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.

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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.

Read more on Novastan: Minsk’s Eastern Bet: Why Central Asia Matters More Than Ever

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.

Read more on Novastan: L’Ouzbékistan lance un indice Plov

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.

Read more on Novastan: The Caspian Sea Is Retreating. Central Asia Is Not Ready

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.

Read more on Novastan: Que vend-on à la frontière tadjiko-afghane ?

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.

Read more on Novastan: Football de rue

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.

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

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.

Read more on Novastan: Hitting the road: the first female bus drivers in Uzbekistan

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.

Read more on Novastan: In Tajikistan, daughters-in-law face a hidden system of control

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.

Read more on Novastan: Kirghizie : Des émirs féminins à la présidente

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.

Read more on Novastan: Saïda Mirzioïeva, la fille du président à l’ascension politique fulgurante

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.

Also read on Novastan: Kazakhstan’s Next Elections: Between Reform and Managed Competition

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?

Also read on Novastan: The Lexicon of Kazakh Decolonisation

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.

Also read on Novastan: “Alaqan”: Aida Adilbek’s decolonial documentary cinema

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.

Also read on Novastan: Manas and the Making of Kyrgyzstan

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.

Also read on Novastan: Dead in the Water: Has the Common Turkic Alphabet Failed to Boost Turkish Influence in Central Asia?

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.

Also read on Novastan: Tokayev’s new term: Central Election Commission announces final results of Kazakh presidential election

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.

Also read on Novastan: Kazakhstan: The Blurred Record of the January 2022 Unrest

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.

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

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.

Also read on Novastan: In Kazakhstan, the futuristic city of “Alatau” reaches a new milestone with special status

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.

Also read on Novastan: In Paris, an Uzbekistani NGO’s fight against human trafficking recognised with the French Republic Human Rights Prize

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.

Also read on Novastan: The paradoxes of migration from Tajikistan to Russia: an interview with Dr Elena Borisova

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the trailer here: My Father Genghis Khan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the trailer here: Mulberry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Central Asia is often described as the next frontier in the global race for rare earths. The reality is both more promising and more complicated. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and their neighbours do hold major reserves of critical raw materials, from uranium and copper to chromium, manganese, tungsten, antimony, graphite and rare earth elements. But much remains uncertain: some deposits are still under exploration, processing capacity is limited, and the most valuable parts of the supply chain remain outside the region.

What is already clear, however, is that governments, state mining companies and foreign investors are moving fast. The European Union has signed critical raw materials partnerships with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. American investors are looking at tungsten and rare earths. France is active in uranium. Development banks are financing graphite and mining governance. China remains the unavoidable reference point, because it dominates global refining and processing.

For Central Asia, the question is not only what lies underground. It is whether the region can avoid becoming simply another supplier of raw materials for richer industrial powers.

Why these minerals matter

Also read on Novastan: Carbon neutral by 2060? Kazakhstan’s green pledge faces a reality check

The term “critical raw materials” can sound technical, but the products they make possible are familiar. A smartphone contains copper, tungsten, rare earth elements and other metals. An electric vehicle depends on lithium, graphite, copper and sometimes cobalt. Wind turbines require steel, copper and powerful permanent magnets. Satellites, missiles, semiconductors and aircraft all need specialised metals.

Rare earths are only one part of the story. They include elements such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, cerium, lanthanum and yttrium. Some are used in permanent magnets for electric vehicles, wind turbines, drones, missiles and electronic devices. Others are used in polishing, catalysts, lasers or specialised industrial applications.

But Central Asia’s strategic importance is wider than rare earths. Uranium is essential for nuclear power. Copper is needed for electrical grids, renewable energy infrastructure, electric vehicles and data centres. Graphite is used in battery anodes. Tungsten hardens steel and is used in cutting tools, aerospace and defence. Antimony is used in flame retardants, ammunition, batteries and semiconductors. Chromium and manganese are essential for steel. Titanium is used in aircraft, spacecraft and medical implants. Molybdenum strengthens steel used in pipelines, industry and defence. Gallium is important for semiconductors, radar systems and advanced electronics.

In other words, the issue is not only about “green energy”. It is also about industrial power, military technology, digital infrastructure and geopolitical dependency.

What is actually known

According to the OECD, Central Asia holds a significant share of global reserves of several critical raw materials. The region accounts for around 39% of global manganese ore reserves, 31% of chromium, 20% of lead, 13% of zinc, 9% of titanium, 6% of aluminium, and about 5% each of copper, cobalt and molybdenum.

Kazakhstan is the strongest player. It is already the world’s largest uranium producer and can export many of the materials included in the European Union’s critical raw materials list. Its known strengths include uranium, chromium, manganese, copper, titanium, tungsten, beryllium, gallium and rare earth potential.

Uzbekistan is also increasingly visible. The country has large copper resources, uranium, molybdenum, tungsten, gold-associated metals and rare metals. Its mining sector is dominated by national champions such as Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Complex, Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Company and Navoiyuran.

Kyrgyzstan has a smaller mining sector, but it is important for antimony, gold and rare earth occurrences. Tajikistan is also relevant for antimony, silver and rare metals. Turkmenistan remains the least transparent case, with public information still much thinner than for the rest of the region.

Kazakhstan’s rare earth moment

The strongest recent rare earth story comes from Kazakhstan. In 2025, the Kazakhstani authorities announced the discovery of the Zhana Kazakhstan deposit, reportedly containing more than 20 million metric tons of rare earth metals. The deposit is said to include neodymium, cerium, lanthanum and yttrium, with an average content of about 700 grams per ton.

The announcement attracted attention because neodymium and related elements are central to permanent magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and defence technologies. But it should be treated with caution. A deposit is not the same as a mine. A mine is not the same as a processing industry. And processing rare earths is technically difficult, expensive and environmentally sensitive.

This is one of the main problems in the global rare earth race. China does not dominate only because it has resources. It dominates because it controls refining, separation and manufacturing capacity. For Central Asia, the real challenge is therefore not only geological. It is industrial.

The companies entering the race

In Kazakhstan, several national and foreign actors are already positioning themselves.

Tau-Ken Samruk, the state mining company, is expected to play a central role in exploration and strategic mineral projects. Kazatomprom remains the key uranium actor, while Eurasian Resources Group is important for aluminium, copper, cobalt and gallium. ERG has announced plans to produce gallium in Kazakhstan, a metal used in semiconductors, radar systems and missile guidance.

American interest is also growing. Cove Capital has been linked to tungsten projects in Kazakhstan, including Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty, in partnership with Tau-Ken Samruk. Tungsten is strategically important because it is used in hard metals, defence and industrial tools, while Western countries are trying to reduce dependence on China.

Sarytogan Graphite, active in Kazakhstan’s Karaganda region, is another example. Graphite is essential for battery anodes, especially in electric vehicles. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development acquired a stake in the company in 2024, showing that development banks are also entering the critical minerals field.

In Uzbekistan, the main actors are domestic state companies. Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Complex is central for copper, molybdenum and other metals. Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Company remains one of the country’s major mining giants. Navoiyuran, the Uzbekistani uranium company, has signed with France’s Orano to develop a new uranium mining venture.

These examples show that the critical minerals race is not only a matter of abstract geopolitics. It is already visible in company strategies, financing decisions and bilateral agreements.

Europe, China, Russia and the United States

For Europe, Central Asia is attractive because it offers potential diversification. The European Union signed a strategic partnership with Kazakhstan in 2022 on sustainable raw materials, batteries and renewable hydrogen value chains. In 2024, it signed a similar memorandum with Uzbekistan. The first EU-Central Asia summit in Samarkand in 2025 also placed critical raw materials within a broader agenda of trade, transport, energy and connectivity.

For the United States, Central Asian minerals are part of a larger attempt to reduce dependence on China in strategic supply chains. Interest in tungsten, rare earths, gallium and other materials fits into this broader competition.

Also read on Novastan: L’héritage de Tabochar : l’extraction d’uranium au Tadjikistan et ses conséquences

China remains the central actor, even when it is not directly mentioned. It is the world’s dominant processor of rare earths and many other critical minerals. Any Western strategy on Central Asian resources is therefore, implicitly or explicitly, about reducing China’s leverage.

Russia still matters through legacy infrastructure, Soviet-era geological knowledge, uranium links and regional influence. But Moscow is no longer the only external actor able to shape Central Asia’s mineral future. This is one reason why the topic is becoming politically sensitive.

The real bottleneck: processing

The most important part of the story is not extraction. It is processing.

A country can have uranium, copper, tungsten or rare earth deposits and still capture only a small part of the value. The highest profits and strategic leverage often come from refining, separation, metallurgy, battery components, magnets and advanced manufacturing.

This is where Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are trying to change the model. Both countries want more local value creation, not only raw exports. Uzbekistan is promoting mining reform and industrial processing. Kazakhstan is trying to position itself as a partner for value chains rather than just a supplier of ore.

Also read on Novastan: En Ouzbékistan, la percée saoudienne dans le secteur de l’énergie

The risk is obvious. Central Asia has already experienced extractive economic models: cotton, oil, gas, uranium and metals have often generated revenue without creating diversified, high-value economies. Critical minerals could reproduce the same pattern under a greener label.

Environmental and social risks

Critical minerals are often presented as tools of the green transition, but their extraction can be environmentally damaging. Mining requires water, energy, chemicals and waste management. Rare earth processing can be particularly polluting if not properly regulated. In a region already facing water stress, desertification and fragile ecosystems, this matters.

There are also governance questions. Who benefits from new mining projects? How transparent are contracts? Are local communities consulted? Are environmental standards enforced? Do projects create skilled employment, or mainly export raw materials?

Also read on Novastan: En Asie centrale, le marché des véhicules électriques fait ses débuts

For Central Asian governments, the opportunity is real. But so is the danger of a “green resource curse”, where global demand for clean technologies reinforces old patterns of dependency, opacity and environmental damage.

A starter pack for readers

The simplest way to understand the issue is this:

• Rare earths such as neodymium and dysprosium are used in magnets for electric vehicles, wind turbines and defence technologies.
• Uranium is used for nuclear power.
• Copper is used in electrical grids, renewable energy, electric vehicles and data centres.
• Graphite is used in battery anodes.
• Lithium is used in rechargeable batteries, though Central Asia is not yet a major global lithium centre.
• Cobalt is used in batteries and aerospace alloys.
• Tungsten is used in hard metals, cutting tools, aerospace and military equipment.
• Antimony is used in flame retardants, ammunition, batteries and semiconductors.
• Chromium and manganese are used in steelmaking.
• Titanium is used in aircraft, spacecraft and medical implants.
• Molybdenum is used in high-strength steel.
• Gallium is used in semiconductors, radar and advanced electronics.
• Beryllium is used in aerospace, satellites, telecommunications and defence systems.

This is why Central Asia’s mineral base is suddenly being watched so closely. The region is not only sitting on obscure metals. It may hold some of the materials needed for the energy transition, digital technologies and modern defence industries.

More than a mine?

The coming years will show whether Central Asia can turn critical minerals into a development opportunity. The region has the resources. It has growing diplomatic attention. It has national mining companies and foreign investors willing to engage.

But the decisive question is whether Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and their neighbours can move beyond extraction. Without processing, transparency, environmental standards and local value creation, the new critical minerals boom could simply repeat older patterns of dependency.

Also read on Novastan: Le Kazakhstan renforce son emprise sur son uranium face à une demande mondiale croissante

Central Asia is not yet the next rare earth superpower. But it is becoming an important region in the global competition for critical raw materials. For the region itself, the challenge is to ensure that what lies beneath the ground helps build something above it.

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

The post What lies beneath Central Asia? Rare earths, critical minerals and the new race for resources appeared first on Novastan English.

Citizens from Central Asia now represent the largest group of foreign nationals fighting in the Russian army. Novastan spoke with several of them after their capture by Ukrainian forces. Their accounts reveal how Central Asian migrants have become an especially vulnerable recruitment pool for Moscow.

In the yard of a military prison in Lviv region, West Ukraine, dozens of prisonners silently head towards the dining hall. The walls surrounding them are filled with portraits of Ukrainian prominent nationalist figures such as Daniel of Galicia or Stepan Bandera. In the largest prisoner camp in the whole country, everything is in Ukrainian, from the inscriptions to orders given to prisoners.

“There is no trouble here, they are pretty calm and do not brawl much” says a prison guard. In front of him, prisonners start entering the lunchroom, their faces blank. Some of them have already been detained for four years. Many prisonners clearly appear to have Asian features. Among them, some Russian citizens from Siberian republics of Buryatia and Yakutia, where mobilisation rates are particularly high.

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Many others come from the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia. “From what I saw, a majority of foreigners in the Russian army come from this region”, explains Khushbakht Peruzaliev. In spring 2024, the 47-year old Tajikistani citizen signed a contract to serve the Russian Army : “I was told that I would not have to go to the front or anything of this kind. They said I would only be working in a warehouse, so I accepted”, he remembers. But soon, these promises revealed to be lies. Few weeks later, the man was captured by Ukrainian forces after being injured in a frontal assault in Donetsk oblast.

Far beyond the 1,400 Africans or 200 Indian citizens that the Russian army recruited since the beginning of the war, more than 12,000 soldiers from Central Asia have already participated in the “special military operation”, according to public data published in April 2026 by the Ukrainian war prisoners coordination. More than half of foreign soldiers serving Russia are originally from Central Asia.

Passport promises amid raids and deportations

In Mykolaiv penitentiary, all Central Asian soldiers that Novastan met were already in Russia before 2022. “Recruitment efforts towards foreigners were targeting on both migrant workers and people who were in jail”, according to an officer of the Ukrainian coordination of war prisonners.

Ilyas, a 40-year old Kyrgyz citizen, worked as a drink retailer in Moscow since 2007. He signed his contract in April 2025. “During the hiring process, they didn’t directly promise me citizenship, but I knew I would have the possibility to obtain it after” he says.

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Indeed, in January 2024, a decree was signed by Vladimir Putin, allowing certain foreigners to obtain Russian citizenship under the condition that they served the army, especially during the “special military operation”. The number of foreigners who benefited from this process remains unknown.

In Ukraine, most prisoners from Central Asia mention that they were sent to the front only after a short training, which caused heavy casualties. “We were moving to a village, when on the road, drones already started appearing and targeting us”, Ilyas remembers. He barely escaped, only to be taken prisoner shortly after.

Khushbakht Peruzaliev, a prisoner whose wife and children still live in Ryazan, 200 kilometers south east of Moscow, was harmed during an intense artillery bombing, while he was moving towards Ukrainian lines. “Half of the group was killed immediately, all 200 [Russian military code for death, Editor’s note]”. 

He describes a general climate of fear that began to appear “right after the Crocus City Hall attack”. This terrorist attack committed by Tajikistani citizens was claimed by the Islamic State of Khorasan, and killed 149 people. Following this tragedy, living conditions of Central Asian migrants in Russia got tougher. “Raids against Tajiks” became frequent, during which migrants were “barred from Russian territory”, according to Khushbakht Peruzaliev.

The Tajik migrant abandoned plans to renew his expired passport, for fear of being arrested on his way to the embassy in Moscow. “Eventually, special police forces started checking the construction site where I was working”, he explains. During police controls, he was promised to obtain citizenship if he accepted to join the army.

Caress Schenck, a political science professor at Nazarbayev University in Astana, acknowledges that “Tajiks were indeed more targeted than other ethnic groups from Central Asia, after the Crocus City Hall attack”. According to the Ukrainian coordination of war prisoners, Tajiks represent the second most represented nationality in the Russian army, with more than 3,400 recruits, while 4,800 Uzbeks and 2,400 Kazakhs also joined the army.

Caress Schenck reminds that, however, in Russia “migration control policies, raids and pressure to join the army are still highly influenced by the news cycle”.

Other ethnic groups have also been targeted since the beginning of the war, depending on the context : “Sometimes, anyone with Asian features can be perceived as suspicious”, according to the researcher.

Since November 2025, some foreigners in Russia are required to present a commitment contract in the army to obtain Russian citizenship or a residency permit. People from Central Asia are particularly impacted by these policies, as they make up more than 40% migrants living in Russia in 2020.

Despite that, all prisoners met by Novastan explain that they signed the contract by their own will to obtain a Russian passport, Caress Schenck mentions a strong administrative pressure on migrants that “reduces their ability to act and make their own decisions, rather than offering them a real choice”

The ideological vulnerability of migrants

In addition to the precarious administrative status of Central Asian migrants, the Russian army bases its mobilization stategy on shared ideological patterns. “As for me, I wanted to live in Russia. I considered that I had the right to obtain citizenship, so to earn it, I had to serve the homeland” says Jasur Islamov with a detached voice. After a year and a half in the army, in March 2025, the 38-year old man was promised he would obtain citizenship if he continued serving. A few weeks later, Jasur Islamov was captured, after being wounded by a drone strike.

Ilyas, Islamov and Khushbakht never tried to surrender on purpose, unlike accounts from other foreign prisoners of war fighting for Russia, such as African recruits. This behaviour at war could be explained by the fact that parts of migrant populations in Russia are already “Russian speakers, born in the 1970s or 1980s, under the Soviet Union”, according to the Ukrainian coordination of war prisoners.

Prisoners met by Novastan also state that they wish to go back to Russia, hoping to be included in a prisoner exchange. “We have nothing against an exchange of prisoners from Central Asia”, says the Ukrainian coordination of war prisoners. However, among the 7,000 Russian soldiers already exchanged, those originally from Central Asia remain a small minority. 

When Novastan asked them about their experience with racism in Russia, before or after serving, all assert that they “never” faced it. They are confident in their ability to rejoin Russian society after their detention, once they obtain a passport. “Could you imagine that I risked my life to obtain citizenship, and they would send me back to my country, when I have nothing left there ? It would be a huge betrayal” says Jasur Islamov, bitterly.

However, it would not be the first time that these war prisoners face disappointments related to their migrant experience in Russia. Despite being married to a Russian woman for years, Ilyas failed to obtain a passport : “I submitted all documents to apply for citizenship, a long time ago, but it was refused”. Jasur Islamov admits that he “did not even receive any money from the contract”, with only two months paid out of the eighteen months he spent in the army.

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“I believe it would take years to dismantle internalized discriminations” Caress Schenk explains. The researcher reminds that in the Soviet imagery, racism was seen as inherent to capitalism and the Western bloc.

Citing the Geneva convention, the Ukrainian coordination of war prisoners explains that Central Asian citizens are treated the same as other prisoners. In the courtyard, on the weight training benches, Central Asian prisoners exercise alongside their Russian cellmates.

“We never thought we would end up here”, says Jasur Islamov. When he is reminded that he signed consciously and was aware of risks, the Uzbek detainee bristles : “You are talking as if I specifically signed to kill people… I only needed a place to live, a passport, to work and feed my family”. After a silence, he adds, regretfully : “I’m not saying we made the right decision. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone”.

Driss Rejichi,
Contributor for Novastan France

Translated by Elea Muresan

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

The post “I only needed a passport” : In Ukraine, Central Asian prisoners of wars caught between loyalty and regret appeared first on Novastan English.

Every year on June 1st, Kazakhstan celebrates International Children’s Day. In many cities, it is marked with concerts, theater performances, and free activities for children. For families, it is a day of celebration. At the same time, a broader question arises: What does it mean to protect a child today? Is it simply about ensuring safety, education, and health, or also about taking their feelings, boundaries, and their own voice seriously?

Anyone who talks about parenting in Kazakhstan quickly encounters contradictions. Children often grow up in a strong family network, surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older siblings. At the same time, they are under immense pressure to succeed in school, to be multilingual, to be independent, and to thrive in a globalized world. Alongside the traditional notions of obedience and respect, a new language is gradually emerging: that of emotional closeness, personal boundaries, and dialogue.

Parenting in Kazakhstan thus exists at the crossroads of several worlds: the Kazakh extended family, Soviet-influenced educational ideals, urban performance pressures, global anxieties about the future, and a growing psychological sensitivity towards children.

Experts note that in Kazakhstan, love for children is not changing. What is changing is the language of that love. Previously, care was primarily expressed through actions – feeding, clothing, and educating a child, perhaps later helping them find housing. Today, another question is increasingly being added: What does the child themselves feel?

Family as a sanctuary – and as a source of pressure

One of the most enduring characteristics of Kazakh parenting is the significant role of the extended family. A child often grows up not only with their mother and father, but amidst a wide circle of relatives. Sometimes this includes neighbors, family friends, or people from the neighborhood.

Anar Kakimova, mother of four, founder of the parenting community “Parentsclub” and the children’s club “Readkids,” describes such a family as a “holistic organism.” In this model, a child learns early on that they are supported not just by one adult, but by an entire network. In Kazakh society, she says, many feel that they are not alone in this world. Ayana Tokeyeva, a psychologist, lecturer, and mother of three with 15 years of experience in school and preschool education, sees a key strength of Kazakh upbringing in the continuity between generations. Values ​​are conveyed less through direct instruction than through example, atmosphere, and relationships between generations.

The saying that it takes a village to raise a child therefore sounds almost literal in the Kazakh context. But Maiya Li, an art therapist and psychological counselor with international experience, points to a change: In the cities, this “village” no longer always exists in its former form. Young families often live far away from grandparents, one parent works long hours, and mothers are often left to care for small children largely on their own.

However, the extended family also has another side. It can provide support, but it can also exert pressure. Children grow up in a dense web of expectations: how they should behave, whom they should respect, how they should learn, what profession they should choose, what constitutes a “good son” or a “good daughter.”

Tradition and Modern Psychology

In Kazakh culture, there is a well-known principle: Until the age of five, a child is considered a khan; from five to fifteen, they are educated; and from fifteen onward, they are to be respected like an adult. Ayana Tokeyeva sees in this not only tradition but also a connection to modern psychology. In the first years of life, a child primarily needs love, acceptance, gentleness, and emotional security. From this, a fundamental trust in the world develops.

This idea shows that a gentle approach to children is not simply a Western import. Kazakh educational concepts have long included the idea that young children need protection, closeness, and acceptance. Only later are they gradually introduced to responsibility and independence.

Also read on Novastan: „Sich Feministin zu nennen, ist schon Protest“ – Frauen-Punkbands in Kasachstan

Gender roles are also being renegotiated. While boys were traditionally seen more as future pillars of the family and girls as guardians of warmth and security, younger parents today are more frequently asking how caregiving can be combined with education, career choices, and self-realization. Maiya Li points out that in some families, the expectation persists that a girl’s primary life path must lead primarily through marriage and motherhood. This issue is sensitive for Kazakhstan: The country is modernizing, women are gaining more educational and career opportunities, but traditional views remain.

From Obedience to Dialogue

For a long time, parental care in Kazakhstan was primarily practical. Parents invested in their children’s education, helped with their studies, provided financial support, and often remained heavily involved even into their children’s adult lives. Love was expressed less through words than through responsibility.

However, according to Anar Kakimova’s observations, communication with children in many families still revolves heavily around daily life and school: Is the homework done? Has the child eaten? Why did they get that grade? What assignments were given? Parents do a lot for their children, but they don’t always know what’s going on inside them: what they’re afraid of, what they like, what they dream about, what’s troubling them.

During her time in the United States, Kakimova noticed how naturally many parents there talk to their children about feelings, experiences, and wishes – and how visibly fathers are involved in everyday life. In Kazakhstan, the role of fathers is also being discussed more openly, but the daily responsibility for school, food, clothing, leisure activities, and the emotional atmosphere often still rests with mothers.

Maiya Li describes this shift with the term “conscious parenting,” often called “gentle parenting” in English-speaking countries. According to her, more and more parents in Kazakhstan are moving away from a strictly authoritarian model in which an adult’s word is never questioned. This isn’t about making the child the center of the family. Parents still establish boundaries. But they try to be more considerate of the child’s needs, feelings, and age, and to explain rules instead of simply demanding obedience.

This change isn’t uniform. In some families, physical punishment, psychological pressure, or discipline through fear remain part of everyday life. At the same time, Ayana Tokeyeva observes a change: parents are more aware of the consequences of pressure and are seeking help from child psychologists more often – especially during periods of high academic pressure, before final exams, or when transitioning to new educational levels.

Also read on Novastan: Wie ein Schüler versucht, tadschikische Mosaike zu retten

A new parenting culture thus begins not with the child, but with the adult: with the willingness to question their own experiences, not to automatically repeat old patterns, and to communicate with children differently.

Education as a springboard for social mobility

In Kazakhstan’s major cities, especially Astana and Almaty, parenthood is increasingly linked to investments in education. English courses, private schools, enrichment centers, sports, music, programming, creative programs, international exams, and preparation for studying abroad are part of the new strategy for many families.

English is no longer just a school subject. It represents mobility, the future, and access to a wider world. Rufina Adeleva, a mother of two and a master’s student in education and psychology, connects this interest to globalization: The digital world has reduced distances, children are exposed to people and opportunities outside of Kazakhstan earlier, and foreign languages ​​broaden educational and life paths.

Maiya Li adds that multilingualism has become a key to competitiveness – not only internationally, but also domestically. Besides English, Chinese, Korean, and other languages, Kazakh is also gaining importance for families who envision their children’s future in Kazakhstan. Multilingualism is therefore not just a path abroad, but a key to participation within the country.

Ayana Tokeyeva emphasizes that education has long been considered a central value in Kazakhstan. What is new, however, is the anxiety with which parents now view it. Artificial intelligence, technological upheavals, and the disappearance of familiar professions intensify the worry that their child will not be able to keep up in the future. The desire to give them “the best” therefore stems not only from ambition, but also from fear.

Anar Kakimova’s experience as a mentor in the “iQanat” project [a social education project launched by Kazakh entrepreneurs to support rural schoolchildren, author’s note] shows how unequally these opportunities are distributed. For young people from rural areas, international exams, career guidance, or the possibility of studying abroad represent not only motivation, but also financial, organizational, and informational hurdles. For a child from the city, an English course might be part of the weekly schedule. For young people from rural areas, the same language can be a rare opportunity to leave the predetermined path.

When Pressure for the Future Displaces Childhood

The image of the successful child in Kazakhstan is still often clearly defined: good grades, a scholarship, a prestigious profession, a secure job, and later perhaps a car, an apartment, and social status. A child’s success is often seen as a reflection of parental success.

Today, this image is becoming even more demanding. According to Maiya Li’s observations, a modern, successful child is not only expected to excel in school. They attend several courses, learn foreign languages, play sports or music, participate in competitions, have long-term goals, consider studying abroad, are comfortable navigating the digital world, and simultaneously maintain respect for family, society, and country.

Also read on Novastan: Wie Frauen in Kasachstan die Kultur des Schweigens herausfordern

The pressure thus rests not only on the children but also on the parents. Many parents want to do everything right and, in doing so, end up controlling too much. The central question of modern parenting is therefore: How do you give a child a future without robbing them of their childhood?

City and Countryside, Freedom and Supervision

The difference between city and country remains pronounced in Kazakhstan. In cities, parents can structure a child’s childhood very carefully: A child’s weekly schedule can be almost as full as an adult’s work calendar.

In rural areas, there are fewer such opportunities. Rufina Adeleva, who herself grew up in the countryside, describes the difference this way: In the city, the focus is often on intellectual and cultural development, while in the countryside, it’s more on work and everyday life skills.

Anar Kakimova also observes that young people from rural areas often have a better understanding of the value of money, time, and opportunities. They are more cautious, more modest, and more careful with their resources. At the same time, families in rural areas often lack access to information about scholarships, international programs, career counseling, and educational pathways.

Another distinctive feature is the early independence of many children. In Kazakhstan, it’s not uncommon for elementary school children to walk to school alone, play in the yard, go to small shops, or stay at home unsupervised for periods of time. For many families, this is considered normal: A child should become independent step by step. But the line between freedom and lack of supervision is thin.

Digital Media as a New Boundary in Parenting

Over the past 10 to 15 years, parenting in Kazakhstan has been transformed by digital media. Smartphones, social networks, online games, cyberbullying, and cybersecurity are now among the everyday concerns of families.

Ayana Tokeyeva confirms that many current inquiries from parents are related to digital media. Excessive screen time can be associated with restlessness, aggression, emotional withdrawal, tantrums, school refusal, or a general lack of energy. The devices themselves are not always the problem. Often, these issues also reflect family tensions, communication problems, difficulties with peers, or the child’s inner turmoil.

This highlights the central conflict: technologies are changing everyday life faster than families can adapt their parenting models.

A New Formula for Parenting

Modern parenting in Kazakhstan is neither entirely traditional nor simply Western. Perhaps this is precisely where the new formula for parenting in Kazakhstan lies: preserving the strength of the family without increasing its pressures; enabling children to receive an education without depriving them of their childhood; fostering independence without leaving them alone; and respecting traditions without ignoring the child’s voice.

Nurgul Adambayeva for Novastan

The post Between Extended Family and Personal Boundaries: How Parenting is Changing in Kazakhstan appeared first on Novastan English.

From Almaty to Moscow and Paris, filmmaker and editor Rinat Bekchintaev has built a creative identity shaped by movement, memory and displacement. In this interview with Novastan, he discusses Almaty’s cinematic power, his relationship with Kazakhstan, his work on films such as Salarié oriental, Crypto Rush and JOQTAU, and the independent cinema community he is helping to build in France.

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From Almaty to Paris

Novastan : You studied in Almaty and then continued your studies at the Moscow School of New Cinema. What did Almaty give you as a filmmaker, visually, emotionally or intellectually?

Rinat Bekchintaev: Listen, Almaty is simply an unbelievably cool place. I can talk for hours about how cinematic this city is. It has its own distinctive, authentic vibe, its own tone. There is a kind of noir quality on foggy days, and the mountains, of course, create this “wall of the horizon”. But the most important thing is the people, they are very open and responsive. I am still in touch with my friends from Almaty, and I collaborate with people connected to cinema and the visual arts.

Read also on Novastan: Que sont devenues les premières salles de cinéma du Kazakhstan-Oriental ?

And of course, I dream of making not just one film in Kazakhstan, and in Almaty in particular. For example, I am currently at the development stage of a film called I Want to Be a Geologist Like My Father, a film about how ecological trauma becomes part of collective memory and continues to exist in people and landscapes decades after the disaster itself.

I studied engineering at Almaty University of Power Engineering and Telecommunications (AUPET) for five years, then took screenwriting courses at the Open Literary School. At the time, it did not seem important to me, as is usually the case. But after several years, I realized that it had given me a very important impulse to take up cinema.

Your biography is linked to several geographies: Sevastopol, Almaty, Moscow, Paris. How do these places coexist in your creative identity?

Yes, I have quite a complex, nomadic path. Sevastopol and Crimea are the most difficult starting point for me, and I think I still have to reflect on this original point of my journey. I don’t know, my mother took me away from there to Almaty when I was very young. I spent my entire conscious life in Almaty, and perhaps the only thing I can identify myself as now is an Almaty person, strange as that may sound.

Moscow also gave me a lot that was very important. It was part of my formation, an education at the Moscow School of New Cinema that mattered a lot to me, and people with whom I am still in contact.

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I have not been in Paris for very long, and it is probably difficult to speak about it yet, but again, it is another chapter: new people, a new language, everything new. But I try to continue creating interaction with reality, with people and institutions. We created an association of independent filmmakers, K1NO1 (Kino 11), wrote a manifesto, organize screenings and discussions in Paris, and run a Telegram channel. Anyone can join the community, participate in events and so on. There is a website, Instagram and Telegram. In general, we are creating a kind of community, and it is international, not only made up of immigrants. I think this is important. I don’t know, at first glance it all looks like chaos, but I think it all mixes quite well in my ghostly creative identity.

Do you consider yourself a Central Asian filmmaker, a post-Soviet filmmaker, a filmmaker in exile, or do such definitions seem too limiting to you?

Perhaps for a career it is useful to manifest oneself in some way along these lines, but I do not think I would really manage to do that. I think all these labels coexist within me.

Has your perception of Kazakhstan, Central Asia or the post-Soviet space changed since moving to France?

Before moving to France, I came to Kazakhstan. I had not been in my native Almaty for about five years. And I was absolutely delighted. It seemed to me that everything was developing very well. Again, forgive me for being so complimentary, but I truly think that Kazakhstan is not stagnating at all, in any respect, and in the field of art, definitely not. After moving to France, I think it was only here that I began seriously considering the possibility of making a feature film in Kazakhstan. Perhaps the outside view is very important for me.

Note from Novastan: Bekchintaev’s work moves between directing and editing, fiction and documentary, personal stories and broader social questions. His filmography includes Salarié oriental (Vostochny rabochy), a short fiction film shaped by migration, labour and emotional distance; editing work on Crypto Rush, a documentary on the rise of cryptocurrency; and collaborations on Kazakhstani films such as Aruan Anartay’s JOQTAU and Dreams of the Sky Mausoleum.

Your films and artistic universe

One of your early fiction films, Salarié oriental (Vostochny rabochy), follows a story of emotional distance shaped by class, language and migration. Even its title seems to raise questions of labour, identity and perhaps irony. What story did you want to tell in this film?

The story in this film is simple: the impossibility of love because of class, language and other differences. But that is my interpretation now, ten years after the premiere. Perhaps at the time it was different. And of course, I believe that everyone should identify something for themselves in it. That, it seems to me, is the power of cinema.

I am also very glad that this film was once shown in Almaty, at the Arman cinema, the first cinema I ever visited in my life.

How did the idea for Salarié oriental come about, and what does this title mean to you?

The idea for the film came to my co-author Egor Shevchenko in a dream. After that, we developed it very seriously, and a lot came from reflecting on my perception of Moscow, as I had only just arrived there to study at the time.

The title appeared by chance. The sound designer named the folder with the files that way, we noticed it and immediately fixed it for ourselves. Before that, I do not even remember what the working title was.

You also worked as an editor on Crypto Rush, a documentary exploring the world of cryptocurrency across several countries and protagonists. What attracted you to this topic, and what did editing a film about such an abstract and global phenomenon teach you?

I was the editor on this film. It was a very important experience. We worked very closely with the director. At the time, she was very deeply immersed in the subject, and she had a very global project: several countries, protagonists and so on. In general, the most important thing was that we managed to combine a cinematic image and an informational one in this film. And I also learned a little more about crypto and so on.

Among your editing works is a movie connected to Kazakhstan, Aruan Anartay’s JOQTAU, rooted in Kazakhstani stories, landscapes and visual imagination. What attracts you to films shaped by this geography and cinematic world?

I think Kazakhstan has that authentic cinematic image that has enormous potential. This image consists of many elements, and it cannot be repeated anywhere else in the world.

JOQTAU is a film by my friend Aruan Anartay, and it is one of those examples where this image was captured. We searched for solutions for this film for a long time, and in the end, during editing, we found certain approaches that helped us bring this image out.

Directing, editing and cinematic language

You are both a director and an editor. Does working with editing make you a more disciplined director?

Yes, absolutely. As a director, I understand the editing process and try to make it less costly. In general, I believe that a contemporary director should be able to edit, shoot and work with sound themselves too.

Editing often remains invisible to the viewer, but it largely shapes the emotion and meaning of a film. In your view, what makes editing good?

It is not only about comfortable cuts, but about building the structure of the film, as well as creating refrains and syntagms. This happens almost entirely at the editing table. Not to mention rhythm and the flow of time. Sometimes a film comes together during editing, and this is not only my opinion.

Also read on Novastan: Le cinéma kazakh à l’honneur : retour sur la sixième édition du Festival du film kazakh à Paris

When you direct, do you already “edit” the film in your head during shooting, or do you try to leave space for discovery at the editing stage?

Yes, I do actually already edit in my head, and this gives me the opportunity to do fewer identical takes and shoot more variations of a scene. I felt this when I was shooting my film Gobelin, one of my own fiction projects.

What usually comes to you first: an image, a character, a place or a conflict?

Some kind of phenomenon or life situation appears first, or some place, or a figure, I don’t know, something that creates a sustained interest in exploring it. That is the starting point for a film.

What faces, landscapes, pauses or gestures attract your camera?

Those that transmit either vitality or a hauntological feeling.

Paris, emigration and artistic transformation

What are the main difficulties faced by a filmmaker who arrives in Paris without previous professional connections, a familiar linguistic environment or the usual film-production system?

Yes, there are many problems. First of all, not being embedded in the environment, the lack of connections, and the language too. That is probably the most difficult part, but I am trying to move in that direction. There is no shortage of ideas, and the film-production system is more or less clear.

Does emigration provide artistic freedom, or does it primarily create practical constraints?

Both. An outside view always gives a new lens on reality. Also, the reality around me is new to me, so one way or another I find interest in it. As for practical constraints, they always exist, and emigration intensifies them. It is difficult, but in my view not fatal.

Kazakhstan and Central Asian cinema

Which Kazakhstani or Central Asian filmmakers should French-speaking audiences know more about?

Aruan Anartay, a Kazakhstani director, screenwriter and producer whose debut feature JOQTAU brought a poetic, documentary-inflected vision of the Kazakh steppe to international festivals; and Katerina Suvorova, an Almaty-born documentary filmmaker known for Sea Tomorrow, which premiered at Locarno’s Critics’ Week, and for her work on Mediastan.

Which of your films would you advise Novastan readers to start with, and why?

They can watch Vostochny rabochy / Salarié oriental here.

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Interview by

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

Maya Ivanova, Contributor at Novastan

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The post Rinat Bekchintaev: “Almaty has an authentic cinematic image that cannot be repeated anywhere else” appeared first on Novastan English.

Presented as a future major technological and economic hub, the city of Alatau in Kazakhstan is entering a new phase of institutional structuring after obtaining special status, amid persistent uncertainties about its development.

On 27 March, Kazakhstan’s Parliament adopted a law establishing a special legal regime for the city of Alatau, located a few dozen kilometres from Almaty. This status as a “territory of accelerated development”, with specific economic, administrative and legal rules, is intended to attract investment and foster innovation. The decision marks an important step in the evolution of a project that has been presented for several years as a future technological showcase for the country.

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Until recently, however, Alatau remained largely associated with political announcements and ambitious projections, without any real implementation on the ground. The adoption of this special status therefore reflects the Kazakhstani authorities’ desire to structure the project and give it an operational dimension. It remains to be seen whether this institutional advance will make it possible to turn a futuristic vision into a tangible reality.

A project revived by the adoption of a special legal regime

According to the municipality, the city will now benefit from a distinct governance system, with an organisation designed to speed up decision-making and facilitate the establishment of economic actors. The project notably provides for the creation of a strategic authority, the Alatau City Authority, responsible for defining development priorities, as well as an operational body dedicated to the day-to-day management of the project.

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The city will therefore be placed under the supervision of a council chaired by Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov, in order to ensure direct coordination at the highest level of the state. At the same time, traditional local institutions, such as akimats and maslikhats, will retain their powers in urban management and public social services.

Also read on Novastan : Almaty, une ville en quête de cyclabilité

Beyond governance, this status comes with a specific regulatory framework, including tax incentives, simplified administrative procedures and rules adapted to innovative sectors. This development allows the project to move beyond the announcement stage and enter a concrete institutional framework, marking a new phase in its development.

An economic and regulatory framework designed to attract investment

Launched in the early years of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s mandate in the 2020s, Alatau is intended to become a hub capable of attracting international investment and supporting the country’s economic diversification, notably through its integration into a special economic zone.

The city, which has more than 50,000 inhabitants, is also intended to become a hub for digital technologies, digital assets and innovative financial services. In May 2025, President Tokayev announced the creation of a pilot zone called “CryptoCity” in Alatau, where cryptocurrencies could be legally used to pay for goods and services. This direction is part of a broader strategy aimed at positioning Kazakhstan as an emerging player in high value-added sectors.

Also read on Novastan : Le Kazakhstan envisage l’utilisation de cartes de paiement cryptographiques

Several concrete initiatives illustrate this ambition. As reported by Alatau City, discussions have been held with South Korea under the Economic Innovation Partnership Program, or EIPP, for the development of the city’s infrastructure. In addition, a branch of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST, one of South Korea’s leading technological universities, is set to be established in Alatau, strengthening its academic and scientific positioning.

Financial ambitions are also significant. According to the Kazakh authorities, planned investment in the project could reach 10.4 trillion tenge, or around €20 billion. At the same time, the municipality has announced the upcoming start of construction on a landmark architectural complex called “Iconic Towers”. Work is due to begin in May 2026, with completion expected by 2029, at an estimated cost of $800 million, or around €680 million. These elements reflect a desire to give Alatau an economic, technological and symbolic dimension.

Between stated ambitions and persistent uncertainties

Despite these advances, several factors call for caution regarding the project’s immediate impact. In particular, a lack of clarity remains around the tax and legal rules applicable to Alatau, raising questions about the coherence and effective implementation of the system. These uncertainties reflect the difficulties inherent in creating an entirely new regulatory framework.

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Above all, the situation on the ground remains limited at this stage. In March 2026, Kazakh influencer Alimbek Ulan visited the Alatau site and observed the start of excavation work on the outskirts of the area concerned. However, no major structural progress was visible, confirming that the project remains largely in a preparatory phase.

Also read on Novastan : Au Kazakhstan, la privatisation d’une partie du parc national d’Ile-Alatau fait polémique

This gap between stated ambitions and concrete progress has fuelled criticism from some observers, who point to the risk of Alatau remaining a primarily symbolic project. The year 2026 therefore appears to be a decisive moment: with the announced launch of construction work, the authorities will have to demonstrate their ability to turn announcements into reality and begin a genuine construction phase.

Lenny Cabrol Noto
Author for Novastan

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

The post In Kazakhstan, the futuristic city of “Alatau” reaches a new milestone with special status appeared first on Novastan English.

Like many countries, Kazakhstan is facing major environmental problems. Kazakh media outlet The Village has listed the environmental issues most frequently discussed in the country.

Kazakhstan continues to actively address the environmental challenges affecting different regions of the country.

In recent years, the environmental situation in major cities has deteriorated significantly: the basins of many water bodies are gradually drying up, emissions of harmful substances exceed permitted levels several times over, and industrial enterprises are releasing chemicals into the environment in an uncontrolled manner.

Kazakh media outlet The Village has listed the main ecological problems facing the country.

Air pollution

For many years, the East Kazakhstan region remained the country’s largest industrial region. According to the Bureau of National Statistics, more than 15,000 companies are registered there. These include major industrial giants such as Kazzinc, KazMinerals, the Ust-Kamenogorsk Titanium and Magnesium Plant, the Ulba Metallurgical Plant and others.

The mining and metallurgical company Kazzinc, which produces zinc, copper, lead and other precious metals, is the most significant source of pollution. According to the region’s ecology department, in 2021 Kazzinc accounted for almost half of all pollutant emissions in the region.

Read also on Novastan : Au Kazakhstan, les villes industrielles souffrent de la pollution atmosphérique

According to Kazhydromet, in the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk, the region’s administrative centre, unfavourable weather conditions are recorded around 100 days a year. These are days when there is no wind in the region, causing harmful substances to accumulate in the air. During such periods, scientists even advise residents to avoid long walks outdoors, not to open windows, and to prioritise distance learning for schoolchildren.

Today, the East Kazakhstan region tops the national ranking for cancer incidence. The rate in the oblast is 55% higher than the national average: 321 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Residents themselves say they have been experiencing a sweet, metallic taste in their mouths for years.

Polluted rivers

Senator Olga Bulavkina has highlighted the critical level of air pollution in Ust-Kamenogorsk, noting that hydrogen chloride levels exceed the norm by nine times. She has also linked this pollution to the increase in cancer cases.

Representatives of the prosecutor’s office have stated that, out of the region’s 165 landfills, only 22 comply with environmental requirements — just 13%.

It should be noted that pollution of local water bodies is regularly recorded in the region. In May 2019, residents noticed that the Berezovka River had turned bright green. Following an inspection, scientists found that the water contained 140 times the permitted level of manganese, 44 times the permitted level of zinc, twice the permitted level of ammonium, and five times the permitted levels of sulphate and copper.

Kazzinc was held responsible for uncontrolled discharges and fined 8 million tenge, or €14,640. In July 2023, residents noticed that the water in the Filippovka River had turned milky white. Kazzinc again paid a fine, this time of 50 million tenge, or €91,589.

Modernising industrial facilities to reduce pollution

It is important to note that many rivers in East Kazakhstan are tributaries of the Irtysh. They form part of a single ecosystem. When one body of water is polluted, there is always a risk that harmful substances will enter other channels. The water from these rivers is used not only for drinking water, but also for agriculture and for the operation of thermal power plants and industrial enterprises.

Read also on Novastan : Kazakhstan : une hécatombe de cygnes causée par la pollution

As a result, the Ust-Kamenogorsk metallurgical complex had to modernise its sulphur gas purification units, which should reduce sulphur emissions by 10 to 20%. In Ridder, a new workshop was built, reducing emissions by 714 tonnes in 2024.

On 9 October 2024, it was announced that an environmental air monitoring system was being introduced and that eco-offices would be opened to allow residents to monitor air quality themselves. Work is also under way to improve the emissions monitoring system. This was stated by the akim, or local government representative, of the East Kazakhstan region, Ermek Kosherbayev.

Air pollution in Almaty

In January 2025, Almaty topped the ranking of the world’s most polluted megacities. According to environmentalists from the Almaty Air Initiative, one year of living in the city is equivalent to smoking 487 cigarettes. Annual emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere amount to around 125,000 tonnes.

In addition, according to a survey carried out by the Almaty Air Initiative in August 2024, 42% of respondents believe that air quality in their neighbourhood is poor or very poor. One in six residents is considering moving because of the poor environmental conditions.

Read also on Novastan : La pollution de l’air toujours aussi forte en Asie centrale

In 2024, 202 days of high air pollution were recorded in Almaty. Specialists recommend that residents limit their time outdoors and use protective masks, particularly those who are especially sensitive.

At a meeting of the Public Council, data on the main sources of pollution in Almaty were presented. Motor transport is the city’s main source of air pollution, accounting for around 60% of total emissions. Industrial enterprises also heavily pollute the environment, emitting around 27.5% of all harmful substances. The use of coal heating in private homes also contributes to air pollution, accounting for around 11% of total emissions.

The government is aware of the problem

In November 2022, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, addressing Almaty residents, raised the issue of air pollution in the city. He noted that the state of the environment has a direct impact on people’s health and lives.

During a meeting with residents of the Zhetysu district, Almaty akim Yerbolat Dossayev explained how the city intends to address environmental problems. According to him, the full modernisation of Combined Heat and Power Plant 2 will be completed in 2026, which should reduce emissions by 90%.

Transport is also being actively developed. By the end of 2026, the city has promised to replace all public transport with environmentally friendly vehicles.

Waste disposal

Waste and rubbish are also among Almaty’s main environmental problems. A large number of illegal dumps have accumulated in the city, and waste recycling remains difficult. During a meeting with residents of the Almaty region in October 2022, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called for all tourist routes to be equipped with rubbish bins and for waste collection and sorting to be organised. He also instructed the Ministry of Internal Affairs to step up efforts to bring those responsible for illegal dumps to justice.

Plans are being discussed to build a waste recycling plant in the Ile district and another facility in the Karasay district, which would recycle waste and produce electricity from greenhouse gases.

Also read on Novastan : Décharges sauvages au Kazakhstan : d’où viennent-elles, et comment lutter contre ?

As early as 26 February 2022, a rally for clean air was organised in Almaty. Participants called on the authorities to take urgent and comprehensive measures, arguing that the city was on the brink of an ecological disaster. Among the participants were activists, experts, students and families with children.

At the rally, expert Aiymgul Kerimray accused the authorities of manipulating emissions data and called for a transition to European standards for assessing pollution. Activist Asiya Tulesova called on the state not only to listen, but also to act.

The drying up of the Aral Sea

Until 1960, the Aral Sea was the fourth-largest lake in the world. But because of Soviet irrigation projects, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers, which fed the basin, were diverted.

As a result, over the past 60 years, the Aral Sea has shrunk by a factor of three, while its volume has decreased fifteenfold. Its water level has fallen by 29 metres. In the 1980s, the sea split into two parts: the northern Small Aral and the southern Large Aral. This tragedy led to the migration of most of the region’s wildlife, the disappearance of fish, and the emergence of the Aralkum Desert.

Also read on Novastan : Le totalitarisme de l’irrigation a tué la mer d’Aral

In 2023, the akim of the Kyzylorda region, Nurlybek Nalibayev, stated that tens of millions of tonnes of salt and dust are carried by the wind every year from the dried-up bed of the Aral Sea. They travel thousands of kilometres. “The only way to prevent salt from spreading beyond the sea area is to plant saxauls,” a type of Central Asian tree, he said.

According to the akim, 350,000 hectares of saxaul were planted on the dried-up bed of the Aral Sea between 2021 and 2022.

A full restoration of the sea is impossible

However, scientists have expressed doubts about the possibility of fully restoring the Aral Sea. Ecologist Yevgeny Simonov has said that the region’s water deficit is increasing and that it is more realistic to speak of preserving delta water bodies and wetlands than of fully restoring the sea.

Mels Yeleusizov, president of the environmental movement Tabigat, notes that the drying up of the Aral Sea leads to the spread of salty dust, which settles on glaciers and accelerates their melting. He stresses that the disappearance of this body of water has a negative impact on Kazakhstan’s ecosystem, contributing to desertification and the deterioration of the region’s environment.

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At the expense of the state and regional budgets, 101,000 hectares were planted in 2021. In 2022, phytoremediation work was carried out over an area of 250,000 hectares, and in 2023 over an area of 193,200 hectares. From 2024 to 2025, these phytoremediation efforts targeted 556,200 hectares.

Thanks to agreements reached with neighbouring countries, a total of 1.6 billion cubic metres of water had been sent to the northern part of the Aral Sea by the end of March 2025. In April of the same year, the total volume of water in the northern Aral Sea stood at 22.1 billion cubic metres, 3.2 billion cubic metres more than at the beginning of 2022.

Daniyar Beisembayev and Sultan Temirkhan
Journalists for The Village

Translated from Russian by Sophie Combaret and from French by Mathieu Lemoine

Proofread by Elise Medina (French version)

The post Overview of environmental issues in Kazakhstan appeared first on Novastan English.

Last month, Kazakhstan hosted the 40th Conference of Directors General of Railways, bringing together representatives from more than thirty countries. It was an opportunity for Astana to showcase its ambitions for the “Middle Corridor”, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and the reshaping of global trade routes.

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From Monday 20 April to Monday 24 April 2026, the 40th Conference of Directors General of Railways brought together more than thirty countries in the heart of the Kazakh capital, against a backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty. The Organisation for Co-operation between Railways, known as the OSJD, is an intergovernmental organization that brings together a network of more than 320,000 kilometres of railway tracks, carrying around 5.5 billion passengers and nearly 5 billion tonnes of freight each year.

Founded in 1956, the OSJD – the main forum for railway coordination between Europe and Asia and a legacy of technical cooperation from the Soviet era – has gradually expanded to include new members. It currently has 27 members, ranging from Albania to Vietnam.

This year, the 40th Conference of Directors General of Railways brought together more than 300 officials and representatives of railway companies. Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister, Olzhas Bektenov, spoke in person, a sign of the political importance attached to the event.

He recalled that “Kazakhstan’s railway sector, which plays a crucial role in economic development, aims to improve the population’s quality of life and ensure sustainable growth”. The Prime Minister also announced strong ambitions for the coming years, declaring that he wanted to “build an additional 5,000 kilometres of railway tracks” over the next four years and to “increase transit volumes to 100 million tonnes per year by 2035”, thereby underlining his desire to strengthen Kazakhstan’s pivotal role in trade between Europe and China.

An Afghan delegation representing the Islamic Emirate met Kazakh and Azerbaijani officials to discuss the strengthening of the Hairatan and Torghundi ports and regional transit, according to the Afghan news agency Pajhwok Afghan News. This presence, like the joint presence of Ukraine and Russia, shows that railway cooperation can sometimes go beyond conventional diplomatic logic.

In addition to financial management issues, the conference also focused on the OSJD’s future work programme and the organization of the next meeting. Emphasis was placed on increasing volumes, modernizing infrastructure and transitioning towards more advanced technologies to improve the efficiency and fluidity of rail transport, reports the media outlet Transport Corridors.

The Middle Corridor at the heart of global challenges

By speaking of “transforming Eurasia into a single, fully functioning transport mechanism”, the Kazakh Prime Minister is directly referring to the trade route that has been developing in the region for around twenty years, particularly since China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.

The Middle Corridor, also known as the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), is a 4,000-kilometre multimodal transport corridor linking Chinese factories to European markets via Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus and Turkey.

It is also the shortest overland route between China and Europe, provided the necessary infrastructure is in place, which was long not the case. Delivery times, which once took several weeks, have now fallen to around 18 days, according to The Astana Times.

Read also on Novastan : L’Asie centrale face au défi de la réalisation du corridor médian

This reduction was made possible in part by digital transformation and the introduction of the TezCustoms system, which has reduced processing time at the borders with China from 8 hours to 30 minutes.

Mr Bektenov emphasized Kazakhstan’s pivotal role, with around 85% of Middle Corridor traffic passing through the country. He also announced the construction of 5,000 kilometres of new railway lines over the next four years, with the aim of reaching a transit capacity of 100 million tonnes per year by 2035.

A route that has grown rapidly since the geopolitical crises…

This Eurasian route has been one of the main beneficiaries of the global geopolitical situation of the past four years, with two successive shocks having propelled its importance.

The first is the war in Ukraine since 2022: Western sanctions imposed on Russia caused westbound freight volumes on Russian routes to fall by 51% in 2023, according to Transport Corridors. The Middle Corridor has thus established itself as the only practical land bridge between China and Europe that bypasses Russian territory.

Read also on Novastan : Le corridor sud, une menace pour le transport kazakh ?

The second is the war in the Middle East and the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, which began in late 2023. According to the Qatari media outlet Gulf Times, amid uncertainty in the region, some companies redirected their traffic from the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal towards the Cape of Good Hope, making land-based alternatives all the more attractive.

In 2024, the volume of goods transiting along the Eurasian route increased by more than 63% year-on-year, according to the US think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, reaching 4.1 million tonnes compared with only 500,000 tonnes before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On the China-Europe segment alone, the number of containers transported increased twenty-fivefold between 2023 and 2024, according to the journal CEBRI.

…but remains constrained

However, according to an article by Friedrich Conradi published on the Carnegie Politika website, despite its potential to become a major competitive route, it could prove limited by structural problems. “The Middle Corridor is still far from competitive. It handles only around 6% of the annual capacity of the Northern Corridor via Russia, which stands at 100 million tonnes, and while many Western actors expect it to continue growing, several indicators instead suggest a slowdown,” the researcher explains.

The Middle Corridor’s infrastructure remains insufficient, with ports often saturated, particularly in Georgia, and an inherently fragmented route, since it relies on a succession of transport modes, making it slower, more expensive and less seamless than alternative routes via Russia or by sea.

Added to this is persistent geopolitical instability in the Caucasus and around Iran, as well as environmental challenges, particularly the falling level of the Caspian Sea, which directly affects port capacity and the continuity of maritime transport.

Lorenz Uberti
Contributor for Novastan

Edited by Elise Medina (French version) and Mathieu Lemoine (English version)

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The post Kazakhstan continues to assert itself as the “key link” in the Middle Corridor appeared first on Novastan English.

Relations between Kazakhstan and China are deepening fast. As a linchpin in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, Astana hopes to pluck the fruits of this global infrastructure development strategy, which aims to boost overland trade connections between East and West. However, China’s treatment of ethnic Kazakhs in the Xinjiang province, the region’s second-largest Turkic community after the Uyghurs, remains a sensitive subject that is complicating further rapprochement between the two countries.

This text was originally published on 20 October 2025 by our partner media outlet Lossi 36.

On a cold winter’s day in February 1997, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the city of Yining, known to locals as Ghulja, in China’s Xinjiang province to protest against growing ethnic discrimination and religious repression. As the demonstration grew in strength, people started chanting “God is great!” and “Independence for Xinjiang!”. Chinese security forces soon mobilised and cracked down on the crowd, killing dozens and arresting hundreds. The exact casualty figures of the massacre remain unknown. The 1997 Ghulja incident is now looked upon as a precursor to the brutality against the predominantly Muslim population in China’s westernmost region.

Nearly three decades later, tensions are still palpable in Yining. Travelling through the city, there is a distinct presence of CCTV cameras and police patrols on the streets. Important intersections in the downtown area are overseen by well-equipped Chinese soldiers next to armoured vehicles with mounted machine guns. They appear suspicious of people taking pictures of the local street life and seem uncomfortable with foreigners freely roaming about a region where, according to most observers, China is perpetrating grave crimes against humanity. Several countries have also accused Beijing of committing genocide, though some human rights groups contend that there is insufficient evidence to support this qualification.

One of the targeted communities are the Xinjiang Kazakhs, the region’s second-largest ethnic minority after the Uyghurs. Because of their mostly Turkic-Muslim background, the Chinese authorities see them as a threat to the state ideal of creating a homogeneous nation, united under the red banner of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In accordance with a policy of “preventative repression”, Beijing has sought to dilute the province’s demographic makeup through the state-sponsored in-migration of Han Chinese and has invested heavily in surveillance technology and infrastructure while building an enormous network of so-called re-education camps. 

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A short history of repression

After the takeover of Xinjiang by the CCP in the waning days of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the position of the Kazakhs in the region steadily grew worse. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mao Zedong implemented his Great Leap Forward, which caused tens of thousands of local Uyghurs and Kazakhs to defect to Soviet Central Asia. 

The exodus coincided with a gradual deterioration of relations between Moscow and Beijing. The Soviets launched a propaganda offensive against China, promoting the migration of minority groups while trying to destabilise Chinese authority over Xinjiang by appealing to separatist movements. The local Soviet consulate enabled the emigration of ethnic minorities by issuing passports. 

When Beijing found out, they stopped distributing exit visas, which sparked fears among local Kazakhs and other minorities of being cut off from their kin in the USSR. A resulting demonstration was brutally put down, encouraging thousands of others to flee as well. Eventually, in 1962, the Sino-Soviet border was closed after between 60 and 100 thousand had left, and remained so for most of the Cold War.

Read more on Novastan: 70 years of Xinjiang: Beijing celebrates and enacts new political doctrine

Isolated from the outside world, the economic situation in Xinjiang worsened, while elsewhere the “Chinese economic miracle” was just gaining steam. Uneven regional development, combined with interethnic tensions due to the continued inflow of Han Chinese settlers, eventually resulted in a wave of separatist terrorism in the 1990s and 2000s, followed by a ruthless clampdown on the region by Chinese authorities. This eventually culminated in the ongoing Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Terrorism, which started in 2014.

Atajurt Eriktileri (Homeland Volunteers), a Kazakhstan-based human rights organisation in the forefront of advocating for the release of ethnic kin in Xinjiang, has documented thousands of cases of ethnic Kazakhs who have been incarcerated in China without a trial. Although the number of imprisoned Kazakhs is much smaller than the several hundred thousand Uyghurs currently detained in prison camps, Atajurt has done most to highlight the plight of all ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

Yet, as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) brings a surge of investment into Kazakhstan, deepening ties between the two countries place Astana in a delicate position amid domestic concerns over the repression of the Xinjiang Kazakhs.

Crossroads Khorgos

About a hundred kilometres by road to the northwest of Yining, on the Chinese side of the Sino-Kazakh border, lies Khorgos. This newly planned town with a skyline that, from a distance, rivals that of any major European city, is part of a recently created special economic zone. It includes a massive area full of highways, warehouses, manufacturing sites, residential areas for workers and their families, and a duty-free shopping zone.

Khorgos is key to Beijing’s BRI. This multi-billion infrastructure development strategy, colloquially known as the New Silk Road, aims to expand China’s economic and political influence around the globe by boosting trade connections between East and West. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as well as heightened instability in the wider Middle East, the route passing through Khorgos – the shortest overland transport route to Europe – has rapidly grown in importance. 

That strategic relevance is also visible on the Kazakh side of the border. Here, Khorgos transforms from a geopolitical pivot into a logistical hub. The importance of Khorgos lies in the fact that the Chinese operate with a different track gauge, so any rail transport making its way to Europe has to change trains here. This happens just inside Kazakhstan, on a vast asphalted harbour-like complex, surrounded by barbed wire fence and dense with brightly-coloured shipping containers, towering cranes, and a warren of railway tracks. 

This infrastructure, together with additional roads and railways for onward transport, has been financed with Chinese loans. Critics of the BRI have voiced concerns about what they call “debt-trap diplomacy”. This alleged strategy, however, has been repeatedly disproven by experts. In the case of Kazakhstan, Nargiza Muratalieva, associate professor at the American University of Central Asia, states that “[s]trong institutions, public understanding, a diversified loan portfolio, and sustainable projects” allow Kazakhstan to effectively manage its debt.

That is not to say there are no risks to deepening economic ties with China. China is facing considerable economic challenges, as it struggles with deflation and an ageing population. These internal problems could easily spillover into BRI countries. Should Kazakhstan continue to take on BRI-related investments in the long term, infrastructure projects like Khorgos might become a liability. 

Views on China

China has come to recognise growing unease over its expanding economic footprint in Kazakhstan. Beijing has responded by promoting soft power initiatives, especially through boosting educational and cultural exchanges and increasing the production of Kazakh language content through Chinese media outlets. These efforts are aimed at moving beyond the elite-level political and economic ties China previously depended upon.

So far, this strategy has not been very successful. Apart from economic concerns, the (mis)treatment of ethnic kin in Xinjiang continues to influence public opinion on China in Kazakhstan. Over the past few years, several demonstrations have been organised to protest against China’s Xinjiang policy.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan’s government under President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has been mostly silent on this issue. Although the resettlement of several thousand ethnic kin from China has given the impression that Astana is trying to address the situation with Beijing, the country’s political leadership carefully avoids direct criticism. Tragic but true, the pursuit of economic interests undercuts any meaningful response to human rights abuses on the other side of the border. 

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

The awarded reportage Kazakhstan-Xinjiang, the Border of Tears describes how many Kazakh survivors, upon their return to Kazakhstan, face indifference with regard to their experiences in China: “All the violence they have endured is not recognised, and seems to exist only in their private lives: denied by the Kazakh authorities, generally ignored by civil society, invisible to the medical community.”

In recent years, Astana has tried to actively thwart activists and grassroots organisations concerned with the suffering of Xinjiang Kazakhs. Most notably, in 2019, Atajurt Eriktileri’s founder and frontman Serikzhan Bilash was charged for inciting inter-ethnic hatred and arrested. When he was released after seven months of detention, he was forced to leave Kazakhstan. Attempts by his organisation to enter national politics were obstructed by the authorities, and little has been heard about these efforts. 

The BRI paradox

To pre-empt domestic unrest linked to China’s Xinjiang policy, Kazakhstan’s government is committed to making the BRI work. The latest Central Asia Barometer shows a correlation between the current boom in trade between China and Kazakhstan and more favourable views on China, especially among the youth. This finding reveals a striking paradox. Kazakhstan’s growing economic dependence on China could be softening Sinophobic sentiment – even as the BRI facilitates the repression of Muslims in Xinjiang, a cause that has provoked outrage among Kazakhs. 

In China, BRI projects have gone hand-in-hand with a sharpening of security measures. The new highway connecting Khorgos with Yining, for example, is strewn with police checkpoints, and at airports and train stations throughout Xinjiang security controls are strict and time-consuming. The Chinese government has long perceived the expression of minority identity as an obstacle to regional development and worked to pacify separatist resistance.

Scholars have argued that the economic benefits of BRI-related infrastructure development befall disproportionately upon the non-local Han Chinese population, while the ethnic minorities of Xinjiang have played a significant role in the workforce behind BRI projects — possibly under conditions that amount to forced labour. If true, these findings would suggest that the promise of the BRI would sooner increase than diminish regional inequalities. 

Ultimately, managing the fine line between fostering economic development and addressing human rights issues leaves Kazakhstan in a tricky situation. The ongoing struggles of ethnic Kazakhs in China highlight the significant tensions that form a major obstacle for further rapprochement between Kazakhstan and China.

Julian Postulart for Lossi 36

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The post The story of the Xinjiang Kazakhs: silent suffering along the Belt and Road appeared first on Novastan English.

Two years into the war in Gaza – which has killed over 68,000 Palestinians – Kazakhstan has volunteered to join Trump’s Abraham Accords initiative to forge closer ties with Israel. While Tokayev’s gamble is far from groundbreaking due to the country’s pre-existing relations with Israel, the manoeuvre does signal a new, American direction emerging for Kazakhstan’s international orientation.

Ahead of the much anticipated C5+1 Summit in Washington D.C., US President Donald Trump announced on 7 November that Kazakhstan would soon join the US-led Abraham Accords, an initiative spearheaded by Trump to encourage resistant Muslim-majority nations to forge closer ties with Israel. With Kazakhstan’s entry, the Central Asian state will become the first country to join the accords since war in Gaza began in 2023. 

Unlike all past Abraham Accords members who had refused to recognise Israel before joining the agreement, Kazakhstan has maintained formal relations with Israel since 1992. Experts have been quick to describe Kazakh President Qassym-Jomart Tokayev’s move as a symbolic gesture aimed at currying favor with Washington, doubting that it will significantly alter Kazakhstan’s existing relations with Israel.

Kazakhstan’s Geopolitical Pivot

To Tokayev, the move is clearly a signal to Washington it is open to further strategic cooperation. Just hours before Kazakhstan’s Abraham Accords announcement, Kazakhstan and the United States signed a lucrative cooperation deal over rare earth minerals the United States deems as critical to its national security.  By the time Tokayev had left Washington, he had signed 29 deals with the United States amounting to $17 billion in new investments, per the Astana Times. 

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

Beyond minerals, the United States sees political potential to draw Kazakhstan out of China’s orbit and into its own, severing a key link in China’s emerging Belt and Road Initiative trade corridor across the Asian continent. Kazakhstan, hoping to balance its international agreements among the global heavyweights, hopes close partnership with the United States will limit the state’s dependence on China and Russia.

A Much Needed Win for the Trump Administration

With the country’s proposed accession to the Abraham Accords, Kazakhstan offered Trump a diplomatic victory he greatly desired: a Muslim-majority country willing to forge close ties with post-war Israel. In his first term, Trump surprised the world by successfully negotiating for four Arab, Muslim-majority states—Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan— to establish formal relations with Israel through the framework of the Abraham Accords. In 2023, Saudi Arabia was set to become the next and most influential state to formally recognise Israel, a move the United States hoped would inspire a number of other Arab states to follow. However, largely due to public pressure once Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza in October of 2023, Saudi Arabia halted all momentum towards the recognition of an Israeli state. 

When Trump returned to office in January 2025, he conceded that Israel, a key regional ally of the United States, was becoming increasingly isolated on the world stage. Backlash stemmed from global outrage over alleged war crimes committed by its army in Gaza. On September 16, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory issued a report concluding that Israel “has committed genocide” in the Gaza Strip. Due to overwhelming condemnation of Israel’s actions in war across the Arab and Muslim world, no state in the region since the beginning of the war in Gaza has moved to recognise Israel. 

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Trump still believes in the Abraham Accords as the solution to break the regional isolation of post-war Israel. With Kazakhstan’s participation, Trump claims the gesture is a pivotal revitalisation of the Abraham Accords, spurring future membership from more consequential regional powers. Notably, Kazakhstan’s announcement came twelve days before Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman is planned to visit Washington D.C.. Trump is expected to use Kazakhstan’s accession to the Abraham Accords to put political pressure on Saudi Arabia to restart efforts to normalise ties with Israel.

The Future of Kazakh-American Cooperation

During the November 2025 C5+1 summit, Trump hinted he may soon make a presidential visit to Astana. All indications suggest Trump has grown fond of Tokayev’s government. Its readiness to secure US access to critical minerals and to breathe life into Trump’s stalled Middle East peace project has not gone unnoticed in Washington. While Tokayev believes he is able to maintain Kazakh sovereignty by juggling agreements between Russia, China and the United States, it is unclear if further cooperation with Trump’s America will bring Kazakhstan the independence it so desires. 

Read more on Novastan: Central Asia and Russia: an ever-changing relationship

Qatar, a regional neighbor long eager to balance diplomacy and defense, found itself punished for its alignment with Washington and peace efforts. In the past year alone, it was bombed twice – once by Iran and once by Israel, America’s closest regional ally. Not too far away from Kazakhstan in the Caucasus, Trump recently showed the world with his Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Deal his administration’s eagerness to use diplomacy to cement America’s own economic hegemony in far away regions.

Time will tell if Tokayev’s gamble for further integration with the United States will yield the result his government desires. By joining the Abraham Accords at a critical moment for the initiative’s survival, Kazakhstan has successfully proven its diplomatic usefulness to Washington. However, as Trump aims to expand American influence over the Asian continent, Kazakhstan now risks becoming a pawn in America’s mounting competition for dominance with China engulfing the Central Asian region.

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Joseph Fisher for Novastan

The post Kazakhstan to become an Unusual Addition to the Abraham Accords: Will this Diplomatic Gesture for Washington Pay Off? appeared first on Novastan English.