efforts. After my father passed away, she was the only one who cared for me”, he explained. − “Thanks to her, I am now employed in the arts”. After the death of his mother, Nurlan had to have an artistic break and only recently resumed his activities. “My favourite thing to paint is older people, because one can see real life in their eyes. Our grandparents have been through so much, and yet they manage to keep their smile and enjoy the little things”. It may well be that the artist is partly drawing his parents in these people. Nurlan actually wanted to work in the Czech Republic, but the pandemic changed his plans. So, he took a job at Light Creative Studio, which he does not regret: “I don’t have a high salary, but I love what I do, and I take great pleasure in my work”.

I rest when I paint

“Painting is my biggest hobby, and I can paint on my knees, emotionally detached from everything. While painting, I rest”, he explained. With his pictures, he wants to show the real Kyrgyzstan by incorporating traditional patterns and motifs of Kyrgyz culture into the drawings. He finds inspiration in different films, landscapes, and videos. In the young artist’s paintings, one can see not only landscapes and sights, but also historical figures such as ballerina Bübüsara Beyshenalieva, writer Chinghiz Aitmatov or actor Tattybübü Tursunbayeva. He also paints heroes from his favourite films and books, like Duyshon from Aitmatov’s ‘The first teacher’. Read more on Novastan: Jamila – the “world’s most beautiful love story” on film In addition to his father’s work, Nurlan also loves the work of the actor and artist Suimenkul Chokmorov. “I like the paintings of Chokmorov. He paints people, rural motifs and conveys family values and the emotions of people”.

In Nurlan’s pictures, one finds sincere friendship, motherhood, carefree childhood, paternal education, and true love. The coffee paintings have an unusual glossy surface and a charming, pleasant aroma. “If I could change something in my country, it would be the consciousness of our people. It is a difficult time for the whole world, but if our society was less scrupulous, everything could be better. I saw adults, self-sufficient people, who sold their votes for 2000 Som (about GBP 20) in the election. My heart burned”, he mentions the widespread vote-buying in the October parliamentary election. But in his optimism, the artist also states that people’s attitudes towards the arts are changing. In the last three years, they have developed more appreciation for artists and their works. “Whereas people used to believe art should be free, they have [now] more understanding that it is also people’s work and time”, described Nurlan. Artists are also in dialogue with society: “The majority of artists are introverted. I think one must open themselves to the world. Regardless of how society accepts you and your work. I want to live and grow in my country and to contribute to the welfare of our society”.  

                                                                                    Written by Sezim Arynova

                                                                        Translated from German by Susan Higgins

                                                                                    Edited by Maya Ivanova and Anna Wilhelmi

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The Kyrgyz parliament approved the outline for an agreement of a new border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.  The outline includes handing over the Kempir-Abad water reservoir to their Uzbek neighbours.  The news has caused a stir in the country.This article was originally published on Novastan’s French website on 27 October 2022.

On 10 October the Kyrgyz Supreme Council’s Committee on International Affairs and Defense gathered to vote on the outline for an agreement to hand over a debated region to Uzbekistan. Particularly debated in this project is the Kempir-Abad water reservoir bordering Uzbekistan in the Osh Region.  According to the Kyrgyz news agency 24.kg, the reservoir is 4400 hectares and holds almost 1.9 cubic kilometers of water.  It is of great importance to the inhabitants in the region as a source of water for both human consumption and agriculture.  According to the agreement’s outline, the reservoir would be handed over to Uzbekistan. If the agreement is signed, then Kyrgyzstan would receive 19 700 hectares of land in return.  However, considering how dependent the local population is on the water reservoir, the handover is proving very difficult.

A secret vote

The vote on 10 October on the outline of the agreement occurred behind closed doors.  According to reports from Kyrgyz media Kaktus, the details of the project were not shared with the public in order to prevent any uproar.  Furthermore, only 10 out of the 15 representatives of the committee were present. Only a portion of the agreement’s text was shared with them on the day of the vote – actions that are unconstitutional according to the American media agency Eurasianet.  The agreement was approved with six “yes” and four “no” votes. The delegates who voted against the agreement illuminated the details of the affair on the very same day.  Delegate Chingiz Aidarbekov reported to 24.kg that he had not seen the document.  “I said that I couldn’t vote for the agreement before I read it.  So I voted against it,” he said.

A failed cover-up

This situation has led to criticism towards the Kyrgyz government.  After the procedural errors were made public, the parliament declared that the agreement could be voted upon only after a plenary session with the representatives and the president, as required by pre-defined protocols. The controversy is particularly strong in the Osh Region and the border city Özgön, where, after becoming aware of the affair, a committee for the protection of the Kempir-Abad reservoir was established.  The committee, which considers itself to be defending Kyrgyz sovereignty over the reservoir and representing the affected community, is made up of politicians, activists, and civil actors.  Numerous demonstrations have been organized, which have been attended by several dozen people.

Repression against protests

The government of President Sadyr Japarov reacted to the oppositionist protests with repressive measures. On 23 October the houses of about a dozen oppositionists and activists were searched, according to Eurasianet.  Some of them were imprisoned. The authorities claim that the arrests occurred due to attempted organizing of mass unrest, but did not give an exact number of how many were arrested.  The president later explained that these oppositionists were “provocateurs” who would try to build the foundation for his overthrow. These statements were immediately condemned by the opposition, who pointed out the authoritarian nature of the authorities vis-à-vis a non-violent civil movement.

A touchy subject

Prior to his election in 2021, Japarov based his campaign on the defense of Kyrgyz sovereignty.  The outline of the agreement is therefore seen as him going back on promises made almost two years ago. The government is engaging in risky two-faced behaviour on the national level.  To justify the agreement, Japarov claims that joint management of the reservoir is planned.  The Russian daily Kommersant reports that Japarov considers this an improvement over the previous administration of the dam.

Media in Kyrgyzstan increasingly threatened

According to Eurasianet, the arrests on 23 October have occurred in the broader context of attempts to control the opposition and the media.  The government has imprisoned activists and journalists regularly in the past several months, and now wants to pass a law which would lead to greater control over independent media to reduce its influence. None of the parties which have taken a stance against this law were present during the drafting of the law’s text. Read more on Novastan: Kyrgyzstan: Journalists complain about attempts to hack their accounts The Kyrgyz news portal Kloop discovered that Radio Azattyk, the Kyrgyz branch of Radio Free Europe and one of the most important critical media voices in the country, was blocked for two months in a decision made by the Ministry of Culture on 26 October. Radio Azattyk supposedly spread false information about the conflict with Tajikistan and therefore had their site blocked in accordance with the law “On protection from incorrect information,” signed in August 2021.  This law allows the government to block websites which are viewed as brokers of fake information without a court order.  

Written by the editors of Novastan’s French website

Translated from French to German by Michèle Häfliger

Translated from German to English by Mari Paine

Edited by Maya Ivanova

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The first economic forum between the European Union and Central Asia was held on November 5 in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. An opportunity for constructive exchanges, but also to confirm or repeat declarations of intent on bilateral projects between Central Asian and European states. This article was originally published on Novastan’s French website on 15 November 2021. On 5 November, the president of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov opened the first economic forum between the European Union (EU) and Central Asia in Bishkek. The Kyrgyz president celebrated “a new step towards further cooperation between the European Union and Central Asia, which allows for legitimate optimism,” reports the Kyrgyz news agency 24.kg.

Sadyr Japarov underlined the symbolic aspect of this first economic forum, 30 years after the independence of Central Asian republics. He acknowledged the ongoing partnership process of the European Union, which “supported democratic changes and changes of the market.” The idea behind this economic forum between the EU and Central Asian countries was launched in December 2020 in order to support a green and resilient revival after the socio-economic crisis, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, declares the EU. It aims to quicken the pursuit of diversity in Central Asian economies, to stimulate trade, to strengthen the rule of law and to modernize the regulatory framework. Before the summit, the European Union estimated that the forum would serve as a platform for dialogue between and towards regions, which will help to translate into concrete actions goals of the European Union strategy for Central Asia. This strategy was presented in May 2019. The green relaunch, digitalization, and the Central Asian business climate The result of this forum was primarily the declarations of intent. The joint press statement by the EU and the five countries of the region can be summarized as the acknowledgment of some issues and the reiteration of wishes, without figured agreements and concrete promises. Covered topics include the environment from an economic perspective with the green relaunch. Thus, Kyrgyz prime minister Akylbek Japarov reiterated that Central Asia is deeply impacted by the melting of glaciers and the shortage of some resources, describes 24.kg. Three weeks after he came into office, Akylbek Japarov however took an optimistic view, estimating “factors which favour both green revival and the overall building of a green economy” existed in Kyrgyzstan. Beyond Kyrgyz declarations, all representatives of Central Asian republics expressed their will to expand the Euro-Central Asian cooperation. Representatives of both parties stressed the importance of the forum for the economic development of the region, describes Kyrgyz media Kabar.kg. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also participated in this forum. In a video conference, she emphasized the fact that the green relaunch, digitalization and the strengthening of the business climate were domains upon which “Europe has unprecedented expertise”. Hungary dives in Kyrgyzstan in particular However, also some more concrete points have been tackled during the forum. Thus, Austria was able to express its interest in the building of a hydroelectric power station in Kyrgyzstan during an interview between Sadyr Japarov and the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Michael Linhart, says 24.kg. Hungary is one of the European countries which offered the most concrete elements at the forum. Budapest indeed has announced its recognition of vaccination passports of Kyrgyz citizens, says 24.kg. Furthermore, direct flights from Budapest to Bishkek will be available in 2022. At large, the Hungarian minister for Foreign Affairs Peter Siyjarto and the Kyrgyz Minister of Economy Daniyar Amangeldiev have officially launched a Kyrgyz-Hungarian fund for development worth 16 million dollars (14 million euros), reports Kabar.kg. The fund is aimed at helping Kyrgyz small and medium size businesses. Reinforced by the success of this first edition, this forum is to be organized yearly, says Kabar.kg. Set for 2022, the second session will take place in the Kazakh capital Nur-Sultan, after the evaluation of the outcomes of the work carried out in Bishkek.  

Written by Leo Friedrich

Translated from French by Emma Bekrine

Edited by Maya Ivanova

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