Bruce Pannier has watched Central Asia change for more than three decades – from the final years of the Soviet Union to a generation that no longer remembers it. In an interview with Novastan English Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine, the veteran journalist reflects on independent media, Russia’s changing role, generational shifts, overlooked communities and what outsiders still misunderstand about Central Asia.

In the summer of 1990, Bruce Pannier arrived at Tashkent State University. The Soviet Union still existed. Central Asia’s five future independent states did not.

More than three decades later, Pannier has become one of the most familiar English-language voices on Central Asia. At Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), he co-created and co-hosted Majlis, a podcast that brought together journalists, scholars and analysts to discuss developments across the region and, increasingly, to amplify perspectives from Central Asians themselves.

Today, he is part of the team behind Turan, a project covering Central Asia and the wider Turkic world. In this interview with Novastan, Pannier looks back at more than three decades of reporting and reflects on the changing media landscape, the impact of the war in Ukraine, generational change, overlooked communities and a region that, in his view, is increasingly defining its future on its own terms.

Novastan: You have been covering Central Asia for several decades. How did your interest in the region first begin?

Bruce Pannier: I was learning Russian and doing Soviet Studies in college. But I suppose everything started with two books: Eastern Approaches by Sir Fitzroy MacLean and Setting the East Ablaze by Peter Hopkirk. That was in the early and mid-1980s.

The leading American authority on Central Asia was Edward Allworth, who taught at Columbia University. I was fortunate to go and study under him. He loved Central Asia and, best of all, he knew thousands of years of the region’s history. He treated the Soviet period as just another chapter in that history, so we never looked at Central Asia through a Russian or Soviet lens.

Then I went to summer school at Tashkent State University in 1990, and I was completely hooked after that.

Were there particular places in Central Asia – a city, a region, a border area, a mountain landscape, a desert, a bazaar or an everyday encounter – that changed the way you understood the countries and societies you were covering?

Many. I worked in villages in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in 1992 and 1993.

They all had similar lives, working on farms growing crops or herding animals, but there were different ways to do this work in every village and different attitudes about living and working in rural areas.

I was amazed to find out how religious people remained there. I arrived in spring 1992 and, in one of the first villages I worked in, someone died. We all went to the very Muslim funeral, and almost everyone knew the prayers.

I was doing sociological research and one of the questions I asked was: “What building or facility would you like to see in your village?” The answer every time – and I mean every time – was a mosque.

I certainly gained a new respect for herders. I was instructed to do what the people in the villages did. I especially disliked picking cotton, but taking a herd out to pasture was my type of work.

You have a few dogs, a stick to keep stragglers moving and a couple of rocks to throw in front of animals, usually sheep, that are moving too far ahead. You find a good grazing area and sit under a tree watching the animals eat. When it’s time to go back, you round up the herd and head back to the village.

If the job paid better, I would be doing it now.

Of course, the inter-ethnic violence in Osh in June 2010 was a shock. I had thought, or at least hoped, that was all behind everyone.

Remember, I was at Tashkent State in summer 1990 when it happened before, though we couldn’t get much information about what was going on. When I was in Osh and other parts of the Fergana Valley in 1992, the events of 1990 seemed very far away. People didn’t talk about it much.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the mountains. I love mountains and enjoyed the many times I was in the Central Asian mountains.

I liked doing the trip between Bishkek and Osh in a marshrutka just because of the views. The road was in terrible shape until the end of the 1990s, but it didn’t matter to me when I was staring out of the window, or when we stopped along the road.

One time I was with a Kazakh friend in Shymbulak – then called Chimbulak. It’s a good ski area now, and even in 1992 there was a ski lift there. There were no skiers, but I convinced one of the park rangers, for five dollars, to turn on the ski lift long enough to take my friend and me to the top.

I remember him saying, in Russian, “For God’s sake, don’t break anything.”

We walked back down, and the view was magnificent.

And obviously, the Silk Road cities were amazing. Samarkand looks so different now compared with the early 1990s, but even back then it had a charm.

It was not well tended, and the old buildings looked old and in need of repair, but it really made me appreciate how old they were. And since I worked in villages, I could imagine what it was like for a farmer or herder to visit one of the big and bustling cities.

When you first started following Central Asia, what did outside observers most often misunderstand about the region? Has that changed today?

Well, when I first started following Central Asia, there were not many outside observers. Some Western media outlets were having difficulties even spelling the names of the Central Asian countries.

Probably the biggest misconception was that the people in Central Asia had accepted that they were part of the Soviet Union. When I was at TashGU that summer, there were people from all over Central Asia studying there, and it was clear they regarded Russia as a colonizer that was pilfering the region’s resources and trying to force them to become a “Soviet man or woman.”

That has clearly changed since the USSR collapsed. Since the Kremlin launched its full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022, we have seen some lively discussions in Central Asia about colonization and exploitation under Tsarist and then Soviet rule. Even the leaderships of some Central Asian countries are calling it a dark period in the region’s history.

Read more on Novastan: “I only needed a passport” : In Ukraine, Central Asian prisoners of wars caught between loyalty and regret

Majlis became one of the most recognizable English-language formats for discussing Central Asia. What was the original idea behind the podcast?

Muhammad Tahir and I started Majlis in 2014 in response to the increase in fighting in northern Afghanistan. Our first programme was about Turkmenistan being the Achilles heel of Central Asian security.

We weren’t sure then that we would ever do any more podcasts, but RFE/RL management liked it, and I agreed there was a wide variety of topics beyond deteriorating security in northern Afghanistan that we could cover, starting with the great reporting RFE/RL’s Central Asian services were doing in local languages and Russian.

Muhammad was something of a showman. He really embraced being the host, with me as the “in-house” RFE/RL expert. Majlis gave us a chance to show off our people in the Central Asian services and promote people outside RFE/RL who had made, or were making, a name for themselves in the field of Central Asian affairs.

Our guests really propelled the podcast forward, and I’m glad to see so many of them are now leading scholars in the field of Central Asian studies.

Why was it important for Majlis to include voices from Central Asia itself, and how did their perspectives shape the discussions?

There was often a difference in interpretations of events in Central Asia – sometimes large differences, but mostly nuances.

Someone like me, who has studied the region, lived there briefly and travelled widely, came to different conclusions about what events in the region meant and where they were leading Central Asia.

For about the first 20 years after independence, there were not many Central Asians who could articulate, in English, their views on the course of events. But when they started to appear, Muhammad and I were, firstly, very happy and, secondly, determined to give the voices of Central Asia – often people in their 20s and 30s – an opportunity to explain what was happening in their homelands.

It was possible to disagree with what some of the people from Central Asia said, but it was important to hear how they viewed the evolving world inside and outside Central Asia.

In the end, it’s their story. I think it made for a better understanding of the region for people outside it.

Were there episodes or discussions of Majlis that particularly stayed with you because they captured a turning point in the region?

Several dealt with the deterioration of security in northern Afghanistan. Most of our guests on this topic were from Afghanistan and supporters of Ghani, or at least not supporters of the Taliban, or from Central Asia. The gradual depression with which they spoke about events unfolding in northern Afghanistan between 2014 and 2021 certainly caused me to consider more and more the possibility that the Taliban would reconquer Afghanistan.

Several of the podcasts we did about women’s rights and gender-based violence were revealing, and I learned a lot, but I was troubled by some of the assessments given by guests.

One that really moved me was the description Freedom for Eurasia founder Leila Seiitbek gave of how she was a victim of ala kachuu, bride kidnapping, and escaped because she smoked a cigarette and her kidnapper’s family rejected her as a forced bride.

How has reporting on Central Asia changed since the 1990s, especially in terms of access, sources and risks for local journalists?

When I started work for the Open Media Research Institute (OMRI) in March 1995, the internet was not much help. People at OMRI would give me photocopies of current articles from Central Asian newspapers. Sometimes I had access to the actual newspapers, though these were at least several days old and usually more like a week or two old.

Back in the 1990s, certainly in the early and middle 1990s, journalists and media outlets in Central Asia were freer to write about what they wanted, with the exception of Turkmenistan. Kazakhstan had a vibrant independent media scene, very much like the one developing in Kyrgyzstan.

But even in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, journalists were pushing the limits of coverage on matters such as corruption, the deteriorating socio-economic situation, questionable state policies and other topics.

This situation changed as governments faced increasing challenges and decided that some criticism might be valid, but that some outlets were reporting too much about problems. In Tajikistan’s case, during the 1992-1997 civil war, this could be deadly, and more than a dozen journalists, foreign and local, were essentially assassinated.

By the end of the 1990s, it was becoming more difficult for journalists in Uzbekistan to report freely on a wide range of topics. The government would find charges such as fraud or failure to pay taxes – something unrelated to journalism – to use against journalists who were exposing shortcomings in the country. This became a standard practice, and even President Islam Karimov’s nephew, who was an independent journalist, was forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital for his reporting.

Now, journalists in each country understand where the boundaries in reporting are, and there is a lot of self-censorship being practised.

How would you describe the current generation of journalists in Central Asia compared with those reporting in the 1990s or 2000s?

I suppose the biggest difference is the range of media now available. Everything is on the web now. Back in the 1990s, outlets were confined to the basic three – television, radio and print media, what people now refer to as “traditional media.”

It was easier for governments to shut down independent outlets among these three, or pressure outlets that featured criticism of government policies. That made it very difficult for journalists at independent outlets.

Today, the same pressures still exist, but “non-traditional” media are giving independent journalists opportunities they did not have in the past. That is why many of the best reports on Central Asia are coming from people with YouTube channels. Facebook and other social networks are also giving journalists – whether journalists by training or “citizen” journalists – opportunities to speak about corruption and state mismanagement.

I think the journalists in the 1990s and 2000s were just as brave and anxious to report the big news affecting their countries as journalists today.

I would mention one development that showed me that, given the chance, good independent journalism could take root in any of the Central Asian countries.

When Shavkat Mirziyoyev became Uzbekistan’s president in late 2016, he eased state control over the media and encouraged journalists to report on the important things happening in Uzbekistan. And they did. Given some space, journalists in Uzbekistan went right after corrupt officials and reported on other topics they would not have touched during the last decade or so of President Islam Karimov’s rule.

In fact, it proved to be too candid, and Mirziyoyev’s government had to rein in some of the coverage. But it showed the spirit of independent, objective journalism was still alive in Uzbekistan and that all it needed was an opportunity to blossom.

Independent media now operate across very different spaces – inside the region, in exile and through social media, podcasts, YouTube and investigative platforms. Has this changed what independent journalism means in Central Asia?

Certainly. The role of “non-traditional” media is becoming more important all the time.

Some of the cutting-edge criticism of policies or officials in Tajikistan or Uzbekistan has been coming from YouTube channels. This is true to a lesser extent, in my opinion, in the other three countries.

And, of course, the YouTube channels and websites such as Turkmen.news and Hronikatm.com dealing with Turkmenistan are all operating from outside the country.

Which independent media outlets or journalistic initiatives from Central Asia do you think deserve more international attention today?

In Kazakhstan, Vlast.kz, Orda.kz and KazTAG come to mind as good independent media outlets that could use some international attention and, if possible, funding. Unfortunately, Orda.kz recently ceased operations after legal difficulties that included its chief editor being sentenced to eight years in prison. I’m sure there are others, but those are three off the top of my head.

In Kyrgyzstan, Kloop Media is currently banned from operating inside the country. Temirov Live has also done some great investigative reporting and was closed down. Kaktus Media is still working in Kyrgyzstan, but it is one of only a few independent media outlets left.

The Central Asia Barometer was a great initiative that did some fantastic survey work. They had European funding. Unfortunately, they were pressured into stopping work. It would be great to find a way for them to resume operations.

What I would like to see generally is some form of cooperation or organization that brings independent journalists from Europe and Central Asia together. I know Vlast.kz and Orda.kz have employed Europeans, and the results were notable.

If it were possible to get funding for a media outlet covering EU-Central Asian cooperation, such as Global Gateway, and employing young European and Central Asian journalists, I think the results would be excellent and very enlightening.

What role have exile media, independent journalists and regional analysts played in keeping Central Asian stories visible internationally?

It varies from country to country. Independent journalists, including those working in non-traditional media, have been instrumental in calling out corrupt government officials who are then fired when authorities perceive the attention these reports are garnering nationally and, in some cases, internationally. I’m thinking mainly about YouTube channels.

In Turkmenistan’s case, exile media are almost the only source of objective news about what is happening inside the country. Obviously, RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, Azatlyk, is an exception, but Turkmen.news and Hronikatm.com are essential sites for following events in Turkmenistan.

There are some absolutely fantastic regional analysts, and since I am afraid I might forget someone, I will not list any names. So much of the best material appearing in English these days is being produced by Central Asians – and it is not translated into English; it is being written by them in English.

What can international media, donors and regional platforms do to support Central Asian journalists without distorting their priorities or making them more vulnerable?

This is a tough question. On the one hand, international publicity provides some protection for journalists – and activists and politicians – in Central Asia, and often keeps them out of prison or at least pressures authorities into some leniency.

On the other hand, in the ever-changing world, it is impossible to stay focused on any one topic. When attention wanes, these journalists are vulnerable.

International publicity around a particular journalist can also make that person a special target of authorities who do not want independent journalists or media outlets. If they work for foreign media, such as RFE/RL, governments can attack them as doing the bidding of their foreign paymaster.

The war in Ukraine has changed how many people in Europe and the United States look at Central Asia. What has it revealed about the region?

Deep-seated resentment against having been colonized, and growing efforts by many Central Asians and their governments to distance themselves from Russia.

This is particularly evident in the new security and defence partnerships the Central Asian states are forming with Türkiye, first and foremost, but also with Azerbaijan and some of the Gulf states.

Following on from that, I think Central Asians are understanding more and more that they do not need to depend on Russia, certainly not to the extent they did for the first 30 years after independence.

Russia is a leading trade partner and will remain so for the foreseeable future, but it is now clear that there are other partners, and some have ethnic or religious ties to Central Asia that Russia does not have.

Even if the war in Ukraine ends tomorrow, I don’t think there’s any way to go back to the status quo prior to February 2022.

Read more on Novastan: Who Made the Nations of Central Asia?

I still see articles that refer to Central Asia as Russia’s “backyard.” Central Asians never viewed it that way, and now they have less and less reason to accept such characterizations.

Has the war accelerated a real diversification of Central Asia’s foreign relations, or are we still overstating the change?

Accelerated. Definitely.

Prior to February 2022, Russia and China were the dominant partners for trade, investment and security, including energy security. Everyone else was at best running a distant second.

Read more on Novastan: Money, boxes and absent men: the hidden economy reshaping Central Asia

China and Russia are still important partners for Central Asia, Russia perhaps less so now. But many countries have stepped up their interaction with Central Asia. The EU and the Gulf Arab states have all increased their roles in and importance for Central Asia.

Türkiye and the Organization of Turkic States are also increasingly part of Central Asia’s future. Azerbaijan’s role in the OTS and as a key country in the Middle Corridor is bringing it closer to Central Asia, and in November 2025 there was even a “C6” meeting with the five Central Asian states and Azerbaijan.

Some people used to say Russia was the policeman and China the banker for Central Asia. Now the Central Asian states have options for both security and finance.

What are the social changes in Central Asia that outsiders tend to miss because they focus too much on presidents and geopolitics?

The younger generation, people under 30 or 35 years old, is very tech-savvy.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and to a lesser degree Kyrgyzstan, are all moving forward quickly and modernizing everything from architecture to online documents and payments. These three countries are becoming modern states.

Do you see a generational shift in Central Asia, especially among young people who no longer remember the Soviet Union?

Definitely, and it’s not only that almost everyone under 35 or 40 has a mobile phone and knows how to use computers.

For young people in the 1990s, it was often enough that their countries were independent. They remembered clearly what life was like as part of the Soviet Union and, even if socio-economic conditions were often not better, and at times perhaps even worse, they were independent and there was a feeling they were masters of their own destiny. Change could happen.

The current generation wants to be masters of their own destiny but often views the entrenched leadership in their countries as the primary obstacle to positive transformation. There is scepticism among some young people that their governments are willing to make changes that benefit the younger generation.

In the Soviet days, there wasn’t much people could do to change policies made in Moscow, but now they believe it is, or at least should be, possible to change policies in their own countries.

It must be frustrating for many younger people when they see their leaders cling to policies that benefit the regime, not the masses.

Which communities, regions or issues within Central Asia remain most invisible in international coverage?

There are many, but I’m just going to mention the situations of the Karakalpaks in the Republic of Karakalpakstan in western Uzbekistan and the Ismailis in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast in eastern Tajikistan.

In both cases, the rights of minority groups are being trampled as the governments in those countries attempt to forcibly assimilate these people.

I would also mention that the situation of ethnic minorities in Turkmenistan receives almost no attention – in fairness, because it is so difficult to obtain information.

Central Asia is still relatively little known in France and Europe. What stories would you recommend European-based media cover more often?

I think the obvious story is the Middle Corridor, or Trans-Caspian International Transport Route. People in Europe don’t know much about their countries’ trade with Central Asia.

Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Romania and some other European countries are buying Kazakh oil, which is especially important now as EU countries try to stop buying Russian oil. France buys uranium from Kazakhstan, and other countries in Europe probably will as more nuclear power plants are built.

If you buy dried apricots or raisins in Poland, Germany, France, the UK or the Baltic countries, there is a good chance the dried fruit came from Uzbekistan.

Many European travellers have gone to Central Asia. Marco Polo, of course, but more recently, in the 19th century, Arminius Vámbéry from Hungary, Aurel Stein, also a Hungarian who became a British citizen, Sven Hedin from Sweden – and yes, I know about his later connection to Nazi Germany – the Frenchman Paul Pelliot, and others.

Their stories are fascinating, and they are stories of Europeans in Central Asia.

Of course, there is always the ancient Silk Road that linked Europe to Central Asia long ago. The two regions have been in contact for a long time.

Interestingly, although the climate and landscape are very different between the two regions, they are located roughly at the same latitudes, meaning if you travel straight west from Central Asia you end up in Europe, and vice versa going straight east from Europe, with only the Caucasus or southern Russia separating them.

You are now working on Turan, a project focused on Central Asia and the wider Turkic world. What are you hoping to bring to readers through it?

First, there are a lot of stories about Central Asia that are under-reported or not reported at all by media outside the region. That has generally been true since the five countries became independent in late 1991.

Second, unfortunately, there is not much money for outlets and organizations in Europe that are interested in Central Asia. The most obvious example is Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which has been forced to drastically reduce its coverage of Central Asia due to budget cuts.

Turan hopes to fill that void to some extent and bring Central Asia’s stories to an audience on YouTube – and not only Central Asia’s stories, but those from more broadly across the Caspian, including Türkiye and Iran.

The Turan Research Center is part of the Yorktown Institute, so the coverage style leans towards that of a think tank. I think that’s noticeable from the topics and the language used. Many of the reports are based on articles written for the Turan Research Center.

I am not running the channel. I’m just a member of the team. The driving forces are the chief editor and the people doing the graphics.

What advice would you give to a relatively small independent media outlet like Novastan trying to cover Central Asia seriously?

I think Novastan is doing a great job, especially with covering youth culture. I like that Novastan covers niche topics like the French-Uzbek theatre presentation, as well as big stories such as the shrinking Caspian or the lexicon of Kazakh decolonization.

The photographs of scenes from everyday life in Central Asia are excellent.

Many – all? – of your writers have travelled or lived in Central Asia, and it shows in the coverage and choice of topics.

I think advertising is the biggest drawback for Novastan, but again, many organizations are facing this problem. Advertising requires money and a social media team.

The material is there, and in English, French and German. The problem is getting enough people to see it and recommend it, so that it comes to the attention of a wider audience.

For a European outlet like Novastan, what is the best way to work with Central Asian journalists – not only by quoting them as sources, but by building real editorial partnerships and giving their perspectives more visibility?

One possibility is offering Central Asian journalists, including those working for state media, an opportunity to write for European outlets. It would likely require translation.

And the matter of payment could be complicated, since it could lead to accusations of them being funded, and therefore influenced, by foreign sources.

But if some Central Asian journalists were willing to write without expecting remuneration, simply for the exposure in Europe and a chance to boost their credentials and CVs, it would solve that problem.

In the case of journalists writing for state media, they could present the state version of events. Agree or disagree, it is a view that needs to be taken into consideration when assessing the situation in Central Asia.

After all these years covering Central Asia, what still surprises you about the region?

There are always surprises. For me personally, the biggest surprise – and it is a happy one – is seeing the five countries getting along so well.

I travelled through Central Asia quite a bit, especially in the 1990s. I was in every country and listened to what people said about the neighbouring countries. A lot of it was negative, which was really strange to me, since when I was in summer school in Tashkent in 1990 there were people from all over Central Asia, many different ethnicities, and they all agreed that Moscow, the Soviet government, was exploiting them.

There was a sort of equality, a kinship that formed between the peoples of the different Central Asian Soviet republics, a quiet mutual agreement that they were all being neglected and mistreated.

But once they were independent, there were some cruel comments about the neighbours and other indigenous ethnic groups. And, of course, the worst expression of this was in southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010.

I was there, mostly in Osh, speaking to people from every side, and it was often chilling and always extremely disappointing and sad to hear what so many people were saying at that time.

That situation is at least becoming better now. That sense of brotherhood and common cause I heard in talks with groups of Central Asians at Tashkent State in 1990 is returning, though now the Central Asians are stronger, no longer victims of a colonizer.

Central Asia is still often covered internationally through politics, security and geopolitics. Which authors, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, artists or cultural works from the region would you recommend to readers who want to understand Central Asia differently?

This would also be a very long list, and I worry about leaving somebody out.

For material in English, and often in Russian, some of the authors I would recommend are Temur Umarov, Assel Tutumlu, Diana Kudaibergen and Asel Doolotkeldieva, just to name a few. There are obviously dozens more.

You can find the work of Central Asian scholars on several Western websites, and I will just mention the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Oxus Society.

I will say it’s worth looking at the media outlets in all five Central Asian countries as much as possible. Even state media and the journalists working for these outlets are worth following, even in places like Turkmenistan where almost every article mentions “Hero Arkadag.”

It is one side of the story, the side the governments tell their people.

There are many good journalists and outlets outside Central Asia that do fantastic jobs keeping track of events in the region or posting photos of life there that convey to people what it’s like to be there, what you see in front of your face.

When I was working there in the 1990s, hardly any people from the West were going there, so nobody knew much about it. Now there are many people writing about Central Asia who have travelled extensively there, spent a lot of time in one or several places, or have just been following events and writing about them.

The level of knowledge is so much higher than it was. It makes me smile all the time to see how many great people are sharing their deep knowledge and experiences of Central Asia with the rest of the world.

I am not familiar with contemporary filmmakers and musicians, so I really couldn’t say much about them. I would recommend watching the movies Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are making about their history.

It is important to see how their forefathers are portrayed and think about the effects that has on the people living in these countries today.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English.

The post Bruce Pannier: “Central Asians never viewed their region as Russia’s backyard” appeared first on Novastan English.

Following a small river from the mountains into the Kazakh steppe, filmmaker Kristina Mikhailova set out to imagine its dreams. Five years later, the journey had become a portrait of Kazakhstan told through the voices of its women – and an intensely personal exploration of freedom, identity and belonging.

A small river runs for 130 kilometres through Kazakhstan, beginning among mountain peaks and glaciers before gradually disappearing into the vast landscape below. When filmmaker Kristina Mikhailova first decided to follow the Aksay from beginning to end, she imagined making a film about the river’s dreams.

Five years later, that idea had become something much larger.

Along the river, Kristina interviewed around 100 women, asking each an unusual question: if you were a river, what kind of river would you be? Fifteen of them eventually became part of River Dreams, a 98-minute film in which the Aksay serves simultaneously as landscape, witness and metaphor.

What emerged is not simply a portrait of a river. Through women’s stories of freedom, violence, dignity and belonging, the film became what its director describes as “a political portrait of Kazakhstan through a female perspective”.

The film has since travelled internationally, receiving around 30 festival invitations and and winning the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury in the Forum section at the 2026 Berlinale. It has also drawn enthusiastic audiences closer to home, including three sold-out screenings in Kazakhstan and a packed morning screening in Kyrgyzstan, where it won Best Feature-Length Documentary Film at the UmutDoc International Documentary Film Festival in Bishkek.

Yet bringing the film to a wider audience in Kazakhstan itself has proved much more difficult. Kristina says censorship has prevented River Dreams from securing the domestic release she wants.

For Novastan, Kristina Mikhailova spoke with Novastan Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine about the “sisterhood of rivers”, the women she met along the Aksay, her Ukrainian grandmother’s memories, female agency and violence, her identity as a Russian Kazakhstani, and the painful experience of feeling deeply attached to a country that she sometimes feels is pushing her away.

A sisterhood of rivers

Novastan: The film began with the idea of following the Aksay River for its entire 130-kilometre course. What were you looking for when you first set out?

Kristina Mikhailova: When I started filming, I was very young. This was the idea for my first feature-length film: I wanted to follow the river all the way, 130 kilometres from beginning to end, and imagine what it might dream about – to film those dreams as I saw them.

But after walking the entire river alone, I saw how much it changed along the way. I wanted to capture those changes and see reality through the river’s eyes, to personify it. I was working with a post-humanist approach and looking for a way to give the river a voice.

That is how I came up with the idea of asking the girls who lived along the river what kind of rivers they would be.

That question immediately helped me understand the person in front of me and shape the conversation in a way that allowed her to share something very important to her. In the Kazakhstani context, very little space is often given to women’s perspectives. It mattered to me that, as a woman, I was creating such a space, and that through the film other women could have that space too.

Gradually, what emerged was a political portrait of Kazakhstan through a female perspective.

Why did you choose the Aksay in particular?

Aksay, or Aksaika, is a very small, modest river. I wanted to film precisely this kind of inconspicuous river, because we have so many of them.

Its journey is typical of many mountain rivers in Central Asia: they begin among mountain peaks and glaciers and then disappear somewhere in the steppe or flow into lakes, never reaching the ocean.

By filming Aksay, I was also filming all these other rivers. I called it a “sisterhood of rivers”.

It is funny because I once heard someone say that the film shows some of the negative aspects of women’s lives in Kazakhstan because I had chosen the “wrong” river – one that was too insignificant. Apparently, if I had chosen some great, “proper” river, the story would have turned out differently.

I doubt it.

Making female agency visible

You interviewed around 100 women during the making of the film, with 15 eventually appearing in the final version. What did these encounters teach you?

First and foremost, I learned about myself.

Recently, I started thinking about how I changed over the five years it took to make the film. Of course, I established myself as a filmmaker, my name became known and new opportunities opened up. But something much more personal happened too: I discovered myself as a woman of Kazakhstan. I saw who I was.

Through meeting other women, I realised how different we are and how many pains we share. I came to understand relationships between men and women better – and men themselves, too.

For me, it was a genuine step up in my understanding of myself. One film led to so many personal discoveries.

Freedom seems to be one of the central themes of the film. Did making it change the way you understood freedom and the restrictions women face?

I am glad you noticed the theme of freedom because, for me, it was one of the key themes on a human level.

While making the film, I realised how many layers restrictions can have. Some are so deeply embedded and so difficult even to recognise that overcoming them can sometimes seem utopian.

But if we are talking about empowerment, then yes, absolutely. And women expand these possibilities for themselves.

I think every one of the 100 girls I interviewed, and each of the 15 who eventually appeared in the film, helped create a safe space through her story and her willingness to share her vulnerability – a safe space for all of us within those 98 minutes.

It is a space that women throughout Kazakhstan can enter.

That is why I am trying so hard to secure a wide release for the film in Kazakhstan. I want every Kazakhstani woman to be able to see it. Its distribution title is Qyz Republic.

The film deals with difficult experiences, including violence, but the women are never reduced to victims. Was challenging stereotypical representations of women something you consciously set out to do?

I did not explicitly set out to move away from stereotypical representations of women. I had a different objective: to make female agency visible.

That sounds slightly paradoxical, but there is a need for it.

Above all, I wanted my girls to feel strong.

I think both men and women can connect with that experience. But for girls in particular, the film creates a place where they can recognise themselves, feel seen and feel strong – where they can see themselves as capable of preserving their dignity despite everything.

The culmination of this, of course, comes in the final scenes involving violence. At that point, the conflict becomes completely explicit – almost black and white.

But in my view, not one of my girls looks like a victim.

The river as witness

The landscape itself seems to function almost like another character. How did you want the river and its surroundings to appear on screen?

The landscape is definitely my silent witness – the ghost of Hamlet’s father.

I always wanted the landscape cinematography to be minimalist and static, without camera movement. I wanted it to record impartially whatever was in front of it, creating what my cinematographer calls “moving photographs”.

I wanted to leave room for a transcendental experience beyond my own statement, so that each viewer could develop their own idea of the river through these landscapes.

I did not want to dramatise them or deliberately select only emotionally charged scenery. I showed the landscapes as the river passed through them, from beginning to end.

Of course, a lot had to be left out, but I think the film still gives you a sense of roughly every ten kilometres of the river’s journey.

I wanted the landscape to speak for itself.

A grandmother’s river

Your grandmother also appears in the film, although you did not originally intend for her to be part of it. How did her story enter the film?

I think I inherited my particular attentiveness to the world around me from my grandmother.

She understood the world intuitively. The war had a profound impact on her childhood – on where and how she was able to study – and eventually brought her to Kazakhstan as a little girl.

When my grandmother arrived here, she spoke only Ukrainian. She did not know Russian. I think that sharpened her perception too: she had to read reality and learn from it through observation.

I had not originally planned to include my grandmother in the film. I simply decided to speak with her by the river about our family history and her past. Then, during the editing process, I found this moment when she suddenly comes alive while remembering the river of her childhood.

My grandmother is 93. That is almost a century. Yet both the river of her childhood in Siberia and my river in Kazakhstan can overflow, flooding houses and cities.

Through my grandmother’s memory, I wanted this sense of timelessness to enter the film.

“I belong entirely to this place”

The film is multilingual, much like Kazakhstan itself. How does your own identity shape the perspective from which you portray the country?

I love the fact that the film turned out to be multilingual – just like our reality in Kazakhstan. I see that as an advantage.

But I understand that, as a Kazakhstani whose passport says “Russian”, I have my own perspective. It cannot express the general mood surrounding identity in Kazakhstan.

Speaking purely about my own feelings, I belong entirely to this place. I am deeply connected to it.

But sometimes – or often? – I feel that it is trying to push me out.

I feel that both as a Russian Kazakhstani and as a woman and filmmaker.

At the same time, there is nowhere else on Earth where I feel so needed, or where I can so easily find common ground with people.

I understand everything here. Unfortunately, I cannot accept everything.

Between documentary and visual art

River Dreams combines documentary filmmaking with dreams, metaphor, music and highly stylised imagery. Did you ever think of it as a conventional documentary?

From the beginning, I was not making a traditional documentary. For me, it was a large artistic practice that happened to come closest to documentary cinema.

Essentially, I was making visual and conceptual art.

So I did not restrict the means I could use. I looked for ways of expressing my metaphors through different images, visual registers and the editing itself.

In the end, I think the river itself dictated what its dreams should look like.

I receive very different reactions to these techniques. Some people call them outstanding. Some see them as nothing more than B-roll. Some say they are not poetic at all, while others find them endlessly poetic. Some people think they are naive.

I like the fact that they provoke an emotional response and make the imagination work. I think that is what real cinema should do.

At least, that is what cinema does to me. And I am glad my film has had that effect on other people.

Music also plays a prominent role in the film. What did you want it to contribute?

Music plays a very important role.

The film includes several compositions by a Scottish artist I like and a track by a well-known American artist. But the most important element for me is the a cappella singing.

It appears four times. I perform one short melody myself, while the others are sung by girls I met along the river. Then, at the end, there is a music video featuring the classic line-up of the group KeshYOU, which becomes a separate, meta-ironic statement for me.

I feel no affinity with the idea, familiar across the post-Soviet space, that “real cinema” should not have music.

I use music because, for me, it speaks first and foremost to our emotions. And it fits this film particularly well because the film’s structure is itself profoundly emotional.

Success abroad, censorship at home

The film has now travelled widely and received considerable international recognition. What has the response been like?

By the time we are recording this interview, the Kazakhstani premiere has already taken place and we have had three sold-out screenings.

In Kyrgyzstan, we filled a cinema at 9:30 in the morning and won the festival’s Grand Prix. The film has received an award at the Berlinale and around 30 festival invitations around the world.

Soon I will leave for a three-month tour through Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The US premiere has already taken place in New York, and the Latin American premiere is coming next.

But despite all of this, I am still struggling to get the film into general release at home.

The reason is censorship.

I hope we will manage to overcome it, but as an artist I find the fact that I constantly have to fight simply humiliating.

It is still difficult for me to cope with the enormous pain of not being accepted at the state or industry level.

And yet the reaction from audiences in Kazakhstan itself seems to have been very different. How do you reconcile those two experiences?

Kazakhstan is also my audience – both women and men.

The film received an extraordinary and deeply emotional response here. I saw rivers of tears. I heard so many people open up to me after the screenings.

And my heart is torn between my love for my homeland and the searing pain of feeling that it rejects me.

I do not yet know how to resolve that contradiction.

I tried to express it in the film.

“The universe is my country”

After five years making this film and speaking to so many people along the river, how do you think about Kazakhstan’s future?

I think about the country’s future as the future of the people who live in it.

In Kazakhstan, I have met so many people who give me hope. They express their opinions openly. They value their freedom and are prepared to fight for it. They create space for others. They make the people around them happier.

But there have also been periods when I encountered many people filled with self-censorship and despair – people who seem no longer to regard their own dignity as something inviolable.

That is why thinking about the country’s future is very painful for me at the moment.

In the film, I describe a dream I had as a child. I am a baby who keeps growing and expanding until I reach the dimensions of the universe, but I never reach its boundaries.

Now I feel as though I am that baby again, and the universe is my country, Kazakhstan.

Maybe I need to go beyond its boundaries. Maybe I am already outgrowing them.

But I do not know.

My family lives here.

I love this place very deeply.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post “River Dreams”: A river, 100 women and a portrait of Kazakhstan appeared first on Novastan English.

In August-September 2026, the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit took place in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Initially conceived as a platform for regional security cooperation, the organization used its 2026 summit to reiterate demands for a multipolar international order through appeals to Eurasian connectivity. State-overseen media in some of the organization’s authoritarian member states repeatedly invoked euphemistic terms such as “Silk Road” and “Digital Silk Road” alongside declarations of multipolarity. These references accompanied efforts by regional powers, particularly China and Russia, to secure recognition as global powers and challenge the predominance the United States has exercised since the end of the Cold War. For the post-Soviet states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, embracing the Silk Road paradigm presents a particular dilemma, as they seek greater international recognition through a framework that designates them primarily as intermediaries between larger powers.

Read more on Novastan: In Central Asia, China is taking advantage of Russia’s isolation at war

The Making of the Silk Road Paradigm

 Since the early 2010s, the Silk Road has become a pervasive framework for representing Central Asia and the South Caucasus in tourism, scholarship, current affairs, and policy analysis. Many hotels and travel agencies in these regions bear the name or feature imagery of camels and caravans, while international tour operators market visits to these countries as Silk Road journeys. Conferences and institutional associations, including the Tbilisi Silk Road Forum and the Silk Road Universities Network, adopt the same designation. American academic institutions have also embraced it, most notably the Silk Road Studies Program formerly affiliated with Johns Hopkins University and Indiana University’s incipient Silk Road Studies program.

Uyghur and Uzbek restaurants across Western Europe and North America operate under names such as “Silk Road” and “Caravan.” The Chinese-American cello virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma applied the same paradigm to musical performance through his Silk Road project, conceived in 1998. Its eclectic ensemble reduces the rich musical traditions of various Eurasian nations to one or two representative performers, prioritizing national representation over demonstrating genuine historical musical connections across Eurasia. In a 2021 video from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the popular Emirati food blogger Khalid al-Ameri gleefully attributes the enormous portions of Tashkent-style pilaf (to’y oshi) to the appetites of merchants traversing the Silk Road, as if local culinary traditions existed chiefly to serve transient traders.

    The Silk Road paradigm was popularized in the former Soviet space during late perestroika, almost a quarter-century before China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, as  late Soviet and early post-Soviet publications attest. UNESCO provided institutional endorsement by launching a research program dedicated to the “Silk Roads” in 1988. In 1994, the Samarkand Declaration on Silk Road Tourism established a framework for international cooperation to promote the region’s historical routes and cultural heritage. Four years later, Baku hosted a conference on the restoration of the historic Silk Road under the EU’s auspices. The United States adopted the designation for its own New Silk Road initiative in 2011. Uzbekistan’s 2009 postage stamps promoted the theme, followed by subsequent issues depicting mapped routes, camels, caravans, and other popular Silk Road imagery. Russia also issued a Silk Road commemorative coin honoring the Eurasian Economic Community. The tourism expansion across post-Soviet Eurasia in the 2010s further encouraged Silk Road branding. For the newly independent states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the paradigm offered a means of asserting historical identities and international significance after the Soviet collapse amid the limitations of established Western regional classifications, as Central Asia and the South Caucasus fitted awkwardly within conventional definitions of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, or South Asia.

    Scholarship and popular historical writing in the English-speaking world have helped popularize the Silk Road as a framework for interpreting Central and Inner Eurasia. Valerie Hansen and Susan Whitfield have made substantial contributions to the study of underexplored communities and cultural encounters through works organized around this designation. Christopher Beckwith’s monograph applies the term to a broad history of Central Eurasia while emphasizing the historical agency of the region’s vernacular communities. Peter Frankopan adopts the pluralized Silk Roads for an expansive Eurasian synthesis for a general readership. In their accounts of premodern Eurasia, these authors organize historical interpretation around a designation that did not exist during the periods under examination. Maps of the Silk Road and its supposed branches, now ubiquitous in tourist promotions and geopolitical analysis, further reinforce the impression that the term describes a coherent framework. References to the Silk Road also supply historical context in prominent Anglophone media outlets’ reporting on the dire human rights situation of the Uyghurs.

    The Silk Road paradigm often entails a teleological interpretation of Eurasian history by projecting the modern concept of globalization onto premodern exchanges. Conventional accounts describe a network of routes linking China with Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean from the period when the Han and Roman empires coexisted to the mid- or late fifteenth century, before the Age of Discoveries fundamentally reshaped global connections. Replacing a single road with a plurality of routes leaves largely intact the presumption that these exchanges constituted a coherent and enduring trans-Eurasian system. The term itself was a nineteenth-century coinage, appearing in Carl Ritter’s work in 1838 before the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen gave it greater scholarly prominence in 1877. The existence of exchanges between distant regions does not establish that the people involved shared a conception of a unified system joining Eurasia’s eastern and western extremities. Treating their activities as successive stages of globalization risks attributing a common direction to interactions shaped by distinct local circumstances and changing sociopolitical realities. The conventional fifteenth-century endpoint similarly obscures the continuation of overland exchange across the Eurasian landmass into the modern period.

    The Silk Road has also acquired a geographical scope that encompasses entire regions of Central and Inner Eurasia. In this usage, Central Asia, Iran, the Caucasus, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia fall under a common designation derived from their association with routes connecting China with Europe. The term consequently covers the political, social, religious, and cultural histories of these territories, including developments whose significance extends well beyond commercial or cultural transmission. This usage conflates the history of connections among regions with the histories of the regions themselves. Establishing that a society participated in a network of exchange provides limited justification for treating that network as the principal framework for interpreting its historical development.

Between China and Europe

    The Silk Road paradigm presents China and Europe as the principal cultural and commercial centers of premodern Eurasia, relegating the intervening lands and peoples to an intermediary position within a linear rather than territorial conception of space. This hierarchy obscures the development of local political institutions and intellectual traditions, assigning historical importance primarily according to a society’s contribution to exchanges between the two endpoints.

The mathematical scholarship of al-Khwarazmi, the philosophical and medical writings of Avicenna, the musical theories of al-Farabi, the astronomical discoveries of al-Biruni, the linguistic and ethnographic works of Mahmud al-Kashgari, and the poetry of Ferdowsi, Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Ahmad Yasawi, Yusuf Balasaguni, and Ali-Shir Nawa’i exemplify contributions whose significance exceeds the transmission of ideas between distant centers and deserves consideration in its own right. Even when exchange remains the principal subject of inquiry, emphasizing these two endpoints understates India’s importance. During the Roman period, Mediterranean commerce with India, often through Central Asia, was considerably more voluminous than commerce with China. The Seleucid Empire and the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms had sustained earlier political and cultural connections, whose Hellenistic legacies persisted beyond their rule.

    The Silk Road paradigm’s Sino-centrism and Euro-centrism often obscure the cultural agency of vernacular communities in Central Eurasia. Communities selectively adapted and appropriated cultural imports, changing their forms and significance before they circulated further. Scholars such as al-Khwarazmi elaborated the Indian system underlying Arabic numerals before it reached Europe. Chess acquired new rules, pieces, and social meanings as it spread from India through Persia and onward to Europe, with “checkmate” being a Persian loan. Christian communities adapted Syriac script to write Sogdian and Old Uyghur. Regional variants of instruments such as the zurna, qanun, and kamancha differ in construction and performance practice, reflecting the musical traditions and preferences of the communities that developed them. Regional preparations of noodles (laghman, lamian), dumplings (chuchvara, manti), fried dough (çäkçäk, tush, sachima), and fruit leathers (lavashak, guodanpi) also require attention to local specificities.

Exchange Beyond Trade

The Silk Road paradigm’s emphasis on commerce often obscures the role of conquest, pastoral mobility, and permanent migration in facilitating cultural exchange across Eurasia. Scythian expansions and the Arab, Mongol, and Timurid conquests intensified cultural contacts through military service, imperial rule, and population displacement, frequently under conditions of extreme violence. Timur’s deportation of artisans from conquered cities to Samarkand made forced migration a major source of the Timurid capital’s architectural and artistic achievements. Similar developments followed Shah Abbas I’s deportation of Armenians from Nakhichevan to Isfahan, where churches combined Armenian and Safavid architectural characteristics. Nomadic communities sustained other forms of exchange through seasonal movement and recurrent encounters with settled populations.

Research on mountain routes through Inner Asia suggests that pastoral mobility helped establish some of the connections subsequently used by long-distance traders. The migrations of Qypchaqs, Seljuks, Kalmyks and other Oirat groups, and Alans carried military practices, oral literature, and material culture into new settings, where interactions with settled populations encouraged further adaptation. Jewish diasporic communities across Central Eurasia maintained connections through kinship, religious institutions, and scholarship, sustaining exchanges that extended beyond the activities of merchants, best exemplified by the Moroccan-born rabbi Yosef Maimon’s efforts to promote religious education and Sephardic liturgical practices among Bukharan Jewish communities in Central Asia during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Commerce itself often depended on the routes and social relationships established through these movements.

Silk Without China

The history of silk production further undermines the Silk Road paradigm’s Sino-centrism. Sericulture had spread into Central Asia and Iran well before the thirteenth century, and tenth-century geographical accounts describe silk production across much of Iran. Communities developed their own practices of silkworm breeding and textile manufacture, while Shaki and Shamakhi in modern-day northern Azerbaijan became important centers of silk production and trade in the Caucasus. Before Azerbaijan took control of the city in late 2023, one of the main streets of Stepanakert (Khankandi), the de facto capital of Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh, was called Silk Weavers’ Street (Metaqsagorts’neri poghots).

The smooth, colorful khan atlas (“royal silk”), produced most famously in the ancient city of Margilan in the Ferghana Valley, is widely regarded as a national symbol of Uzbekistan. The expansion of production diversified the sources of silk entering regional and distant markets while sustaining its commercial importance. Raw silk remained a major export of Safavid Iran in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Iranian workshops produced luxury fabrics for domestic consumption and foreign buyers. In Shaki, wealth from silkworm breeding and cocoon sales supported urban development in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as reflected in the magnificent summer palace of the Shaki khans. These economies depended on local agricultural conditions and commercial institutions and could sustain production and exchange without continuous input from China. The association of silk with China, therefore, provides little justification for assigning a subordinate historical role to societies that became substantial producers and exporters themselves.

From Historical Metaphor to Geopolitical Strategy

    The Silk Road paradigm’s retrospective Sino-centrism also lends historical legitimacy to the Chinese government’s contemporary geopolitical ambitions. China’s position among the largest premodern economies provides an insufficient basis for assuming comparably extensive political influence, cultural ties, or transit connections with the principal centers of Central Eurasia and beyond. The extent and character of these connections varied considerably across periods, depending on changing political arrangements and networks sustained by communities and Eurasian land empires with their own interests and institutions.

Read more on Novastan: China in Central Asia: Fact-checking and myth-busting

Official Chinese presentations of BRI invoke the pluralized historical Silk Roads to portray contemporary transit investments as the renewal of historical connections. This presumed continuity frames the expansion of Chinese interests as restoring a lost position, encouraging acceptance of Beijing’s ambitions to reshape Eurasia’s political and economic development. Central Asia and South Caucasus states embrace the same framework to attract Chinese investment, promote transit infrastructure centered around China, and secure greater international recognition. Their self-presentation as intermediaries risks making that recognition contingent on their usefulness to larger powers, while reinforcing a historical hierarchy that privileges China’s geopolitical objectives.

Read more on Novastan: China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway: Who wins from Central Asia’s new trade route?

Marco Polo and the Politics of Eurasian Space

    The Silk Road paradigm’s anachronistic Sino-centrism also appears in bestselling American author Robert Kaplan’s use of Marco Polo’s travels to interpret contemporary geopolitics. In The Return of Marco Polo’s World, Kaplan uses the Venetian traveler’s itinerary to explain the strategic significance of China’s expanding connections across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean. The itinerary of a single traveler offers limited grounds for establishing either the density of historical exchange or a common geopolitical orientation among the societies he encountered. Polo’s journeys depended on Mongol imperial arrangements and networks maintained by merchants, religious communities, and local authorities, whose activities served numerous purposes beyond connecting Europe with China.

Kaplan explicitly presents Kublai Khan’s empire as a guide to contemporary Chinese strategy, encouraging the interpretation of Mongol-era connections as precedents for China’s present ambitions, although Chinggisid imperial domains encompassed much of Eurasia and included political centers well beyond China. This analogy risks attributing a continuous geopolitical agenda to distinct political entities and subordinating other Eurasian societies to a narrative of Chinese resurgence. Kaplan’s advocacy of a sustained American naval presence also exposes a tension in his emphasis on Chinese centrality: American naval power helps sustain the maritime trading system on which China depends, while US military positions and alliances along the First and Second Island Chains constrain China’s pursuit of predominance in the western Pacific.

What the Eurasian Frame Leaves Out

    The Silk Road paradigm’s Eurasian frame also erases the Western Hemisphere when used to interpret contemporary global power dynamics. The United States, which emerged from the Cold War as the sole superpower, lies outside this paradigm’s geographical space. The postwar economic order still depends on financial arrangements shaped by American power, with the US dollar retaining its central role in international transactions, banking, and reserve holdings. The scale of the US economy and the global operations of US corporations sustain commercial relationships that cannot be adequately represented through routes joining China and Europe. American corporations, especially those based in Silicon Valley, occupy leading positions in the global high-technology industry. US military deployments and alliances, including a naval presence along major shipping routes, remain integral to the security arrangements within which much of this commerce occurs. Interpreting Chinese infrastructure expansion primarily through a Eurasian historical frame risks overstating China’s capacity to displace American dominance by discounting the United States’ pivotal role on the global stage.

When Influence Ran East

    The history of China’s Tang dynasty (618–907) challenges Sino-centric accounts of Eurasian exchange that portray China primarily as a source rather than a recipient of cultural influence. Conventionally celebrated as an apogee of Chinese cultural achievement, the Tang period coincided with extensive political and cultural engagement with Central Asia. The Tang capital, Chang’an (Xi’an), maintained close ties with the region, where Tang campaigns and protectorates established a substantial, though uneven, presence. Turkic soldiers and commanders contributed significantly to Tang military power, while Uyghur allies provided crucial assistance during the eighth century. Central Asian music and dances shaped Tang court entertainment, notably through Sogdian dances, while the pipa, often called the Chinese lute, developed from Middle Eastern and Central Asian prototypes. Elite men and women adopted Central Asian clothing and equestrian fashions; Crown Prince Li Chengqian dressed as a Turkic khan, established a tent camp within the palace grounds, and ate mutton cut with his sword. Sogdian communities in Chang’an and other urban centers contributed to commercial, artistic, and religious life, with manuscripts recovered from the caves of Dunhuang preserving evidence of their activities and beliefs. Imported fruit varieties, vegetables, and livestock, including peaches from Samarkand and prized Central Asian horses, further demonstrate the material significance of these contacts.

Christianity and Manichaeism reached Tang China through networks connecting Iran and Central Asia. Translations of Buddhist and Christian scriptures expanded Chinese religious literature, while Buddhist translation continued an earlier process of incorporating Sanskrit terms into Chinese. Li Bai (Li Bo), among China’s most celebrated poets, may have been born in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. Popular narratives about the battle of Talas in 751, fought between the Tang dynasty and the Abbasid Caliphate, often obscure the political agency of Central Eurasian communities by crediting the Abbasid victory with bringing Chinese westward expansion to a definitive end. The conflict emerged from regional rivalries involving Ferghana and Chach, whose ruling families sought allies to advance their own interests. Karluk forces played an important part in the Tang defeat, with Chinese accounts attributing the outcome partly to their defection to the Abbasid side. Tang expansion depended heavily on Turkic troops and commanders and alliances with Sogdian rulers. Tang garrisons remained in the Tarim Basin after Talas, while An Lushan’s rebellion in 755 and subsequent Tibetan advances led to Tang’s decline. An Lushan (Rokhshan in Sogdian), a general of Sogdian and Turkic ancestry, captured two Tang capitals and forced the emperor to flee, while the prolonged conflict severely weakened the dynasty.

Beyond the Silk Road

    Prominent historian of Central Asia Scott Levi has advocated the scholarly embrace of the Silk Road paradigm despite its conceptual laxity. However, its acceptance in Western academia would inevitably lend greater legitimacy to the expansive agenda of an authoritarian dictatorship whose repressive policies have actively destroyed the communities and cultural legacies that have long formed the backbone of Western imaginations of the Silk Road.

By Diego Benning Wang.

Diego Benning Wang is a historian of Eurasia and Eastern Europe. Having received a PhD in history from Princeton University, an MA in Russian studies from Columbia University, and a BA in Russian studies from New York University, he is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

The post The Silk Road Paradigm and the Dilemma of In-Between appeared first on Novastan English.

Mongolia’s position between Russia and China is often portrayed as a geopolitical constraint. Researcher and writer Bolor Lkhaajav argues that Ulaanbaatar instead seeks to combine strong ties with both neighbours with an increasingly ambitious “third neighbour” policy spanning critical minerals, energy, technology, diplomacy and security.

Bolor Lkhaajav is a specialist in East and Northeast Asia who has published more than 200 articles and commentaries in multiple languages. She writes regularly on diplomatic history, foreign and security policy, geopolitics, economics, politics and society. She is currently working on Mongolia’s foreign-policy grand strategy and has been accepted to a PhD programme beginning in autumn 2027.

In this interview with Novastan, she discusses how Mongolia is navigating the geopolitical consequences of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the growing importance of South Korea and other “third neighbours”, the country’s critical-mineral potential, environmental pressures and Mongolia’s distinctive position in a rapidly changing Northeast Asia.

Novastan: You are currently working on Mongolia’s foreign-policy grand strategy. How would you describe the country’s strategic approach today, and how has it evolved in the changing geopolitical environment since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

Bolor Lkhaajav: In 2011, the Mongolian Parliament adopted the country’s Foreign Policy Concept, a legal document mapping out Ulaanbaatar’s foreign-policy strategy to meet modern-day demands while maintaining a balance between its two neighbours – Russia and China.

One of the important elements of the concept was the formal introduction of the “Third Neighbour” Doctrine. The idea of a “third neighbour” had long existed in Mongolian history and diplomatic circles, but it had never been explicitly defined and applied in such a transparent way. Since 2011, the policy has become one of the pillars of Mongolia’s foreign-policy grand strategy.

Read more on Novastan: “Mongolia cannot be understood through one lens”: Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan on democracy, China and Central Asia

It is specifically intended to strengthen Mongolia’s diplomatic, political, economic and cultural links with countries outside Russia and China, while at the same time reinforcing bilateral and trilateral engagement with Moscow and Beijing.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mongolia has experienced the consequences of Russia prioritising its domestic energy supply. Given Mongolia’s heavy dependence on Russian fuel, intermittent shortages have become a regular occurrence over the past six months. This also highlights why it is crucial for Mongolia to invest in renewable energy and work with third-neighbour partners to strengthen the country’s energy sector. I would not say that Mongolia can achieve energy independence at present, because that is simply not realistic.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has also changed the geopolitical and security dynamics of Northeast Asia. For Mongolia’s foreign-policy grand strategy, it is crucial that its only two neighbours remain free of conflict.

Mongolia’s grand strategy seeks to position Ulaanbaatar as a stable, democratic actor on the world stage. It is not dependent on the foreign policies of its neighbours, or of any other country, nor on their global engagements. Mongolia may respond differently to external challenges, but these will not fundamentally alter the country’s foreign-policy grand strategy.

Mongolia’s “third neighbour” policy has been central to its diplomacy for decades. Which relationships do you think have the greatest potential to deepen in the coming years – whether with South Korea, Japan, India, the European Union, the United States or others – and why?

Mongolia’s “Third Neighbour” Doctrine provides a much broader framework that envisages mechanisms for cooperation across different sectors and stages of development. It is not restricted to the mining sector.

At its core, the Third Neighbour Doctrine is both a concept and a foreign-policy practice encompassing multiple mechanisms that support Mongolia’s geopolitical balance between the two major powers surrounding it, Russia and China, while also placing an emphasis on reinvigorating the country’s bilateral and multilateral engagements outside their respective spheres of influence.

Within the region, relations between Mongolia and South Korea have certainly expanded tremendously. This is partly because of South Korea’s successful commercial presence in Mongolia and its more recent interest in diversifying its critical-mineral supply chains. Japan’s interest and investment follow, although not to the same extent as South Korea’s.

European partners will continue to play a crucial role in Mongolia’s democracy and development. Building on strong bilateral relations with European partners, Ulaanbaatar aims to increase cooperation on climate change, renewable energy and sectors that align both with Mongolia’s development priorities and with European standards and regulations.

Read more on Novastan: “Heritage is something alive”: Ganzorig Miimaa reimagines Mongolia through photography

With the United States, however, environmental and renewable-energy cooperation is unlikely to be a central focus under Donald Trump’s administration. In many respects, the current administration’s priorities do not align with Mongolia’s core values at present.

The US has shown interest in Mongolia’s critical minerals. However, given Washington’s posture towards both Moscow and Beijing, Ulaanbaatar is not particularly confident about the prospects of concluding a major deal.

One of the largest US contributions to Mongolia to date has been the successful implementation and launch of the Water Compact funded by the US Millennium Challenge Corporation.

You have written extensively on Mongolia’s relationship with South Korea, as well as on India and the European Union. How far can these partnerships help Mongolia translate diplomatic diversification into real economic diversification, given the constraints of geography, infrastructure and export routes?

Mongolia’s partnerships with South Korea, India, the European Union and others vary considerably according to the kinds of investment each partner is interested in pursuing. These are not all equivalent partners, and each can offer something different.

For example, India’s $1.7 billion soft loan for Mongolia’s first major greenfield oil refinery is a major boost for the country’s domestic supply and also has potential for exports.

The EU, on the other hand, is more interested in investing in human capital and civil society, promoting democratic values, and supporting the green transition, forestry and governance. Mongolia has a great deal to gain from its relations with the EU.

For example, the Mongolian government can learn from the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act as the country moves towards establishing data centres and becoming a more digital nation. These ambitions will in turn create a need for greater cybersecurity capabilities, which countries such as South Korea, India and the United States can provide.

The logistical challenge involved in exporting Mongolian goods is obvious, and there are no magical solutions. All exports ultimately need to transit through Russia or China.

It is therefore strategically important for Mongolia to maintain the strongest and most stable possible bilateral and trilateral relations with both neighbours. Mongolia-China railway connections, as well as Mongolia-Russia transit corridors, are equally important for expanding Mongolian exports to Europe and elsewhere in the world.

Critical minerals and uranium are attracting growing international attention to Mongolia. What opportunities does this create, and what would Mongolia need to do to turn this interest into durable economic and strategic benefits?

Mongolia’s exploration and export of critical minerals and uranium form part of the country’s diversification strategy, even though they remain within the mining sector.

Mongolia holds an estimated $1-3 trillion in untapped mineral reserves, including significant deposits of copper, fluorspar, coal and rare earth elements.

South Korea is already working on building a stable supply chain to support its technological development. During South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s state visit to Mongolia in July, Ulaanbaatar and Seoul signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which included the elimination of 2-5 percent tariffs on critical minerals.

In 2025, a South Korean critical-minerals research hub was established in Ulaanbaatar. This was recently followed by the launch of joint scientific research between the Mongolian National Rare Earth Corporation and the Korea Basic Science Institute.

Read more on Novastan: What lies beneath Central Asia? Rare earths, critical minerals and the new race for resources

Given South Korea’s advanced manufacturing industries, including steel, automobiles and semiconductors, the country has considerable demand for high-purity molybdenum powder. Moreover, South Korea’s growing interest in becoming more active in the defence industry and manufacturing makes Mongolia’s natural resources a strategic asset.

France has also become the first European country to seal a major uranium deal, signing a $1.6 billion investment agreement in 2025. These interests can be mutually beneficial: France requires uranium for its nuclear-energy sector, while Mongolia can use the partnership to diversify its exports.

For Mongolia to continue attracting investment from global partners, however, the country’s political system needs to be stable.

More than anything else, I think the constant changes of government, government plans and budgets, changes to the taxation system, and corruption are among the main obstacles to Mongolia’s development.

Mongolia recently hosted UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, a subject you have also written about. Beyond the diplomatic visibility of hosting a major UN conference, what could COP17 realistically mean for Mongolia in areas such as desertification, land restoration, water security and environmental finance?

This year’s COP17 included discussions on finance, water, land and people, and food systems. Each of these issues has direct implications for Mongolia.

Water security, water pollution and land restoration in particular are closely linked to major mining operations in the country. Over the years, we have come to understand that environmental-protection clauses must be included as part of responsible mining. These requirements are understandably costly, but they are something the Mongolian side needs to demand regardless.

Read more on Novastan: From the Pamirs to the Aral Sea: Following the Amu Darya Through Central Asia

During COP17, mining giants such as Rio Tinto announced strategies to contribute to Mongolia’s fight against desertification and water pollution and to restore forests, including planting 5,000 hectares of forest, investing in renewable energy for company use and introducing new technologies to replenish groundwater.

Oyu Tolgoi, one of Mongolia’s largest mining operations, began paying water-pollution fees in 2026, with regular quarterly payments of 150-200 million Mongolian tugrik, or roughly $42,000-$55,000. These practices are intended to set an example for other major mining companies operating in the country.

Water security and water pollution will become even more important issues in the coming years as the construction of data centres is already being discussed at government level.

Their environmental impact needs to be studied thoroughly, and Parliament will need to develop appropriate legal and regulatory mechanisms for such projects.

You have also written about the changing geopolitical environment in Northeast Asia. What new opportunities or challenges does this create for Mongolia, particularly as relations among Russia, China, North Korea, South Korea and Japan continue to evolve?

Over the last five years, Northeast Asia has become a hotspot of geopolitical transformation, and recent events have only highlighted these shifts in the post-Second World War international order.

These are dynamic and complex international-relations issues, but I will mention the most significant ones here.

Russia’s war in Ukraine created tremendous opportunities for North Korea. Pyongyang is moving towards becoming a de facto nuclear state, most likely with the backing of both Russia and China.

For Mongolia, regional peace and security are crucial, and this includes peace on the Korean Peninsula. Mongolia currently maintains, and will continue to maintain, open diplomatic channels with North Korea regardless of Pyongyang’s actions. There are also some economic incentives for doing so.

Despite Mongolia’s landlocked position in Northeast Asia, one of its geopolitical advantages is that it is the only country in the region without territorial disputes or unresolved historical grievances with neighbouring states. This is a significant advantage for Mongolian diplomacy and creates opportunities for Ulaanbaatar to develop diverse political, economic and cultural engagements.

In the short to long term, Mongolia’s economic engagement with all regional actors is likely to continue.

Moreover, in order to diversify its energy sources – a need that has become more pressing because of the consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine and fuel shortages – Mongolia will require support from China as well as third-neighbour investment in the energy sector.

India is currently supporting Mongolia’s first greenfield oil refinery, which is expected to become operational in 2028.

Finally, what aspect of Mongolia’s international position do you think remains most misunderstood outside the country, and looking five to ten years ahead, what would successful diversification actually look like for Mongolia?

I think one of the main misconceptions among observers of Mongolia is the idea that the country somehow has to choose between Russia and China.

Mongolia’s histories with Russia and China differ, and its diplomatic and economic relations with the two countries also differ tremendously. To think that Ulaanbaatar needs to choose between Russia and China in modern-day diplomacy is therefore not only a misconception, but also something that simply does not apply to Mongolian foreign policy.

The second misconception is that, because of Mongolia’s landlocked position between Russia and China, the third-neighbour policy is unsuccessful.

I have come across views that undermine Ulaanbaatar’s third-neighbour approach, arguing that the policy cannot genuinely counterbalance Russian and Chinese influence. But the misconception lies in assuming that this is what the policy is designed to do.

Mongolia needs robust relations with Russia and China. That is itself a foreign-policy priority. The Third Neighbour Doctrine is an addition to strong relations with Mongolia’s only two neighbours, not an alternative to them.

From both a foreign-policy and implementation perspective, since 2011 – over a period of 15 years – Mongolia’s third-neighbour relationships have flourished and will continue to develop through niche partnerships and new mechanisms for cooperation.

If one looks at the impact of Mongolia’s third-neighbour policy in its entirety, it becomes clear that it is not limited to economic diversification. It also encompasses culture, education, technology, innovation, modernisation and everything else that a modern society demands.

If there is one thing slowing Mongolia’s third-neighbour engagement, it is the country’s political instability, constant changes of government, shifts in investment laws and regulations, and, finally, corruption.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post Bolor Lkhaajav: “Mongolia does not need to choose between Russia and China” appeared first on Novastan English.

Why Soviet borders do not make Central Asian statehood artificial

In January 2026, Russian state television commentator Vladimir Solovyov did what a small but persistent chorus of Russian nationalists has done regularly since the invasion of Ukraine: he described Central Asia as part of a natural Russian sphere of power and suggested that Moscow could extend its military operations there if it judged this necessary. The remark prompted a sharp response from Uzbek politician Alisher Qodirov, who dismissed it as propaganda and stressed that the states of Central Asia are sovereign and capable of defending their interests. The exchange was brief, but the argument behind it is familiar. Russian nationalist commentators periodically suggest that Central Asian sovereignty is somehow contingent – an accidental product of Soviet administrative borders rather than the outcome of a deeper political history. Western coverage often treats such statements primarily as geopolitics: another expression of Russia’s post-imperial anxiety or its competition with China for influence in the region. Recent analysis of Russian-Central Asian relations has documented the growing frequency of such irredentist rhetoric. That interpretation is not wrong, but underneath it lies a historical claim that deserves to be addressed on its own terms. The idea that Moscow simply “invented” the nations of Central Asia is misleading.

Soviet rule profoundly reshaped Central Asian nationhood. It territorialised identities, codified languages, built national institutions and created republics whose borders later became international frontiers. But that is very different from saying that Central Asian political identities appeared out of nothing in 1924. The process drew on pre-existing communities, political movements, religious institutions and local elites, and it was negotiated, appropriated and contested by Central Asians themselves. Modern Central Asian nations are therefore neither timeless entities that survived unchanged from antiquity nor arbitrary creations handed down fully formed by Moscow. They emerged from a much longer interaction between local political life, Russian imperial rule, indigenous reform movements and Soviet nationality policy.

Political life before the Bolsheviks

Central Asian nationhood cannot be understood by starting the clock in either 1917 or 1924. Pre-Soviet Turkestan was not an empty political space waiting for Bolshevik ethnographers to give it shape, although it would be equally anachronistic to imagine that the region already possessed mass national movements corresponding neatly to today’s five republics. Society was overwhelmingly rural, literacy remained limited, and modern political ideas about nationhood circulated mainly among relatively small urban and educated circles. Adeeb Khalid’s study of Jadidism and colonial society provides the key background for this pre-revolutionary political and intellectual landscape. Russian imperial rule had also transformed the region’s social and political structure well before the Bolshevik Revolution, particularly through settler colonisation, the creation of new administrative centres and the expansion of a Russian-speaking bureaucracy whose influence was disproportionate to the size of the settler population in many parts of the region.

The empire restricted indigenous participation in imperial politics while preserving a degree of local administration. At village and volost level, Muslim communities could manage taxation, minor judicial disputes and communal affairs, but their authority remained subordinate to Russian officials. Elections could be annulled, administrative decisions required approval, and Muslim political participation was constrained by the colonial state’s suspicion of wider political mobilisation. This system was therefore neither simple exclusion nor meaningful self-government. Russian rule combined political marginalisation with the selective preservation of indigenous elites deemed useful or reliable. The Emirate of Bukhara, for example, survived as a nominally sovereign protectorate under Russian domination, retaining its court, treasury and Islamic establishment. The Khanate of Khiva remained under a similar arrangement, while Kokand, regarded as less manageable and more threatening to imperial control, was annexed outright in 1876. Local political authority thus survived, but in fragmented and highly constrained forms determined by the priorities of empire.

Read more on Novastan: Bukhara Before the Border: Aini and the Politics of Tajik-Uzbek Memory

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one of the most important new expressions of indigenous reform was Jadidism. The Jadids – their name derived from the usul-i jadid, or “new method”, of education – were Muslim modernists who founded schools, newspapers and theatres and sought to reform education, religious life and society in cities including Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara. Education stood at the centre of their programme. Some Jadid reformers advocated or experimented with education for girls well before the Soviet state later presented women’s emancipation as one of the defining achievements of socialist modernisation. Khalid’s work remains a foundational source on Jadid reform, education and indigenous intellectual life. This does not make the Jadids straightforward proto-nationalists in the modern sense, nor were they politically unified. But it matters because it demonstrates that debates over reform, identity and political authority already existed before Soviet power consolidated itself across the region.

The Jadids were not the only indigenous source of authority. The ulama – Muslim scholars, judges and teachers – represented another deeply rooted social and religious establishment. Some opposed Jadid reform, while others adapted to the changing political environment after 1917. Their authority was neither uniform nor uncontested, but it long predated the Bolsheviks and remained socially significant across much of Turkestan. A 2024 study of the Tashkent Ulama society documents how religious scholars organised politically during the revolutionary opening of 1917. By the time Soviet leaders began reorganising Central Asia, they were therefore not working on an empty political map. They were intervening in a region where multiple forms of authority, identity and reform were already competing, and where Muslim intellectuals, religious figures and local elites had their own ideas about how political life should develop.

What Moscow actually did in 1924

The decisive Soviet intervention came with the national-territorial delimitation of Central Asia beginning in 1924. The process reorganised the former territories of Russian Turkestan, the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic and the Khorezm People’s Soviet Republic into new territorial units associated with particular nationalities. Yet the familiar image of Moscow drawing five modern states in a single bureaucratic exercise is misleading. The Uzbek and Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republics emerged in 1924, but Tajikistan initially became an autonomous republic within the Uzbek SSR before becoming a union republic in 1929. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan followed different territorial and constitutional trajectories, with their status continuing to evolve during the following decade. The map that ultimately became contemporary Central Asia was therefore produced through a process of repeated administrative and political decisions rather than one act of Soviet cartography.

Historian Francine Hirsch has shown that Soviet nationality policy was rooted in a particular Marxist understanding of historical development. Bolshevik officials believed societies moved through identifiable stages and that nationhood itself could be a necessary phase on the path towards socialism. This gave ethnography, census-taking and classification enormous political significance. Soviet experts attempted to identify populations, languages and national categories and then give them institutional and territorial form. The process was not simply descriptive: by deciding which languages would be codified, which categories would appear in censuses and which populations would become titular nationalities of republics, the Soviet state helped create the administrative reality it claimed merely to be recording.

Arne Haugen and other historians have placed greater emphasis on the political context in which delimitation occurred. Soviet leaders were wary of broader Turkestani, Muslim or Turkic political projects that might provide an alternative focus of mobilisation to Moscow, particularly after years of armed resistance and instability. The resulting territorial divisions therefore served both ideological and political purposes. But neither interpretation supports the simplistic idea that Central Asian nations were arbitrary inventions imposed on passive populations. Local elites participated extensively in delimitation debates, arguing over borders, cities, linguistic communities, economic resources and the status of particular populations. Their influence was constrained by Soviet power, and Moscow retained ultimate authority, but the process was not simply one of Russian cartographers drawing lines across a blank map.

This distinction matters because the argument that Soviet borders were politically constructed is true but insufficient. Nearly every modern state is the product of political construction, conflict and institutionalisation. The relevant question is not whether Soviet authorities drew borders but how those borders acquired political meaning and why they proved durable. Territorial delimitation nationalised space, but it did not by itself create fully formed nations. That required decades of institutional work carried out within the new republics themselves.

Nation-building was not a one-way process

Creating republics was only the beginning. Languages had to be standardised, alphabets repeatedly reformed, schools and publishing systems expanded, universities and academies established, literary canons assembled and histories written. New bureaucracies had to be staffed and new political elites trained. A central element of this process was korenizatsiya, or indigenisation, through which Soviet authorities sought during the 1920s to increase the presence of local nationalities in party structures, courts, ministries and other institutions. The policy was intended to make Soviet rule more legitimate and effective, but it also created cadres whose political careers, institutional interests and cultural projects became increasingly tied to the republics themselves.

Read more on Novastan: “Islands of Soviet power on the steppes”

Faizulla Khodjaev illustrates the complexity of this process. Born into a wealthy Bukharan family and active in the Young Bukharan movement before the consolidation of Soviet rule, he became one of the leading political figures of Soviet Uzbekistan. His career shows how pre-Soviet reformist politics could be absorbed into the institutions of the new republic. Similar processes occurred across the region as local teachers, writers, administrators and intellectuals entered Soviet structures and helped determine what Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik or Turkmen national culture would mean in practice. Their room for manoeuvre was never unlimited, but they were not merely passive executors of instructions produced in Moscow.

Soviet nation-building in Central Asia was therefore neither a unilateral imposition from the centre nor a freely chosen indigenous project. It is better understood as a process of co-production under profoundly unequal conditions. Soviet institutions provided the territorial framework, controlled the political boundaries within which nation-building could occur and possessed the coercive power to decide which political projects were permissible. Central Asian intellectuals, teachers, bureaucrats and political cadres nevertheless played indispensable roles in giving those institutions substance. The Soviet state did not merely classify nationalities; it also created institutional spaces in which local actors could standardise languages, construct national histories, develop cultural institutions and train republican elites whose interests increasingly became inseparable from the republics themselves.

This is why saying that Soviet rule shaped modern Central Asian nationhood is historically accurate, while saying that Russia “created” Central Asian nations and therefore somehow owns them is not. The institutions were Soviet, but Soviet was not synonymous with Russian. The Union itself depended on tens of thousands of Central Asian officials, writers, teachers and administrators who transformed republican institutions from bureaucratic categories into lived political and cultural structures.

The contradiction at the heart of Soviet nation-building

The same Soviet system that promoted national institutions also destroyed many of the people who had helped build them. This contradiction is essential to understanding the period and prevents the story from becoming either a celebration of Soviet modernisation or a simple narrative of national emancipation. The hujum, launched in the late 1920s, sought to transform women’s lives through a state-directed campaign against veiling and seclusion. The policy was presented as emancipation, but it also turned women’s bodies into symbols of a wider struggle over modernity, religion and political authority. The backlash was frequently violent, and women who unveiled could become targets of intimidation or murder. Soviet social transformation could therefore simultaneously expand certain forms of opportunity and impose them through profoundly coercive means.

A decade later, the Great Terror devastated the intellectual and political elites of the region. Many Jadids, former reformers and local Soviet cadres who had participated in building national schools, administrations and cultural institutions were arrested, purged or executed. Faizulla Khodjaev himself was executed in 1938. Adeeb Khalid’s work on Uzbekistan captures this contradiction particularly well: Soviet national institutions were built in part by a generation that the Soviet state later decimated. The system had encouraged local intellectuals to construct republican cultures, only to accuse many of those same intellectuals of nationalism once the political environment changed.

The republics, however, survived the people who had helped construct them. That fact complicates both Soviet triumphalism and the idea that the institutions of Central Asian nationhood were merely artificial shells. A school system remains a political reality even after its founders are purged; a standardised language continues to shape generations after the intellectuals who codified it have disappeared. By the middle of the twentieth century, the republics had become institutional ecosystems with ministries, universities, artistic establishments, party hierarchies and administrative borders that organised the lives of millions of people.

The republics outlived the Soviet Union

The political significance of those institutions became unmistakable in 1991. Central Asian republics did not generally campaign for independence with the intensity seen in the Baltic states, Georgia or parts of Ukraine. Kazakhstan was the last Soviet republic to declare independence, in December 1991, and its population had earlier voted overwhelmingly in favour of preserving a reformed union. Yet when the Soviet Union disappeared, the Central Asian republics did not dissolve into one another, and they did not surrender their sovereignty back to Moscow. Instead, each inherited national administrations, education systems, territorial borders, political elites and institutional cultures that had developed over decades. Their post-Soviet governments then reworked these inheritances to construct national narratives of their own.

This does not mean that Russian influence disappeared with the Soviet flag. Economic dependence, labour migration, Russian-language media, security arrangements and institutional ties kept several Central Asian states closely connected to Moscow for decades after 1991. Russia remained particularly important to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, while millions of Central Asian citizens continued to live and work in the Russian Federation. Political elites often maintained strong personal and institutional links with Moscow, and Russian remained an important language of administration, education and regional communication. The post-Soviet story was therefore not one of clean geopolitical separation.

But influence is not the same thing as ownership. The states of Central Asia continued to function as distinct political units because the republics created in the Soviet period had become much more than temporary administrative conveniences. Their borders structured economic life and political careers; their education systems created national publics; their cultural institutions produced literature, historical narratives and symbols that people increasingly understood as Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik or Turkmen. Post-Soviet elites had every incentive to strengthen these identities, because their own legitimacy depended on the continued existence of the states they governed. They did not need to invent national institutions from scratch. Much of the infrastructure of statehood was already there.

Why the argument matters today

This is where the historical debate becomes contemporary geopolitics. When Russian commentators describe Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or other post-Soviet states as “gifts” from Russia, they rely on a particular reading of history: Soviet borders were bestowed by Moscow, and states created through those borders therefore possess less historical legitimacy than Russia itself. The implication is that sovereignty may be conditional, particularly when it conflicts with what Moscow defines as its historical sphere of interest. Recent FPRI analysis documents how this kind of irredentist rhetoric has increasingly targeted Central Asian states. That rhetoric echoes a broader revisionist understanding of the post-Soviet space in which Russia appears as the principal historical subject while its neighbours are reduced to administrative products of Soviet decision-making.

The war against Ukraine has made the political implications of such arguments impossible to dismiss. This does not mean that every provocative statement by a Russian television commentator signals imminent territorial ambition in Central Asia, and treating every rhetorical outburst as evidence of an approaching invasion would itself distort the political situation. But rhetoric matters because it helps normalise a hierarchy of sovereignty. Once some states are described as historically authentic while others are treated as accidental creations, territorial integrity becomes easier to present as negotiable.

Read more on Novastan: The Lexicon of Kazakh Decolonisation

Central Asian responses increasingly reject that hierarchy. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other states have diversified diplomatic, economic and security partnerships, expanded ties with China, Turkey, the European Union and Gulf states, and strengthened cooperation with one another. These policies are not necessarily anti-Russian. In many cases, governments continue to seek workable relations with Moscow while simultaneously reducing excessive dependence on it. What has changed is the growing willingness to articulate sovereignty as something inherent rather than something granted by participation in a Russian-led political space.

The history of Soviet nation-building helps explain that confidence. Modern Central Asian statehood was profoundly transformed by Soviet rule, and the republics, borders and institutions of the twentieth century remain central to the countries that exist today. But the region was not politically empty before the Bolsheviks arrived, and nation-building after 1924 was not carried out by Russians alone. It involved Muslim reformers, religious authorities, intellectuals, teachers, bureaucrats and political cadres from Central Asia itself – people who adapted to Soviet institutions, shaped them, resisted them and, in many cases, were eventually destroyed by them.

The historical reality is therefore more complicated than either nationalist myth allows. Moscow did not simply invent Central Asia, but neither did Soviet rule merely impose artificial borders on fully formed ancient nations. Modern Central Asian nationhood emerged from the interaction between older identities, imperial rule, indigenous reform movements, Soviet nationality policy and decades of local institution-building. The states that survived the Soviet Union are products of that history. That does not make their sovereignty artificial. It makes it historical.

By Shakhzoda Khusankhodjaeva. Shakhzoda is a researcher focused on conflict, gender, and regional politics, with a particular interest in Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia.

The post Who Made the Nations of Central Asia? appeared first on Novastan English.

Kazakhstani feminist and LGBTI rights activist Zhanar Sekerbayeva was convicted of battery after a confrontation in Astana in November 2025. She says the prosecution was retaliation for her activism and part of a wider deterioration in the rights of LGBTI people in Kazakhstan.

“They said to me, ‘It will be hooliganism. Don’t worry, Zhanar. We just want to get rid of you,’” says Zhanar Sekerbayeva, a Kazakhstani feminist and LGBTI rights activist, and co-founder of the feminist initiative Feminita.

She was describing to Amnesty International what police officers allegedly told her after she and fellow LGBTI rights activists were harassed at a café in Astana in November 2025.

What Sekerbayeva initially understood would be treated as an administrative case instead became a criminal prosecution against her.

“Somebody decided it would not be an administrative offence, but a criminal one, because I think it was some kind of last opportunity for them before the amendments [to the so-called LGBTI propaganda law] came into force,” she says. “They needed a public lesson, a public lesson to everybody.”

On 22 April 2026, a criminal court in Astana found Sekerbayeva guilty under Article 109-1, Part 1 of Kazakhstan’s Criminal Code of “battery or other violent acts causing physical pain but not causing minor injury to health”.

She was fined around 178,000 Kazakhstani tenge, approximately US$380.

From harassment to prosecution

On 22 November 2025, Sekerbayeva and several friends and fellow activists gathered for a private lunch on the second floor of a café in Astana.

For security reasons, the venue’s exact address had been withheld publicly and shared only in private messages with trusted guests.

Yet a woman who had disrupted an expert roundtable on gender issues organised by the Education Community in Astana the previous day found the group there. Accompanied by several unidentified people, she began filming those present without their consent and loudly accused them of spreading “LGBT propaganda”.

When Sekerbayeva and her companions tried to leave, the woman blocked the staircase. After they eventually reached the exit, she obstructed their path again. Witnesses, including diners at nearby tables, later described how the woman physically prevented the group from leaving.

Sekerbayeva had previously survived two violent attacks in Shymkent and Qaragandy in 2021. She says the Astana confrontation left her in severe shock.

But it was Sekerbayeva, rather than the woman who had confronted the group, whom police subsequently pursued.

According to Sekerbayeva, officers followed her from one café to another and then to a shop, where she locked herself in a restroom. She says officers threatened to break down the door.

Sekerbayeva and her colleague Temirlan Baimash were eventually taken to a police station and held for around three hours before being released without formal charges.

Three days later, Sekerbayeva filed a written complaint describing the incident as unlawful stalking.

Police opened a preliminary inquiry but closed it only a few days later, characterising what had happened as no more than a “verbal conflict” that had caused no “substantial harm”.

A second complaint filed by Sekerbayeva on 12 February 2026 was rejected on similar grounds.

By contrast, a complaint against Sekerbayeva’s group was pursued and became the basis of a criminal case for battery.

From witness to sole defendant

By February 2026, Sekerbayeva had gone from being a witness to an accused person and ultimately became the sole defendant in the case.

An indictment approved on 27 March repeatedly described her and her companions as “persons disseminating information prohibited from dissemination on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan”.

That language reflected provisions contained in Kazakhstan’s March 2026 law banning so-called “LGBT propaganda”, although the law had not yet entered into force when the café incident took place in November 2025.

The proceedings initially involved three members of Sekerbayeva’s group, but the case eventually narrowed until she was the only person facing prosecution.

At trial, the prosecution relied largely on the complainant’s testimony, which Sekerbayeva says changed in detail over the course of the proceedings, as well as testimony from two witnesses.

According to the case material reviewed for this article, none of the available recordings – including footage from the complainant’s phone and from phones belonging to people accompanying her – show Sekerbayeva striking anyone. Sekerbayeva says the café itself had a surveillance camera, although without audio, and that police relied on only a short segment that did not show the complainant entering or the beginning of the confrontation.

The prosecution’s forensic medical report documented a single bruise on the complainant’s upper arm, which was classified as falling below the threshold of “light harm to health”.

“I should be equal in this case. I should be investigated equally with [her]. No, it was never equal. Never,” Sekerbayeva says.

Her lawyers argued that the prosecution amounted to retaliation for her human rights work and her sexual orientation.

The court rejected this interpretation.

“The defendant’s arguments about alleged persecution on political motives, as well as on the basis of her belonging to LGBT, are a method of defence and are refuted by the case materials,” the judgment stated.

The case materials nevertheless contain explicit references to Sekerbayeva’s LGBTI activism. In statements to police, the complainant repeatedly described her as an activist engaged in “LGBT propaganda”.

A conviction upheld on appeal

On 22 April 2026, the court found Sekerbayeva guilty.

She appealed, but on 2 June the Astana City Court upheld the conviction in full, finding that the original verdict had been “comprehensively, fully and objectively” substantiated.

The decision took effect immediately.

Sekerbayeva had anticipated the outcome.

“We believe the appeal court will likely uphold the lower court’s ruling,” she said before the decision. “We want to exhaust all avenues for defending our rights at the local level before moving to the international stage.”

LGBTI rights under growing pressure in Kazakhstan

The case has unfolded against a broader deterioration in conditions for LGBTI people and human rights defenders in Kazakhstan.

In late 2025, following a 2024 petition signed by 50,000 people demanding restrictions on public LGBTI representation, Kazakhstan’s parliament passed legislation banning the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation and paedophilia” in the media and online.

The law was signed in December 2025 and entered into force in March 2026.

Read more on Novastan: Queer life under pressure in Kyrgyzstan

The legislation has drawn comparisons with Russia’s 2013 anti-LGBTI “propaganda” law, which international human rights bodies have repeatedly found incompatible with fundamental rights.

Amnesty International warned before the Kazakhstani legislation was adopted that such restrictions would further entrench stigma, fear and censorship.

The measure followed earlier discriminatory changes. In 2024, for example, Kazakhstan barred LGBTI people from adopting or mentoring orphans.

Read more on Novastan: When Freedom of Speech Is a Joke: Author of a Satirical News Outlet Detained in Kazakhstan

Further restrictions were incorporated into the new Constitution adopted on 15 March 2026, which defines marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman.

Critics also argued that the constitutional process lacked inclusive public consultation and meaningful participation by independent civil society.

The Constitution permits broader restrictions on freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly on the basis of concepts including “constitutional order” and “public morality” – terms human rights advocates fear could be interpreted expansively.

Feminita under pressure

The case file identifies Sekerbayeva as director of Feminita, the feminist initiative for lesbian, bisexual, queer and trans women that she co-founded with fellow activists.

Feminita is one of the few organised LGBTI groups operating openly in Central Asia.

Kazakhstani authorities have repeatedly refused to register the organisation since it first applied for legal recognition in 2017.

Days before the November 2025 confrontation in Astana, Feminita had organised, funded and hosted a strategic meeting in Almaty bringing together LGBTI activists from across Kazakhstan to discuss how their work could continue under the impending “propaganda” law.

“Feminita was one of the organisers who found money, who rented a hotel and actually found the platform,” Sekerbayeva recalls. “We invited everybody, even the people who are in conflict with us.”

She says the organisation’s visibility has made both her and her colleagues targets for years.

In 2018, Sekerbayeva was arrested and convicted of “petty hooliganism” for taking part in a photoshoot challenging stigma surrounding menstruation.

In 2021, a Feminita event in Shymkent was violently disrupted by a group of men. Sekerbayeva says she was dragged by the hair and punched in the face.

She also served ten days of administrative detention following a 2025 protest against femicide.

Read more on Novastan: Women’s Day in Kazakhstan: hundreds gather for rally in Almaty

During the hearings in her latest case, Sekerbayeva says anonymous and newly created social media accounts repeatedly portrayed her as guilty and deserving of punishment.

Her mother, a paediatrician in Astana, has told her that she is too afraid of possible professional repercussions to attend the hearings.

Adapting activism under the new law

Rather than suspending its activities altogether, Feminita has adapted its public presentation.

We work on the protection of LGBT women’s rights and researchers, mobilisation of community, while also integrating feminist business ideas and eco-feminist activities into our strategic framework.”

“I just want people to see it was a political case”

Asked what justice would mean to her, Sekerbayeva says she is not seeking revenge.

“For now, for me, justice would mean reopening the case and showing that it was not correct to charge me,” she says.

“They should hold to account not only the provocateur, but also the police, the prosecutor’s office, the Committee of National Security and the akimat [local council]. Everybody should be named for how they did this provocation.”

“I don’t need apologies from them. I just want people to see it was a political case, and to see how it was created.”

Her expectations stretch beyond the immediate legal process.

“Even if I will not be alive,” she adds, “I think there will come a time when everything will be reinvestigated again. And I really believe that time will come.”

It would not be the first time Sekerbayeva has turned the label of “hooligan” back on the authorities.

Speaking to Amnesty International in 2019 after an earlier conviction for hooliganism, she said:

“Being a woman human rights defender is much more important – even if that makes me a ‘hooligan’ in the eyes of the authorities.”

By Vahid Aliyev, Global Civic Space Fellow at Amnesty International.

The post “A public lesson to everybody”: Kazakhstan convicts feminist and LGBTI rights activist Zhanar Sekerbayeva appeared first on Novastan English.

From Kazakh-Russian code-switching to French puns and Turkic-inspired typography, Kazakhstan’s musicians are turning multilingualism into a creative language of their own.

Imagine you’re at a concert in Almaty. The lights go down, the crowd falls quiet, and a singer steps up to the microphone. What comes next is not quite Kazakh, Russian or English, but a mixture of all three. The languages intertwine within the same line, sometimes even within the same word. The audience does not blink; if anything, it seems more engaged. The mixture is familiar because it reflects the way many people speak in everyday life. Kazakhstan’s multilingual reality gives musicians room for creative wordplay, while language choice can also signal artistic values, identities and worldviews. The examples below show some of the ways musicians bend, combine and reshape the languages around them.

A multilingual music scene

Kazakhstan has a layered linguistic history. Kazakh is the state language, while Russian remains widely spoken, in part as a legacy of Soviet-era language policies. English, meanwhile, has become increasingly visible among young, urban and globally connected Kazakhstanis. Turkish, Korean, Japanese and other languages also attract interest through the cultural products consumed by younger audiences. Debates over Kazakhstan’s planned transition from Cyrillic to a Latin-based Kazakh alphabet add another layer to this already complex linguistic environment.

Public debates about language can sometimes suggest a simple equation: one language, one script, one identity. Official language policy strongly promotes Kazakh and often emphasizes standard or “correct” usage. Yet local hip-hop, Q-pop and indie artists frequently disrupt these expectations. They switch between languages and scripts, insert slang and borrow sounds from elsewhere, turning linguistic mixture itself into a creative resource.

Global hip-hop, Kazakh references

In 2022, Irina Kairatovna, one of Kazakhstan’s most popular hip-hop groups, and rapper Shiza released the song ‘Kok tu’[1], which opens with these lines:

This kind of language mixing is common in Kazakhstani hip-hop, alongside English phrases and references drawn from global hip-hop culture. The lyrics also contain words such as ‘zhuz’ and ‘ru’, referring to forms of Kazakh tribal and clan affiliation. The result is both global and intensely local. Artists can signal familiarity with the traditions and conventions of international hip-hop while grounding their music in distinctly Kazakh social references, sounds and meanings.

Shiza is based in Shymkent, a southern Kazakhstani city where Kazakh is widely spoken. His lyrics are mainly in Kazakh, with occasional lines or words in Russian and English. Irina Kairatovna, by contrast, is based in Almaty and often uses separate verses in both Kazakh and Russian, alongside English words and phrases. This multilingual approach can also broaden an artist’s potential audience, including Russian-speaking listeners beyond Kazakhstan.

Ninety One and the politics of language

Ninety One, one of Kazakhstan’s best-known Q-pop groups, offers a different example. Q-pop draws inspiration from K-pop while developing a distinctly Kazakh-language pop culture. The group’s name refers to 1991, the year Kazakhstan gained independence, and the members have presented themselves through a strongly patriotic and decolonial frame while performing predominantly in Kazakh. They have played an important role in making Kazakh-language pop more visible to younger audiences. At the same time, they notably avoid Russian in their songs while freely experimenting with English and other languages.

Several of Ninety One’s songs turn this linguistic experimentation into wordplay. ‘Mooz’ and ‘Ah!Yah!Mah!’, for example, contain English sections or lines. The group also plays with similarities between Kazakh and languages such as English, French and Spanish. In ‘Mooz’, meaning ‘ice’, the spelling uses the English-looking ‘oo’ in place of the Kazakh letter ‘ú’. In ‘Ah!Yah!Mah!’, English-style exclamations echo the Kazakh word ‘ayama’, meaning ‘do not pity’. A similar play between Kazakh and French runs through ‘Jur mapelep’, whose title sounds like the French phrase ‘je m’appelle’. In ‘Senorita’, the artists combine Spanish phrases such as ‘Mi casa, su casa’ with the Kazakh word ‘bailandy’ (‘he or she became attached’), creating a phonetic echo of the Spanish ‘bailando’. These choices showcase the flexibility of Kazakh while also demonstrating the artists’ linguistic inventiveness and cosmopolitan references.

Playing with scripts and typography

Script and typography provide another field for experimentation. Against the backdrop of Kazakhstan’s long-running debate over a transition from Cyrillic to Latin script, some artists have also reimagined writing systems used in the region before the Soviet period. Irina Kairatovna, for example, used Cyrillic lettering designed to resemble Arabic script on the poster for the short film ‘Turning Over Thirty’. Rapper Yenlik has used Latin lettering with a similar visual reference to Arabic script on an album cover. Sary, a band working in the growing Q-rock (Qazaq rock) scene, uses a logo whose Latin lettering evokes Turkic runiform writing. Through typography, these artists connect contemporary popular culture with older layers of the region’s literary and cultural history.

Read more on Novastan: From Küi to Metallica: How Aldaspan Electrified the Kazakh Dombra

After 2022: new cultural directions

The balance between these languages is also changing. Whereas artists such as Irina Kairatovna have used Russian as part of a multilingual strategy that can reach audiences across the post-Soviet space, groups such as Ninety One focus more strongly on Kazakh-speaking listeners while also looking toward international, often English-speaking audiences. Demand for high-quality cultural products in Kazakh had already been growing, but Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine gave questions of language and national identity new urgency. Some Kazakhstan-born artists who had worked in Russia, including Skryptonite, M’Dee and Dequine, returned to Kazakhstan and publicly condemned the war. More broadly, parts of the local music scene have increasingly looked toward Western and Asian markets, and some artists have declined to perform in Russia.

Read more on Novastan: Central Asian rap in 10 tracks

International attention has followed. In 2026, hip-hop artist Yenlik appeared on COLORS, the German online music platform that has featured international stars including Billie Eilish, Drake and Doja Cat. The platform has more than eight million followers, and Yenlik’s performance attracted more than half a million views. In 2025, the British platform Dazed interviewed the Kazakhstani indie artist Samrattama. Actor Iain Armitage, known for the television series Young Sheldon, has also said online that Kazakh singer Ayau is among his favorite artists, bringing her additional international attention. Taken together, these examples point to a broader shift: Russia is no longer the only external cultural reference point for musicians from Kazakhstan, as Western and Asian platforms become increasingly important.

Russian still matters

Yet the growing symbolic importance of Kazakh does not mean Russian has disappeared from the music industry. Performing in Kazakh can signal patriotism and alignment with local cultural values, but Russian remains important in professional and commercial life. According to people working in the sector, contracts and financial arrangements with advertising companies are still often handled in Russian. In practice, working in the creative industries – and in urban professional life more generally – can still be difficult without it. It is therefore too early to speak of a complete ‘Kazakhization’ of the music scene. What is visible instead is a substantial, but uneven, linguistic shift.

Kazakhstan’s multilingual environment, combined with the coexistence of several scripts and writing traditions, gives musicians unusually rich material for linguistic experimentation. Artists use language choice, code-switching, script and typography to communicate values, identities and worldviews. There is a clear decolonial current and a growing body of high-quality music in Kazakh, but the picture is more complicated than a simple replacement of Russian by Kazakh. Russian remains significant, while English and other international languages are becoming increasingly prominent in the country’s music scene.

These examples capture only a fraction of the linguistic experimentation taking place in Kazakhstan’s music. Future pieces in this series will look at the rise of Qazaq rock, the country’s underground music scene, and the ways Russia’s war against Ukraine has reshaped the choices and horizons of local musicians.

Article by Merey Otan, PhD in Eurasian Studies, Nazarbayev University.

[1] ‘Kok tu’ translates from Kazakh as ‘blue flag’, referring to Kazakhstan’s national flag, which features a blue background, a golden sun and eagle, and traditional Kazakh ornamentation.

The post From Q-pop to Hip-Hop: Kazakhstan’s Multilingual Sound appeared first on Novastan English.

Independent journalism cannot survive on good journalism alone. Marius Dragomir, director of the Media and Journalism Research Center, speaks to Novastan English Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine about media capture, donor dependence, the transition from volunteer initiatives to professional newsrooms, the particular economics of Central Asian and exiled media, and the growing threat AI poses to specialist publications.

Why good journalism does not guarantee financial survival

Novastan: To begin, could you introduce yourself and the Media and Journalism Research Center to our readers? What questions have guided your work on media ownership, funding, policy and editorial independence?

Marius Dragomir, director of the Media and Journalism Research Center: I am a journalist by training who ended up spending most of his career studying the economics and politics of journalism rather than practising it. I spent over a decade at the Open Society Foundations, where I ran the research and policy portfolio of the Program on Independent Journalism and edited comparative projects such as Television Across Europe and Mapping Digital Media, which covered 56 countries. I then directed the Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University until it closed in 2022, and I founded the Media and Journalism Research Center that same year to continue that body of work.

MJRC is an independent research centre funded through a mix of research grants, philanthropic contributions and commercial revenue. All profits are reinvested in research, and we accept no government money of any kind. That last point is not a slogan, but a methodological necessity. It is difficult to publish credible research on how governments capture media while taking money from governments.

Our main projects follow the links between ownership, influence, money and journalism. The State Media Monitor, for example, maps the funding, governance and editorial autonomy of state and public media worldwide: in the 2025 edition, 606 outlets across 170 countries. The Media Influence Matrix examines, country by country, who actually shapes journalism: government and regulators, funders, and technology companies. The Global Media Finances Map tracks the financial performance of some 24,000 media companies in around 60 countries. We also run a Media Capture Monitoring Report with IPI in Vienna.

The question that has guided all of it is deceptively simple: who pays for journalism, through which channel, and what does that money buy? Ownership registries and press-freedom rankings tell you part of the story. But influence over journalism is usually exercised through the accounting department, not the newsroom: through an advertising contract, a licence renewal, a printing bill, a tax audit, a grant condition. If you want to understand editorial independence, it is important to follow the invoices.

Independent media are often evaluated primarily through the quality and public value of their journalism. Why does strong editorial work so often fail to produce financial sustainability?

Because quality and revenue are produced by two different organisational capacities, and most independent outlets have only invested in one of them.

Journalism was never really sold to audiences at cost. For most of the twentieth century, readers paid a fraction of the price of producing news, and advertisers covered the rest, in most cases not because they valued journalism, but because they had no cheaper way to reach an audience. Once they found one, that subsidy left, and it left permanently.

What remains is a market in which attention, not quality, is the priced commodity. Nothing in that market rewards the six months of work behind an investigation more than it rewards a piece of aggregation produced in 20 minutes. In captured markets, the distortion is even blunter: the biggest buyer of advertising is often the state, and it is not buying attention at all, but compliance.

We also have to remember that independent newsrooms are usually founded by journalists, for good reasons. But journalistic culture treats commercial work as slightly disreputable, something to be done reluctantly and by whoever has least to do. An outlet can win awards for a decade while nobody ever owns the revenue line.

Excellent journalism does not fail to produce sustainability. It simply does not produce it by itself: it has to be converted into money by someone whose job that is, and that conversion is a professional skill, not a moral consequence of doing good work.

What are the main structural weaknesses of the traditional media business model today? Are these problems fundamentally different for small, nonprofit or specialist publications than for large national media organisations?

The traditional model rested on three pillars that have all been removed.

First, bundling: a newspaper sold sport, classifieds, weather, obituaries and investigative reporting in one package, and the profitable parts paid for the unprofitable ones. Digital distribution unbundled all of it.

Second, control of distribution: a printing press and a licence were expensive, which created a barrier to entry and a local monopoly. That barrier is gone.

Third, direct access to the audience: publishers now reach most readers through intermediaries – search engines, social platforms, and increasingly AI assistants – that own the relationship, set the terms, and can change them overnight.

For small, nonprofit and specialist publications, the diagnosis differs in important ways. Their weakness is not the collapse of a legacy model they never had; it is a structural overhead problem. There is a floor of institutional cost – legal compliance, accounting, fundraising, editorial management, security, technology – that does not shrink in proportion to the size of the newsroom. A five-person outlet carries almost the same administrative burden as a 50-person one and has one-tenth of the capacity to absorb it. That is why so many small outlets are structurally condemned to under-invest in the very functions that would make them sustainable.

Their advantages are real but narrow. They have low fixed costs, no legacy print infrastructure, no unionised back office and, very importantly, a defined and identifiable audience, which is the precondition for any direct revenue model. A specialist publication covering Central Asia knows exactly who its readers are and why they need it, in a way a general national daily no longer does.

Large national organisations face the opposite problem: they have the resources to build revenue capacity but are far more exposed to capture. They are big enough to be worth buying, worth pressuring and worth subsidising. Our financial analysis of Hungarian media companies, published in 2025, showed measurably how proximity to political power reshapes the financial outcomes of media firms.

Small outlets are rarely captured through acquisition: they are captured through starvation, or simply outlawed.

Can readers and donors sustain independent media?

Your research has emphasised the importance of building a direct relationship between media outlets and their audiences. Under what conditions can memberships, subscriptions and reader donations provide a meaningful source of income? Why do these models succeed for some publications but fail for others?

Four conditions, in my experience, and the model tends to fail when any one of them is missing.

One is a clearly bounded community. People do not pay for information, which is abundant. They pay for belonging, identity, or a service they cannot obtain elsewhere. Outlets serving a defined community – a profession, a diaspora, a region, a cause – convert far better than general-interest outlets, regardless of quality.

Second is a market where paying is normal, safe and technically possible. This is the condition most often overlooked from Western Europe. In much of the world, small recurring online payments are unusual, card penetration is low, and, decisively, a domestic payment to an independent outlet leaves a traceable record. In an environment where an outlet may be declared extremist, asking readers to subscribe is asking them to accept a risk, not a price.

Third, an actual product. Membership is not a donation button. It is a set of obligations the outlet takes on: newsletters, events, access, data, community, a reason to renew. Many outlets adopt the vocabulary of membership without building the product, then conclude the model does not work.

And finally, someone who owns it. The single strongest predictor is whether anybody is professionally responsible for the revenue relationship. For example, for-profit European digital natives derive their main revenue from advertising, website subscriptions and grants, in that order, while nonprofits rely on grants, individual donations and membership. Legal form shapes the achievable revenue mix more than most founders expect at the moment they register the organisation.

Where these models fail, it is usually for one of three reasons: the audience is large but poor or dispersed; the outlet asks for money without changing anything it offers in return; or it starts asking too late, after grant income has already collapsed, when there is no time left to build the habit.

Audience revenue is a slow asset. It has to be built while you still have other money.

Many independent outlets rely heavily on grants and international donors. What are the principal benefits and risks of this model? Can donor dependence influence editorial priorities even when funders never directly interfere with content?

The benefit is straightforward and should not be minimised: donor money funds journalism that no market will pay for. Investigative reporting on corruption in an authoritarian state has, from a commercial standpoint, a negative expected return. Without philanthropy, most of the independent journalism produced in many countries in the Global South over the past 20 years would not exist.

The risks became brutally visible in 2025. When the US government suspended most foreign assistance, roughly $150 million in annual support for journalism and the wider information ecosystem disappeared almost overnight. The consequences: closures, mass layoffs, abandoned investigations.

The cut also taught another lesson: many organisations believed they had diversified, holding grants from several different agencies and implementing partners, only to discover that every one of those grants traced back to the same ultimate source, and all were cancelled simultaneously.

On the second half of your question: yes, donor dependence shapes editorial priorities even when no funder ever comments on content, and this is the more insidious mechanism precisely because nobody is doing anything wrong.

Influence operates through anticipation. Editors learn which themes attract funding – this year climate, next year disinformation, then AI, then gender – and reporting drifts toward the fundable. Story selection begins to be justified internally by whether it fits a logframe. Impact is reported in metrics donors recognise, which are rarely the metrics that matter to the audience. Over several cycles, an outlet can end up producing journalism that is accountable primarily to institutions abroad rather than to readers at home.

And there is a political cost that is now unavoidable in an increasing number of countries. Foreign funding has been converted into a legal weapon in countries that have adopted legislation on foreign-funded organisations. That makes the very funding that keeps an outlet alive a pretext to delegitimise it as a foreign instrument.

What do international donors and media-development organisations most frequently misunderstand about the needs of independent media? How do funding criteria, project cycles and reporting requirements shape the organisational behaviour and editorial priorities of the outlets they support?

Five things, in descending order of damage.

They fund projects when organisations need institutions. Donors buy outputs: an investigation series, a training programme, a podcast. What outlets need is the capacity to exist: a business manager, a lawyer, an accountant, a security budget, a functioning CMS. These are usually classified as overhead and capped at some arbitrary percentage. The result is systemic under-investment in exactly the functions that would end donor dependence.

Secondly, project cycles do not match institutional time. Building an audience-revenue base takes three to five years. Grants run twelve to eighteen months. An outlet is therefore asked to become sustainable on a timetable that makes sustainability structurally impossible, and instead spends its senior editorial time writing applications. In small newsrooms, fundraising and reporting compete for the same person, usually the editor-in-chief, who is also the best reporter.

Thirdly, reporting requirements consume the capacity they are meant to safeguard. A five-person outlet managing four grants with different reporting formats, currencies, audit standards and impact frameworks is running a compliance department disguised as a newsroom. Donors underestimate this because each individually imposes a reasonable burden; nobody counts the aggregate.

Fourth, impact is measured in the wrong units. Reach and output are easy to count and largely meaningless. What a captured environment requires is different: did a procurement decision change, did a public debate shift, did an official resign, did the audience trust you enough to send documents? Those outcomes are slow, irregular and unsuited to quarterly reporting.

And finally, exits are unmanaged. Funders enter loudly and leave quietly. There is rarely a wind-down plan, a transition fund or an endowment mechanism. If 2025 taught the sector anything, it is that responsible donors should be building reserve and endowment structures – including pooled, multi-donor vehicles insulated from any single government’s foreign policy – rather than annual grant cycles that transfer all volatility onto the weakest party in the chain.

From volunteer initiative to professional newsroom

Some media organisations begin as volunteer initiatives but later seek to establish professional structures and remunerate editors, journalists and contributors. What determines whether that transition succeeds? What mistakes should volunteer-founded publications avoid?

This transition kills more promising publications than censorship does, and the causes are almost always internal.

What determines success, in the cases I have observed, is that the organisation formalises its governance before significant money arrives, not after. It decides who decides – who can hire, who can spend, who appoints the editor – while the stakes are still low enough that the conversation is not personal.

It defines roles rather than distributing tasks. Volunteer organisations run on generalists; professional ones need someone who owns revenue, someone who owns editorial, someone who owns operations, and these should not be the same person.

And it accepts that the founding culture must end. A volunteer collective runs on consensus, goodwill and unlimited discussion. That is not a management system, and it does not survive payroll.

The mistakes to avoid are consistent. One is paying everyone a little. Spreading a small budget across 15 contributors produces 15 people who are underpaid and still treat the outlet as a side project. Two properly paid full-time roles change an organisation.

Another is not paying the founders. Founder self-sacrifice looks noble and creates a hidden subsidy that masks the real cost base, and an organisation that cannot survive the day its founder burns out.

Another is choosing the legal form by accident. The structure you register determines which revenue you can access: whether you can take tax-deductible donations, sell advertising, receive foundation grants. Many outlets discover this three years too late.

And finally, professionalising editorial while leaving management voluntary is a major error. The business side is the side that most needs a paid professional, and it is invariably the last to get one.

Diversification is frequently presented as the solution to media sustainability. In practice, how many sources of revenue can a small organisation realistically manage without diverting excessive time and energy away from journalism?

There is no given formula. But from experience, I can say that between two and six revenue sources appears optimal, and that more sources do not correlate with greater success. Outlets with fewer than two sources are likely to fall in the bottom third of revenue earners in their markets. So there is a floor and there is a ceiling.

The reason there is a ceiling is that every revenue stream has a fixed management cost that has nothing to do with how much it earns. Advertising needs a salesperson and an ad server. Membership needs a payment system, a CRM, retention work and a product. Events need logistics and risk. Grants need proposals and audits. Consultancy and training pull your best journalists out of the newsroom.

Each one is a small business, and a five-person organisation cannot operate six small businesses without ceasing to be a newsroom.

The practical rule I would offer: no revenue line without an owner. If nobody’s name is against it, it is not a revenue stream; it is an aspiration that consumes attention. Three streams that someone actively manages will out-earn seven that everyone manages occasionally.

I would add one refinement about diversification that the 2025 funding shock made obvious: what matters is not the number of sources but their correlation. Four grants from four organisations ultimately funded by the same government are a single point of failure. One grant, one advertising base, one membership programme and one licensing deal is genuinely diversified, because no single political or economic event removes all four at once.

How money becomes a tool of media capture

Media capture is often associated with censorship or direct political control. How does capture operate more subtly through ownership, government advertising, subsidies, commercial dependency, regulatory decisions or access to distribution?

Capture is what happens when direct censorship becomes unnecessary. I defined it in a paper in 2019 as a situation in which most or all news media operate as part of a government-business cartel that controls the flow of information in order to protect its unrestricted access to public resources. The key point is that capture is an economic arrangement, not an editorial one.

It works through four levers: media regulation, state-owned outlets, government financing, and private ownership. Within financing, governments use four recognisable tactics: direct funding, state advertising, subsidies, and deliberate market disruption. What unifies them is that none requires anyone to tell a journalist what to write.

State advertising is the cleanest instrument. It is legal, discretionary, unaudited and enormous relative to these markets. When the state is the largest buyer of advertising, media outlets are not operating in a market; they are competing for patronage. No instruction is needed, because every editor can calculate.

Read more on Novastan: Leaving the island: Japarov’s campaign to silence independent media

Then there are the less visible mechanisms. One is informal payments: payments to outlets from politicians and officials – prime ministers, mayors, MPs, sitting and former presidents. This money never appears in any accounts, which is precisely the point.

Another is opacity: companies are not obliged to disclose revenues, so basic market data simply do not exist. Where nobody can see the finances, capture cannot be proven.

Regulation and administrative friction also contribute to building capture: accreditation rules, registration requirements for online publications, licensing, tax inspections, “false information” statutes. Ownership transfer, when companies close to the government buy media outlets, is the most efficient method of all.

And, of course, distribution and infrastructure: printing, kiosks, cable carriage, app stores, domain blocking all matter in how content is controlled. Control of the pipe is control of the publication.

Read more on Novastan: Pressure from Russia increases on Central Asian media outlets

Can private or philanthropic ownership protect editorial independence, or does dependence on wealthy individuals and foundations simply create different forms of vulnerability? What governance safeguards are most effective in protecting editorial decision-making?

It can, but it substitutes one dependency for another, and the honest answer is that ownership form matters far less than governance design.

Private ownership by a wealthy owner, for example, can truly insulate a newsroom from state pressure: a patron with independent wealth can absorb losses and ignore the withdrawal of state advertising. But it creates a different exposure: to that individual’s business interests, political ambitions, mortality and change of mind. Central and Eastern Europe offers an abundant record of proprietors who bought outlets as instruments rather than businesses. Our State Media Matrix includes a whole category, captured private media, precisely because privately owned outlets can be as editorially captured as state ones.

Philanthropic ownership avoids the profit motive but not the dependency. A foundation-owned outlet is subject to strategic shifts, board politics and the thematic fashions of the philanthropic sector. It is more stable and more transparent than an oligarch, but it is not a guarantee.

What actually protects editorial decision-making is a set of structural safeguards, and I would rank them roughly in this order.

First, structural separation of funding from appointment: whoever provides the money must not control who is appointed editor. This is the single most important rule.

Second, appointment rules: fixed, non-renewable terms, supermajority or qualified appointment procedures, and a formal role for the newsroom in the selection or veto of the editor-in-chief.

Third, a capital structure that outlasts the donor: endowments, trusts and foundation-ownership models remove annual renewal as an instrument of pressure.

Fourth, radical transparency of funding: publishing every source above a threshold as a form of protection.

And finally, self-imposed concentration limits. An internal rule that no single source may exceed, say, 40% of revenue is worth more than any editorial charter.

The sustainability challenge for Central Asian media

Your Media Influence Matrix studies of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan examined how state financing, ownership, political influence, informal payments and foreign donor support shape journalism. Looking back at those findings, how do you think the two media systems have evolved since 2019, and which developments most urgently merit renewed research today?

I have to be honest here because we have not conducted updated fieldwork in Central Asia since those studies, and I would not want to offer an assessment of how the two systems have evolved based on third-party sources. Our method depends on locally sourced financial and regulatory data collected by researchers in the country, and without that I would be speculating.

What I can restate is the baseline we established in 2019, because it defines what would have to be re-measured.

The two countries presented distinct configurations. Kazakhstan was a system of financial dominance: an overwhelming state presence in media funding combined with no obligation on companies to disclose their finances, and marginal donor money.

Read more on Novastan: In Central Asia, the Freedom of Press is in Decline

Kyrgyzstan was a system of informal dependence: a weak advertising market, media instrumentalised by politicians and businessmen who treated outlets as tools rather than businesses, and widespread undisclosed payments from officials, but alongside a rather plural space, a significant donor presence, and a handful of outlets that funded themselves from grants and advertising and could therefore set their own editorial line.

On what most urgently merits renewed research, I would name four things.

First, the actual flow of state media financing since 2019: amounts, recipients and the conditions attached. This is the single most consequential and least documented lever in both countries, and it is precisely the kind of figure that cannot be estimated from outside.

Second, the economics of exile: what it costs to run a Kyrgyz or Kazakh newsroom from abroad, how it is financed, and whether any of it is sustainable beyond the current funding cycle.

Read more on Novastan: When Freedom of Speech Is a Joke: Author of a Satirical News Outlet Detained in Kazakhstan

Third, the migration of journalism to YouTube and Telegram, where a substantial part of independent reporting now appears. We know very little about who funds these projects, what they earn, or how exposed they are to platform decisions.

Fourth, the effect of the 2025 collapse in US media assistance, which I suspect hit this region harder than the global headline figures suggest, and which will have reshaped the funding structure we described in 2019 more thoroughly than any legal change.

Independent Central Asian media often operate across borders or from exile, while attempting to reach audiences exposed to state-controlled information and increasingly restrictive legislation. Does this require a different sustainability model from that used by independent media in Western Europe?

Yes, fundamentally, and the standard Western sustainability playbook is close to useless for them.

The reason is a structural mismatch: for an exiled outlet, the audience and the revenue base are in different countries. A German or French independent outlet builds a virtuous circle: it serves a local audience, that audience pays, local advertisers want to reach it.

An exiled Central Asian or Azeri or Iranian outlet has an audience it cannot legally monetise, in a jurisdiction where its brand may be criminalised, reached through channels that can be blocked, while its costs are incurred in euros in a European capital. Every link in the Western circle is broken.

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Their cost structure is also different in kind, not degree: legal defence, digital security, physical security, relocation and visas for staff and their families, trauma support, redundant infrastructure, translation, and the permanent overhead of operating under two legal systems. These are not luxuries, yet they are rarely funded.

And there is a distinctive risk absent in Western Europe: asking the audience for money can endanger the audience. A domestic bank transfer to an outlet designated extremist is evidence, making reader revenue – the model everyone recommends – not merely difficult but ethically fraught.

So what does work? In practice, based on my experience, a different portfolio is needed.

First, revenue raised outside the audience’s jurisdiction: diaspora communities in Europe, North America and other relevant countries who can pay safely and often have strong motivation.

Then, institutional and B2B income needs to be considered: syndication, content licensing to international outlets, translation, research and consultancy for organisations that need country expertise they cannot generate themselves.

Increasingly, we have found that shared services are becoming important for such media. The most realistic efficiency for small exile media is not individual growth but pooled infrastructure: shared legal counsel, shared security, shared accounting, shared fiscal hosting in an EU jurisdiction, joint fundraising vehicles, and so on. Myanmar’s exiled outlets moved towards exactly this kind of cooperation after 2025.

AI poses a new threat to independent journalism

Artificial intelligence and automated information systems are increasingly determining which sources people encounter and how information is summarised. What risks does this create for smaller independent publications, particularly those covering countries or regions that receive limited international attention? Could their reporting become essential to AI systems while bringing them little traffic, recognition or revenue?

Your question contains a sharp formulation of the problem, and the answer is: yes, exactly that. Their reporting can become essential to AI systems while returning almost nothing in traffic, recognition or revenue. This is the defining economic asymmetry of the coming period, and small outlets covering under-reported regions are its most exposed victims.

There are various aspects of that. Let me refer to a few that I consider important.

One is what I call referral collapse: the distribution model that publishers built for 20 years assumed intermediaries would send readers onward. Answer engines are designed not to. When a summary satisfies the query, the visit never happens. For a small outlet whose advertising, membership conversion and reputational visibility all depend on that visit, the loss is not just a decline in traffic; it is the removal of the mechanism by which reporting converts into anything at all.

Another aspect is extraction asymmetry, concentrated on the specialists. Precisely because you are the only detailed English-language source on, say, Kyrgyz media legislation or Tajik labour migration, your reporting is disproportionately load-bearing in any system generating answers about the region.

Large publishers can negotiate licensing deals; a specialist outlet with four staff has no leverage, no legal capacity and no realistic path to individual negotiation. Thus, we expect a situation where the most essential sources have the least bargaining power. That is an inversion of how markets are supposed to work.

And finally, relevant to your question is the language problem, which worries me most. Models are trained on what exists in a language. For some languages – and here I would guess most of the Central Asian ones – the available corpus is dominated by state and state-aligned media, simply because they publish more. Independent reporting is a rounding error by volume.

So the statistical baseline for what is “normally said” about these countries is likely to be drawn overwhelmingly from captured sources, and it is then reproduced fluently, in the user’s own language, with no visible provenance and none of the contextual cues that would once have signalled a state outlet.

Media capture can thus be laundered into apparently neutral infrastructure. This is a new distribution channel for propaganda that requires no propagandist.

MJRC has begun mapping this terrain: our study on how AI is changing media and journalism in Central Europe, Control Beyond Code, which examines the ownership and financial structures behind the AI systems newsrooms are adopting, and the AI Information Map, which maps the sources of information the largest LLMs use to give answers in various languages.

What can small publishers actually do? Three things, none sufficient alone.

Build channels that do not pass through an intermediary – newsletters, events, direct communities, Telegram – because owned relationships are the only assets not subject to unilateral repricing.

Negotiate collectively. Licensing is only viable for small publishers through consortia, and this is where regional and thematic associations should be putting their effort.

And push for provenance and attribution requirements in regulation, because if summarisation is going to become the default interface for information, the minimum acceptable standard is that the source is visible, attributed and linkable.

What does sustainable independent media look like?

Looking ahead, what would a genuinely healthy and sustainable independent-media organisation look like? Which combination of revenue, governance, audience engagement and institutional support offers the best prospect of editorial independence over the long term?

This is very difficult to answer, as there is no ideal model and local context and factors matter immensely. But generally, I would describe it in five dimensions, and I would insist that no one of them substitutes for another.

Revenue first: between two and six streams, with no single source above roughly 40% and no two major sources sharing an ultimate political principal. At least one stream should come directly from the audience, however small, because it is the only income that is also a measure of whether anyone needs you. And at least one person must be professionally responsible for revenue.

Then, governance. A structural firewall between whoever funds the organisation and whoever appoints its editor. Fixed terms, transparent appointment procedures, a formal newsroom role in editorial leadership decisions, and published funding down to a low threshold.

Then, audience. A defined community rather than a general public, and a relationship the outlet owns rather than rents from a platform. In a period when intermediaries are actively removing referral traffic, direct audience relationships have shifted from a marketing asset to a survival asset.

Institutional support next. This is the part that cannot be solved by any individual newsroom, and where policy has to do the work: multi-year unrestricted core funding rather than project grants; pooled and endowed funding vehicles insulated from any single government’s foreign policy; favourable tax treatment for nonprofit journalism; shared back-office and legal infrastructure; and enforceable transparency in state advertising allocation, which remains the most powerful and least regulated instrument of capture worldwide.

Finally, reserves and realism about scale. Six to twelve months of unrestricted reserves, and an accurate sense of the size the organisation can sustainably be. A great many outlets have destroyed themselves by growing into a grant.

A healthy independent outlet is one that could survive losing its largest funder, its largest platform and its most prominent journalist – not comfortably, but survivably.

Interview by Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post “Follow the invoices”: Marius Dragomir on how money shapes independent journalism appeared first on Novastan English.

Mongolia occupies an unusual position between Russia and China while maintaining a democratic political system and cultivating partnerships with countries far beyond its immediate neighbourhood. In recent years, Ulaanbaatar has also intensified its relations with Central Asia, raising new questions about Mongolia’s place between Northeast and Central Asia.

Novastan Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine spoke with Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan of Global Nomads of Mongolia  about the country’s democracy, political instability, mineral wealth, relations with China and Russia, its cautious approach to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and its growing connections with Central Asian states.

Novastan: When people outside Mongolia think about the country today, what do you think they most often misunderstand? What developments deserve considerably more international attention?

Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan of Global Nomads of Mongolia: In today’s world, Mongolia is no longer at the end of the world. Because of its open society and extensive global interactions, Mongolia is relatively well known, both for its positive and negative developments.

Although Mongolia has a small population and vast territory, there are always many interesting developments. Beyond its nomadic social structures, culture and lifestyle, Mongolia experienced several decades of socialist development from the 1920s to the 1980s, followed by democratisation and the transition to a free-market economy beginning in 1989.

You can recognise the effects of these different layers – nomadic, socialist and capitalist – in almost every aspect of society. When you are in Mongolia, you feel as though you are at the crossroads of three major cultures: Chinese, Soviet/Russian and Inner Asian nomadic culture. Different historical periods also intersect here: nomadic dominance, the spread of Tibetan Buddhism, communist ideology, democracy and globalisation.

These factors all need to be considered to understand developments in Mongolia. If you look at Mongolia through only one lens – whether democracy, mining or its nomadic legacy – you can easily misunderstand what is happening. Fortunately, there are now many sources available to people outside Mongolia.

Mongolia went through another period of political turbulence in 2025, including protests and the resignation of Prime Minister Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene. What did that episode reveal about Mongolian politics and society? Did it point to deeper frustrations over inequality, corruption and the distribution of mineral wealth?

At the simplest level, this episode was a typical outcome of the political system we have chosen. Our system generates “too much politics” and can threaten political stability, particularly when politicians and political-economic factions compete for authority, political prominence and parochial interests.

Unfortunately, inequality is widening, corruption has not been tamed, and political leaders are not delivering on their electoral promises. We often see politicians, parties and factions operating according to election-cycle thinking, which is of course normal in any democracy. But they are also competing for state resources – whether state-owned enterprises, bonds, loans, tenders or large and small construction projects.

In any society, whether democratic, socialist or monarchical, if the state fails to enforce the rule of law and penalise corrupt officials, it loses public trust and support.

So yes, the current political turbulence indicates growing frustration with politicians and political parties, particularly concerning corruption and the mismanagement of state funds, whether taxes, loans or aid. We know that this is one of the factors contributing to political instability and populist politics.

Ultimately, if this situation continues, the political system could gradually evolve into a kleptocratic one. This episode should therefore be seen as another strong warning to our political leaders.

Internationally, Mongolia is often presented as an unusual democratic success story in its neighbourhood. From inside the country, which aspects of Mongolian democracy are genuinely resilient, and where do you see its main vulnerabilities?

I don’t think our democratic success is as unusual as many people argue. It was triggered by the same crisis that affected communist states around the world, and Mongolia’s democracy evolved along paths similar to those followed by Central and Eastern European countries. Other non-European communist states, by contrast, generally did not permit political pluralism and repressed political dissidents.

Fortunately, both of our neighbours have respected our choice of democratic governance from the beginning and have continued their bilateral relations with Mongolia at all levels without interfering with our unique political process, including our elections. This is an important fact.

Three aspects of our democracy could be considered particularly resilient.

First, Mongolia has institutionalised protections for political and economic rights. People can practise religious freedom, possess private property and enjoy freedom of movement both within and outside the country, in addition to political rights.

Second, when the nation faces a political crisis, there is generally both the will and the space to reach consensus. If I define democracy as a process through which people can arrive at peaceful decisions without harming one another, this has been one of the strongest features of Mongolian democracy from the beginning.

Third, in my view, Mongolian political leaders care about their domestic and international image as supporters of democratic values. They understand that abandoning that image would cost them support domestically and complicate Mongolia’s relations with developed democracies.

Alongside these resilient features, however, corruption and populist politics remain our main vulnerabilities. They threaten the efficiency and effectiveness of government as well as public trust in the democratic political system.

Mining has transformed Mongolia economically but has repeatedly become a source of political controversy. What has Mongolia learned from three decades of managing its mineral wealth, and what problems remain unresolved? Do projects such as Oyu Tolgoi and the French-Mongolian uranium partnership indicate a new phase in Mongolia’s resource development?

I am not an expert on this subject, but I think we have learned several things.

First, the country needs to develop and retain its own professional and politically independent experts who can handle investment negotiations with large multinational mining companies.

Second, major investment agreements need to be insulated and protected from domestic politics and the political process, particularly elections.

Third, state-owned enterprises should be managed more transparently and professionally, as they are in countries such as Singapore or Sweden.

Looking back, virtually all major corruption cases and allegations have revolved around major state-owned enterprises. In the late 1990s, this concerned the Erdenet copper factory or the railway. Today, controversies revolve around the Tavan Tolgoi coal mines, while some cases have also involved the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine.

This problem therefore remains unresolved. We still cannot sufficiently restrain the involvement of politicians, parties and factions in Tavan Tolgoi. Political actors use corruption allegations to marginalise their opponents and increase their influence over state-owned enterprises, but we rarely see these allegations resolved through the legal system.

As for the second part of the question, these major projects take a long time to develop. The Erdenet copper deposit was explored by Czechoslovak geologists in 1963, the investment agreement with the Soviet Union was concluded in 1973, and production began in 1978.

Oyu Tolgoi was discovered in the late 1990s, the investment agreement was signed in 2009, open-pit production began in 2013, and underground production followed in 2023.

Looking at these two copper projects alone, I would expect the French-Mongolian uranium project to have to overcome many hurdles before reaching its full potential. We also have to consider commodity cycles and opportunities for economic diversification, both of which are often beyond Mongolia’s control.

China dominates Mongolia’s trade, while Russia remains strategically important and Mongolia simultaneously seeks deeper relations with its “third neighbours”. Where does Mongolia still have room for manoeuvre, and where does geography impose unavoidable constraints? How does public opinion towards China compare with the economic reality of the relationship?

In our foreign-policy concepts and statements, we prioritise relations with our two neighbours. These relationships go back more than two thousand years. Stable and prosperous neighbours are in Mongolia’s interest, just as a peaceful and stable Mongolia is in the interests of our two neighbours.

Mongolia shares long land borders with both countries and is historically, culturally and even ethnically connected with neighbouring regions of China and Russia.

The principal concern for Moscow and Beijing is that Mongolia should not welcome the security or military interests of their strategic competitors. I think this red line is clear both to our third neighbours and to our own political leaders.

Mongolia is therefore keen to develop closer and broader cooperation with its third neighbours in politics, economics and culture. Cooperation in security and defence is generally limited to education and training exchanges, peacekeeping and the development of disaster-response capabilities.

The most difficult periods for Mongolia come when the great powers – our two neighbours and the Western powers – engage in geopolitical and geoeconomic competition. We are entering such a period now. What we don’t know is the dynamics, duration and intensity of this competition. In fact, this challenge applies to many middle and small powers.

Anti-Chinese attitudes in Mongolia are an interesting phenomenon. They wax and wane, as other forms of negative attitudes do. After three decades of peaceful, friendly and good-neighbourly bilateral relations, I would argue that most Mongolians now have a relatively balanced view of China.

A person can simultaneously hold positive, neutral and negative attitudes towards different aspects of China – its culture, government, people or economy. Someone might have positive views of Chinese culture and economic development while holding very different opinions about Chinese nationals or businesses operating in Mongolia.

We should therefore be careful not to overgeneralise. Many Mongolians have mixed views of China, but everyone understands that economically China remains indispensable to Mongolia.

Nevertheless, there is a trust deficit between our two nations because of historical memories, the asymmetry of power and persistent or emerging geopolitical narratives. Unfortunately, negative comments and narratives in the Chinese and Mongolian blogospheres can easily contribute to mistrust and reinforce negative attitudes on both sides.

Mongolia has remained outside the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation while maintaining close relations with most of its members. What choices does Mongolia now face regarding the organisation?

If you read the SCO’s key statements carefully, the organisation’s core area of interest remains Central Asia, rather than Eurasia or South Asia. Mongolia may sometimes appear to be a regionless country in Inner Asia, but it is very closely connected with Northeast Asia.

There are multiple daily flights connecting Ulaanbaatar with Seoul, Tokyo and cities across China. There is only one direct air connection with Central Asia, between Almaty and Ulaanbaatar. Mongolia’s key strategic and economic partners are in Northeast Asia, including China’s northeastern and southern provinces.

Most Mongolians therefore see the SCO primarily as a regional organisation for Central Asia, a region with which many Mongolians still have relatively limited knowledge and interaction. If the SCO were to expand its membership into Northeast Asia – for example, to include the two Koreas – that could affect Mongolia’s perception of the organisation.

Another important reason for Mongolia’s reluctance to join is concern that the SCO could develop into a political and security alignment against the West.

This would create two challenges for Mongolia. First, it could threaten the country’s principled position of non-alignment and its desire to avoid becoming caught up in great-power politics. Second, Mongolia could find itself under pressure from Beijing and Moscow to pursue similar foreign-policy positions.

Given Mongolia’s historical experience of being caught in two overlapping Cold Wars – one between China and the Soviet Union and another between the Soviet Union and the West – non-alignment and an independent foreign policy are highly valued.

Because of these complexities, Mongolia will probably prefer to retain its observer status rather than pursue full membership.

The Ulaanbaatar Dialogue has existed for more than a decade. What can a relatively small state such as Mongolia realistically achieve by creating a diplomatic platform involving much larger powers?

The spirit behind the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue goes back to the 1960s and 1980s, when a small state sought to pursue proactive multilateral diplomacy to increase its international profile and, frankly, to find friends.

There were many difficulties, from geopolitics to Mongolia’s physical isolation. Getting around the world often meant travelling through Moscow, either spending five or six days on the Trans-Siberian Railway or taking long flights through Sheremetyevo Airport. Moreover, Mongolian political leaders had to align the country’s foreign-policy efforts with the Kremlin’s wishes.

An early version of the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue concept was promoted by the Institute for Strategic Studies of Mongolia in 2008, with the idea of making Ulaanbaatar a “new Helsinki” for Northeast Asia. Then, in 2014, political leaders, senior diplomats and foreign-policy experts launched the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue, bringing together policy experts and academics from Northeast Asia and specialists interested in the region.

With the exception of a two-year interruption during the pandemic, Mongolia has organised the Dialogue ever since, and it has become one of our successful foreign-policy initiatives.

It should be understood as one element of a broader series of Mongolian diplomatic initiatives directed towards Northeast Asia and beyond.

There is also the Ulaanbaatar Process, organised with civil society organisations to bring together experts working on nuclear-weapon-free zones and denuclearisation. Mongolia is the world’s only single-state nuclear-weapon-free zone, recognised by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The conference helps keep denuclearisation and nuclear risks on the agenda, particularly in Northeast Asia.

Then there is Khaan Quest, a multinational peacekeeping exercise that began in 2004. It brings Chinese People’s Liberation Army personnel together with participants from countries that are otherwise geostrategic competitors, including the United States, Japan, South Korea and India, as well as Central Asian countries and Turkey.

Mongolia has also chaired the Asian Buddhist Conference for Peace since 1970. You can add the Northeast Asian Mayors’ Forum, the Northeast Asian Parliamentary Roundtable and sporting events in which conflicting parties from across the region participate.

Of course, regularly organising international events requires significant effort and expenditure and is scrutinised by taxpayers. Nevertheless, Mongolia may be the only country in the region that maintains friendly relations with all the others without significant unresolved disputes.

Even though the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue is relatively small compared with major multilateral forums, it provides a relaxed atmosphere for discussion. Scholars from China, Russia, the United States, Japan and elsewhere appreciate the opportunity to meet one another precisely because current geopolitical tensions have severely restricted these interactions – much as they did during the Cold War.

This year’s Ulaanbaatar Dialogue included discussions on connectivity between Northeast and Central Asia and the idea of a “green power corridor” connecting the two regions. Why is this connection attracting more attention now?

Although Mongolia is geographically close to Central Asia, Soviet geopolitics separated Mongolia and Central Asia for many decades. Mongolia was one of the early supporters of the independence and sovereignty of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

However, the newly independent states initially had different foreign-policy priorities. Mongolia looked primarily towards Northeast Asia, while Central Asian states looked towards Europe.

The pandemic and the changing geopolitical environment have required us, particularly on the Mongolian side, to reassess our foreign policy and reach out more proactively to Central Asian states.

Within this framework, the organisers of the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue began welcoming participants from Central Asia in 2022. It quickly became clear that both Central Asian and Northeast Asian participants wanted greater connectivity and interaction. This is particularly true among policy experts and researchers because they have lacked a platform specifically dedicated to discussing connections between the two regions.

UNESCAP is also important here. It co-organises a panel on sustainable economic development with a strong focus on energy, power corridors and connectivity. We therefore decided to dedicate panels specifically to connectivity between Central and Northeast Asia, including the concept of a “green power corridor”.

Despite all the C5+ bilateral formats involving China, Japan, South Korea and Europe, there is no comparable venue bringing policy experts and academics from Central and Northeast Asia together.

Mongolia’s relations with Central Asian states appear to have accelerated significantly in recent years. What is driving this rapprochement, and which areas of cooperation should we watch over the next few years?

Mongolia and Kazakhstan have historic and cultural links. Around 90,000 Mongolian Kazakhs now live in Kazakhstan. This is Mongolia’s largest diaspora community concentrated in a single country; South Korea comes next, with around 60,000 Mongolians.

For centuries, Mongols and Kazakhs have lived around the Altai mountain range, which connects Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. All four countries are now promoting initiatives to increase economic and cultural connectivity across the Altai.

The Kyrgyz Republic is quite similar to Mongolia in terms of economic scale and population size, as well as having an open society. Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan have maintained close political and cultural interactions in the past.

Mongolia’s relationship with Uzbekistan is historic, but its contemporary development is relatively new and remains at an early stage.

One strong driver of renewed attention, particularly from our side, is that all these states operate in similar geopolitical circumstances. They all have to balance their relations within the larger strategic triangle involving Beijing, Moscow and Washington.

They reach out to the West for investment, trade and a degree of soft balancing vis-à-vis China and Russia. At the same time, they need to accommodate Russia’s geostrategic and economic interests while relying heavily on Chinese investment, markets and infrastructure.

In simple geopolitical terms, they all need to pay close attention to the Sino-Russian balance of power. Mongolia and the Central Asian states therefore share an interest in pursuing multilateral foreign policies and finding ways to increase their economic connectivity.

Beyond Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon also made an official visit to Mongolia in July.

Over the next few years, we could see closer cooperation in international forums as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan promote forms of middle-power foreign policy. China’s infrastructure, including its rail network and ports, could help Mongolia and Central Asian states increase trade flows, even if these remain relatively small.

We could also see more direct flights linking Mongolia with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan could cooperate more closely in promoting the nomadic cultures of greater Central Asia.

Looking ahead five to ten years, what is one development in Mongolia that you think foreign observers are currently underestimating?

Over the next five to ten years, Mongolia could become a more egalitarian and progressively liberal society than other states in the region.

First, our distinctive combination of democracy and an open society has become more firmly established over the past three decades, particularly in comparison with our two neighbours. I expect this to continue.

Second, Mongolia is becoming increasingly urban and digitally connected. We have a younger generation that is increasingly well educated and internationally exposed. Mongolia also has a growing population and relatively high birth rates compared with much of the region.

Finally, Mongolians are relatively tolerant of different views and cultures. Mongolia could become one of the more peaceful and attractive places to visit as climate change increasingly affects Europe, North America and other parts of Asia. Its continental climate, particularly its moderate summers and autumns, could become an advantage.

It is already interesting to see increasing numbers of people from South and Southeast Asia looking for employment opportunities in Mongolia’s education and service sectors.

Interview by Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan English.

The post “Mongolia cannot be understood through one lens”: Dr. Mendee Jargalsaikhan on democracy, China and Central Asia appeared first on Novastan English.

From Kazakhstan’s pine-covered lakes to Kyrgyzstan’s walnut groves and the tugai forests of the Amu Darya, Central Asia is considerably greener than its international image suggests. But fires, mass tourism and development are testing whether landscapes designated as protected are also protected in practice.

In the height of summer, a spark can be enough.

It may come from a campfire left smouldering beneath the trees, a cigarette discarded beside a road or machinery operating in dry grass. Heat, wind and vegetation do the rest. For the foresters and rangers responsible for Central Asia’s protected landscapes, the first sign may be a thread of smoke rising behind a mountain ridge. By the time a fire is visible from the nearest village, reaching it may already require hours on rough tracks with limited equipment.

Wildfires have made forests an urgent political issue far beyond Central Asia. Yet the region is rarely included in international conversations about them. To many outsiders, Central Asia remains a land of steppe, high mountains and desert: spectacular, certainly, but largely treeless.

The reality is more complicated.

Spruce forests climb the slopes of the Tian Shan. Walnut and wild-fruit trees cover parts of southern Kyrgyzstan. Pine and birch grow among the lakes and granite formations of northern Kazakhstan. Juniper woodlands survive in the mountains of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Along the Amu Darya and other rivers, fragments of tugai forest still provide shelter to deer, wild boar and migratory birds. Turkmenistan’s mountains and deserts contain pistachio woodland, juniper, tamarisk and saxaul adapted to some of the harshest conditions in Eurasia.

These landscapes store water, stabilise soil, support rural livelihoods and shelter wildlife. They are also being asked to perform another function: attract a rapidly growing number of visitors.

The result is a regional dilemma. Central Asian governments are creating and expanding protected areas, promoting ecotourism and announcing ambitious restoration targets. At the same time, their forests and parks face hotter conditions, fires, grazing, construction, waste and, in several countries, limited enforcement capacity.

Read more on Novastan: From the Pamirs to the Aral Sea: Following the Amu Darya Through Central Asia

The important question is therefore not only how many national parks Central Asia has. It is how effectively they are protected.

A region greener than its reputation

Central Asia’s forests are not the continuous temperate woodlands found elsewhere. Many are fragmented, highly localised and adapted to mountain, river or desert environments. Their relative scarcity makes them particularly valuable.

In eastern Kazakhstan, Katon-Karagay National Park reaches from forest and meadow to alpine tundra in the Altai Mountains. Siberian larch, fir, spruce, birch and cedar pine provide habitat for maral deer, brown bears, lynx, ibex and the elusive snow leopard. Kazakhstan describes Katon-Karagay as its largest national park and one of its most intact protected landscapes.

Read more on Novastan: How Central Asia is trying to protect the snow leopard

Farther west, the pine forests of Burabay and Bayanaul emerge almost unexpectedly from the surrounding steppe. Their lakes and accessible landscapes have made them popular tourist destinations, but accessibility brings pressure: more vehicles, more informal campsites, more rubbish and a greater likelihood that human activity will start a fire.

In Kyrgyzstan, the walnut-fruit forests around Arslanbob are among the region’s most distinctive human landscapes. Walnuts grow alongside wild apple, pear, plum and hawthorn. Local families have long depended on collecting nuts and fruit, meaning that conservation cannot be separated from questions of access, income and community rights. Forests cover only a small proportion of Kyrgyzstan’s territory, but they remain an important ecological and economic asset.

Higher in the Tian Shan, Schrenk spruce and juniper forests surround parks such as Ala-Archa, Chong-Kemin and Besh-Tash. Camera traps in Besh-Tash recorded snow leopards, argali, Siberian ibex, wolves and foxes in 2025, a reminder that protected areas contain living ecosystems rather than simply scenic backdrops for visitors.

Read more on Novastan: Artists and activists raise awareness for Bishkek’s waste problem

Uzbekistan’s mountain parks protect juniper woodland, wild-fruit species and habitats used by bears, ibex, lynx, vultures and other birds of prey. In the west, the newly created Aralkum National Nature Park represents a very different experiment: protecting life emerging in and around the former bed of the Aral Sea. Uzbek authorities report that the park contains 25 animal species, including four listed in the national Red Book.

Tajikistan’s forests cover only a small part of the country, but their ecological function is disproportionate to their area. Juniper, pistachio, almond and riverine vegetation help hold mountain soils together and regulate water. Our media partner Asia-Plus has reported that forest cover is now approximately three percent of Tajikistan’s territory and that the country’s once-extensive tugai forests have contracted dramatically under agricultural pressure.

Turkmenistan relies less on the designation “national park” than its neighbours. Its conservation system is organised largely around state reserves, including Badkhyz, Köýtendag, Repetek, Kaplankyr and Syunt-Hasardag. These protect ecosystems ranging from pistachio woodland and mountain habitat to saxaul desert, along with species such as kulan, goitered gazelle, urial and markhor.

Together, these landscapes dismantle the idea of Central Asia as an ecologically uniform expanse of empty land.

How many parks does Central Asia have?

The simple answer is that no simple regional figure is entirely reliable.

Kazakhstan consistently identifies 14 state national nature parks. In Kyrgyzstan, however, published totals vary according to whether sources count only parks administered by the principal protected-areas department or include additional sites under different arrangements. Uzbekistan distinguishes between national parks, national natural parks, natural parks and other protected categories. Tajikistan uses several park and reserve classifications, while Turkmenistan’s system centres on state nature reserves and sanctuaries.

A regional total can therefore be misleading unless the legal categories are harmonised.

This is more than a technical problem. It demonstrates how governments can report growth in protected territory without necessarily making clear what each designation permits. A strict reserve may substantially limit human activity, while a national or nature park can contain zones for tourism, roads, grazing or other forms of use.

All five countries have framework legislation governing specially protected natural territories. Kazakhstan’s principal law dates from 2006, Kyrgyzstan’s current framework from 2011, Uzbekistan’s from 2004, Tajikistan’s from 2011 and Turkmenistan’s from 2012. But these laws operate alongside forest codes, land legislation, fire regulations and individual decisions establishing or rezoning particular parks.

The legal designation is therefore only the beginning. The practical questions are more revealing: Can a hotel be built inside the park? Can livestock graze there? How many rangers patrol it? Who responds when it burns? Can its boundaries be altered to accommodate development?

When ecotourism becomes mass tourism

Kazakhstan illustrates the contradiction particularly clearly.

Its national parks have become central to the country’s domestic-tourism strategy. New roads, visitor centres, accommodation and marked routes can make nature more accessible and generate income for remote regions. But growing visitor numbers also produce waste, soil erosion, traffic and fire risk.

Research and regional reporting have already raised concerns about damage to vegetation and soils along heavily used routes. Kazakhstan is now developing a new biodiversity framework for 2026-2035, under which the total area of specially protected natural territories is expected to increase from approximately 31 million to 33.2 million hectares.

The expansion is significant. Yet adding hectares does not by itself solve overcrowding in the most accessible parks or guarantee that tourism revenue is reinvested in conservation.

Kyrgyzstan faces a similar tension. More than 250,000 people visited the country’s protected zones in 2025, generating 38 million soms in revenue. Environmental specialists interviewed by 24.kg warned that roads and hotels were increasingly reaching previously undisturbed forests.

This raises an uncomfortable question: when a protected landscape becomes economically valuable as a destination, which institution is strong enough to say that no further construction should be allowed?

Tourism is not inherently hostile to conservation. Visitor fees can fund rangers, waste collection, trail maintenance and ecological monitoring. Guides and guesthouses can give local communities an economic reason to preserve wildlife and forests.

But this requires rules based on ecological carrying capacity rather than the assumption that every increase in visitor numbers represents success.

A park can receive more tourists and earn more money while becoming less capable of fulfilling the ecological purpose for which it was established.

New parks, old capacity problems

Uzbekistan is moving rapidly in the opposite direction: rather than confronting only the overcrowding of established destinations, it is significantly enlarging its protected-area system.

On 25 March 2026, the government created the Ovjazsoy-Moviy Toglar, Pskem and Fergana national natural parks, covering a combined 188,800 hectares. It also expanded Pop National Natural Park from 10,000 to 135,300 hectares.

The expansion follows earlier decisions enlarging the Nurata and Surkhan reserves and Zarafshan National Natural Park.

These measures could protect important mountain, forest and riverine habitats before roads, settlement or intensive tourism fragment them further. Uzbekistan is also working with UNDP and the Global Environment Facility on landscape restoration in the Western Tian Shan, Nuratau and Kugitang. The programme aims to improve the management of 1.3 million hectares of forests and rangelands.

Yet rapid territorial expansion produces its own challenge. New parks require trained staff, vehicles, fire equipment, ecological inventories, zoning plans, community consultations and reliable budgets. Without them, a park may exist immediately in law but only gradually on the ground.

The distinction between planting trees and restoring ecosystems is equally important. A plantation can increase an official forest indicator while providing less biodiversity than naturally regenerating native woodland. Saxaul planted to stabilise exposed soil has a different purpose from restoring juniper forest, walnut groves or riverine tugai.

The central question is not whether tree planting is valuable. It is what kind of landscape is being created, for whom and for how long.

Fire as the test of protection

Wildfire is perhaps the clearest test of whether a protected area functions beyond paper.

In Tajikistan, more than 430 hectares of forest were reportedly affected by fires across nine regions in 2025. Extreme heat and human carelessness were identified among the causes.

For a heavily forested country, that area might appear limited. In Tajikistan, where woodland is scarce and often protects vulnerable mountain soil, every burned hectare can have wider consequences. The loss of vegetation can accelerate erosion, damage pasture, reduce water retention and expose nearby settlements to landslides and flooding.

Across the region, remoteness complicates fire response. Protected forests may be separated from the nearest equipment by poor roads or mountain terrain. Rangers are expected to monitor tourists, prevent poaching, manage relations with local communities and respond to fire, often across vast areas.

Technology can improve early detection through cameras, satellite monitoring, drones and automated alerts. But an alert only helps when someone has the equipment, personnel and access needed to act on it.

Climate change further narrows the margin for error. Central Asia is already experiencing land degradation, water scarcity and stress on mountain and desert ecosystems. A hotter, drier landscape turns ordinary negligence into a potentially devastating event.

Who is supporting conservation?

Central Asian states are not dealing with these pressures alone.

The World Bank’s RESILAND initiative supports landscape restoration and climate resilience across the region. It also promotes transboundary protected areas and ecological corridors, recognising that watersheds and wildlife do not stop at political borders.

In Tajikistan, a World Bank investment of $45 million supports landscape restoration, sustainable natural-resource management and climate resilience. In Uzbekistan, the Bank has backed a much larger programme for forest and degraded-land restoration. Regional and national projects are also financed through the Global Environment Facility and implemented by UNDP, FAO and government agencies.

IUCN works with members and state partners in all five Central Asian countries, focusing on biodiversity, protected areas and conservation policy. UNESCO supports natural World Heritage sites and biosphere reserves, while the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund has channelled support towards civil-society organisations in the Mountains of Central Asia biodiversity hotspot.

In April 2026, the five Central Asian countries signed a regional declaration on biodiversity conservation in Astana. The declaration is politically important, but its value will ultimately be judged in less ceremonial settings: a ranger station with working equipment, a forest where illegal cutting has stopped, a tourism project relocated away from a fragile habitat, or a village given a meaningful role in managing nearby land.

International projects can provide money, expertise and technology. Their lasting contribution depends on whether they build institutions that continue functioning after a project cycle ends.

Protection with people, not against them

Forests are rarely empty spaces.

People collect walnuts and fruit, graze livestock, gather medicinal plants, work as guides and heat their homes with wood. Restricting access without creating alternatives can turn conservation into a source of conflict. Allowing unrestricted extraction, on the other hand, can gradually destroy the ecosystem on which those livelihoods depend.

This is why the human future of Central Asia’s protected areas matters as much as their legal status.

A family collecting walnuts in southern Kyrgyzstan, a guide leading visitors through the Tian Shan and a ranger watching for smoke may have different immediate interests. But all depend on the forest surviving.

Effective conservation requires communities to receive tangible benefits, participate in decisions and understand why some uses must be restricted. It also requires governments to resist projects that promise quick tourism revenue at the expense of long-term ecological stability.

Central Asia is creating more parks, restoring land and placing biodiversity higher on its regional agenda. Those are real developments. But the coming years will show whether the region is building resilient ecosystems or accumulating protected-area designations.

When smoke rises above a forest, the distinction becomes impossible to ignore.

A boundary drawn on a map cannot stop a fire. A law cannot patrol a mountain trail. A declaration cannot remove rubbish, prevent illegal cutting or persuade a developer to build elsewhere.

For that, a protected area needs people, resources and the political authority to remain protected.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief of Novastan English.

The post Central Asia’s Forests Under Pressure appeared first on Novastan English.

When Nurzhan Toishy first heard Metallica in the late 1980s, he recognised something unexpected in the riffs: the rhythmic language of the Kazakh dombra. More than two decades later, that intuition gave birth to Aldaspan, a band that replaced electric guitars with electric dombras. What began as a musical experiment also became part of a wider debate over tradition, modernity and the place of Kazakh culture in contemporary music.

In 1988, Nurzhan Toishy was listening to Metallica when the opening of Motorbreath caught his attention.

To many listeners in the late Soviet Union, the aggressive riffs and speed of American thrash metal represented a musical world far removed from traditional Central Asia. To Toishy, however, something about it sounded strangely familiar.

“I recognised in the first riffs a manner of playing characteristic of the dombra,” the founder and producer of the Kazakh band Aldaspan told Novastan.

It was an observation that would stay with him for decades.

Metal and dombra music, he says, had effectively been playing alongside each other in his head since childhood. But it took around twenty years before he had the money, time and musicians capable of turning the idea into something tangible.

The result was Aldaspan: a rock project built not around the electric guitar but around electrified versions of Kazakhstan’s emblematic two-stringed instrument.

Its premise might sound like a novelty. In practice, however, Toishy argues that the musical distance between the Kazakh steppe and heavy metal is considerably shorter than it appears.

How the Kazakh dombra became a metal instrument

To understand his argument, Toishy says listeners should first hear the dombra without distortion, amplifiers or drums.

The dombra is a long-necked, two-stringed plucked instrument at the centre of Kazakh musical culture. One of its most important traditions is the küi: an instrumental composition which can communicate stories, historical memory and emotion without sung lyrics.

UNESCO inscribed the traditional art of dombra küi on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2014, describing it as a practice that connects communities to their historical roots and helps transmit Kazakh cultural knowledge between generations.

Within that tradition, two broad performance styles are usually distinguished: tökpe and shertpe. The distinction is more complex than simply “fast” and “slow”, although that is how Toishy initially explains it to an unfamiliar listener.

Tökpe, historically associated particularly with western Kazakhstan, tends towards a more forceful and expansive style, often involving rapid movement across the strings. Shertpe, strongly associated with central and eastern Kazakhstan, places greater emphasis on individual plucking, melodic nuance and lyricism. Ethnomusicological research describes tökpe as characteristically rapid and broad in scope, while shertpe tends towards greater subtlety and expressive variation.

For Toishy, the connection with rock becomes particularly apparent in the faster tökpe küi tradition. He recommends first listening to traditional tökpe küi performances – including the pieces collected in this playlist – and only then returning to Metallica’s Motorbreath.

By contrast, Seken Turysbek’s well-known Köñil Tolqyny is an example of the slower, more lyrical shertpe küi tradition. Toishy mentions it to illustrate the stylistic range of dombra music rather than as a direct comparison with Motorbreath.

“If you listen to what I have mentioned, you will understand how obvious these things are yourself,” he says.

Aldaspan later explored the two traditions in different releases. Toishy points in particular to Elge Qait and Tokpe Light. The band’s own discography describes the 2012 Elge Qait as a collection primarily of slow shertpe küi.

For him, then, putting the dombra into heavy rock was less an attempt to force two incompatible genres together than to amplify a connection he believed was already there.

Six strings, but no guitars

Aldaspan’s crucial decision was not simply to place a traditional instrument over a conventional rock arrangement.

There would be no electric guitar.

The project instead developed around lead, rhythm and bass electric dombras. Its original formation paired three variants of the instrument with drums; the band’s debut album Attila, released in 2011, mixed ethno-rock and thrash metal with throat singing. Aldaspan’s current official history dates the fully formed concept to 2009, when Toishy began pursuing the idea of running the sound of the dombra through overdrive and distortion.

For a musician, electrification presented an obvious problem.

The attraction of the dombra lies precisely in the distinctive character of its sound. If amplification and distortion simply made it imitate an electric guitar, the experiment would lose much of its purpose.

“That was what I feared most – that the sound of the dombra would become the sound of a guitar,” Toishy says.

His conclusion after experimenting was that the distinctive timbre survived.

In his own estimation, around “90 percent” remained recognisably dombra, while perhaps “10 percent” acquired a metal character. The numbers are subjective, of course, but they capture the balance he was seeking: power without erasing identity.

Even Toishy says he did not initially know exactly what kind of ensemble would emerge once overdrive and distortion were applied to the instruments. Only after recording, mixing and listening back to several albums did he feel that Aldaspan had created not simply one sound but several variations of ethno-rock.

Among the works he considers particularly important in that evolution are El Dastan, Uly Kosh, tracks from Attila, and the albums Tokpe Light and Elge Qait.

There is also a striking economy to the band’s basic setup.

“Across our whole group, there are six strings,” Toishy says of the three two-stringed dombras.

The apparent simplicity is precisely what surprises audiences, he says. A small traditional instrument associated by many with acoustic performance can suddenly produce the density and physical impact expected from a rock band.

Toishy believes another quality differentiates the instrument from the guitar.

“The dombra is close to the timbre of a man’s voice,” he says. “When it plays, physiologically its sound is closer to the human voice than a guitar is.”

He is careful to present that as a personal perception rather than a scientific claim.

“How dare you ruin such an instrument?”

If rock audiences were intrigued, some guardians of musical tradition were considerably less enthusiastic.

Toishy remembers the first reactions of Kazakh audiences as a kind of astonishment: how could such a small instrument make so much noise – and so many different kinds of noise?

“Even now at our concerts, people genuinely feel the impact of the live performance and don’t believe their eyes,” he says.

Rock listeners, he recalls, were particularly won over by the band’s first album Attila and the solo in the track Edige.

But some traditional musicians from an older generation saw the experiment very differently.

Their response, Toishy remembers, was essentially: “How dare you ruin such an instrument?”

One conservatory teacher, he says, even suggested that people should be put in prison for what they were doing to the dombra.

The anecdote is humorous in retrospect, but the disagreement underneath it is significant.

Aldaspan touches on a question that extends far beyond one Kazakh rock band: what does it mean to preserve a traditional instrument?

Is preservation primarily about maintaining established forms of performance? Or can radically changing the environment in which an instrument is played also help keep it culturally alive?

The dombra is not a marginal object in Kazakhstan. It is one of the country’s most visible cultural symbols. Since 2018, Kazakhstan has even celebrated National Dombra Day on the first Sunday of July.

That symbolic weight makes experimentation more sensitive. An electric dombra is not merely a new piece of musical equipment: for some listeners it interferes with an object tied to ideas of heritage, history and Kazakh identity.

Yet traditional dombra culture itself is hardly static. Different regions developed different instruments, techniques and schools, while contemporary performers continue to adapt their instruments to new stages and performance environments.

Aldaspan pushes that process considerably further – but Toishy’s concern about preserving the dombra’s timbre shows that the band does not understand modernisation simply as replacing the traditional sound with a Western one.

The point, for him, is to make the dombra capable of entering another musical space without ceasing to sound like itself.

Rediscovering what was already there

Toishy also sees the reception of Aldaspan as part of a broader change in how Kazakhstan relates to its own cultural inheritance.

“What changed was people’s awareness and a reassessment of what we Kazakhs have as an ethnic group,” he says.

The internet played an important role in that process, in his view.

Greater exposure to music and culture from around the world could have weakened interest in local traditions. Toishy believes the opposite happened as well: comparison allowed Kazakhs to hear their own musical heritage differently.

“Kazakhs, through comparison, discovered the beauty of their own instruments and compositions,” he says.

He sees the result as part of a wider cultural revival, accompanied by renewed public interest in Kazakh and Turkic history.

That observation has a visible contemporary context. Traditional instruments now coexist in Kazakhstan with rock, electronic music, world music and other hybrid forms. Almaty’s Spirit of Tengri festival, held since 2013, has developed into a major platform for contemporary ethnic and world music, bringing together performers who combine inherited musical traditions with global genres. Its 2026 edition again presented ethno-fusion and contemporary ethnic music to a large open-air audience.

Aldaspan nevertheless occupies an unusually uncompromising position within this landscape.

Rather than adding a dombra as a marker of local colour to an otherwise familiar rock sound, it asks the instrument itself to do the work normally performed by the guitar.

The resulting music becomes an argument of sorts: modernity does not necessarily require abandoning the traditional instrument.

Warriors, memory and the imagined steppe

History is as important to Aldaspan’s identity as musical technique.

Asked which historical figure most inspires him, Toishy refuses to choose one.

Instead he invokes a collection of personalities and traditions – among them the eighth-century Turkic prince Kül Tegin, Genghis Khan, commanders and warriors – that together form what he describes as a wider Turkic warrior culture.

Some of his broader historical claims go well beyond scholarly consensus, and are best understood as part of his personal interpretation of Eurasian history rather than statements of established fact.

But that worldview helps explain Aldaspan’s artistic universe.

The band is interested not only in how old music can sound through modern equipment, but in whether contemporary Kazakh popular culture can use older histories, heroes and narratives as raw material of its own.

Toishy says the Kazakh language and Kazakh musical traditions remain among the strongest elements shaping the band’s identity.

Actively combining them with contemporary genres, he believes, creates something that cannot simply be replicated elsewhere.

It is a form of cultural confidence that differs from preservation behind glass. The past becomes material to be rearranged, amplified – and distorted.

From an American dream to European festivals

For years, Toishy’s imagined destination for the band lay across the Atlantic.

“As a child I dreamed of stages in the United States,” he says.

He eventually spent six years living there. The experience changed his ambition.

Today, he wants Aldaspan to reach European rock festivals.

Toishy believes European audiences are more receptive to unusual combinations of musical cultures and genres. It is explicitly his own judgement – and one he jokingly acknowledges Americans may dislike – but he now sees Europe rather than the United States as Aldaspan’s most promising international audience.

There is something fitting about that ambition.

Aldaspan is a deeply Kazakh project created partly through encounters with music from elsewhere. Its origin story begins with a teenager in Soviet Kazakhstan hearing an American metal band and unexpectedly recognising the dombra inside it.

Nearly four decades later, Toishy still seems fascinated by the same possibility: that listeners who believe they are hearing two completely separate musical worlds may discover that the boundary between them is less obvious than expected.

For newcomers, he suggests starting with three Aldaspan tracks: Edige from Attila, El Dastan from Uly Kosh, and Turk Kultegin from Balqadisha.

Listen to those, then to an acoustic küi. Then perhaps go back to Motorbreath.

That is the comparison Toishy has been asking people to make since 1988.

And whether or not every listener hears exactly what he hears, Aldaspan has already demonstrated something else: an instrument does not have to remain sonically unchanged to carry a tradition forward.

Sometimes two strings, an amplifier and a distortion pedal are enough to make the steppe sound unexpectedly contemporary.

By Mathieu Lemoine, Editor-in-Chief for Novastan-English, based on an interview with Nurzhan Toishy.

The post From Küi to Metallica: How Aldaspan Electrified the Kazakh Dombra appeared first on Novastan English.

Can Pakistan become the long-promised southern gateway for landlocked Central Asia?

A brightly painted Pakistani truck carrying boxes of kinnow mandarins towards Central Asia looks almost festive. Its cab may be covered with flowers, peacocks, mountain landscapes, fragments of poetry and polished metal ornaments. Chains hanging from its body announce its arrival before the driver reaches the border.

Yet the fruit inside imposes a less decorative reality. Every customs delay shortens its commercial life. Every border closure risks turning a profitable shipment into spoiled cargo.

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Pakistan’s kinnow – a sweet, easy-to-peel mandarin hybrid grown mainly in Punjab – can already be found in Central Asian markets. Uzbekistan has become a destination for Pakistani citrus, and Islamabad has introduced measures to facilitate the registration of exporters supplying the country.

A truck carrying kinnow therefore offers a more useful test of regional connectivity than the maps displayed at diplomatic summits. Pakistan and Central Asia can already trade. The question is whether goods can travel between them regularly, predictably and quickly enough for the journey to remain profitable.

Rice can survive a detour. A mandarin cannot wait indefinitely at a closed border.

Central Asia has spent decades searching for reliable access to the sea. Pakistan says it can provide it. Karachi, Port Qasim and Gwadar are increasingly promoted as the southern endpoints of roads and railways that would connect the region to the Arabian Sea.

Some elements of this vision are beginning to move beyond declarations. Pilot consignments have tested routes between Pakistan and Central Asia through China. New transit arrangements have been discussed through Iran. Pakistan has offered space at Gwadar for facilities intended to serve Central Asian trade.

But the most transformative part of the vision – a direct railway through Afghanistan – remains at the feasibility-study stage.

Rather than asking only whether Pakistan could one day become Central Asia’s gateway to the sea, it is therefore more useful to examine what already exists, what goods are actually moving, what remains experimental and what is still largely confined to political speeches.

The drivers behind the corridor

Transport corridors are usually represented as clean lines drawn across maps. On the ground, they are embodied by drivers travelling in some of the most visually distinctive commercial vehicles in the world.

Pakistani trucks are transformed into moving works of art. Their surfaces combine floral patterns, animals, religious imagery, political personalities, landscapes, calligraphy and verses about love, distance and returning home. Painters, metalworkers, woodcarvers and other specialist artisans may spend weeks decorating a single vehicle.

Regional styles can also be recognised. Trucks associated with Peshawar are known for elaborate woodwork, while decorative traditions in Balochistan may incorporate different materials and motifs. The result is not standard commercial branding but an expression of the driver’s identity, memories and aspirations.

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These are the vehicles that must convert the language of international connectivity into an actual journey.

Their drivers encounter customs officials, poor roads, security checkpoints, mountain passes, mechanical failures and borders that may close with little warning. When governments suspend transit, it is the driver who sleeps beside the cargo, the porter who loses a day’s income and the trader who watches the value of a shipment decline.

The decorated truck is therefore more than a colourful detail. It is where the corridor becomes human.

How long does the journey take? Which borders must the driver cross? How many documents are required? How much is spent on fuel, insurance, customs and informal delays? How much of the fruit is still marketable when it arrives?

These questions determine whether a corridor exists in commercial reality, rather than merely in diplomatic language.

A bag of rice and the problem of geography

The same story can be told through something as ordinary as a bag of Pakistani basmati rice on a supermarket shelf in Almaty or Tashkent.

Pakistan is one of the world’s major rice exporters, and its products already reach Central Asian consumers. The presence of Pakistani rice, citrus, pharmaceuticals and textiles in the region shows that trade is not hypothetical.

The difficult question is how these goods arrive.

A Pakistani exporter attempting to reach Central Asia faces several possibilities. Cargo can pass through Afghanistan, travel west through Iran, or move north-east through China. Goods may also be sent by sea to an Iranian port before continuing overland.

Each option carries disadvantages.

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Afghanistan offers the most direct geographical connection but also the greatest political and security uncertainty. The Iranian route may provide access to established road and rail networks, but it is longer and vulnerable to sanctions-related complications and wider regional tensions. The Chinese route benefits from comparatively predictable state infrastructure, but requires difficult mountain crossings and substantial additional distance.

The shortest line on the map is not necessarily the cheapest or most dependable commercial route.

For rice, delays reduce margins. For kinnow, mangoes, meat and other refrigerated or perishable products, delays can destroy the shipment.

This is why the most meaningful measure of connectivity is not the number of agreements signed, but whether transport companies can quote predictable prices and delivery dates. A corridor becomes commercially significant when businesses use it repeatedly without requiring exceptional government intervention for each consignment.

From pulao to plov

Rice also reveals that Pakistan and Central Asia are less culturally distant than modern regional labels may suggest.

Pakistani pulao and Central Asian plov belong to a much wider family of rice dishes stretching through South Asia, Iran, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Their names share a Persian linguistic ancestry, although recipes, cooking techniques and cultural meanings differ considerably.

In Pakistan, pulao may be prepared with meat, stock and spices, with regional variations found across the country. In Uzbekistan, plov is a national institution associated with weddings, holidays, neighbourhood gatherings and hospitality. Tajik osh occupies a similarly important place.

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The comparison should not be exaggerated. Pakistani pulao and Uzbek plov are not the same dish. But their familiarity offers a small reminder of the historical movement of tastes, words and people between the regions.

A bag of Pakistani rice arriving in Tashkent is therefore not merely anonymous cargo. It enters a culinary culture in which rice already carries powerful associations with family, celebration and collective identity.

The proposed corridor would connect ports and markets, but it would also reconnect societies that already recognise elements of one another.

Pakistan looks north

Pakistan’s interest in Central Asia is easy to understand.

The five Central Asian states form a market of more than 80 million people. Pakistan offers them access not only to a population exceeding 240 million, but also to the Arabian Sea and onward maritime trade.

Yet actual commerce remains limited compared with the ambitions expressed by regional governments. Pakistan exported goods worth approximately $106 million to Uzbekistan in 2025, but its combined trade with the five Central Asian republics remains small relative to the size of the markets involved.

The gap between geographic proximity and commercial integration is partly historical.

Soviet Central Asia’s transport infrastructure was designed primarily to connect the region northwards through Russia, not southwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan. After independence, China became an increasingly important economic partner, while routes across the Caspian Sea gained prominence as Central Asian governments sought alternative connections to Europe.

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Pakistan was separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistan’s narrow Wakhan Corridor and from the wider region by difficult terrain, insecurity and weak cross-border infrastructure.

The resulting irony is striking: Central Asia and Pakistan are geographically close, but moving goods between them can require enormous detours.

Islamabad now hopes to change that. Pakistani officials increasingly describe their country as a bridge between Central Asia, South Asia, China and the Middle East. Karachi, Port Qasim and Gwadar are promoted as potential maritime outlets for landlocked economies.

But Central Asia does not need access to the sea in the abstract. It needs access that is affordable, dependable and connected to regular shipping services.

Karachi already works

Discussions of Pakistan’s maritime offer often group Karachi and Gwadar together. Commercially, however, they are very different propositions.

Karachi is Pakistan’s established economic and maritime centre. Together with nearby Port Qasim, it handles most of the country’s seaborne commerce. It possesses regular shipping connections, freight-forwarding services, customs infrastructure, warehouses and access to Pakistan’s largest industrial and consumer market.

For a Central Asian trader seeking a southern outlet today, Karachi is therefore the more credible option.

The main obstacle is not the port itself, but the journey required to reach it.

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A reliable road or railway through Afghanistan could give Uzbekistan and parts of southern Central Asia a comparatively direct connection to Karachi. The port could also serve trade moving in the opposite direction, improving Pakistani access to Central Asian markets.

This two-way traffic is crucial. A truck delivering Pakistani products to Uzbekistan but returning empty is less profitable. A commercially sustainable corridor needs southbound cargo as well as goods moving north.

Uzbek textiles, Kazakh grain and metals, and other Central Asian products could help provide that return traffic. Uzbekistan already exports textiles to Pakistan, demonstrating that the relationship need not consist only of Central Asia importing Pakistani food and consumer goods.

Karachi offers commercial scale. What it lacks is a reliable land bridge to Central Asia.

Gwadar offers something else

Gwadar has become the more powerful symbol.

Situated in Balochistan near the entrance to the Gulf of Oman, the deep-sea port occupies a location that appears strategically ideal. It lies close to Iran and forms the southern centrepiece of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC.

Its significance also derives from China’s role.

Pakistan transferred the operation of Gwadar to China Overseas Ports Holding Company in 2013. The company describes itself as the concession holder and operator of the port and its associated free-zone activities.

The concession is commonly described as lasting 40 years. Gwadar itself remains Pakistani territory and the port remains a Pakistani asset, but its operation and development are closely tied to a Chinese company and to Beijing’s broader Belt and Road Initiative.

Chinese involvement provides investment, political support and a long-term strategic framework. But it also complicates the idea that Gwadar offers Central Asia an alternative independent of the major powers already shaping its trade.

Gwadar promises Central Asia another route to the sea, but not necessarily an alternative to Chinese influence.

For Central Asian governments, this may not be an obstacle. All five countries already maintain substantial economic relationships with China, and several actively seek Chinese infrastructure investment. Beijing’s participation may increase confidence that projects will retain financing and political backing.

Yet Gwadar remains far less commercially mature than Karachi. It has limited regular traffic, lacks Karachi’s dense logistics ecosystem and faces significant security problems in the surrounding province.

A port does not become a regional hub because governments designate it one. Shipping companies, freight forwarders and exporters must decide that it is cheaper, faster or more reliable than the alternatives.

Gwadar and the Balochistan question

Gwadar’s strategic position cannot be separated from the political realities of Balochistan.

The province is Pakistan’s largest by territory and among its poorest and least densely populated. It contains major gas and mineral resources, as well as the port that Islamabad and Beijing present as a future centre of Eurasian commerce.

Yet many Baloch activists argue that local communities have received too little benefit from the extraction of the province’s resources and from the infrastructure projects developed in their name.

These grievances are connected to a decades-long separatist insurgency, allegations of enforced disappearances and abuses by the security forces, and recurring protests over political exclusion and economic marginalisation.

In Gwadar itself, residents and local movements have protested over access to water and electricity, restrictions affecting fishing communities, security controls and the perception that the benefits of port development are flowing primarily to outside actors.

Armed Baloch separatist organisations have also attacked Pakistani security forces, infrastructure and Chinese personnel. China’s involvement has turned Gwadar and other parts of CPEC into symbolic targets, while Pakistan has responded with an extensive security presence intended to protect foreign workers and strategic installations.

Security remains one of the principal concerns surrounding renewed Chinese and Pakistani plans to turn Gwadar into a regional connectivity hub.

This creates a contradiction at the centre of the project.

A port promoted as a gateway of openness and connection is located in a province marked by checkpoints, political distrust and recurring violence.

Security measures may protect ships, roads and foreign personnel, but they also impose costs and reinforce local perceptions that Gwadar is being developed for outsiders. For Central Asian traders, the question is not only whether the port can physically handle cargo. It is whether the surrounding political and security environment permits goods, workers and investment to move predictably.

Gwadar cannot become a convincing gateway for Central Asia without also becoming a more credible economic gateway for the people who already live around it.

What has actually moved?

The strongest evidence for new links between Pakistan and Central Asia does not yet come from the proposed railway. It comes from trucks and limited trial consignments.

In April 2026, Pakistan launched an export consignment from the Karachi Export Processing Zone to Kyrgyzstan through China’s Sost Dry Port under the international TIR customs-transit system.

The route was geographically indirect: goods moved towards the Chinese border before continuing through China to Kyrgyzstan. Yet its apparent inefficiency revealed something important. Businesses may prefer a longer route if it offers more predictable procedures and avoids the volatility of Afghanistan.

This does not yet constitute a high-volume trade corridor. A first or pilot consignment tests customs systems, roads and political agreements; it does not prove that a route is commercially competitive at scale.

Nevertheless, actual shipments matter.

They show that Pakistan is beginning to convert corridor diplomacy into physical cargo movements. They also reveal how far reality remains from the elegant north-south lines usually drawn on official maps.

The corridor has begun to function in fragments, sometimes by going around its presumed centre.

Afghanistan: bridge and bottleneck

Any serious attempt to connect Uzbekistan directly to Pakistan must confront Afghanistan.

The most discussed project is the proposed Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan railway. The line would connect Uzbekistan to Pakistan’s rail network and ports through Afghan territory. Supporters argue that it could reduce transport times, lower costs and create the first direct rail connection between Central and South Asia.

The railway could be transformative. It could also remain unbuilt.

In July 2025, the three countries signed an agreement to conduct a joint feasibility study. Uzbekistan ratified the agreement in February 2026, and officials later announced that the study had entered an active phase.

This represents progress, but the terminology matters.

A feasibility study is not construction. The route, engineering specifications, financing arrangements and security guarantees still require resolution. Afghanistan’s terrain will make the project expensive, while differing railway gauges and connections to existing networks create further technical complications.

The political environment is no less difficult.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have deteriorated amid disputes over border security and armed groups operating from Afghan territory. Repeated closures of key crossings have disrupted traders and encouraged Afghanistan to divert commerce through Iran and Central Asia. In 2025, Afghan traders increasingly used alternative routes through Chabahar and neighbouring Central Asian states to compensate for disruptions at the Pakistani border.

Such closures affect people far beyond foreign ministries.

Drivers lose income while waiting at the border. Porters and customs workers lose daily wages. Traders watch perishable goods deteriorate. Importers must explain delays to customers who may never have heard of the diplomatic dispute that stopped their order.

For a Central Asian company choosing a trade route, these experiences matter more than the theoretical number of kilometres saved.

Afghanistan is therefore both the bridge and the bottleneck. Without it, the most direct southern route becomes substantially longer. With it, the corridor remains exposed to insecurity and political confrontation.

Routes around the bottleneck

Pakistan is not waiting for the Trans-Afghan railway to be completed.

Routes through Iran and China offer alternatives, although neither recreates the direct north-south connection envisioned by the railway.

The western option can connect Pakistani ports to Iran and then to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the wider Central Asian network. It avoids the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and may be particularly relevant to western and southern Central Asia.

But it introduces other uncertainties. Iran faces sanctions, financial restrictions and recurrent regional tensions. A corridor that avoids one geopolitical vulnerability may inherit another.

The route through China benefits from close Pakistan-China relations and from Chinese transport connections with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The Khunjerab Pass and the Karakoram Highway provide a physical connection, although difficult terrain, weather conditions and distance limit the route’s suitability for some cargo.

China and Pakistan renewed their commitment in May 2026 to improving CPEC, the Karakoram Highway and Gwadar’s role as a regional connectivity hub.

Yet strategic commitment does not automatically produce commercial demand.

The existence of several imperfect alternatives may nevertheless prove more realistic than waiting for one grand railway to solve every problem. Different routes may serve different countries, seasons and products.

Kinnow may require the fastest viable road. Machinery may tolerate a longer journey. Bulk commodities may need rail. A corridor is ultimately not one line but a network of commercial decisions.

Central Asia already has alternatives

Pakistan is also entering a competitive market.

Central Asian governments are developing the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, commonly called the Middle Corridor, across Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye. The route has gained strategic importance as countries seek to diversify away from Russia and strengthen connections with Europe.

Iran offers access to the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea through ports such as Bandar Abbas and Chabahar. China provides access to eastward markets and global maritime supply chains. Russia remains a major commercial and transit partner despite ongoing efforts to diversify.

Pakistan must therefore offer more than access to the sea as a concept. Central Asia already possesses several maritime options.

Pakistan’s strongest potential advantage is proximity to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and parts of southern Central Asia. A reliable route through Afghanistan could be shorter than many alternatives. Pakistan also provides direct access to South Asian markets rather than functioning merely as a passage to ships bound elsewhere.

Its disadvantages are equally substantial: unstable borders, incomplete infrastructure, difficult terrain, security risks and the absence of established high-volume logistics chains.

The balance also differs from one Central Asian country to another.

Uzbekistan, with its large population, manufacturing ambitions and doubly landlocked geography, has the clearest strategic interest in a southern connection. Tajikistan could benefit from improved north-south trade but lacks direct access to the proposed principal railway. Turkmenistan already borders Iran and the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan is more closely integrated into routes through Russia, China and the Caspian. Kyrgyzstan’s geography may make connections through China more immediately relevant than a route through Afghanistan.

There is no single Central Asian interest. What works for Tashkent may offer little advantage to Astana or Ashgabat.

From Babur to border paperwork

The north-south connection is not new.

Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur was born in Andijan, in present-day Uzbekistan. After losing his Central Asian possessions, he established himself in Kabul, captured Lahore and founded an empire that included large parts of present-day Pakistan and northern India.

Five centuries before governments began promoting a railway from Uzbekistan to Pakistan, Babur travelled along the same broad axis through the Ferghana Valley, Afghanistan and the Indus basin.

The modern journey is less romantic. It depends on axle-load limits, customs guarantees, insurance contracts, refrigerated trailers and border opening hours.

Yet the historical reference is more than decorative. It reminds us that Central and South Asia were not always treated as separate worlds. Empires, trading networks, migration, language and culture connected the regions long before Soviet infrastructure redirected Central Asia’s economy northwards.

Today’s corridor projects are therefore not creating a relationship from nothing. They are attempting to rebuild connections that modern borders and political systems made increasingly difficult.

A gateway, but not yet a corridor

Pakistan has moved beyond promises, but only partly.

Goods already travel between Pakistan and Central Asia. Initial consignments have tested new routes through China. Karachi provides a major functioning commercial port. Gwadar is operational, supported by China and increasingly presented as a potential destination for Central Asian cargo. The three governments behind the Trans-Afghan railway have moved into the feasibility-study phase.

These are real developments.

But they do not yet amount to a regular, high-volume corridor connecting Central Asia to the Arabian Sea.

The shortest route remains politically fragile. Routes avoiding Afghanistan are longer and face other geopolitical or physical constraints. Gwadar remains less commercially established than Karachi and cannot be separated from the conflict and political grievances surrounding it in Balochistan. Central Asian traders already have competing options through Russia, China, Iran and the Caspian.

Pakistan’s southern offer should therefore be treated neither as an illusion nor as an inevitable geopolitical transformation. It is an emerging network whose commercial value must still be demonstrated shipment by shipment.

The decorated truck carrying kinnow matters because it places a driver, a product and a deadline inside the abstraction of regional connectivity.

The decisive moment will come when another truck follows without a ministerial ceremony, and then another – carrying mandarins and rice north, textiles and other goods south, along a route whose successful completion is no longer considered newsworthy.

That is when a diplomatic corridor becomes an economy.

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

The post Gwadar, Karachi and the Central Asian Dream of the Sea appeared first on Novastan English.

After more than a century of migration, repression and adaptation, the Koryo-Saram are building new communities in the United States. Hana Sexton, founder of Koryo Saram Koreans in America, speaks to Novastan about historical memory, cultural survival and the challenge of making a little-known diaspora visible.

The history of the Koryo-Saram extends across several countries and political systems. Their ancestors began settling in the Russian Far East in the nineteenth century, many fleeing poverty, famine and Japanese colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula. In 1937, Stalin’s government deported the entire Korean population of the Soviet Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, accusing them collectively of potential collaboration with Japan.

The deportees endured a brutal journey in overcrowded railway wagons and were forced to rebuild their lives in unfamiliar conditions. Over subsequent decades, Koryo-Saram communities became deeply rooted in Central Asia. They contributed to agriculture, science, medicine, education, culture and public life, while also experiencing linguistic assimilation and the gradual erosion of some Korean traditions.

See more on Novastan: How Central Asia became home for the Koryo-Saram

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the community became increasingly dispersed. Many moved to South Korea, Russia, Europe and the United States, creating new forms of transnational family and cultural life. Today, an individual Koryo-Saram family may have relatives in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Russia and North America.

Hana Sexton grew up in Central Asia and later settled in the United States. After repeatedly encountering a lack of awareness about Koryo-Saram history, she established Koryo Saram Koreans in America, a nonprofit initiative intended to increase the visibility of the community and strengthen its connections with the wider Korean-American diaspora.

She is a member of the Council of Korean Americans and The Korea Society, and participates in cultural, community and policy events across the United States. In this interview with Novastan, she explains why the Koryo-Saram experience cannot be reduced to labels such as “Soviet Korean” or “Russian Korean,” and why preserving the community’s history matters far beyond the diaspora itself.

Novastan: Could you begin by introducing yourself and telling us what inspired you to establish Koryo Saram Koreans in America?

Hana Sexton: For more than a decade in the United States, my life has involved repeatedly answering one question: who are the Koryo-Saram?

Meeting people across very different social and professional circles taught me something important. My lifetime would simply be too short to explain the history of the Koryo-Saram individually to every new person I encountered. That exhausting realisation is precisely why I founded a nonprofit initiative dedicated to our community.

I am a Koryo-Saram Korean American. It is an identity that I claim proudly, but it is also one that is constantly obscured by misconceptions. We are frequently described as “Soviet Koreans,” “Russian Koreans,” “Central Asian Koreans” or even “North Koreans.” The reality is far more complex.

Many Koryo-Saram migrated to the Russian Far East long before the Soviet Union was established. They moved there during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often fleeing famine, poverty and Japanese colonisation. The Soviet era was only one chapter in our much longer history, just as the Russian Empire before it and the post-Soviet Central Asian states afterwards were also chapters.

Each period and each region shaped our culture, but none of them defines us entirely.

We are ethnic Koreans and today many of us predominantly speak Russian. The broader Russian-speaking Korean world also includes communities such as the Sakhalin Koreans, although their historical experience is distinct in important ways.

For me, Koryo-Saram is a collective identity for a global diaspora united by a shared history of migration, Stalinist forced displacement, trauma, resilience and cultural adaptation. We also developed a distinctive cuisine, including dishes such as morkovcha, the spiced carrot salad that has become famous across the former Soviet Union.

Through this organisation, we are no longer telling our story only one person at a time. We are trying to share our historical legacy with the wider world.

For readers unfamiliar with this history, who are the Koryo-Saram, and how would you describe their journey from the Russian Far East to Central Asia and, more recently, to the United States?

The Koryo-Saram are ethnic Koreans whose ancestors settled in the Russian Far East from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. Labour was needed to develop sparsely populated land around Vladivostok and other border regions, and many Koreans settled there as farmers, labourers and traders. Others arrived while fleeing Japanese colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula.

Koryo-mar, the traditional language associated with the community, is now officially considered endangered. The language carries traces of the varieties of Korean spoken by the original migrants, but decades of displacement and assimilation transformed the linguistic life of the community.

In 1937, under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet government forcibly deported the entire ethnic Korean population of the Russian Far East to Central Asia, primarily Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The authorities justified the deportation by invoking fears of Japanese espionage and alleged “anti-Soviet activities.”

Read more on Novastan: From Bukhara to Queens: The Global Journey of the Bukharan Jews

It was the first large-scale Soviet deportation of an entire ethnic community, although it would not be the last.

The journey was brutal. Families were loaded into freight and cattle wagons. Many people died from disease, hunger and exposure during the journey or shortly after their arrival. Survivors found themselves in a completely different climate and environment. They had to farm in the steppe, grow food for their own survival and meet state agricultural demands, while trying to preserve elements of Korean family and cultural life.

For decades, many deportees remained classified as “unreliable people.” Their movements were restricted and they were required to report to local authorities.

A lesser-known part of our history concerns the Korean intellectuals and officials who survived deportation and were later sent to North Korea to help establish the new state. Some were subsequently purged, imprisoned or killed by the North Korean authorities. For them, deportation was followed by another form of displacement and political repression.

Over time, the Koryo-Saram became Soviet citizens. Many entered professional life and became scientists, doctors, teachers, engineers, artists and administrators. At the same time, Soviet assimilation policies, the closure of Korean-language schools and the dominance of Russian contributed to the decline of Korean-language transmission.

Read more on Novastan: Diasporas et diversité : brève histoire des peuples au Kazakhstan

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many Koryo-Saram began seeking opportunities abroad. South Korea became a major destination, but the United States also attracted a growing number of migrants.

I was personally surprised to discover how many Koryo-Saram live in different American states. Today it is common to meet a Koryo-Saram American citizen with relatives in both South Korea and Central Asia.

Unlike some other communities deported under Stalin, including many ethnic Germans or Poles, the Koryo-Saram were never collectively repatriated. As a result, the diaspora is now scattered across Central Asia, Russia, South Korea, Europe and the United States.

In America, Koryo-Saram often settle in cities with established Korean communities, including New York and Los Angeles. They become part of a broader Korean diaspora while maintaining cultural and family ties to Central Asia and the post-Soviet world.

There are estimated to be around 500,000 Koryo-Saram worldwide, with growing populations in South Korea and the United States. The community’s journey is one of displacement, resilience and cultural adaptation: from early migration to the Russian Far East, through forced deportation to Central Asia, and later to the rebuilding of lives in South Korea, America and elsewhere.

Much has been written about Koryo-Saram communities in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but far less about those living in the United States. What distinguishes the American experience, and how has the community evolved there?

The Koryo-Saram population in the United States is extremely diverse. Some people came directly from post-Soviet countries. Others were born in South Korea or another country and later moved to America for education, employment or family reunification.

Even Koryo-Saram living in the United States are not always aware of the full diversity of the community here.

Unlike the Soviet deportations, migration to the United States is generally voluntary. This allows Koryo-Saram to integrate into American society under completely different circumstances.

In my own case, I entered the American diplomatic and policy world relatively easily as the spouse of a former US diplomat. Other people make different choices. Some surround themselves primarily with Americans. Others remain within Russian-speaking social circles. Some identify strongly as Korean American and build their networks among ethnic Koreans.

Read more on Novastan: Qu’est-ce qu’être un Coréen au Kazakhstan aujourd’hui ?

One characteristic that many Koryo-Saram communities share is a tendency towards insularity. I believe this is partly a legacy of our complicated history and the experience of living for generations as a distrusted or misunderstood minority.

At the same time, many families successfully preserve Koryo-Saram traditions. These include hansik, Korean food culture, hwangap, the traditional celebration of a person’s sixtieth birthday, family rituals and distinctive forms of Koryo-Saram cuisine.

In the United States, Koryo-Saram may identify simultaneously with the broader Korean diaspora and with Russian-speaking immigrant communities. This creates opportunities for networking and cultural exchange, but it also means navigating several identities, languages and national backgrounds.

The American Koryo-Saram experience is shaped by voluntary migration, economic opportunity and comparatively successful integration into US society. It shares historical roots with Central Asia but is also influenced by post-Cold War migration and the blending of Korean heritage with American life.

I hope that, as Korean Americans, we will become a more confident, outward-facing and globally connected diaspora.

What are the main objectives of Koryo Saram Koreans in America? What kinds of activities do you organise, and what needs within the community are you hoping to address?

At present, my main priority is raising awareness and increasing the visibility of the Koryo-Saram community. This work is vital, and it requires thinking beyond one’s own experience in order to advocate for people who often remain unseen.

I believe that South Korea, the United States and wider society all benefit from greater cross-cultural understanding and from recognising the diversity that exists within the Korean diaspora.

Read more on Novastan: The Lexicon of Kazakh Decolonisation

The needs within the Koryo-Saram community are broad and can be difficult to address.

Many people face cultural barriers when asking for help. Some find it extremely difficult to admit that they are low-income or vulnerable. They may come from backgrounds in which revealing weakness historically invited exploitation rather than support.

One of my goals is to bridge that gap and help create an environment in which people feel safer asking for assistance.

I take great pride in fostering cross-cultural understanding through grassroots advocacy.

On Samiljeol, Korea’s March First Independence Movement Day, in 2025, I became the first Koryo-Saram in America to participate in a joint commemoration with Korean Americans in the state of Florida. I built on that milestone by taking part in a larger Korean-American commemoration in Georgia in 2026.

In autumn 2025, I represented South Korea at FusionFest in Orlando, one of Florida’s largest multicultural festivals. I organized a cultural display featuring reproductions of national treasures from the National Museum of Korea, traditional hanbok, heritage skincare and other elements of Korean culture.

I also modelled a traditional hanbok during the FusionFest fashion show, accompanied by music from KPop Demon Hunters. In addition, I have carried the South Korean flag at several major cultural events in Florida.

Alongside grassroots events, I invest in leadership and institutional engagement by participating in major Korean-American and US policy forums. I attend these events at my own expense because I believe that the Koryo-Saram diaspora needs a visible voice in such spaces.

I have attended the Van Fleet Policy Forum, the flagship policy event of The Korea Society.

I have also participated in the Council of Korean Americans’ annual Envision Gala and Summit, the Federation of Korean Associations US’s national leadership convention for presidents of Korean associations, and the World Korean Business Convention in Duluth, Georgia.

Ultimately, I believe that South Korea, the United States and the Koryo-Saram community all benefit from mutual collaboration, deeper cultural understanding and a shared appreciation of our Korean heritage.

Many Koryo-Saram families remain connected across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Russia and beyond. How transnational is the community today, and what kinds of links exist between these different diasporas?

The Koryo-Saram diaspora is deeply transnational. Strong family, cultural and economic ties connect communities across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Russia, South Korea and other countries.

As I mentioned earlier, the Koryo-Saram were never collectively repatriated. For that reason, they can now be found across the world.

Koryo-Saram in America often have relatives working or living in South Korea, Central Asia, Russia or Europe. This creates expanded social networks and a broader sense of identity and belonging, but it also produces challenges.

These include identity tension, legal and political complexity, social isolation and the practical difficulty of maintaining family life across borders.

Our history spans more than a century of migration, repression and cultural survival. As a result, Koryo-Saram identity is often a living negotiation between contrasting political, social and cultural frameworks.

One example concerns children born and raised in South Korea to parents who are not South Korean citizens. In many cases, those children do not automatically acquire South Korean citizenship. They may later be required to return to Russia or Central Asia, where they face additional questions about identity, belonging and integration.

I am not afraid to enter uncomfortable rooms or spaces, because that is often where change must be made.

It is not uncommon for people to ask whether the Koryo-Saram are “communists”. This is insulting, but such questions usually reflect genuine ignorance rather than deliberate hostility.

The diaspora lived for decades under the Soviet label of an “unreliable people” after the 1937 deportation. After surviving that history and eventually reaching the United States, the last thing many people want is to prove repeatedly that they should not be distrusted because of where they come from.

This is one reason why many Koryo-Saram do not identify publicly as Koryo-Saram. It can be exhausting to remain permanently on the defensive.

Being part of a transnational diaspora offers cultural richness, economic opportunity and global connections. But it also brings identity challenges, risks of cultural loss and substantial emotional and logistical demands.

Success often depends on how well individuals and families manage these multiple worlds, using technology and community networks to sustain connections without becoming overwhelmed by distance or isolation.

You are also active in organisations such as the Council of Korean Americans and The Korea Society. How has this broader engagement shaped your work, and do you think awareness of the Koryo-Saram experience is growing within Korean-American and US policy circles?

I see myself as trailblazing by becoming the first Koryo-Saram American to join both the Council of Korean Americans and The Korea Society.

These are among the most prominent Korean-American organisations in the United States.

Because I have an American MBA and practical experience of foreign-service life, I am able to engage with policy, academic and business environments. I understand the language used in those circles and can find a sense of belonging there.

This is a significant step forward. Awareness of the Koryo-Saram experience is gradually growing, but much more work remains to be done.

Korean-American organisations are increasingly aware that the Korean diaspora is not limited to migration directly from the Korean Peninsula. It also includes communities shaped by life in China, Japan, Central Asia, Russia and other parts of the world.

The Koryo-Saram experience adds an important dimension to that wider history. It shows how Korean identity survived and changed under Russian imperial rule, Soviet repression, Central Asian integration and post-Soviet migration.

Uzbekistan has qualified for its first FIFA World Cup, and Central Asia is receiving increasing international attention. Do you think this growing visibility is also creating greater interest in the region’s Korean communities, or do the Koryo-Saram remain largely overlooked?

Uzbekistan’s World Cup qualification has undoubtedly increased Central Asia’s international profile. However, its effect on the visibility of the Koryo-Saram is likely to remain indirect and relatively limited.

The community is still underrepresented in Western media. Without deliberate cultural, journalistic or diplomatic outreach, Koryo-Saram history can easily remain overlooked, even as international interest in Central Asia increases.

Nevertheless, any positive attention given to Central Asia helps us in the broader sense. When more people become curious about Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the wider region, there is a greater opportunity to introduce them to the communities that have contributed to its social and cultural development.

Read more on Novastan: Uzbekistan at the World Cup: The White Wolves Enter the Global Stage

Several internationally known figures have Koryo-Saram heritage or partial Koryo-Saram ancestry.

They include Lomon, also known as Park Solomon, the Uzbekistan-born South Korean actor; Nellie Kim, the Olympic gymnastics champion; and Gennadiy Golovkin, the world boxing champion.

Figures such as these undoubtedly contribute to the visibility of the diaspora. Yet the wider history of the Koryo-Saram remains much less well known than their individual achievements.

How are younger generations engaging with their multiple identities – Korean, Central Asian, Russian-speaking and American? Are there particular challenges in preserving language, culture and historical memory?

America seems to me to be an ideal place in which to preserve culture.

Because many of our organisation’s activities revolve around culture and heritage, I have met Korean Americans who immigrated to the United States more than 40 years ago. This includes both Koreans from the Korean Peninsula and Koryo-Saram Koreans.

Some have preserved as “heritage” cultural practices and social norms that are no longer common in contemporary South Korea or in post-Soviet countries. Diaspora communities sometimes preserve a version of culture that reflects the period in which people emigrated.

I did not grow up in the Soviet Union, and I always felt that I had a strong sense of American individualism. I was never afraid to be different, even though I grew up without Americans around me.

Ironically, it was in America that I encountered what I considered a Soviet mentality most clearly. That experience helped me recognize how different I was from what I understood as a stereotypically Soviet mentality.

In a similar way, one may encounter patriarchal South Korean social norms in some Korean-American communities even when those norms no longer exist in exactly the same form in contemporary South Korea.

There is no single model for younger Koryo-Saram.

Some are not merely preserving their multiple identities. They are reinventing them in ways that reflect both their heritage and the globalised world in which they live.

Others in the United States currently show little interest in their background or in what their ancestors experienced. It can be very comfortable to become a fully integrated American.

Many Koryo-Saram already possess a global outlook and have relatively little difficulty integrating into American society.

At the same time, I believe the community carries shared generational trauma. When you work with Koryo-Saram for long enough, you may notice certain behavioural patterns even among people who do not speak Russian or who do not publicly identify as Koryo-Saram.

Language loss remains one of the greatest challenges. Many younger people no longer speak Koryo-mar or Korean. Some do not speak Russian either. In such cases, identity is transmitted through food, family stories, names, photographs, celebrations and memories rather than language.

Historical memory can also become fragmented. A young person may know that a grandparent was deported but may not know the details. Another may know the family’s migration route but feel little emotional connection to it.

Preservation therefore requires more than nostalgia. It requires education, documentation, community spaces and opportunities for younger generations to interpret the history in their own way.

Looking ahead, what projects are you currently working on, and where do you see the greatest opportunities for cooperation between Koryo-Saram communities in the United States, Central Asia and South Korea?

We are preparing to participate in a Korea Liberation Day event, and I hope we will make history by participating for the first time in the upcoming Council of Korean Americans Summit in Los Angeles.

Koryo-Saram communities in the United States, Central Asia and South Korea share a common heritage. They can build on this to develop cultural, economic and educational cooperation.

Cultural preservation and exchange

Koryo-Saram communities in Kazakhstan and South Korea have worked for years to revive Korean traditions, language and cuisine.

In the United States, where the Koryo-Saram population is growing, there is also increasing interest in Korean heritage.

Cooperation could include joint cultural festivals and language-immersion programmes connecting communities in America, Central Asia and South Korea.

Youth-led initiatives in Kazakhstan, including Korean Sunday schools, could inspire similar programmes in the United States and South Korea. Such initiatives would help younger generations build a stronger sense of identity and shared history.

Economic and business cooperation

Projects such as K-Park in Alatau City, Kazakhstan, demonstrate how Koryo-Saram entrepreneurs can strengthen economic links between Kazakhstan and South Korea.

Koryo-Saram in the United States could act as an additional bridge, connecting Central Asian and South Korean businesses with American markets.

Promising sectors include Korean culture, Korean food, technology and creative industries.

Cooperation could take the form of co-branded products, joint ventures, professional networks and investment platforms linking the three regions.

Education and research

Koryo-Saram descendants in the United States, Central Asia and South Korea possess increasingly strong academic and professional networks.

Cooperation could include joint research on Korean history, diaspora studies, migration and cultural adaptation, as well as student and scholar exchanges.

Universities in South Korea, Central Asia and US cities with significant Korean populations, including New York and Los Angeles, could establish partnerships focused on heritage, language and diaspora studies.

There is still a great deal of Koryo-Saram history that remains insufficiently documented, especially at the family and community levels.

Tourism and heritage tourism

K-Park in Kazakhstan is intended to serve as both a cultural landmark and an economic hub.

Similar initiatives could be developed in the United States and South Korea. Heritage tourism routes could connect significant Koryo-Saram locations and communities across several countries.

Visitors could learn about Korean culture as it developed in the Russian Far East, Central Asia, South Korea and the United States.

Such projects could contribute to cultural diplomacy and deepen mutual understanding.

Policy and diaspora engagement

Given the strong diplomatic ties between South Korea and the Central Asian states, Koryo-Saram communities could advocate for policy frameworks that support diaspora engagement.

This could include cultural grants, support for research and education, diaspora investment incentives, easier routes to legal status or naturalisation and greater recognition of Koryo-Saram heritage in national historical narratives.

The greatest opportunities lie in cultural revitalisation, cross-border business networks, educational partnerships, heritage tourism and policy advocacy.

By pooling resources and networks across the United States, Central Asia and South Korea, Koryo-Saram communities can strengthen their shared identity while contributing to sustainable cultural and economic development.

Finally, if there is one message you would like Novastan’s readers to take away about the Koryo-Saram experience, what would it be?

The Koryo-Saram story is not simply a footnote in Korean history.

It is a living testament to resilience, cultural endurance and the quiet power of identity in the face of displacement and erasure.

For more than a century, the Koryo-Saram have navigated migration, forced deportation, language loss and assimilation. Yet they preserved elements of Korean culture through food, theatre, newspapers, music, family celebrations and community gatherings.

Our journey demonstrates that identity is not static. It evolves, adapts and endures.

History is not preserved only in official documents. It also survives through everyday acts of remembrance: cooking morkovcha, preparing family dishes, maintaining traditions, telling children about their grandparents or performing traditional dances at family celebrations.

The Koryo-Saram story is one of endurance with dignity, adaptation with pride and the belief that heritage can remain alive even when the ancestral homeland is far away.

It is also a call to recognise and honour such histories, not as isolated curiosities, but as vital threads in the global story of human resilience.

Interview conducted and edited by Mathieu Lemoine.

Photographs courtesy of Hana Sexton.

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

The post From Central Asia to America: The Koryo-Saram Diaspora Finds a New Voice appeared first on Novastan English.

Archaeologist and museum specialist Oktyabr Dospanov on the lost world of Muynak, the memory of the Aral Sea and the cultural heritage of Karakalpakstan.

For much of the outside world, Muynak is represented by a single image: rusting ships stranded in a desert. For Oktyabr Dospanov, however, the town was once an island, a busy port and the setting of a childhood filled with ship bells, gulls, music and the smell of freshly caught fish. In this interview, the Karakalpak archaeologist and museum specialist recalls the human world that disappeared with the Aral Sea, explains why the region’s cultural history reaches far beyond the ecological catastrophe, and reflects on what should be preserved for future generations.

This interview was conducted in Russian and translated into English.

See more on Novastan: Souvenirs éphémères

The story of the Aral Sea is usually told through statistics: falling water levels, rising salinity, abandoned ports and millions of tonnes of salt and dust lifted from the exposed seabed. Those figures describe the scale of the disaster, but they cannot fully convey what it meant to lose a sea that organised the economy, culture and daily rhythms of an entire region. Dospanov belongs to the last generation that remembers the Aral as an ordinary presence rather than a vanished world. Born in Muynak, he later became an archaeologist and museum specialist. His professional path began in 1979, when Igor Savitsky invited him to join an expedition at Janpyk Kala, an ancient Khorezmian settlement near the Sultan Uvays mountains. He subsequently worked at the museum in Nukus that now bears Savitsky’s name, devoting decades to the archaeology, ethnography, art and environmental history of Karakalpakstan.

Novastan: You grew up in Muynak when it was still a living port. What kind of town was it?

Oktyabr Dospanov: My childhood was spent in Muynak, which at that time was a real island in the Aral Sea. For me, it is not simply my birthplace. It was an entire world, filled with sounds, smells and the feeling of continuous life. It is difficult today to imagine that Muynak was once one of the region’s largest fishing centres.

The town’s life was inseparable from the sea. There were five large fishing collectives, twelve fish reception points and two cargo ports. One was in Muynak itself, on the shore, and the other was around twenty kilometres away at Usay, on the opposite side of the island. The fishing industry set the rhythm of the whole town.

Muynak seemed never to sleep. Even late at night, people were always walking through the streets: some going to work, others returning after their shift. Work continued around the clock. I can still hear the ship bells, the grinding of the port cranes, and the hum of fishing vessels and engines. These sounds were a natural part of everyday life.

The city was also remarkably diverse. Engineers, sailors, fishermen, teachers, doctors, scientists and artists came from across the Soviet Union. Karakalpaks, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Russians, Tatars, Koreans, Ukrainians and many others lived side by side. In the mahallas, neighbours helped one another build houses, celebrated holidays together and supported families in difficult times. That sense of community was one of Muynak’s greatest riches.

What do you remember most vividly about the sea itself?

For my generation, the Aral was not a symbol of tragedy. It was the symbol of a happy childhood, filled with the sound of waves and the cries of gulls. Hundreds of vessels stood at Muynak’s quays: cargo ships, fishing schooners, tankers, barges and tugboats. The port operated day and night. It seemed impossible that the sea could ever disappear.

The coast was rich in life. There were reed beds, lakes and wetlands, and an extraordinary number of birds: pheasants, wild ducks, flamingos, pelicans and, above all, gulls. The silver gulls that local people affectionately called ‘laughing gulls’ accompanied us from morning until evening. Fishermen watched them because they could reveal the position of shoals of fish.

I also remember the clean, fresh air. The sea did not have the harsh salty smell that people often imagine. A constant wind made even the hottest summer days easier to bear. In winter, the sea froze and the cold was severe. We swam, fished and played football on the shore. Children came to the nearby pioneer camp from many parts of the Soviet Union, and the coast had holiday homes, sanatoriums and tourist facilities.

See more on Novastan: A sécher

What remains most powerfully in my memory is not a landscape but a smell. When I was five or six, my father and his friend Ibadulla took me out in a small wooden boat. Far from the shore, we met a large fishing seiner commanded by a man named Tazhibay-aga. He showed me the bridge, the cabins and the engine room. The hold was filled with fish. I pointed to the largest one, a huge catfish, and insisted that it was a shark. Everyone laughed.

We stayed on the vessel for almost two days. I saw how the fishermen worked and lived. The engine room smelled of diesel fuel, motor oil, metal, sea moisture, fresh fish, wooden decks and salt-soaked ropes. It was sharp, but warm and alive. To me, that was the smell of the real Aral Sea. Sometimes I close my eyes and I am back there, hearing the engine and the waves against the hull.

Muynak also had a social and cultural life that is rarely mentioned. Where did young people meet?

Muynak did not live by work alone. It had two cinemas. The best known was Sputnik, just a few steps from the shore and beside the market. After an evening screening in summer, people would walk along the waterfront, listen to the waves and stay outside talking for a long time. Later, in the second half of the 1980s, the Berdakh cinema opened in another part of the city. It was a modern cultural centre for films, concerts and public events.

The cultural centre of the fish-canning plant was another important place. It had a library and hosted theatre, amateur performances, concerts and celebrations. Young people especially loved the weekend dances. Many people met their future partners there.

There were also several cafes. The most famous was Tolqyn, which means ‘wave’ in Karakalpak. It was not simply somewhere to eat or drink tea. Families celebrated birthdays and weddings there, friends met, music played, and people exchanged news and made plans.

Music was everywhere. On warm evenings, young people gathered spontaneously in courtyards, on squares or near the sea. Someone would bring a guitar, accordion or bayan, and people would sing together. There were no mobile phones or social networks. People listened to one another and spent long evenings in company. At weddings and major family celebrations, bakhshi – traditional storytellers and musicians – performed epics and legends to the accompaniment of instruments such as the dutar. Ancient oral tradition and modern youth culture existed naturally alongside each other.

When did people understand that the retreat of the sea was irreversible?

The process was gradual. The first alarming signs became visible in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At first, people hoped it was temporary and that the sea would return. A special canal was dug from the port towards the receding water so that vessels could continue to sail. But the water withdrew faster than people could adapt.

Fishermen noticed the change first. Their catches became smaller. Fewer schooners went out. Ships that had entered the port freely began to run aground, surrounded by sand and salt blown from the exposed seabed.

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I remember how the sound of the city changed. Muynak had always lived through the noise of its port: bells, cranes, engines, fishermen’s voices, metal cables and waves at the quays. Then came silence. It arrived almost imperceptibly, but that silence was the most frightening thing. When the ships stop sounding, when the sea can no longer be heard and the port ceases to live, you understand that more than water is disappearing. An entire world is going.

The marine painter Rafael Matevosyan, who devoted more than half a century to the Aral Sea, described an early morning when he woke to voices and crying. Residents had gathered on the shore. Overnight, the water had retreated by dozens of metres. Boats that had been moored at the pier were lying on dry sand. Some people prayed, some cried and others simply stared at the departing water. Matevosyan later captured that moment in a painting called The Sea Has Gone.

The human consequences came quickly. Enterprises closed, fishing declined and families lost their livelihoods. Many people left Muynak for other cities or republics. The city lost not only employment and population, but also confidence in its future.

“Then came silence. It arrived almost imperceptibly, but that silence was the most frightening thing.”

What disappeared with the sea beyond the fishing industry?

Fishing was not just a source of income. It was one of the oldest forms of economic life in the Aral region and had shaped people’s identity for centuries. Archaeological excavations reveal fish represented on ceramics, bronze objects, wall paintings and household items. Fish also appeared in carpets, embroidery, jewellery, woodcarving and textiles. It symbolised water, life and prosperity in an arid region.

For many families, fishing and factory work passed from parents to children. To work at the fish-canning plant was considered respectable. People were proud that their labour mattered to the whole country. When the sea disappeared, traditions that had formed over generations also weakened: techniques and practical knowledge, recipes and fish cuisine, songs, stories and the everyday vocabulary of life by the water.

The psychological loss was equally important. Many residents came to feel that they had been left at the edge of a lifeless desert, far from the world’s attention, with the best part of their lives behind them. When former residents meet today, they often cry. Those tears express joy at seeing one another, but also nostalgia for a world that cannot be restored.

That is why the memories of the last witnesses matter so much. There are still people who remember the port cranes, the crowded waterfront, the smell of fresh fish and the horizon of open water, but their number decreases every year. Their oral histories, family photographs, songs and personal objects are part of the region’s heritage. The Aral Sea is not merely an environmental problem. It is the fate of millions of people.

Tourists now come to photograph the ship cemetery. What do you wish they understood about Muynak?

I am glad that people are interested in our region, but I would like them to see more than an unusual tourist attraction. Behind every ship is a human life. Behind every photograph are thousands of families who lost the world they knew. Every metre of exposed seabed contains the memories of people who sailed from this port, caught fish, built homes, raised children and believed the sea would last forever.

Visitors should try to imagine another picture: an expanse of water reaching the horizon, fishing vessels returning to port, gulls overhead, children laughing on the shore and a town full of movement. Only then can they understand what was lost.

At the same time, Karakalpakstan should not be reduced to catastrophe. This region has been a crossroads of nomadic and settled civilisations for thousands of years. The art of the Aral region carries images of animals, birds, plants, water and steppe. Its carpets, textiles, jewellery, embroidery, carved wood and yurt interiors preserve symbols that connect people to the natural world. Muynak was one part of a much wider cultural landscape.

Your own career began with archaeology. How did Igor Savitsky influence you?

My path into science began in 1979, when I met Igor Vitalyevich Savitsky. He invited me to join an archaeological expedition at Janpyk Kala, one of the great monuments of ancient Khorezm on the right bank of the Amu Darya. That expedition became my school of archaeology. It showed me how rich and insufficiently studied the history of Karakalpakstan was.

Savitsky later invited me to work at the museum in Nukus. He was not only a remarkable artist, collector and museum builder. He taught a whole generation to see culture as an interconnected whole. Through him, I understood that archaeology is not simply excavation. It is a way of understanding people, their worldview and their relationship with nature, history and art.

Karakalpakstan is an open-air museum. It has hundreds of archaeological sites, from antiquity to the late medieval period. Ancient Khorezm stood at the meeting point of major Eurasian trade and cultural routes. Nomadic and settled worlds interacted here, alongside influences from Iran, the Mediterranean, the steppe, Turkic states, the Arab world and Central Asia. Irrigation systems created from at least the first millennium BCE made possible cities, fortresses, palaces and settlements in desert landscapes.

The region’s spiritual history is equally layered. Zoroastrian, Buddhist, early Christian and Islamic traditions all left traces in monuments, rituals, ornament and symbolism. Archaeology records those processes in layers of soil and objects, while oral tradition preserves them in images and stories. Both are necessary.

Savitsky’s importance also lies in the way he built the museum. When he founded it in 1966, he created departments of archaeology and ethnography alongside the art collection. He had first come to Karakalpakstan through the Khorezm Archaeological and Ethnographic Expedition, and during fieldwork he produced hundreds of paintings and drawings of archaeological sites, village life, plants, animals and the region’s changing light. He was interested in the smallest details of traditional culture – a ceramic ornament, carved wood, a textile pattern or a piece of metalwork – because he saw each of them as a language through which a people expressed its worldview.

His study of Karakalpak traditional woodcarving remains especially important to me. He showed how the decorative culture of the region emerged from the meeting of settled agricultural traditions and the nomadic culture of the steppe. At the same time, he understood that many Russian artists of the 1920s and 1930s had been erased from public life by repression and ideological pressure. He largely gave up his own artistic career to find, protect and collect their work. That devotion created one of the world’s most important collections of Russian avant-garde and early Soviet art.

He was equally committed to the emerging Karakalpak school of painting. Kydyrbay Saipov, then the region’s only professionally trained artist, became his close friend and ally. Together they encouraged younger artists, organised exhibitions and helped create an artistic environment in which remarkable talents could develop. Among the painters associated with this generation were Zhollybay Izentaev, Zholdasbek Kutymuratov, Abdulla Erimbetov, Bazarbay Serekeev, Aman Atabaev, Murat Khudaybergenov, Daribay Tazhimuratov and Amangeldy Utegenov.

My strongest memory of Savitsky is still from the expeditions. He was modest and extraordinarily hardworking. He could spend hours examining a ceramic vessel, an ornament or a fragment of cloth, explaining its symbols and the techniques used to make it. Every find and every meeting with a traditional craftsperson delighted him. He did not merely study culture; he lived through it.

Which landscapes or historical places best reveal the depth of Karakalpakstan?

The Ustyurt Plateau is unlike anywhere else. Its chinks, cliffs and canyons are magnificent, but the landscape also contains ancient and medieval burial mounds, necropolises, caravanserais, wells and signal towers. They recall the routes that connected East and West across an extremely demanding environment. The saiga is a symbol of Ustyurt, and images of these animals appear in rock art thousands of years old.

The former seabed is also becoming a new and extraordinary landscape. It attracts ecologists, geologists, archaeologists and palaeontologists. Along former shorelines, people find fossil shells, marine remains and, according to local accounts, even the teeth of ancient sharks – reminders that the geological history of this territory reaches back to seas far older than the Aral.

Karakalpakstan is therefore much more than a disaster zone. It is a place where one can read the history of the Earth and the history of human civilisation in the same landscape. Natural and cultural heritage are inseparable here.

Can the region recover environmentally, and what has changed through the planting of saxaul?

When the sea dried, its exposed bottom became a saline desert. Dust and salt storms carried sand, salt and chemical residues over enormous distances. Planting saxaul, kandym and other desert shrubs was one of the most effective ways to stabilise the soil. After decades of work, vegetation now covers significant areas of the former seabed, reducing the intensity of dust and salt storms and creating conditions for new ecosystems. Some animals and birds are returning.

This does not mean the crisis is solved. Safe drinking water, efficient water management, public health, education, transport and sustainable employment remain fundamental. Climate change adds pressure by altering rainfall, accelerating glacier loss in the Pamirs and Tien Shan, and changing the flow of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. The full restoration of the former sea is an extremely difficult question and cannot depend on one country alone. It requires regional cooperation and rational water use.

The most important lesson is that economic development must not again be built on the assumption that nature is inexhaustible. Any new investment should create dignified local employment, use water responsibly and meet high environmental standards. The people who live here must benefit directly.

Whose work should people read or see if they want to understand Karakalpakstan beyond the Aral Sea disaster?

First, I would name Berdakh, the great Karakalpak poet. His work became one of the spiritual foundations of the national culture. It speaks about the history of the people, moral values, love of the native land and the search for justice and freedom. No less important is Ajiniyaz, one of Central Asia’s major poets and thinkers, whose writing celebrated solidarity between peoples, humanism and respect for human dignity.

In the visual arts, one must of course return to Igor Savitsky and to the artists whose work he helped preserve. Rafael Matevosyan is also indispensable to the memory of the Aral Sea. For more than half a century he painted its water, boats, fishermen and everyday life. Gulls appear repeatedly in his work. After the sea had largely disappeared, he would visit the exposed seabed and say: ‘I believe my gulls will return.’ Those words were later inscribed on his grave.

There is also a deeply personal figure I do not want to omit: my uncle, the Karakalpak writer and translator Shaniyaz Mambetmuratov. He died when he was only 43, but he left an important mark on the literature and culture of Karakalpakstan. The Aral Sea was at the centre of his writing – its open waters, the Amu Darya, fishermen, the landscape and the lives, labour and hopes of ordinary people.

He was extraordinarily well read. It seemed that there was hardly a book in Muynak’s municipal library that he had not opened. He translated foreign authors into Karakalpak, hoping both to introduce local readers to world literature and to show outsiders the richness of his own culture. In the 1960s and 1970s, he used to say that one day Europeans would come to Muynak and the Aral Sea to discover the beauty, history and culture of this region. At the time, that sounded almost impossible.

Part of his work was translated into German and a collection was published in Germany, although he did not live to see it. In a sense, his prediction has now come true: people arrive from across the world, not only to witness an ecological catastrophe but also to learn about Karakalpakstan’s literature, culture, history and inhabitants. As long as his books are read, his voice continues to speak.

Dospanov shared two of his uncle’s poems, translated here, especially for Novastan, from Karakalpak via Russian.

The Seagull

1959

— Seagull, soaring high across the sky,
You seem a messenger of my love.
Why do you circle anxiously above me,
Calling me once more towards the seashore?

— Seagull, flying through the blue of heaven,
Why do you fill my heart with restless thoughts?
Had I not caressed the waves of the sea,
Would spring ever have returned to these shores?

The Blue Sea

1958

Do not judge me harshly when I praise the sea;
Simply look towards the blue edge of the earth.
Like a festive salute marking a great victory,
The blue sea laughs before my eyes.

This blue sea is my native Aral;
With all my soul, I breathe its fresh wind.
And should you wish to know what makes it so majestic,
Know this: within it live both my destiny and my age.

Who else should journalists speak to while the memory of the old Muynak is still alive?

They should begin with the remaining members of the older generation: former fishermen, ship captains, workers from the fish-canning plant and residents of the coastal settlements. They remember the cranes, boats, factory, crowded waterfront, fresh fish and uninterrupted horizon. Such memories cannot be reconstructed from official archives once the witnesses are gone.

It is equally important to record artists, musicians, traditional craftspeople and guardians of oral culture. Young ecologists, archaeologists, museum professionals, historians and civic activists should also be heard, because they connect the past with the region’s future. And journalists should not overlook teachers, farmers, doctors, students and women raising families. The real history of Karakalpakstan is made from many ordinary lives, not only from famous names.

We are among the last living witnesses of the full Aral Sea. That creates a duty to preserve oral testimony, family photographs, private archives, household objects, songs and stories. These materials are as important to the region’s heritage as archaeological monuments and museum collections.

What gives you hope when you think about the future of Muynak and Karakalpakstan?

Above all, people give me hope. Despite everything this region has experienced, its inhabitants have not lost their love for their land or their willingness to work for its future. Human resilience has always been the main strength of the Aral region.

I see a younger generation studying foreign languages, ecology, archaeology, art, museum work, science and information technology. Many of them do not want to turn away from their history. They want to preserve it and show the world that Karakalpakstan is a region of extraordinary cultural heritage and future possibilities.

The world’s growing interest also matters. Archaeologists, artists, scientists, photographers, travellers and students come not only because of the Aral Sea, but also for ancient Khorezm, Ustyurt, the Savitsky Museum and Karakalpak culture.

If I had unlimited resources, I would set three priorities. The first would be human welfare: drinking water, health care, education, infrastructure and good jobs, particularly so that young people can imagine a future here. The second would be ecological restoration and responsible use of natural resources, including water-saving technologies and continued planting on the former seabed. The third would be culture, science and international cooperation. I would like Karakalpakstan to become a major centre for archaeology, museum partnerships, artistic residencies, environmental education and cultural tourism.

The future cannot rest only on natural resources or only on economic growth. It must bring people, nature and culture into balance.

Is there one story you would most like European readers to carry with them?

I would tell them the story of the Camel Trail. Elders said that long before modern roads, caravan routes crossed Ustyurt and the shores of the Aral Sea. Camels connected Khorezm with the Volga region, Kazakhstan and lands farther east and west. They sensed the route better than people and could find wells and caravanserais even at night, in sandstorms or fog.

One trail, used by generations of caravans, led towards the Aral Sea. It was not merely a road. It carried trade, encounters, knowledge and culture. Merchants, craftsmen, poets and pilgrims travelled along it. Goods moved with songs, legends, ideas and traditions.

As the sea retreated, harbours vanished and routes were covered by sand. Yet people say the Camel Trail did not disappear. It survived in memory. You may no longer see it on a map, but you can feel it when travelling through the region. It is an invisible thread between past and present.

For me, the legend means that the most important roads do not cross only deserts and steppes. They pass through human memory. Today, the trail can acquire a new meaning. Where caravans once carried goods, it can now carry research, cultural projects, art and friendship between peoples. It can become a symbol of dialogue between Central Asia and Europe.

Perhaps the trail no longer exists on the ground. But while memory remains alive, the road never ends.

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

The post “My Childhood Was Spent on the Shore of a Sea That No Longer Exists” appeared first on Novastan English.

The world’s largest inland body of water is shrinking. From disappearing sturgeon and stranded ports to an unreliable trans-Caspian ferry and borders drawn around a moving shoreline, the consequences extend far beyond the environment.

For travellers hoping to cross the Caspian Sea between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, the journey has never resembled an ordinary international ferry connection.

Read more on Novastan: Hundreds of lifeless Caspian seals washed ashore in Turkmenistan

There is generally no dependable passenger timetable. The vessels are primarily designed to transport freight, railway wagons and vehicles, accepting individual passengers when operational conditions permit. Travellers may be told to wait in Aktau or Kuryk until sufficient cargo has accumulated, or to make their way to Alat, approximately 70 kilometres south of Baku, without knowing exactly when their ship will depart. Recent travel accounts continue to describe waits lasting several days.

This unreliability predates the current environmental crisis. It reflects freight-centred operations, poor passenger information and limited coordination between ports. But the difficulties now facing Caspian navigation are no longer only organisational.

The water itself is retreating.

At Aktau and Kuryk, the Kazakh ports that connect Central Asia to Azerbaijan, the Caucasus and Europe, falling water levels are making navigation channels shallower and increasing the need for dredging – the removal of mud, sand and sediment from the seabed to maintain sufficient depth for ships. Vessels designed for deeper water may have to carry lighter loads. Infrastructure built for an earlier shoreline risks becoming progressively less effective.

The contrast is striking. Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the European Union and international financial institutions increasingly promote the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, better known as the Middle Corridor, as a strategic bridge between Asia and Europe. Yet the sea at the centre of that corridor is becoming physically less navigable.

The Caspian has fluctuated throughout recorded history, rising and falling in response to changes in river flow, precipitation, temperature and evaporation. But since the mid-1990s, its level has followed a predominantly downward trajectory. Satellite-based research has estimated a decline of nearly seven centimetres annually between 1996 and 2015, accelerating to approximately ten centimetres annually between 2006 and 2021.

The eventual scale remains uncertain. Scientific projections differ according to future greenhouse-gas emissions, river inflows and the models used. But even a decline of five metres would transform the northern and eastern Caspian, where the water is exceptionally shallow. A fall of five to ten metres could critically disrupt ecosystems, remove most of the effective coverage of existing protected areas and leave billions of dollars of industrial and civil infrastructure obsolete.

The Caspian is not about to disappear entirely. Its southern basin reaches depths of more than 1,000 metres. But a body of water does not need to vanish to cease performing the functions on which surrounding societies depend. Ports can become inaccessible. Wetlands and fishing grounds can disappear. Ships can lose carrying capacity. Settlements built around the coast can find themselves kilometres from the water.

For Central Asia, the retreating Caspian is becoming an environmental crisis, an economic constraint and a test of whether regional governments can cooperate before physical change overtakes political planning.

A sea dependent on distant rivers

The Caspian has no natural outlet to the ocean. Water enters through rivers and precipitation and leaves primarily through evaporation. Its level is therefore determined by the balance between inflow and water lost from its surface.

The system is also highly unequal. Although more than one hundred rivers flow into the Caspian, the Volga provides the overwhelming majority of its river water. The Ural, Kura and several smaller rivers supply much of the remainder.

This means that the fate of the Caspian is affected by decisions taken far from its shores. Reservoir management, hydropower, irrigation, industrial consumption and urban water use throughout the Volga basin can influence the quantity and timing of water reaching the sea.

It would nevertheless be misleading to attribute the present decline solely to dams or Russian water management. Rising temperatures increase evaporation from the Caspian’s vast surface, while changing precipitation and runoff affect its drainage basin. The water balance of a closed inland sea is especially sensitive to sustained warming.

The northern basin is the most immediately exposed. Much of it is only a few metres deep, meaning that a relatively modest vertical fall can produce a dramatic horizontal retreat. In Kazakhstan, new stretches of exposed seabed are already emerging around the northeastern coast and the Ural River delta.

Read more on Novastan: Mer Caspienne : sommet décisif au Kazakhstan

These areas are not empty margins. They contain wetlands, bird habitats, fish nurseries and communities whose economic life developed around access to the water.

As the seabed dries, another problem may emerge. Salt, industrial contaminants and other pollutants accumulated in coastal sediments can be exposed to the wind. The experience of the Aral Sea has shown how a disappearing shoreline can become a source of dust carrying salt and toxic residues across large distances.

The comparison between the Aral and Caspian seas must be used carefully. The destruction of the Aral Sea was driven principally by the massive diversion of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya for irrigated agriculture. The Caspian is vastly larger, and climate-driven evaporation plays a much more significant role in its decline.

But the political lesson is relevant. Environmental catastrophe does not begin when the last water disappears. It begins when ecological and economic systems become unable to adapt to cumulative damage.

When the Soviet Union tried to close the Caspian’s “black throat”

The idea that the Caspian’s water level could be controlled through a decisive engineering intervention is not new.

On the Turkmen coast, a narrow strait connects the Caspian to Garabogazköl, also known by its Russian name, Kara-Bogaz-Gol. The vast, shallow lagoon is exceptionally saline. Caspian water flows into it and then evaporates, leaving behind concentrated salts and minerals.

During the Soviet period, planners came to see Garabogazköl as a leak through which the Caspian was losing valuable water. As the sea declined during the 1970s, the lagoon’s intense evaporation appeared to offer a straightforward explanation and an equally straightforward solution: close the channel.

A dam completed in 1980 blocked the connection between the Caspian and the lagoon. Without a continuous inflow, Garabogazköl rapidly contracted. By the middle of the decade, much of it had become an exposed salt basin. The ecological consequences extended beyond the lagoon itself, as winds carried salt from the dry surface across the surrounding territory.

Read more on Novastan: Agreement between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan paves the way for Trans-Caspian Pipeline

In 1992, shortly after Turkmenistan became independent, the barrier was demolished and Caspian water was allowed to return.

The episode is more than an environmental curiosity. It shows the danger of approaching the Caspian as a hydraulic machine whose individual components can be blocked or redirected without wider consequences.

Closing Garabogazköl did not provide a durable solution to the Caspian’s fluctuations. Instead, it transferred the crisis from one body of water to another. By the time the lagoon was reconnected, the Caspian itself had begun rising again, illustrating how poorly its changing water balance had been understood.

The history matters today because falling levels may once again generate proposals for major engineering responses. Some ideas envisage regulating river flows, diverting water between basins or restricting the movement of water into highly evaporative areas. Others concentrate on dredging, artificial channels and the relocation of ports.

Some adaptation will be unavoidable. But Garabogazköl offers a warning against solutions that treat one symptom in isolation. The Caspian is an interconnected ecological system, not merely a reservoir to be managed for maximum economic utility.

The disappearance of the sturgeon

No species is more closely associated with the Caspian than the sturgeon.

For centuries, sturgeon fisheries supported communities around the sea and supplied the caviar trade for which the region became internationally famous. The fish migrate between the Caspian and its rivers, depending on access to spawning grounds in waterways such as the Volga and Ural.

Their decline began long before the present acceleration in falling water levels. Dams restricted access to spawning grounds, while pollution, overfishing and the illegal caviar trade placed enormous pressure on populations. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the weakening of fisheries management and expansion of poaching further devastated stocks.

Official sturgeon landings across the Caspian fell from approximately 28,500 tonnes in 1985 to around 1,345 tonnes in 2005. More recent assessments describe Caspian sturgeon populations as being in critical condition.

Read more on Novastan: La mer Caspienne en état d’urgence

Hatcheries have released millions of young sturgeon in an attempt to compensate for the loss of natural reproduction. But stocking programmes cannot fully replace functioning rivers, wetlands and coastal habitats.

The shrinking sea adds another layer of pressure. The northern Caspian and its river deltas provide shallow feeding and nursery environments. As these areas retreat, salinity changes and habitats fragment, populations already damaged by decades of exploitation lose more of the conditions they need to recover.

The decline of the sturgeon therefore captures the cumulative character of the Caspian crisis. Climate change is not acting on an untouched ecosystem. It is amplifying damage created by dams, hydrocarbons, industrial pollution, illegal fishing and weak regional governance.

The loss is also cultural and economic. The sturgeon is not merely a biodiversity indicator. It represents a way of life that once connected fishing communities from Kazakhstan and Russia to Azerbaijan and Iran. Its disappearance would mark the collapse of one of the Caspian’s most distinctive shared traditions.

The Middle Corridor meets a shallower sea

The economic consequences of declining water levels are becoming particularly important as the Caspian assumes a larger place in Eurasian transport policy.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine increased European and Asian interest in routes that avoid Russian territory. The Middle Corridor carries goods from China and Central Asia across Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye toward European markets.

Its maritime section depends primarily on the ports of Aktau and Kuryk in Kazakhstan and Baku’s port facilities at Alat in Azerbaijan. Turkmenbashi also has the potential to connect Turkmenistan and neighbouring countries to trans-Caspian trade.

International assessments have warned that falling Caspian levels may require continued dredging, vessels with shallower draughts and improved navigation systems.

Read more on Novastan: By the Caspian Sea

These are not marginal technical adjustments. Ships unable to enter fully loaded carry less cargo at a higher unit cost. Repeated dredging requires sustained expenditure and can create further environmental disruption. Port infrastructure may have to be extended or relocated as the shoreline changes.

There is also a risk that investment decisions will be based on a static understanding of the sea. A terminal planned according to today’s water level may be poorly adapted to conditions two or three decades from now. Infrastructure with an expected operational life of fifty years must now be assessed against several possible Caspian futures.

The unreliable passenger connection between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan exposes another weakness in official corridor narratives. For governments and financial institutions, the Caspian is often represented as a segment on a trade map: containers arrive at one port, cross the water and continue westward.

For travellers, the experience is far less seamless. The absence of a regular passenger timetable, uncertain departures and long waits demonstrate that the Caspian has not yet become an integrated regional transport space.

Falling water levels did not cause these organisational failures. But they can compound them by making navigation and port operations more expensive and less predictable.

If the Middle Corridor is intended to become a durable alternative between Europe and Asia, its planners must prepare not only for greater freight volumes but for the transformation of the sea itself.

Legal boundaries around a moving shoreline

For much of the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, diplomatic arguments about the Caspian concentrated on whether it should legally be treated as a sea or a lake.

The distinction mattered because it could affect how the surface, seabed, fisheries and hydrocarbon resources were divided. Russia and Iran were joined after 1991 by three newly independent coastal states – Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – each seeking access to offshore resources and control over maritime space.

The five countries eventually avoided choosing between the conventional categories. The Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, signed in Aktau in 2018, created a special regime designed specifically for the basin.

It allows each state to establish territorial waters extending up to 15 nautical miles, followed by a ten-nautical-mile fishing zone. The remaining surface is intended for common use, while neighbouring states negotiate the division of sectors of the seabed. The Convention also excludes the military forces of non-Caspian states.

Read more on Novastan: Kazakhstan continues to assert itself as the “key link” in the Middle Corridor

The agreement was a major diplomatic achievement, but it was developed primarily around security, navigation, fisheries and hydrocarbons. It assumed that the sea’s basic physical geography would remain broadly recognisable.

A retreating shoreline complicates that assumption.

Territorial waters are measured from coastal baselines. As the water withdraws, islands may become connected to the mainland, bays may disappear and newly exposed land may alter the practical geography of coastal access. Fishing grounds and ecologically important habitats can shift away from the zones intended to regulate or protect them.

Existing bilateral seabed agreements are unlikely to be automatically overturned each time the shoreline moves. Yet practical questions will multiply. Who is responsible for newly exposed seabed? How should states manage wetlands that migrate across administrative or protected-area boundaries? What happens when navigation channels must be repeatedly dredged or moved?

The Convention has also not yet entered into force. As of the latest publicly confirmed position, Iran remained the only littoral state that had not completed ratification, with the issue expected to feature ahead of the Caspian summit planned in Tehran in August 2026.

The Caspian states spent more than two decades negotiating how to divide and use the sea. They are now confronting a different problem: how to apply those rules when the physical sea retreats from the lines drawn around it.

Cooperation without sufficient urgency

The main regional framework for environmental cooperation is the Tehran Convention, signed in 2003 by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan.

At COP29 in Baku, representatives of the five states formally recognised the serious ecological, economic and social consequences of declining water levels. Work has since continued on a regional action plan, including meetings during 2025 and a high-level dialogue in Astana in April 2026.

This recognition is important, but it does not yet amount to a sufficiently ambitious adaptation strategy.

The region needs comparable hydrological data, shared climate scenarios and infrastructure planning based on different possible levels of decline. Coastal protected areas must be capable of moving with habitats rather than remaining fixed around today’s shoreline. Ports require coordinated investment, while fishing communities need support as traditional livelihoods become less viable.

The Volga’s importance makes Russian participation indispensable. Yet cooperation is constrained by sanctions, the war against Ukraine and distrust between the Caspian states. Governments also have competing interests in oil and gas production, transport corridors, fisheries and territorial control.

Environmental cooperation cannot avoid these political realities. Nor can engineering adaptation replace efforts to reduce pollution, protect river ecosystems and limit global warming.

The European Union also has a direct interest. It is promoting the Middle Corridor, closer economic links with Central Asia, renewable-energy connections and partnerships concerning critical raw materials.

Those policies cannot treat the Caspian merely as a neutral transport surface. European support for ports and logistics should incorporate long-term water-level projections, environmental monitoring and biodiversity protection. Otherwise, international institutions risk financing infrastructure built for a Caspian that no longer exists.

A sea does not have to disappear

The retreat of the Caspian is already visible, but its political consequences remain easier to postpone than its physical ones.

Governments can commission another study, organise another regional meeting or dredge another shipping channel. Each action may be useful. None resolves the fundamental mismatch between a rapidly changing environment and institutions designed around stability.

Garabogazköl demonstrated the danger of attempting to correct the Caspian through a single dramatic intervention. The collapse of sturgeon populations shows what happens when cumulative ecological damage is allowed to continue for decades. The Aktau-Alat ferry reveals how distant the region remains from the seamless connectivity presented in official strategies. The unfinished legal Convention illustrates how slowly political structures move compared with the shoreline.

The Caspian will not vanish like the Aral Sea. But its northern and eastern coasts could be transformed beyond recognition. Wetlands may disappear, ports may be stranded and communities may lose access to the water that shaped their economies and identities.

What remains uncertain is the eventual magnitude of the decline. Its direction is no longer seriously in doubt.

Central Asia already knows that a disappearing inland sea can be treated as an economic sacrifice until the damage becomes irreversible. The Caspian offers the region another warning – this time while there is still enough water, infrastructure and ecological life left to protect.

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

The post The Caspian Sea Is Retreating. Central Asia Is Not Ready appeared first on Novastan English.

As Kazakhstan prepares to elect its new Kurultai, women are becoming increasingly visible in political institutions across Central Asia. Their presence, however, still falls sharply as offices acquire greater executive, territorial and economic authority.

Kazakhstan’s political parties have selected their candidates for the country’s first election to the new unicameral Kurultai, scheduled for 23 August. Seven parties submitted lists before nominations closed on 13 July, and the Central Election Commission has begun registering them ahead of the formal campaign.

Read more on Novastan: Kazakhstan’s Next Elections: Between Reform and Managed Competition

The election will help determine the shape of Kazakhstan’s new political system following the entry into force of its new constitution. It also raises a more specific question: what place will women occupy in the redesigned parliament?

Kazakhstan requires at least 30 percent of candidates on each party list to belong collectively to three categories: women, people aged 35 or under, and persons with disabilities. The same combined threshold applies when seats are distributed. The quota therefore guarantees representation for the three categories together, but no fixed proportion specifically for women.

All seven parties say their submitted lists meet the legal requirement. But the combined nature of the quota makes the number of women selected – and their position within the lists – particularly important.

The question reaches beyond Kazakhstan. Across Central Asia, women are more visible in politics than they were a generation ago. Quotas and electoral reforms have increased their representation in parliament, while women now lead legislative chambers and hold prominent positions in governments and presidential administrations.

Yet the closer one moves towards executive command, territorial authority and control over strategic areas of government, the more rapidly women disappear.

Women may occupy a substantial share of parliamentary seats, work throughout public administrations and sit on local councils while remaining much rarer among governors, mayors, district heads, party leaders and the ministers responsible for finance, energy and security.

Central Asia has therefore made more progress in bringing women inside political institutions than in placing them at the head of those institutions.

Parliament is the easiest place to count

Parliamentary representation provides the clearest evidence of change.

Women currently hold 58 of the 148 filled seats in the lower house of Uzbekistan’s parliament, or 39.2 percent. In Kyrgyzstan, women occupy 30 of the 90 seats in the Jogorku Kenesh, exactly one third of the chamber. Tajikistan’s lower house includes 18 women among its 62 members, or 29 percent, while women hold 31 of the 122 currently filled seats in Turkmenistan’s Assembly, equivalent to 25.4 percent.

These figures compare favourably with the global average of 27.5 percent recorded at the beginning of 2026.

Kyrgyzstan offers the most striking recent example of how electoral rules can transform representation. Its November 2025 parliamentary election introduced a system under which each three-member constituency had to return at least one woman and at least one man. Women’s share of seats rose by 12.9 percentage points – the largest increase recorded in any country holding parliamentary elections in 2025.

The change is significant. It created a much larger group of female MPs and could eventually expand the pool of women with the experience and public profile required for ministerial, party and executive positions.

Read more on Novastan: The Vocabulary of Reform: Why Central Asia Is Reimagining Its Political Traditions

But the Kyrgyz election also illustrates the limits of using gender statistics in isolation. The vote took place amid restrictions on political competition and pressure on opposition figures and independent media. A parliament can become more gender-balanced without necessarily becoming more politically pluralistic.

The same caution applies elsewhere in the region. A large share of female parliamentarians is an important measure of inclusion, but it does not by itself reveal how independently MPs can operate, how candidates are selected or how effectively the legislature can scrutinise the executive.

Representation remains meaningful. It is simply not the same thing as power.

What quotas can – and cannot – change

Quotas matter because political recruitment rarely corrects its own inequalities.

Parties tend to select candidates from familiar professional, business and administrative networks. Across Central Asia, these networks remain heavily male, particularly at the senior levels from which candidates for powerful positions are drawn.

Women may also face unequal access to campaign financing, fewer opportunities to develop relationships with party leaders and local officials, and social expectations that continue to place a greater share of family responsibilities on them. Political life can expose women to forms of scrutiny and harassment that their male colleagues are less likely to encounter.

Well-designed quotas can interrupt this cycle. Kyrgyzstan’s experience shows that rules affecting actual election outcomes can produce rapid change. Candidate quotas alone are less reliable: parties may formally include women while placing them in weaker positions or giving them little influence over party decisions.

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Kazakhstan’s current system raises a different problem. By grouping women, young people and persons with disabilities within one 30 percent threshold, the law allows parties considerable flexibility in deciding how that quota is filled. A list can comply with the rule without allocating any predetermined share to women.

The first party list registered in the current campaign illustrates the limitation of the available statistics. Respublica’s list contains 75 candidates, of whom 38 – 50.7 percent – collectively belong to the three quota categories. The official figure does not say how many of those 38 candidates are women.

Quotas can open doors. They do not determine what happens after women enter the institution.

They cannot guarantee committee leadership, influence over legislation or access to senior party structures. Nor can they ensure that parliamentary experience becomes a route towards executive authority.

Women ministers – but in which ministries?

The number of women in government matters, but the portfolios they receive often reveal more than the total.

Across Central Asia, female ministers and senior officials are regularly associated with education, healthcare, culture, labour, social protection, family policy and women’s affairs. These are substantial fields of government, frequently involving large budgets and responsibilities that directly affect millions of citizens.

Yet women remain much less visible in defence, interior affairs, energy, finance, infrastructure and the institutions closest to presidential decision-making.

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This reflects a wider division in political life. Women are frequently considered appropriate leaders in sectors connected to education, care, families and social welfare, while coercive power, natural resources and macroeconomic management remain overwhelmingly associated with men.

The distinction should not be used to dismiss social-policy portfolios as unimportant. Education, healthcare and social protection are central functions of the state. The question is why women’s access to government so often remains concentrated within them.

Counting ministers without examining their responsibilities can therefore produce a flattering but incomplete picture. Five women managing social portfolios do not represent the same distribution of authority as women heading finance, energy, the interior ministry or a presidential administration.

The issue is not simply how many women sit around the cabinet table. It is which parts of the state they have been entrusted to direct.

Inside local government, but rarely at its head

The divide becomes even clearer at the local level.

International comparisons usually focus on women elected to local councils. But “local government” can describe several very different positions: councillors, municipal employees, deputy mayors, village leaders, district chiefs and regional governors.

Combining them under a single percentage obscures the difference between working within an administration and controlling it.

National and Russian-language sources across Central Asia show that women are far from absent from local political life. They serve in representative councils, work throughout municipal administrations and occupy deputy positions. In some countries, women are institutionally assigned responsibility for family or gender policy within local government.

But women’s representation falls substantially at the top of the territorial hierarchy.

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In Kazakhstan, women form a large part of the public administration and are represented in local maslikhats. Yet regional akim posts and the leadership of the country’s largest cities have remained overwhelmingly male. The gap between women’s presence inside local government and their access to the post of akim is much wider than parliamentary figures alone would suggest.

The distinction is particularly important because akims are not merely local administrators. They oversee budgets, land use, development projects, public services and the implementation of presidential policy across their territories.

Kazakhstan’s gradual introduction of direct elections for rural and some district-level akims may create new routes into executive office. The Central Election Commission publishes information on elections for villages, settlements, rural districts and district-level cities, making it possible to trace the number of female candidates and winners over time.

In Uzbekistan, women hold a significant proportion of seats in local Kengashes and are systematically represented within local executives through deputy hokim positions dealing with family and women’s affairs.

This arrangement guarantees women a place within regional, district and city administrations. But it also places them in a specifically gendered field of responsibility. A female deputy hokim dealing with family policy does not exercise the same authority as the hokim responsible for the administration as a whole.

The system therefore combines inclusion with occupational segregation: women are present, but their institutional role is often defined in advance.

Kyrgyzstan presents another striking contrast. Women now occupy one third of the national parliament, but they remain considerably less visible among mayors, district akims and the heads of rural administrations. Its parliamentary success has not yet been reproduced across the territorial executive.

Tajikistan also maintains substantial female participation within public institutions and local representative bodies, while women frequently serve as deputy chairs in regional, city and district administrations. Far fewer reach the post of chair, where general executive authority is concentrated.

In Turkmenistan, women hold around one quarter of parliamentary seats and the Assembly itself is chaired by a woman. But the leadership of the country’s regions, districts and principal cities remains heavily male. Official appointments can be traced through presidential decrees and reports of government meetings, although the information is rarely consolidated into a single accessible gender breakdown.

The regional pattern is therefore not that women are simply excluded from local government.

It is that they often enter as councillors, administrators or deputies while men continue to dominate the offices that command entire territories.

How political parties imagine women

Statistics reveal where women are. Political language can reveal what parties and governments expect them to do.

Across Central Asia, official programmes regularly discuss women in connection with maternal health, family welfare, employment, small businesses, poverty reduction and protection from violence. Female entrepreneurship has become an especially common theme, combining economic participation with an image of individual responsibility that rarely challenges the wider distribution of political power.

Women appear less frequently as a political constituency whose access to decision-making should be expanded across all policy areas.

The distinction is visible in the way political documents frame women. They may be presented as:

• mothers and carers;
• entrepreneurs and workers;
• vulnerable citizens requiring protection;
• guardians of family and national values;
• beneficiaries of social programmes;
• political leaders and autonomous decision-makers.

These categories are not mutually exclusive. Family policy, childcare and social protection directly influence women’s ability to enter politics and remain in public life.

The problem arises when women’s political legitimacy is explained primarily through their family role. A programme may speak extensively about “supporting women” while saying little about candidate recruitment, party leadership, campaign finance or access to executive office.

A genuine gender-mainstreaming approach would not confine women to a dedicated section on family or social affairs. It would examine how taxation, transport, regional development, agriculture, employment policy and state budgets affect women and men differently.

The manifestos submitted for Kazakhstan’s Kurultai election will offer an immediate test. Will parties discuss women primarily as families, workers and beneficiaries, or will they set out concrete proposals concerning women’s political careers and access to decision-making?

Prominent women – and different paths to influence

Central Asia has produced several highly visible female political figures, but their careers illustrate different forms of authority.

Roza Otunbayeva remains the region’s only woman to have served as head of state. She became Kyrgyzstan’s interim president following the 2010 uprising and oversaw a constitutional transition during an exceptionally turbulent period. Her career demonstrated that a woman could reach the highest office, but it did not establish a lasting regional pattern.

Tanzila Narbaeva, chair of Uzbekistan’s Senate, represents a different route to prominence. She has held senior state positions and has become closely associated with labour, social policy and women’s rights. Her role makes her one of the region’s most institutionally prominent female politicians.

Dunyagozel Gulmanova, the speaker of Turkmenistan’s Assembly, similarly occupies one of the country’s highest formal offices. Yet the limited autonomy of Turkmenistan’s parliament makes it difficult to equate formal rank with independent political influence.

Saida Mirziyoyeva has emerged as one of Uzbekistan’s most prominent public officials through senior roles connected to the presidential administration and her visibility in areas including communications, education, culture and social policy. As the daughter of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, she also holds a distinctive position within Uzbekistan’s highly centralised presidential system. Her profile reflects both the senior institutional responsibilities she has assumed and her proximity to the executive centre.

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Her case should not be reduced either to a celebratory story of female advancement or to family ties alone. It instead illustrates how access to the highest levels of political influence in Central Asia can depend on a combination of official position, presidential confidence and proximity to the centre of power.

The region’s most visible women have reached prominence through very different paths: elections, administrative careers, parliamentary leadership, political upheaval and close association with presidential institutions.

A list of “famous women” therefore tells readers little unless it also asks where their authority comes from, what they control and whether their careers create opportunities for other women.

Beyond counting seats

Sustainable Development Goal 5 calls for women’s “full and effective participation” and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making. The wording is useful because “effective” participation cannot be measured by presence alone.

A fuller assessment must ask whether women:

• lead political parties;
• influence candidate selection;
• chair powerful parliamentary committees;
• control economic and security portfolios;
• govern regions, districts and cities;
• have access to campaign financing;
• can criticise executive policy;
• receive serious rather than gendered media coverage;
• can participate without harassment or intimidation.

It must also take account of the political environment itself.

A tightly controlled state can appoint women to senior offices while limiting the autonomy of all political actors. A more competitive system can still expose female candidates to discrimination, abuse and unequal access to resources.

Gender representation is therefore neither meaningless symbolism nor a complete measure of political openness. It is one important part of a larger political picture.

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Across Central Asia, the progress is real. Women occupy more parliamentary seats, electoral rules are beginning to alter candidate selection, and female officials have reached positions that would have been exceptional a generation ago.

But the gains are distributed unevenly.

Women are more likely to sit in a legislature than to govern a region. They are more likely to work inside a city administration than to serve as mayor. They are more likely to manage education or social policy than finance, energy or security. They are frequently praised as mothers, carers and community figures, but less often treated as unrestricted contenders for executive power.

Kazakhstan’s new Kurultai election offers a timely opportunity to observe this distinction.

The proportion of women elected on 23 August will provide one visible measure of change. The more consequential test will come later: which committees they lead, how much influence they exercise within their parties, and whether parliamentary representation becomes a route towards the institutions that command budgets, territories and strategic areas of government.

Across Central Asia, women have increasingly entered political institutions. The next question is whether those institutions are prepared to share power with them.

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

The post More Women in Central Asian Politics – But Where Is the Power? appeared first on Novastan English.

From Kazakhstan’s Kurultai to Uzbekistan’s Mahalla, governments across Central Asia are increasingly framing political reform through institutions rooted in local history rather than imported political models.

For much of the three decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union, discussions about political reform in Central Asia were conducted using a familiar international vocabulary. Elections, constitutions, political parties, decentralisation, civil society and good governance became the dominant language through which both governments and international organisations described political development.

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Increasingly, however, another vocabulary is emerging.

Across the region, governments are reviving concepts such as the Kurultai, the Mahalla, the Halk Maslahaty and councils of elders. These institutions are rarely presented as alternatives to constitutional government. Rather, they are increasingly portrayed as ways of making governance more legitimate, more participatory and more deeply rooted in national history.

This raises an important question. Are Central Asian governments simply giving traditional names to modern institutions? Or are they gradually developing a distinct political vocabulary through which reform itself is imagined?

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Political reform is not only about changing institutions. It is also about changing the language through which those institutions are understood and legitimised.

Beyond Imported Models

All political systems derive legitimacy from history as much as from law. France invokes the Revolution and the Republic. Britain draws upon Parliament and Magna Carta. The United States continues to frame politics through the language of its Founding Fathers.

Central Asia is increasingly doing the same.

Rather than presenting reform exclusively through concepts inherited from the Soviet period or borrowed from international governance discourse, governments across the region increasingly anchor their legitimacy in historical narratives that resonate more directly with domestic political traditions.

This does not necessarily represent a rejection of constitutionalism or modern statehood. Instead, it reflects an attempt to reconcile contemporary governance with locally meaningful historical references.

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Kazakhstan: The Kurultai and the Listening State

Kazakhstan perhaps best illustrates this evolution.

Since the January 2022 events, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has promoted the idea of a “Listening State”, constitutional reform and the National Kurultai as central elements of the “New Kazakhstan”. Alongside referendums, electoral reform and strengthened consultative mechanisms, the Kurultai has become part of a broader effort to redefine how political authority is presented.

The Kurultai is neither a parliament nor an opposition forum. Rather, it functions as a consultative platform bringing together selected representatives of public life, academics, experts and civil society to deliberate on questions of national identity, reform and long-term development.

Whether viewed as meaningful consultation or carefully managed participation, the Kurultai illustrates an important point. It seeks legitimacy not only through elections or representative institutions, but also through an institution whose historical roots reach back to the political culture of the Eurasian steppe.

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Uzbekistan: The Mahalla Between Community and State

Uzbekistan offers a different but equally important example through the Mahalla.

Often translated simply as a neighbourhood community, the Mahalla is in practice much more than a local tradition. It plays a role in social assistance to families in need, neighbourhood mediation, community mobilisation, welfare delivery and the administrative interface between citizens and the state, including in sensitive areas such as the registration and monitoring of religious communities.

It also intervenes in family life, including disputes concerning marriage, divorce and domestic violence. In many cases, Mahalla-level mediation provides rapid community support. Yet it has also been criticised for encouraging reconciliation in situations of gender-based violence, discouraging divorce or prioritising family cohesion over the protection and autonomy of women experiencing abuse.

Under the banner of the “New Uzbekistan”, the Mahalla has been presented not as a relic of the past but as a cornerstone of modern governance. Its strength lies precisely in this dual nature: deeply embedded in everyday community life while simultaneously serving as an important interface between society and the state.

Kyrgyzstan: Contesting the Meaning of the Kurultai

If Kazakhstan presents the Kurultai as a consultative institution, Kyrgyzstan illustrates how the same historical concept can become an object of democratic contestation.

Successive debates over the People’s Kurultai have revolved around fundamental constitutional questions. Should it merely advise elected institutions? Should it exercise oversight? Does it strengthen democratic participation or risk creating a parallel source of political legitimacy?

Rather than providing definitive answers, Kyrgyzstan demonstrates that historical institutions themselves become arenas of political debate when adapted to modern constitutional systems.

Turkmenistan: Tradition as State Legitimacy

Turkmenistan represents perhaps the most institutionalised version of this regional tendency.

The Halk Maslahaty, together with councils of elders and the symbolic authority of aksakals, presents political authority through the language of continuity, wisdom and national consensus. These institutions are not designed as arenas of political competition. Instead, they frame presidential authority within narratives of collective consultation and historical legitimacy.

Their significance therefore lies less in electoral politics than in the symbolic vocabulary through which political authority is justified.

Tajikistan: Statehood, Unity and the Persianate Legacy

Tajikistan follows a different path.

Its political vocabulary is less centred on Turkic or nomadic traditions than on national unity, statehood and the Persianate cultural heritage. References to the Samanid dynasty, the Tajik language and the country’s civil war increasingly serve to anchor contemporary political authority within a narrative of historical continuity and national resilience.

At the local level, elders and community mediation continue to play important social roles. While these traditions are not usually presented as formal instruments of political reform, they nevertheless perform a similar function: linking governance to ideas of continuity, cohesion and collective identity.

A Region Reimagining Its Past

Taken together, these examples suggest a broader regional phenomenon.

Central Asia is not abandoning elections, constitutions or representative institutions. Nor is it simply returning to pre-modern forms of governance.

Instead, governments are increasingly combining modern constitutional structures with institutions, concepts and symbols drawn from selectively reinterpreted historical traditions. The result is neither a rejection of international governance norms nor a simple revival of the past. It is a process of institutional hybridisation.

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This trend also intersects with a wider romanticisation of Turkic, steppe and nomadic heritage. Institutions such as the Kurultai or the authority of aksakals are often presented as evidence of an ancient political culture rooted in consultation, consensus and collective wisdom. Such narratives can offer valuable alternatives to the assumption that political modernity must always be expressed through imported institutional models. Yet they also carry risks. Complex historical realities can be simplified into reassuring myths, while diverse and sometimes hierarchical political traditions become reimagined as timeless expressions of participatory governance.

Türkiye’s recent decision to replace “Central Asia” with “Turkestan” in parts of its school curriculum reflects this wider intellectual shift. Increasingly, the region is being described through historical and cultural concepts associated with the Turkic world rather than Soviet-era geography or externally imposed terminology. Whether one views this as decolonisation, cultural revival or geopolitical symbolism, it illustrates the growing importance of historical narratives in shaping contemporary political identities.

More Than Words

The emergence of this vocabulary reflects deeper transformations.

A generation with little or no memory of the Soviet Union has reached adulthood. Nation-building has entered a more mature phase. Governments increasingly seek legitimacy not only through economic development or institutional reform but also through narratives that resonate with national history and collective identity.

This does not mean these institutions necessarily produce more accountable governance. Traditional concepts can broaden participation, but they may also reinforce hierarchy, exclude dissenting voices or provide new symbolic foundations for existing power structures.

The question facing Central Asia is therefore not whether it is returning to its past. It is not. Nor is it simply reproducing Western constitutional models. Increasingly, the region appears to be constructing something in between: modern states that seek legitimacy through institutions inspired as much by their own historical narratives as by international governance norms.

Whether these hybrid models ultimately strengthen accountability, broaden participation or merely repackage existing political authority remains an open question. What is already clear, however, is that Central Asia is no longer only reforming its institutions. It is also reinventing the language through which political legitimacy itself is imagined.

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

The post The Vocabulary of Reform: Why Central Asia Is Reimagining Its Political Traditions appeared first on Novastan English.

Kazakhstan’s next parliamentary elections are unlikely to determine who governs the country. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s political dominance is not seriously in question. Yet the vote matters because it will test something arguably more significant: whether the “New Kazakhstan” launched after the January 2022 crisis is gradually producing a more representative political system, or merely refining the mechanisms through which political participation is organised and managed.

The elections should therefore not be viewed in isolation. They are the latest stage in a broader political sequence that has included the 2022 constitutional referendum, early presidential and parliamentary elections, the institutionalisation of the National Kurultai, the expansion of direct local elections, and the 2024 referendum on the construction of Kazakhstan’s first nuclear power plant.

Taken together, these developments illustrate Tokayev’s attempt to redefine the political rules of the “New Kazakhstan”: more consultation, broader participation and renewed institutional legitimacy, but without embracing unconstrained political competition. Rather than dismantling the existing political model, the reforms seek to recalibrate it.

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The constitutional referendum of June 2022 marked the beginning of this new political cycle. It reduced elements of the institutional legacy associated with former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, restored the Constitutional Court, modified the electoral system for the Mazhilis and reintroduced a mixed electoral model combining proportional representation with single-member constituencies. The electoral threshold for parliamentary representation was lowered from seven to five percent, while party lists became subject to quotas requiring the inclusion of women, young people and persons with disabilities.

These reforms gave the 2023 parliamentary elections a more pluralistic appearance than previous contests. Six parties entered the Mazhilis: Amanat, Auyl, Respublica, Aq Jol, the People’s Party of Kazakhstan and the National Social Democratic Party. Baytaq, a newly registered environmental party, also participated but failed to cross the electoral threshold. The return of single-member constituencies enabled independent candidates and locally known figures to compete, reintroducing a territorial and personal dimension that had largely disappeared under the previous fully proportional system.

Each of these parties also illustrates a different facet of Kazakhstan’s evolving political landscape. Amanat remains the country’s dominant political force, while Aq Jol continues to position itself as a business-oriented party. Auyl focuses primarily on rural development and agricultural interests, Respublica has sought to appeal to younger entrepreneurs and business circles, and the National Social Democratic Party remains the closest actor to a traditional parliamentary opposition. Baytaq’s participation, despite failing to enter parliament, reflected the growing visibility of environmental issues within Kazakhstan’s public debate.

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Yet the political playing field remained highly asymmetrical. Amanat retained a commanding majority, while newer and smaller parties continued to operate within an institutional environment shaped by presidential authority, administrative resources and limited opposition capacity. The central question was therefore not whether Kazakhstan had become a fully competitive democracy, but whether the reforms had genuinely widened the space for political representation.

The National Kurultai is perhaps the clearest illustration of Tokayev’s broader political philosophy. Neither a parliament, nor an opposition forum, nor a conventional civil society assembly, it serves as a consultative platform bringing together selected public figures, academics, experts and representatives of society to discuss questions of national identity, reform, social cohesion and long-term development.

Supporters view the Kurultai as an attempt to broaden consultation and strengthen dialogue between state and society. Critics argue that its participants, agenda and political boundaries remain largely determined from above. Yet its significance lies less in the decisions it produces than in what it reveals about the model of governance that is emerging. Rather than encouraging adversarial politics, the Kurultai reflects a preference for structured consultation within institutions designed and convened by the presidency itself.

Political participation has also expanded below the national level. The gradual introduction of direct elections for district and rural akims, alongside efforts to strengthen local representative bodies, has created new arenas of political competition and accountability. Although these reforms remain limited and continue to operate within a highly centralised political system, they nevertheless provide opportunities for greater citizen engagement and have contributed to a more diverse local political landscape.

The October 2024 referendum on the construction of Kazakhstan’s first nuclear power plant reinforced many of these dynamics. Formally, citizens were asked to decide whether the world’s largest producer of uranium should embark upon a new stage in its energy strategy. The official result – a clear majority in favour – strengthened the government’s mandate for the project. At the same time, the campaign revived familiar debates concerning unequal access to media, pressure on critics and the limited capacity of organised opposition to compete on equal terms. The referendum illustrated Tokayev’s willingness to seek public legitimacy for major strategic decisions while maintaining firm control over the broader political environment.

Civil society has also evolved since 2022. Although important restrictions remain, Kazakhstan today possesses a more diverse ecosystem of public councils, expert communities, civic initiatives and domestic election observers than a decade ago. Online debate has become more visible, and specialised organisations increasingly contribute to discussions on public policy, governance and social issues. The extent to which these actors can influence decision-making remains contested, but they form part of the broader institutional landscape that will shape the forthcoming elections.

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These domestic reforms also have an international dimension. As Kazakhstan continues to pursue its multi-vector foreign policy while deepening cooperation with partners including the European Union, China, Türkiye and the Gulf states, demonstrating gradual political modernisation has become part of the country’s diplomatic positioning. Electoral reform is therefore not only a domestic governance issue, but also an element of Kazakhstan’s international image as a stable, reform-oriented middle power.

This is the central paradox of Kazakhstan’s current political evolution. The state has undeniably expanded the repertoire of participation through constitutional reform, referendums, direct local elections, single-member constituencies, public consultation mechanisms and the National Kurultai. Yet participation remains carefully channelled, institutionally managed and politically bounded.

That is why the next parliamentary elections matter. Not because they are likely to produce a dramatic alternation of power, but because they will provide another indication of how this evolving political model functions in practice. Will single-member constituencies produce genuinely accountable local representatives? Can parties such as Respublica, Aq Jol, Auyl or the National Social Democratic Party develop into authentic vehicles for social interests rather than primarily institutional actors? Will new political movements, including those focused on environmental, regional or generational concerns, establish a more durable presence within Kazakhstan’s political system?

Equally important will be the quality of the electoral process itself: candidate registration, campaign conditions, access to the media, the work of election commissions, complaints and appeals procedures, domestic election observation and the ability of civil society to participate freely in public debate.

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Kazakhstan has undoubtedly changed since January 2022. The political system inherited from the Nazarbayev era has evolved, introducing new institutions and expanding opportunities for participation. Yet the “New Kazakhstan” remains an unfinished political project, balancing reform with continuity, consultation with control, stability with accountability.

Whether this trajectory ultimately produces a genuinely more competitive political system remains uncertain. What is already clear, however, is that Kazakhstan is no longer seeking legitimacy solely through promises of stability and economic development. Increasingly, it also seeks legitimacy through institutional reform, managed political participation and structured consultation. The next parliamentary elections will therefore be less a verdict on the government than another measure of how far the “New Kazakhstan” can evolve while preserving the political model on which it continues to rest.

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

The post Kazakhstan’s Next Elections: Between Reform and Managed Competition appeared first on Novastan English.

At Central Asian airports, remittances do not always look like money. They can look like taped cardboard boxes arriving from Istanbul, oversized suitcases from Moscow, bags of clothes bought in Turkish markets, phones, cosmetics, fabrics, spare parts, children’s shoes or household appliances carried across borders as luggage. In a village in southern Tajikistan, they can look like a half-finished house paid for by a son working in Russia. In Kyrgyzstan, they can arrive as a notification on a banking app. In Uzbekistan, they can help pay for a wedding, medical treatment, a sibling’s education or the first stock for a small shop.

Remittances are often described as a financial flow. In Central Asia, they are closer to an invisible welfare state. They pay for food, debt, construction, school fees, ceremonies, medicine and daily consumption. They keep families afloat, sustain rural economies and reduce pressure on governments that cannot create enough jobs at home. But they also reveal one of the region’s deepest vulnerabilities: millions of households depend on wages earned elsewhere.

The dependence is most visible in Tajikistan. For years, Tajikistan has ranked among the most remittance-dependent countries in the world. Money sent home by workers abroad has represented more than a third of GDP in recent years, and in some estimates even more. The numbers matter, but they do not fully capture the social reality. In parts of the country, especially poorer and rural regions, migration is not an exception but a stage of life. Young men leave after school, before marriage, after marriage, or when family debts accumulate. They go to Moscow, St Petersburg, regional Russian cities, construction sites, markets, warehouses and service jobs. Some return seasonally. Others stay away for years.

This absence has reshaped village life. In some Tajik communities, working-age men are missing for long stretches of the year. Women, grandparents and children manage daily routines, land, livestock, school, family ceremonies and household budgets. The money sent from Russia gives women responsibility, but not always authority. A wife may manage the household, but major decisions can still be made by an absent husband, his parents or the wider family. Migration can strengthen families by giving them income, but it can also strain marriages, delay return, create second households abroad or leave women carrying both economic and social burdens.

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Kyrgyzstan tells a related but slightly different story. Labour migration, especially to Russia and Kazakhstan, has long supported households across the south and in rural areas. Remittances once represented close to a third of GDP; more recently the share has fallen, partly because of economic diversification and changing migration patterns. Yet the money remains crucial. It pays for homes in Osh, Jalal-Abad and Batken, supports families in villages, and helps households survive when local wages are low. Unlike Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan also benefits from membership in the Eurasian Economic Union, which gives its citizens easier access to the Russian labour market than Tajik or Uzbek migrants. But this advantage does not remove the underlying dependence on external work.

Uzbekistan is different again. Its economy is larger and more diversified, so remittances make up a lower share of GDP than in Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan. But in absolute terms, Uzbekistan is one of the region’s major remittance recipients because of its population size and the large number of citizens working abroad. Uzbek migrants work in Russia, Kazakhstan, Türkiye, South Korea, the Gulf and increasingly other destinations. The state has tried to regulate labour migration more actively, including through organised recruitment and agreements with foreign employers. Still, much of the system remains family-driven: someone leaves, sends money, returns, leaves again, or helps another relative migrate.

Kazakhstan occupies another position in this regional economy. It sends migrants abroad too, but it is also a destination. Workers from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan come to Kazakhstan for construction, agriculture, services, markets and domestic work. In this sense, Kazakhstan is not only part of the remittance map as a country of origin, but also as a regional labour hub. Turkmenistan, by contrast, is harder to include with precision. Migration exists, but reliable data is limited and the country’s closed political environment makes the scale of remittances more difficult to assess.

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How the money is sent has changed dramatically. In the 1990s and 2000s, many families associated remittances with money-transfer offices and familiar brands such as Western Union, MoneyGram, Zolotaya Korona, Unistream or Contact. A migrant would queue, send cash, and relatives would collect it in a bank branch or transfer office. That world has not disappeared, but it has been transformed by sanctions, banking restrictions, digitalisation and the spread of smartphones.

Today, remittances often move through mobile banking apps, card-to-card transfers, e-wallets, national payment systems and fintech platforms. A migrant in Moscow can send money from a Russian bank account to a relative’s card in Dushanbe, Osh, Samarkand or Namangan. In Tajikistan, fintech and banking services such as Alif, Dushanbe City, Eskhata or other local platforms have become part of everyday financial life. In Uzbekistan, digital payment ecosystems such as Click, Payme, Uzum Bank and bank apps allow money to move quickly into household budgets. In Kyrgyzstan, mobile banking and card systems have made transfers faster and more routine.

This technical shift matters. When remittances arrive instantly, migration becomes part of daily household management. Money is no longer only a monthly transfer collected in cash. It can pay for groceries, utilities, school supplies, medicine or construction materials almost in real time. The migrant is physically absent but financially present. A father in Russia can still pay a bill in Tajikistan. A brother in South Korea can send money for a wedding. A son in Kazakhstan can support his mother’s medical treatment. Digital transfers make separation easier to manage, but they also normalise it.

Yet not everything moves through banking apps. Central Asia also has a “box economy”. Shuttle traders, relatives and small entrepreneurs carry goods across borders, especially through routes linking the region with Türkiye, Russia, Dubai and China. Istanbul is particularly important. Flights between Istanbul and Tashkent, Bishkek, Dushanbe, Almaty and other cities carry not only tourists and business travellers, but also small traders moving textiles, clothes, shoes, cosmetics and household goods. Some items are gifts. Others are for resale. Many fall somewhere in between. The result is a blurred line between migration, remittances and trade.

This matters because goods sent or carried home can function like remittances. A migrant may not send cash, but may bring phones, clothes or equipment that can be sold. A woman may travel to Istanbul, buy merchandise, and return to sell it in a bazaar or through Instagram and Telegram. A relative abroad may send goods through cargo services rather than money through a bank. In household economies where cash is scarce and small trade is common, goods are another way of transferring value.

The comparison with elite mobility is revealing. Central Asian governments also promote a very different kind of movement: students, civil servants and professionals sent abroad through state-backed scholarship schemes. Kazakhstan’s Bolashak and Uzbekistan’s El-Yurt Umidi belong to this world. They are designed to bring skills, networks and prestige back home. But they highlight the contrast at the heart of Central Asian mobility. Some citizens leave as future administrators, engineers or specialists. Many more leave as builders, drivers, cleaners, carers, traders or seasonal workers whose earnings keep households afloat.

Also read on Novastan: “I only needed a passport” : In Ukraine, Central Asian prisoners of wars caught between loyalty and regret

Russia remains the centre of this system, but it has become a more uncertain centre. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has needed migrant labour more than ever, especially in construction, manufacturing, logistics and services. Labour shortages have increased the demand for Central Asian workers. At the same time, migrants face a harsher environment: police checks, nationalist rhetoric, bureaucratic uncertainty, military recruitment pressure and social hostility. After the Crocus City Hall attack near Moscow in March 2024, Tajik migrants in particular reported more raids, deportations and difficulties entering Russia. Tajikistan even summoned the Russian ambassador over the treatment of its citizens.

This has exposed the fragility of a model built on migration. For Russia, Central Asian workers are necessary but politically vulnerable. For Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, migration reduces unemployment and brings in money, but it also exports social problems rather than solving them. If Russia tightens rules, deports workers or becomes less attractive, households across Central Asia feel the shock. If the rouble weakens, remittances lose value. If migrants face discrimination, the cost is borne not only by them, but by families waiting at home.

Destinations are diversifying. South Korea attracts workers through more regulated labour schemes. Türkiye combines labour, trade and cultural proximity. The Gulf has become more visible. Kazakhstan remains a regional magnet. Europe is still more difficult to access, but increasingly present in aspirations and small migration networks. But diversification is uneven and often expensive. For many families, Russia remains the most accessible option because of language, networks, transport links and relatively low entry costs.

The central question is therefore not whether remittances are good or bad. For many families, they are indispensable. They reduce poverty, finance education, build homes and open small businesses. Without them, social hardship would be much deeper. But dependence on remittances also allows states to postpone harder questions: how to create jobs at home, how to raise rural incomes, how to protect migrants abroad, how to support women left in charge of households, and how to turn money sent home into productive investment rather than only consumption.

Also read on Novastan: In Kyrgyzstan, one in four families lives below the poverty line

Remittances are Central Asia’s invisible welfare state, but they are also a warning. They show the strength of family solidarity across borders, and the weakness of domestic labour markets. They connect Tajik villages, Kyrgyz towns and Uzbek neighbourhoods to Moscow, Istanbul, Almaty, Seoul and Dubai. They arrive as bank notifications, cash transfers, cargo parcels and taped cardboard boxes. They build houses and empty villages. They pay for weddings and prolong absence. They keep economies moving, but they also reveal how much of Central Asia’s future is still being financed by people who had to leave.

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

The post Money, boxes and absent men: the hidden economy reshaping Central Asia appeared first on Novastan English.

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.

Novastan est le seul média en français et en allemand spécialisé sur l'Asie centrale. Entièrement associatif, il fonctionne grâce à votre participation. Nous sommes indépendants et pour le rester, nous avons besoin de vous ! Vous pouvez nous soutenir à partir de 2 euros par mois (défiscalisé à 66 %), ou en devenant membre actif par ici.

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.