Uzbekistan has increasingly treated Afghanistan not only as a security concern but as a potential trade and transit bridge linking Central and South Asia. In this interview, Aziza Mukhammedova, Leading Research Fellow at the Center for Afghanistan and South Asian Studies at Uzbekistan’s Institute for Advanced International Studies (IAIS), discusses the rapid growth of bilateral trade, the future of the Termez-Hairatan corridor and Trans-Afghan railway, the risks posed by Afghanistan-Pakistan tensions, and what would need to happen for Afghanistan to become a genuine regional economic connector.

For years, Afghanistan was discussed in Central Asia primarily through the language of security, instability and border risk. Uzbekistan has increasingly tried to change that framing.

Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, Tashkent has pursued an increasingly pragmatic relationship with Kabul, expanding trade, energy links and transport cooperation while promoting Afghanistan as a potential bridge between Central and South Asia.

The economic relationship has grown quickly. Uzbekistan’s trade turnover with Afghanistan rose from around $674 million in 2021 to almost $1.68 billion in 2025, while Afghanistan became one of the most important markets for Uzbek exports. Cross-border infrastructure has expanded through the Termez International Trade Centre, cooperation on the Hairatan-Mazar-i-Sharif railway has continued, and Uzbekistan has continued to promote the much more ambitious Trans-Afghan railway towards Pakistan.

But the larger ambition remains uncertain.

The Trans-Afghan railway is still under development, financing remains unresolved, and the economic viability of the project will depend on whether substantial and reliable freight flows actually materialise. At the same time, tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, water disputes around the Amu Darya and questions over whether Afghanistan itself would benefit economically from transit all complicate the picture.

To understand what is changing, and what remains aspirational, Novastan Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine spoke with Aziza Mukhammedova, Leading Research Fellow at the Center for Afghanistan and South Asian Studies at Uzbekistan’s Institute for Advanced International Studies (IAIS). Her research focuses on Afghanistan and regional connectivity between Central and South Asia.

Novastan: Uzbekistan has invested heavily in the idea of Afghanistan as a connector rather than simply a source of security risks. Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, what has actually changed in Uzbekistan-Afghanistan economic relations? Which developments would you identify as the clearest evidence that this approach is producing tangible results?

Aziza Mukhammedova: I would separate the bilateral economic results, which are already quite visible, from the broader idea of Afghanistan as a regional transit connector, which is progressing but has not yet been fully realised.

Since 2021, the most important change has been that Uzbekistan has moved from simply preserving economic ties with Afghanistan to systematically building economic infrastructure around those ties. Engagement has become much more institutionalised.

The clearest evidence is trade. Uzbekistan’s trade turnover with Afghanistan stood at roughly $674 million in 2021, but increased to $1.14 billion in 2024 and almost $1.68 billion in 2025. Bilateral trade has therefore grown by approximately two and a half times compared with 2021. Afghanistan also became one of Uzbekistan’s most important export markets, with Uzbek exports reaching around $1.5 billion in 2025.

A second tangible result is the creation of physical and institutional infrastructure for cross-border commerce. The Termez International Trade Centre, formally opened in August 2024, is particularly significant because it is not simply another political initiative. It provides Afghan entrepreneurs with simplified access to Uzbekistan, including a special visa regime, commercial facilities and access to services. According to Uzbek government figures, more than 800,000 Afghan citizens visited the centre in 2025, while exports through it reached about $320 million.

We can also see growing institutionalisation of bilateral trade. Uzbekistan opened trade houses in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif in May 2025, and the two sides signed a preferential trade agreement in June 2025. Cooperation on the Hairatan-Mazar-i-Sharif railway has also continued, with the Uzbek operator remaining responsible for servicing the line.

Energy is another important dimension. Uzbekistan exported around 1.8 billion kWh of electricity worth more than $90 million to Afghanistan in 2024, and the relationship is now moving beyond electricity sales towards infrastructure development, including the long-discussed Surkhan-Pul-e-Khumri 500 kV line.

However, I would distinguish these achievements from the larger claim that Afghanistan has already become a fully functioning connector between Central and South Asia. That transformation is still incomplete.

The most ambitious project, the Trans-Afghan Railway linking Uzbekistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan, remains under development. There has nevertheless been concrete progress: in July 2025, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan signed a trilateral framework agreement to prepare a feasibility study for the Termez-Naibabad-Maidanshahr-Logar-Kharlachi route.

So I would say Uzbekistan’s strategy is already producing tangible results, but primarily at the bilateral and cross-border level. The next test will be whether these achievements can be converted into genuine regional connectivity.

Termez and Hairatan already form the most developed physical connection between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. How much further could this corridor realistically be developed without waiting for the Trans-Afghan railway?

There is considerable room to develop the Termez-Hairatan corridor further even without waiting for the Trans-Afghan railway.

In the short term, relatively modest improvements in border management, terminals and logistics may generate a higher return than building entirely new infrastructure.

The corridor already has the basic assets: the Friendship Bridge, road and rail connections, the Hairatan-Mazar-i-Sharif railway and a growing logistics cluster on the Uzbek side. Traffic is already increasing. In July 2026, the governor of Surkhandarya stated that freight transportation with Afghanistan by road, rail and river had doubled.

I would identify four areas where practical measures could have a substantial impact.

The first is customs and border processing. Reducing the time a truck or wagon spends at the border can be almost as important as increasing physical railway capacity. Uzbekistan has proposed a “one-stop” principle at border crossings, greater integration with its E-logistics platform, electronic vehicle registration and online cargo monitoring.

Second is railway-terminal capacity. The Hairatan-Mazar-i-Sharif line already provides a functioning 1,520-mm-gauge connection into northern Afghanistan. Capacity can still be increased through additional sidings, better loading and unloading equipment, faster wagon turnaround and terminal rehabilitation.

Third is developing Termez and Hairatan as a single logistics ecosystem. More bonded warehouses, cold storage, container handling, consolidation facilities and predictable truck scheduling could reduce both costs and congestion.

Fourth is road-transport regulation and fees. Harmonising charges, permits, documentation and vehicle requirements could make the route more commercially attractive without laying a single kilometre of new track.

So I would not see the choice as Termez-Hairatan versus the Trans-Afghan railway. Improving Termez-Hairatan now is probably the best way to prepare for the larger corridor later.

The Trans-Afghan railway is often presented as transformative. At this stage, which route and financing model appear most credible? Is there a risk that political enthusiasm is running ahead of demonstrated freight demand?

At this stage, the eastern route through northern and central Afghanistan to Kharlachi on the border with Pakistan appears to be the most realistic option, primarily because formal trilateral technical work is already under way.

In 2025, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to prepare a joint feasibility study for the Naibabad-Maidan Shahr-Logar-Kharlachi route.

Financing is much more complicated. The project is expected to cost several billion dollars, and a purely commercial PPP or BOT model would be difficult because a private investor would have to assume construction, political, security and demand risks simultaneously.

A more credible option would be blended financing combining state participation, concessional finance from international financial institutions, and private investment in terminals, rolling stock and operations.

The key question is the freight base.

The railway is unlikely to be economically sustainable if it relies only on trade between Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Its viability would require substantial transit flows from Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries, potentially Russia, stable Afghan export volumes and reliable access to Pakistani ports.

There is therefore a real risk that political enthusiasm could run ahead of demonstrated commercial viability.

The project has a strong strategic rationale because it would diversify Central Asia’s access to seaports and significantly shorten southbound routes. But a strategically important project is not automatically a financially viable one.

The current feasibility study needs to demonstrate that realistic freight volumes, tariffs and operating costs can support the project without simply assuming that large cargo flows will appear once the railway is built.

Could Afghanistan-Pakistan tensions now represent a greater obstacle to the corridor than insecurity within Afghanistan itself?

Potentially, yes, but I would distinguish between security risk inside Afghanistan and geopolitical risk at the corridor’s southern gateway.

Pakistan is not simply another transit country. It provides the connection to the ports that gives the entire railway much of its geoeconomic value.

Even if the Afghan section operates normally, prolonged disruption at the Afghan-Pakistani border could affect the corridor as a whole. The experience of 2026 illustrates this clearly: border closures significantly disrupted Afghanistan’s external trade, raised logistics costs and forced part of the traffic to seek alternative routes.

At the same time, I would be cautious about describing bilateral tensions as a fundamental obstacle.

The fact that Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan signed a trilateral agreement on the feasibility study and continued political consultations on regional connectivity demonstrates that all three sides recognise a substantial shared economic interest in keeping this direction open.

The railway should therefore not only be seen as dependent on political stability. It can also contribute to it.

Once significant commercial interests, transit revenues and access to regional markets become tied to the corridor, the economic cost of prolonged disruptions increases for all parties. That creates an incentive to insulate transport cooperation, as far as possible, from fluctuations in bilateral relations.

You have also examined the possibility of extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor into Afghanistan and towards Central Asia. Would integration with CPEC complement the Trans-Afghan railway, or risk creating new dependencies?

From Uzbekistan’s perspective, I would see integration with CPEC primarily as a complement to the Trans-Afghan railway rather than an alternative.

The two projects perform different functions. The Trans-Afghan railway is intended to create the north-south link from Central Asia through Afghanistan, while CPEC could provide access to an already developing network of transport, logistics and port infrastructure inside Pakistan.

For Uzbekistan, however, the key principle is not dependence on a single corridor, but multiplication of connectivity options.

This is consistent with Uzbekistan’s broader transport strategy. Tashkent is simultaneously promoting the Trans-Afghan Corridor, the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway and routes towards the Caspian and Europe. CPEC should therefore be understood as one component of a diversified regional network.

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

The optimal outcome would be interconnection without exclusivity.

Central Asian states have developed different relationships with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Do you see their policies gradually converging

I do see gradual convergence, but I would describe it as convergence in practice rather than convergence in perception.

Central Asian states increasingly accept that Afghanistan under the Taliban is a long-term regional reality and that economic isolation is neither practical nor conducive to regional stability.

New regional formats are significant in this regard. In February 2026, Central Asian representatives discussed Afghanistan collectively in Astana, and in April the first Central Asia-Afghanistan Consultative Dialogue was held in Kabul, focusing on trade, transit, connectivity and regional cooperation.

However, national approaches remain distinct.

Uzbekistan has gone furthest in conceptualising Afghanistan as part of the region’s economic architecture. Turkmenistan’s approach is similarly pragmatic but more infrastructure- and energy-driven. Kazakhstan has moved rapidly towards economic normalisation, while Tajikistan remains more security-sensitive, although even Dushanbe has become considerably more pragmatic.

So I would not say Central Asia is developing a single policy towards the Taliban.

What is emerging is a common regional minimum: engagement with Kabul, preservation of security dialogue, expansion of economic relations and an interest in Afghanistan’s greater regional integration.

How much leverage does Uzbekistan’s pragmatic engagement give Tashkent on issues beyond trade and security, particularly women’s education and political inclusion?

Uzbekistan’s engagement gives Tashkent a certain degree of influence, but I would describe it as access-based rather than coercive leverage.

Uzbekistan has maintained regular political contacts with the Taliban authorities, expanded economic cooperation and positioned itself as a constructive regional partner. This creates channels through which sensitive issues can be discussed.

However, the limits of this influence should also be recognised.

Issues such as women’s education and political inclusion are closely connected to the Taliban’s internal ideological and institutional calculations and are therefore much less responsive to bilateral economic incentives than trade, infrastructure or border security.

Read more on Novastan: Nilofar Ayoubi on Afghan women, gender apartheid and rebuilding life in exile

The fact that restrictions on women’s secondary and higher education remain in place in 2026 demonstrates how limited sustained international engagement has been on this issue.

Uzbekistan’s comparative advantage lies elsewhere: maintaining trust, keeping difficult issues on the agenda and encouraging gradual change without sacrificing the channels of communication that make such influence possible in the first place.

Water is becoming increasingly important in Afghanistan’s relations with its neighbours. Could the Qosh Tepa Canal reshape Afghanistan’s relationship with Central Asia?

Yes, but I would be cautious about drawing a direct parallel with Afghanistan-Pakistan hydropolitics.

The common factor is that Afghanistan is becoming a much more active upstream water user.

For decades, limited irrigation infrastructure meant that the Central Asian water balance developed largely without significant Afghan withdrawals. The Qosh Tepa Canal changes this reality. Afghanistan is not party to the existing regional water-sharing arrangements, while the canal could substantially increase its use of the Amu Darya.

Water also becomes more politically sensitive when supply is already under pressure from climate change, glacier loss, population growth and agricultural demand.

However, I think the Central Asian response is developing in a different direction.

Uzbekistan has deliberately framed Qosh Tepa as an issue for dialogue rather than confrontation. President Mirziyoyev has proposed involving Afghanistan directly in regional discussions on Amu Darya water use and establishing a joint working group to assess the canal’s impact.

The key challenge is to move from a system in which Afghanistan was largely outside regional water governance towards one in which it becomes an integrated participant in transparent, data-based basin management.

What would Afghanistan itself gain from becoming a major transit country? Is there a risk that corridors could cross the country without producing much local development?

Afghanistan could gain substantially, but the benefits should not be reduced to transit fees alone.

The more important opportunity is to use connectivity to lower Afghanistan’s own transport costs, expand access to regional markets and stimulate economic activity along the corridor.

There is a real risk of what I would call a “transit without transformation” scenario: trains cross Afghanistan, revenues are collected at the border, but relatively little value remains in the Afghan economy. Railways by themselves do not automatically create development.

To avoid this, the Trans-Afghan Corridor should be developed not simply as a transport line but as an economic corridor.

That means creating logistics centres, dry ports, warehouses and processing facilities around key nodes; connecting agricultural and mining areas through feeder infrastructure; encouraging Afghan companies to participate in transport and logistics services; and developing industrial or export-oriented zones along the route.

The distinction is between Afghanistan as a transit territory and Afghanistan as a participant in regional value chains.

The first generates some revenue. The second can generate jobs, investment, exports and new centres of economic activity.

Finally, looking towards 2030, what indicators should we examine to determine whether Afghanistan is genuinely becoming a bridge between Central and South Asia?

By 2030, I would look at several concrete indicators rather than at the number of agreements or political declarations.

The first is actual transit volume: how much cargo is moving through Afghanistan between Central and South Asia, and what share of that traffic is genuine through-transit rather than bilateral trade with Afghanistan itself.

The second is commercial reliability. A functioning bridge requires regular freight services, predictable transit times, competitive costs and the ability to move cargo throughout the year.

If businesses begin choosing the Afghan route because it is commercially rational rather than politically encouraged, that would be a very important indicator of success.

Third, I would look at network integration: whether Afghan routes are effectively connected northward to Uzbekistan and the wider Central Asian railway system and southward to Pakistan’s transport network and ports.

Fourth is Afghanistan’s own economic participation. If logistics hubs, processing industries, services, employment and Afghan exports grow around these corridors, Afghanistan would be becoming part of regional value chains rather than simply territory crossed by foreign cargo.

Finally, I would examine whether connectivity has become institutionalised enough to survive political fluctuations.

So by 2030, the decisive question should be very practical: are goods moving through Afghanistan regularly, competitively and in growing volumes, and is Afghanistan itself capturing part of the economic value created by that movement?

If the answer is yes, then the idea of Afghanistan as a bridge between Central and South Asia will have moved from geopolitical aspiration to economic reality.

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

The post Can Afghanistan Become Central Asia’s Bridge to the South? appeared first on Novastan English.

From growing up as a bacha posh in Kunduz to becoming an entrepreneur, journalist and women’s rights advocate, Nilofar Ayoubi has experienced the freedoms and restrictions imposed on Afghan women from unusually different perspectives. Now based in Poland, she speaks to Novastan English Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine about gender apartheid, political participation, exile, the legacy of Afghanistan’s pre-2021 media landscape and why the country should also be understood through its connections with Central Asia.

For much of her childhood, Nilofar Ayoubi lived publicly as a boy.

Growing up in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, she became a bacha posh – literally a girl “dressed as a boy” – a practice through which some Afghan families allow daughters to assume a male social identity, often giving them access to freedoms otherwise restricted to girls. Ayoubi has previously recalled attending school, practising karate, riding bicycles and moving through public space with freedoms that disappeared when, around puberty, she could no longer continue living publicly as a boy.

The experience would shape the political outlook that followed. Before the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, Ayoubi built businesses employing women, worked in journalism and founded the Women’s Political Participation Network in 2020, amid growing fears that women’s rights would be bargained away during peace negotiations. She also headed Asia Times Afghanistan and worked as an editor with Akhbar Afghan.

When the Taliban entered Kabul in August 2021, that public profile placed her at particular risk. On 23 August, she left Afghanistan with her husband and three young children and eventually rebuilt her life in Warsaw. She has since continued advocating internationally for Afghan women while maintaining contact with women inside the country.

Five years after the Taliban returned to power, women and girls remain excluded from secondary and university education and face sweeping restrictions on employment, movement and participation in public life. Ayoubi is among those campaigning for this system to be internationally recognised as gender apartheid.

Yet she is equally insistent that Afghan women should not be understood solely through what has been done to them.

“I survived things,” she tells Novastan. “But I also built things.”

Novastan: You spent much of your childhood as a bacha posh, experiencing freedoms that were denied to girls. When you eventually had to begin living publicly as a girl, what did that transition teach you?

Nilofar Ayoubi: It taught me something very early that many people spend a lifetime trying to articulate: freedom can be determined by something as arbitrary as how society perceives your gender.

For around thirteen years, I lived as a bacha posh. As a boy, I could go to school more freely, ride a bicycle, practise karate, move through public spaces and experience a degree of independence. Then I had to return to living publicly as a girl, and suddenly the world around me became smaller.

I was the same person. My intelligence had not changed. My courage had not changed. My abilities had not changed. Only society’s perception of me had changed.

That experience shaped almost everything I later became.

It made me understand that the restrictions imposed on Afghan women were never evidence of women’s inability. They were evidence of a system deliberately limiting their possibilities.

It also taught me that freedom is not abstract. Sometimes freedom is simply being able to walk somewhere without permission. To ride a bicycle. To study. To speak loudly. To occupy space without apologising for your existence.

Once you have experienced both sides of that invisible wall, it becomes impossible not to see it.

Before 2021, you built businesses and employed hundreds of women. Did you see giving women jobs and financial independence as a form of activism?

Absolutely.

I never separated women’s economic independence from women’s rights. A woman who earns her own income gains something beyond money. She gains bargaining power inside her family, greater control over her choices, confidence, mobility and, sometimes, the ability to leave situations she would otherwise be trapped in.

That is political power at its most practical level.

In Afghanistan, I saw women with extraordinary ability who were prevented from using it, not because a law necessarily prohibited them, but because of family pressure, social expectations, insecurity, lack of childcare, restrictions on movement, harassment and the constant calculation of reputation.

Read more on Novastan: Bound by Tradition: Silent Suffering of Daughters-in-Law in Uzbekistan

This is something international discussions about women’s rights sometimes miss. Changing a constitution is important, but a progressive law does not automatically change what happens behind the door of a home.

I wanted women working with me to earn, learn and understand that their labour had economic value.

Entrepreneurship therefore became another form of activism for me. Instead of only saying that women were capable, I could create environments in which they demonstrated it every day.

And they did.

You also worked in journalism. Looking back, what had twenty years of relatively open media actually changed in Afghan society, and how much of that legacy survives today?

Afghanistan’s media sector before August 2021 was imperfect, sometimes chaotic and certainly not completely free, but its transformation was extraordinary.

A generation grew up hearing women questioning politicians on television, journalists investigating corruption, young people debating religion, governance and society, and citizens openly criticising powerful people.

That matters.

Freedom of expression does not only produce newspapers and television programmes. It changes what a society believes it is entitled to ask.

We built that culture over twenty years, often at enormous personal risk. Afghan journalists were threatened, attacked and killed long before August 2021.

Today, the institutional space for that freedom has been devastated. Women journalists have been systematically pushed out of public life, censorship and self-censorship have become pervasive, and independent journalism operates under extraordinary pressure.

But I do not believe the intellectual legacy disappeared.

You cannot expose an entire generation to debate, information and freedom of expression and then completely erase the memory of it.

The Taliban can close a newsroom. They can intimidate a journalist. They can impose restrictions on what can be published. What is much harder is making millions of Afghans forget that another reality once existed.

That memory is itself a form of resistance.

You founded the Women’s Political Participation Network shortly before the previous political order collapsed. What did Afghan women involved in the network actually want from politics?

The women I worked with did not simply want seats in rooms. They wanted influence over the decisions being made inside those rooms.

There is a very important difference between representation and participation.

Read more on Novastan: More Women in Central Asian Politics – But Where Is the Power?

Too often, women’s political participation in Afghanistan became a numbers exercise: How many women are attending? How many women are in parliament? How many women are sitting at the table?

But the real question should have been: Do these women have power?

Can they influence negotiations? Can they shape budgets? Can they challenge decisions? Are women from outside Kabul included? Are younger women included? Are women from different ethnic, socioeconomic and political backgrounds represented?

Read more on Novastan: Uzbekistan: when women demand to have a voice

When we founded the Women’s Political Participation Network in 2020, the peace process was already creating enormous anxiety among women. Many could see that women’s rights were becoming negotiable in the pursuit of a political settlement.

We were not asking the international community to “save Afghan women.” Afghan women had been saving themselves, organising themselves and fighting for political space for years.

We were asking not to be traded away.

Unfortunately, that distinction was not taken seriously enough.

You argue that what the Taliban have created should be recognised internationally as “gender apartheid”. Why is that terminology important?

Because words determine how the world understands a crime.

What exists in Afghanistan today is not a collection of unrelated discriminatory policies. It is a systematic architecture of exclusion based on gender.

Girls have been denied secondary and university education. Women have been pushed out of much of employment and public life. Their freedom of movement has been restricted. Their visibility in public space has been deliberately reduced. Their access to parks, gyms and many other areas of ordinary life has been curtailed.

This is not simply “conservative governance.” It is not merely a women’s-rights problem.

It is a system.

When exclusion becomes systematic, institutionalised and enforced by the state because of the sex of the person being excluded, our language must reflect the scale and nature of what is happening.

That is why I advocate for recognition of gender apartheid.

Calling it discrimination risks making it sound as though women are experiencing unequal treatment within society. Afghan women are increasingly being denied the right to participate in society itself.

The terminology also matters legally and politically. Recognition creates pressure for accountability and makes it much harder for governments to normalise relations while pretending that the systematic persecution of half the population is simply an internal cultural matter.

No government should be permitted to make women socially invisible and still expect normal diplomatic legitimacy.

You remain in contact with women inside Afghanistan. How different are those conversations from discussions about Afghanistan at international conferences?

The difference can be enormous.

At international conferences, Afghanistan is discussed through phrases such as “engagement,” “stability,” “humanitarian access,” “dialogue” and “pragmatism.”

Inside Afghanistan, the conversation is about survival.

It is about a girl watching another academic year disappear. A woman wondering how she will support her children because she can no longer work. An activist deleting messages because she is afraid her phone might be searched. A journalist trying to continue working while navigating censorship and intimidation.

These are not theoretical policy questions for them. They determine the architecture of their daily lives.

One thing outsiders repeatedly underestimate is Afghan women’s agency.

Women inside Afghanistan are not sitting passively waiting for someone abroad to rescue them. They are teaching girls secretly, documenting abuses, working where they can, supporting families, organising networks and finding extraordinary ways to resist erasure.

Another mistake is assuming that silence means acceptance.

When speaking carries the possibility of detention, violence or retaliation against your family, silence cannot automatically be interpreted as consent.

Sometimes silence is survival.

You have also become one of the people international media turn to when telling the story of Afghan women. Do you feel frustrated by the way foreign media portray them?

Yes, very much.

Afghan women have suffered enormously, and we should never minimise that suffering. But suffering is not our entire identity.

I have always resisted the idea that Afghan women should be presented only through photographs of burqas, poverty and despair.

Before August 2021, Afghan women were journalists, prosecutors, judges, politicians, entrepreneurs, athletes, teachers, artists, activists, police officers and students.

After August 2021, they did not suddenly lose their intelligence, ambition or political consciousness. They lost the institutional space in which they were allowed to exercise them.

That distinction matters.

I know something about this personally. My own story has been reported internationally many times, and I am grateful that people have cared enough to listen. But I never want the most painful parts of my life to become the only explanation of who I am.

I survived things. But I also built things.

That is true for millions of Afghan women.

Victimhood may describe something that happened to a person. It should never become the total definition of that person.

You grew up in Kunduz, with deep historical and cultural connections to neighbouring Central Asia. Is Afghanistan too often viewed solely through South Asia, the Middle East or the “war on terror”?

Absolutely.

Growing up in Kunduz gives you a very different geographical imagination of Afghanistan.

Northern Afghanistan has always been connected to Central Asia through trade, migration, language, ethnicity, families and culture. The borders on modern maps are politically important, but human relationships across that geography are much older.

Afghanistan is often analysed externally according to whichever geopolitical crisis is dominant. During the last twenty years, it was overwhelmingly interpreted through terrorism, Pakistan, NATO and the war on terror.

That framework obscures how historically interconnected Afghanistan is.

Looking north reminds us that Afghanistan is not simply the western edge of South Asia or an appendage of the Middle East. It is also deeply connected to Central Asia.

For Kunduz, Balkh, Badakhshan and other northern provinces, understanding relationships with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan helps explain trade, culture, identity, security and political dynamics that cannot be understood solely through Kabul or Pakistan.

Afghanistan has always stood at a crossroads. Reducing it to a battlefield between competing powers has prevented outsiders from understanding the country as a society.

You had to rebuild your life after arriving in Poland. Has becoming an entrepreneur again in Europe changed how you think about economic independence?

Yes, because exile forced me to experience economic independence from another perspective.

On 23 August 2021, I left Afghanistan with my husband and our three very young children. I went from a life and career that I had spent years building to arriving in Warsaw and facing enormous uncertainty.

I had to start again.

There is something profoundly humbling about becoming a refugee. Your qualifications, reputation, networks and achievements do not necessarily cross a border with you in the same way your body does.

Rebuilding businesses and professional life in Europe reminded me that entrepreneurship is not only about financial independence. It is also about identity and dignity.

In Afghanistan, creating businesses was partly about expanding women’s possibilities within a restrictive environment.

In Europe, rebuilding became partly about refusing to allow displacement to reduce me permanently to the identity of “refugee.”

I am proud of surviving, but I do not want survival to be the highest ambition available to displaced women.

We should be able to rebuild, lead, create, employ people and contribute economically to the societies in which we now live.

Economic independence means different things in Warsaw and Kabul, but its psychological foundation is similar: the ability to make choices about your own life.

After years of conferences, meetings and appeals to governments, what kind of international action do you still believe can make a concrete difference?

After five years, I have become much less interested in statements and much more interested in consequences.

The Taliban have learned that international condemnation is often temporary and rarely carries sufficient cost.

We issue statements. We organise conferences. We express outrage. Then another meeting takes place, another diplomatic channel opens and another concession is described as “pragmatic engagement.”

Engagement without benchmarks becomes normalisation.

I am not arguing that the international community should abandon Afghanistan. Isolation that harms ordinary Afghans is not a solution either. Humanitarian assistance must continue, and Afghans should not be punished for the actions of the Taliban.

But engagement must have conditions.

There should be measurable requirements concerning women’s education, employment, movement and participation in public life. Afghan women and independent civil society must have meaningful representation in international discussions about Afghanistan, not ceremonial invitations after decisions have already been made.

There must also be accountability. That means supporting international legal mechanisms, documenting abuses, protecting journalists and human-rights defenders, and advancing the recognition of gender apartheid in international law.

At the same time, international support should reach Afghan-led initiatives directly, particularly women-led education, media, civil society and humanitarian networks.

I have spent years helping vulnerable Afghans, including women at immediate risk, journalists, activists and families trying to escape danger. One lesson has become very clear to me: sometimes relatively small, targeted interventions change an actual human life more effectively than another multimillion-dollar conference about Afghanistan.

What has failed is the repeated assumption that Afghan women’s rights can be postponed until some future political settlement.

We have seen where that logic leads.

Afghan women do not need the world to speak endlessly about how courageous they are. They need the international community to make their persecution politically, diplomatically and legally consequential.

I still believe international action can make a difference. Otherwise I would not continue doing this work.

But solidarity without consequences eventually becomes ceremony.

And Afghan women have had enough ceremonies.

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

The post “I survived things. But I also built things”: Nilofar Ayoubi on Afghan women, exile and resistance appeared first on Novastan English.

An assessment of President Sadyr Japarov’s tenure, the political realignment following the dismissal of the head of the security services, and growing economic dependence on China… For Novastan, prominent Kyrgyz political scientist Emil Dzhuraev looks back at the political, economic and geopolitical upheavals facing Kyrgyzstan.

Emilbek Dzhuraev is a Kyrgyz political scientist and analyst who holds a PhD in political science from the University of Maryland. His areas of expertise include political regimes and democratization in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia, as well as constitutional development and regional geopolitics. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, a regular commentator on Kyrgyz and Central Asian political developments, and co-founder of Crossroads Central Asia, a Bishkek-based think tank.

In this interview with Novastan, conducted in collaboration with IFME (Institut français des mondes eurasiatiques), he discusses Kyrgyzstan’s current political situation in light of the forthcoming presidential election scheduled for January 2027.

Novastan: Since Sadyr Japarov came to power in 2020-2021, following the October revolution, Kyrgyzstan has undergone major constitutional and institutional transformations. How would you broadly describe the political system that has emerged under Japarov?

Emil Dzhuraev: With the arrival of the new government in early 2021 and Sadyr Japarov’s accession to the presidency, a process of constitutional reform was also set in motion, culminating in the adoption of a new Constitution in May 2021. In a sense, this represented a radical and decisive break with the Constitution that had been in force for ten years. The 2010 Constitution had established a form of semi-parliamentary system: Parliament had significant legislative powers, as well as powers to appoint and dismiss the government, while the president’s powers were much more limited. In 2010, this had itself represented a major departure from the much more presidential system that had prevailed previously.

In 2021, we therefore saw the return of a very strong and centralized presidential system. Unlike earlier versions of the presidential system, in the early 2000s or even the 1990s, the president’s powers are now more firmly established at the constitutional level. They are no longer simply de facto powers arising from political circumstances: they are explicitly enshrined in the Constitution. The president is both the head of the executive branch and the highest representative of the state.

The Constitution also grants the president extensive executive powers. For instance, Parliament now has only a limited role in appointing and dismissing members of the government. In most cases, it is the president who appoints and dismisses them, and dismissals can take place without parliamentary involvement. The president also participates in the appointment of judges, all the way down to courts of first instance.

If you look at the current Constitution, the provisions concerning the rights and powers of the president probably constitute the longest section devoted to any state institution.

Kyrgyzstan was long considered the most politically pluralistic country in Central Asia, to the point of being nicknamed the “island of democracy.” Based on what you have said, is the country now moving towards a form of autocracy?

Many observers have noted that Kyrgyzstan has moved towards greater autocracy in recent years and away from democratic norms and principles. Unfortunately, this is also happening against the backdrop of a global democratic retreat and democratic backsliding. The authoritarian shift in Kyrgyzstan is therefore not a unique phenomenon, and there is currently no particularly favorable international environment for a return to democracy.

The question now is whether political pluralism in Kyrgyzstan can be rebuilt. This has proved very difficult under the current Constitution, which gives the authorities significant repressive powers. Political parties, different political groups and the various currents within society have been heavily constrained in their ability to exert any meaningful influence on politics.

Parliamentary elections were brought forward from 2026 to November 2025. What did this early election actually change in the balance of power between the presidency, Parliament and the political elites?

The parliamentary elections were brought forward by one year, and the exact reasons for this decision are not fully understood. The official explanation put forward by the government was that it was related to the proximity of the 2027 presidential election. Even if one views this explanation with some skepticism, I think it is nevertheless grounded in an obvious reality: by the time the country would have elected its Parliament, it would also have been entering the presidential campaign and electoral process. There would have been a two- or three-month period beginning with the parliamentary electoral cycle during which Kyrgyzstan’s political life would have been very open and vulnerable to all kinds of shocks, with a potential risk of instability.

After the elections, and looking at their results, a second explanation can also be considered, in which the president may or may not have played a role. The new Parliament includes a number of figures promoted by Mr. Tashiev who are likely to support his initiatives and main political priorities. And that is precisely what we have begun to see.

Once the new Parliament was installed, at the very beginning of 2026, rumors and a kind of public campaign began suggesting that the presidential election should also be brought forward. There is indeed a debate linked to the discrepancy between the old and new Constitutions: the old Constitution provided for a single six-year presidential term, while the new one provides for two five-year terms. Mr. Japarov’s first term falls between the two systems and, according to some reports, Tashiev’s supporters wanted the election to take place this year, after five years in office.

Kamchybek Tashiev, who played a central role in the Japarov regime, was dismissed in February 2026 as head of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security. What were the reasons for and consequences of this decision?

I think the real reason is that the president and his closest circle – although it is difficult to say exactly who belongs to that circle or how large it is – felt that Mr. Tashiev was moving rapidly towards a presidential bid.

More than that, it was not simply a matter of preparing for the scheduled election: Tashiev’s group was pushing for an early election. More seriously, the president’s entourage apparently believed that Tashiev’s team could secure a majority in Parliament that would allow it to launch impeachment proceedings against Mr. Japarov on the grounds that he had exceeded the five-year term provided for under the current Constitution.

There have therefore been all kinds of allegations, rumors and suspicions which are, of course, very difficult to confirm at this stage, because nothing has been officially documented in a way that would establish that such plans or statements actually existed.

Judicial proceedings are currently underway against Mr. Tashiev and some of his closest associates. They are accused of preparing to overthrow the government. This is essentially the charge they are defending themselves against. At first instance, the district court found them guilty. But the evidence is very limited, and this obviously raises serious concerns about our judicial system and judicial practices.

Japarov has now publicly confirmed his intention to seek a second presidential term in January 2027. At this stage, do you see any political actor capable of seriously challenging him? Could the political break between Japarov and Tashiev ultimately turn into an electoral confrontation?

At this stage, it is very difficult to imagine serious competition against Mr. Japarov when he seeks re-election. No one doubted that he would seek a second term. Recently, in an interview, he said that he had wanted to give up a second term in favor of Mr. Tashiev, but I do not think anyone really takes that statement seriously.

After five years of an extremely intolerant and repressive political environment in Kyrgyzstan, I think we have exhausted our pool of potential competitors – or at least the most important and capable political opponents of Mr. Japarov are currently not in a position to challenge him.

Among other things, a law was also passed – and I think it was strongly motivated by political considerations – during Parliament’s last session. It provides that anyone convicted of certain serious or particularly serious crimes, even after serving their sentence and even after being rehabilitated, will be barred from running for elected office. Of course, this currently applies to almost all of the major figures in the political opposition.

Kyrgyzstan has experienced strong economic growth in recent years. To what extent is this growth actually translating into improved living conditions for ordinary Kyrgyz citizens, and is this likely to become a political issue during the 2027 election campaign?

Indeed, President Japarov’s government strongly emphasizes macroeconomic results – the positive ones, of course, rather than the negative ones – particularly the fact that GDP has recorded very high growth over the past four or five years, often among the highest rates in the region.

But recently, a great deal of public discussion, mainly online – Kyrgyzstan’s political space has shifted to the Internet because it is now almost impossible to engage in political debate offline – has focused on the deterioration or stagnation of living standards, particularly the cost of living and inflation.

Some incomes may be rising, but the cost of living is rising even faster. Inflation is significant. The prices of basic goods and the consumer basket are genuinely increasing. According to Kyrgyzstan’s official economic statistics, the inflation rate may be below 10 percent, and perhaps even slightly below the GDP growth rate. But many people feel that inflation is much higher when it comes to essential goods.

As the election approaches, it will therefore not be enough for President Japarov to say that we have built so many kilometers of roads, so many schools or so many factories, because for a large proportion of ordinary citizens, the day-to-day cost of living will be the main issue.

Kyrgyzstan experienced major political upheavals in 2005, 2010 and 2020, the year you described as a “third departure.” What remains today of the political conditions that produced these revolutions?

First, the economic slowdown resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with the very difficult state of public finances and government obligations, particularly the payment of pensions, had practically emptied Kyrgyzstan’s budget. Repayment of the external debt was also a major problem.

Second, large-scale political corruption and, linked to it, organized crime were very significant factors. The parliamentary elections – which triggered this third political crisis – were also heavily dominated by money and corruption.

Third, I think there was simply a weakness on the part of the government in implementing decisions and effectively exercising its electoral mandate. This notably showed that the president at the time, Sooronbay Jeenbekov, was a very weak president who had surrendered much of his power to corrupt elements within his entourage.

If we look back at that period and compare it with the current situation in 2026, I think President Japarov’s government has eliminated many of these problems. The economy is very different from what it was in 2020, and organized crime is no longer present in the same way.

Of course, some people now argue that law-enforcement agencies within the government itself have become comparable to a form of organized crime, but that represents a different way of exercising power. The presidential apparatus is very powerful, and the state’s capacity to govern has increased considerably compared with 2020.

So I think those conditions are largely no longer present today. And, of course, one of the factors that made the October 2020 movement possible was the existence of elections and political pluralism that allowed parties to mobilize effectively. That is precisely what no longer exists under this highly centralized and hyper-presidential system.

If there were to be a “fourth departure,” it would therefore have to emerge under very different conditions and from different triggers.

Geopolitically, Kyrgyzstan is deeply tied to Russia, increasingly economically dependent on China, and seeking closer relations with the European Union and other external partners. How much room for maneuver does Bishkek have today?

Russia’s war in Ukraine has given Kyrgyzstan more room for maneuver in pursuing this multi-vector foreign policy. At certain points during these four and a half years of war, it did seem that things were becoming more difficult.

But because the war has lasted much longer than expected – much longer than Putin anticipated – it has given countries that are highly dependent on and closely tied to Russia more room for maneuver.

First, this is because Russia has had to devote far more of its resources, including diplomatic resources, to the war itself and to dealing with Western sanctions and isolation.

Second, China, Russia’s main partner and supporter, has also sought to gain more room for maneuver in regional geopolitics, and it is gradually obtaining that space.

Amid all of this, I think Mr. Putin has understood that, in order to meet Moscow’s own needs – particularly given the disruption of transport, logistics and trade networks – and in Russia’s own interests, it was important, even necessary, to give the Central Asian countries, including Kyrgyzstan, more space to pursue their own foreign policies.

I think much of the space left by Russia has been occupied by China. But Kyrgyzstan is also actively pursuing other directions in its foreign relations, particularly with the European Union and certain Middle Eastern countries, which have become very important, as well as, of course, with Turkey and its Central Asian neighbors.

The recent peace agreement between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan ended years of tensions and border conflicts and was signed in March 2025. How could this agreement affect Kyrgyzstan’s domestic politics and Japarov’s political legitimacy? Could it also strengthen Bishkek’s position within the broader regional balance in Central Asia?

From the perspective of Kyrgyzstan’s position in Central Asian politics, this is clearly a positive development: no longer having political disputes with your neighbors is a good thing.

At the same time, we were negotiating and resolving these disputes with both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. With Tajikistan, this included two episodes of open and violent conflict, in 2021 and 2022.

In terms of the legitimacy of Mr. Japarov’s government, however, this remains one of the most difficult issues to assess. The border question had remained unresolved for 30 years because whenever we faced these disputes, it was obvious that they could not be resolved without exchanging territory, without giving something up in order to obtain something else.

This is partly why previous governments and leaders had failed to resolve the issue. Japarov and his partner Tashiev clearly had both a popular mandate in 2021 and the political capacity needed to implement these kinds of decisions, including reaching certain compromises with neighboring countries.

In the long term, things will of course become clearer, because many aspects of the new borders and territorial exchanges are not yet widely understood, and most people in Kyrgyzstan do not know precisely where the border now runs.

However, I think that over time this will probably cease to be a major political issue. Some things could nevertheless retain symbolic importance, such as the large water reservoir. It is an obvious feature that everyone has heard about, that appears on maps and that everyone can see: it has, de facto, been ceded to Uzbekistan.

In practice, the water from this reservoir was already primarily intended for Uzbekistan because that is where the relevant economic activity is located. But the population eventually became aware of this situation.

If we look beyond the 2027 election, what do you see as the main political trends in Kyrgyzstan over the next six years?

Compared with most stable political systems, it is very difficult to predict anything in Kyrgyzstan because things can change very dramatically.

If we follow the current trajectory, several major challenges and questions arise for the future. The first concerns succession. Five years will pass quickly, and the question will be whether President Japarov will be prepared to relinquish power peacefully and openly to whoever wins the election, since he is legally entitled to only two terms. There are already rumors that his son could seek to succeed him.

Another major challenge, frequently raised by government critics and activists, concerns the evolution of our geopolitical relationship with China. Beijing’s activities in many countries, including Kyrgyzstan, are tied to numerous geopolitical interests. Anti-Chinese sentiment can easily be inflamed, and it is easy to mobilize such sentiment among the Kyrgyz population. The issue is all the more important because Kyrgyzstan has taken out numerous loans and entered into many financing agreements with China, and has therefore accumulated considerable debt.

The third major challenge in the coming years will be servicing our debt. Can the Kyrgyz economy continue to grow and increase its revenues over the next few years? The past three or four years have been very successful – at least for the government – but can this momentum continue?

Economic data and broader historical experience suggest that it is very difficult to sustain growth rates of 9, 10 or 11 percent a year for such a long period: growth will eventually slow. But when it does, what will that look like? Will the country enter a recession, experience a collapse, or face some other form of crisis? Economic growth has been heavily driven by sectors and sources of revenue that are not necessarily sustainable in the long term. Construction cannot continue growing at this pace indefinitely.

If that happens, Kyrgyzstan’s debt could become a very serious problem. That is precisely what the Kyrgyz government needs to be concerned about.

Interview by Roman Fuster,
Contributor to Novastan

The post “A Fourth Political Reset?”: An Interview with Kyrgyz Political Scientist Emil Dzhuraev appeared first on Novastan English.

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

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

The Making of the Silk Road Paradigm

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

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

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

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

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

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

Between China and Europe

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

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

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

Exchange Beyond Trade

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

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

Silk Without China

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

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

From Historical Metaphor to Geopolitical Strategy

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

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

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

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

Marco Polo and the Politics of Eurasian Space

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

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

What the Eurasian Frame Leaves Out

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

When Influence Ran East

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

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

Beyond the Silk Road

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

By Diego Benning Wang.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Soviet borders do not make Central Asian statehood artificial

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

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

Political life before the Bolsheviks

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

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

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

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

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

What Moscow actually did in 1924

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

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

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

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

Nation-building was not a one-way process

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

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

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

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

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

The contradiction at the heart of Soviet nation-building

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

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

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

The republics outlived the Soviet Union

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

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

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

Why the argument matters today

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

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

Read more on Novastan: The Lexicon of Kazakh Decolonisation

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

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

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

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

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

What happens to a society when people are afraid not only of what might happen to them, but of what they might say about what has already happened?

In Uzbekistan, the memory of the 2005 Andijan massacre has long been shaped by silence. Nearly two decades later, Uzbek playwright Roma Egorov revisited the events in his theatrical piece Andijan Polka. But Andijan is not the only episode to raise questions about fear, memory and repression in Uzbekistan. The violence in Karakalpakstan in July 2022 also left its mark on a country undergoing profound transformation under the banner of Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s “New Uzbekistan”.

Nukus, July 2022

On 1 July 2022, thousands of protesters gathered in Nukus, the capital of Karakalpakstan, after proposed constitutional amendments threatened the republic’s special status and its constitutional right to hold a referendum on secession. What began as opposition to constitutional change became the most serious political crisis of Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s presidency.

Security forces used lethal and other excessive force to disperse protesters. Twenty-one people were killed and more than 270 injured, while more than 500 people were initially detained. Human Rights Watch later concluded that law enforcement officers had used excessive or unnecessary lethal force against largely peaceful demonstrators.

Read more on Novastan: Karakalpakstan: long prison sentences for participants in last year’s protests

The government declared a state of emergency and severely restricted access to information. Internet connectivity in Karakalpakstan faced major disruptions and near-total blackouts. I was in Uzbekistan that summer. For several days, Telegram – one of the country’s principal channels for news and public discussion – became inaccessible.

Information controls were hardly unprecedented in Uzbekistan. Following the 2005 Andijan massacre, the Karimov government had also sought to prevent independent reporting and restrict competing accounts of what had happened.

Yet the government’s response in 2022 also revealed an important difference from the Karimov era. Mirziyoyev travelled to Nukus and withdrew the disputed constitutional amendments, opting for political de-escalation even as security forces resorted to lethal force. Such a willingness to reverse a controversial policy in response to public pressure would have been difficult to imagine under Islam Karimov.

The concession, however, did not prevent the prosecutions that followed. The violence and subsequent trials exposed a contradiction at the heart of Mirziyoyev’s “New Uzbekistan”: the state had become more responsive and pragmatic, but its willingness to use coercion when its authority was challenged had not disappeared.

This combination of concession and coercion makes Nukus particularly revealing. It suggests that the reform era has changed the way the Uzbek state manages dissent without fundamentally altering the limits it places on political mobilisation.

Why Karakalpakstan reacted

To understand why the protests escalated so quickly, it is necessary to look beyond the constitutional amendments themselves.

Karakalpakstan occupies a distinctive position within Uzbekistan. The autonomous republic has its own constitution, while Uzbekistan’s Constitution historically recognised it as sovereign within the country and provided for the possibility of secession on the basis of a referendum. The proposed 2022 amendments would have removed constitutional provisions underpinning this special status.

For many Karakalpaks, this was not simply a technical legal change. It raised questions about autonomy, dignity and whether Tashkent was prepared to respect Karakalpakstan’s distinct political identity.

Geographically distant from Uzbekistan’s political centre and profoundly affected by the environmental catastrophe of the Aral Sea, Karakalpakstan has also faced serious economic and social challenges. Questions of representation, regional marginalisation and the relationship between the central government and the periphery formed part of the background against which the constitutional amendments were received.

As political scientist Sergey Horák has argued, the protests cannot simply be understood as a coordinated separatist campaign. Regional identity, constitutional anxiety and anger over the treatment of Karakalpak activists also shaped the mobilisation.

The government’s emphasis on separatism nevertheless helped recast a political dispute over constitutional rights, representation and regional identity as a question of state security. Once dissent was interpreted primarily through the language of threats to the constitutional order, the space for political dialogue narrowed considerably.

The events in Nukus therefore cannot be reduced either to a separatist movement or to a spontaneous outburst. They reflected a deeper unresolved question about the relationship between Karakalpakstan and the Uzbek state – and about how much political space the “New Uzbekistan” is prepared to leave for dissent.

What really changed under “New Uzbekistan”

The significance of Nukus becomes clearer when set against the substantial reforms introduced since Mirziyoyev came to power in 2016.

Following Karimov’s death, Mirziyoyev inherited a politically stable but economically restrictive and internationally relatively isolated state. At the centre of his reform programme was the concept of “New Uzbekistan” (Yangi O’zbekiston), which presented the new administration as a departure from the excesses and rigidities of the Karimov era.

The programme promoted economic liberalisation, administrative modernisation, regional diplomacy and greater international cooperation while preserving political stability and a strong presidential system. Its rhetoric presented Uzbekistan as a confident, reform-oriented state increasingly integrated into the global economy.

Some of the most consequential reforms occurred in the economic sphere. In 2017, the government liberalised the Uzbek som, ending years of rigid exchange-rate controls that had distorted the economy and sustained a large black market for foreign currency.

The change was visible in everyday life. Under Karimov, bazaars and streets were filled with informal currency traders calling out “Tenge! Dollars! Rubles!” With hard currency difficult to obtain at official rates, many Uzbeks relied on the black market. Currency liberalisation largely dismantled this system and was welcomed by international financial institutions and investors as a major step towards a more predictable economic environment.

It was followed by measures to ease business regulation, promote private enterprise and attract foreign capital. World Bank data show foreign direct investment net inflows increasing substantially over the longer term, from around $213 million in 2005 to approximately $2.7 billion in 2022, although flows varied considerably from year to year.

Equally important was Uzbekistan’s shift in foreign policy. Under Karimov, relations with neighbouring states were frequently characterised by mistrust, border disputes and limited regional cooperation. Mirziyoyev instead prioritised diplomacy and regional integration, improving relations with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan through reopened crossings, increased trade and negotiated settlements of long-standing disputes.

The difference could be felt at the border. Crossing Gishtkuprik between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan once meant long waits, cumbersome controls and, not infrequently, informal payments. For families separated by the border, even short journeys could become exhausting. The experience today is markedly different.

These changes matter. “New Uzbekistan” cannot convincingly be dismissed as a branding exercise. The country has become economically more open, internationally more engaged and, in important areas, administratively more responsive than it was under Karimov.

What did not change

Political liberalisation, however, has been much more limited.

Independent political parties continue to face major barriers. Elections remain tightly managed, while independent civil society organisations encounter significant obstacles to registration and operation. Freedom of expression has expanded compared with the most restrictive years of the Karimov era, but clear red lines remain.

Human Rights Watch, for example, has documented prosecutions under Article 158, part 3 of Uzbekistan’s Criminal Code, which criminalises public insult or slander against the president through the press, telecommunications networks or the internet and carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.

The apparent paradox is important. The reforms undertaken since 2016 were genuine, but genuine reform does not necessarily amount to democratisation.

Political scientist Vladimir Gel’man describes authoritarian modernisation as a model in which governments pursue socioeconomic development and technical reform while political freedoms remain outside the modernisation agenda or are postponed to an indefinite future. Although Gel’man develops the concept primarily in relation to Russia, it provides a useful framework for understanding the reform trajectory of Mirziyoyev’s Uzbekistan.

“New Uzbekistan” can therefore be understood as a form of authoritarian modernisation pursued through controlled liberalisation. Economic modernisation, improved public administration, international engagement and carefully managed openness can strengthen state capacity and legitimacy without fundamentally redistributing political power.

Rather than weakening the state, many reforms have made it more effective. Rather than dismantling presidential authority, they have operated within a system in which political power remains heavily concentrated around the presidency.

This is precisely why Nukus matters. The state has become more responsive, pragmatic and outward-looking, but political power has not been fundamentally redistributed. Authoritarianism was not dismantled. It was recalibrated.

Nukus and Andijan: continuity and adaptation

The comparison between Nukus and Andijan is central to understanding both what changed under “New Uzbekistan” and what did not. The two episodes were very different in scale and context, and equating them would obscure more than it explains. Yet the contrast between them reveals important continuities and changes in the Uzbek state’s approach to protest and coercion.

The defining episode of state violence under Karimov occurred in May 2005 in Andijan. Protests developed following the trial of 23 local businessmen accused of Islamic extremism and grew into a broader expression of anger over poverty, corruption and political repression.

Uzbek security forces opened fire on a largely peaceful crowd that included protesters and bystanders.

The true death toll remains disputed. The Uzbek government reported 187 deaths, while independent organisations, witnesses and activists produced considerably higher estimates. The New Humanitarian, reporting in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, cited local human rights activists who believed that more than 1,000 people may have been killed. No independent international investigation was permitted, and no one has been held accountable for the massacre.

The political aftermath was equally significant. The Karimov government rejected outside scrutiny and resisted international calls for an independent investigation. Uzbekistan subsequently entered a period of increased isolation from Western governments and institutions, while discussion of Andijan inside the country remained severely restricted.

The government’s behaviour during the 2022 unrest in Karakalpakstan was noticeably different. Mirziyoyev travelled to Nukus, acknowledged public opposition to the constitutional proposals and withdrew the amendments. The scale of the killing was also dramatically lower than the estimates associated with Andijan, and Uzbekistan did not retreat into the kind of prolonged international isolation that followed the 2005 massacre.

Yet the continuities remain difficult to ignore.

Security forces again resorted to unjustified lethal force against protesters. Protest leaders were prosecuted. Claims of torture and ill-treatment emerged. Meaningful accountability for the deaths and serious injuries has remained elusive.

The contrast with Andijan is therefore best understood not as a simple transition from repression to reform, but as a change in the way repression operates.

Karimov’s government answered political challenge with overwhelming force, denial and isolation. Mirziyoyev’s government showed a greater capacity for tactical retreat and political management. It withdrew the most controversial constitutional changes while simultaneously using coercion to reassert state authority.

Concession and coercion were not alternatives. They operated together.

That capacity to absorb pressure without surrendering political control may be one of the defining characteristics of the “New Uzbekistan”.

What happened afterwards

The authorities did not simply withdraw the constitutional amendments and close the episode.

More than 500 people were initially detained in connection with the July 2022 unrest. Human Rights Watch later reported that 61 people were criminally prosecuted over their alleged involvement in the demonstrations.

The most prominent was Karakalpak lawyer and blogger Dauletmurat Tazhimuratov. Before the unrest, he had spoken against the proposed constitutional changes and called for a peaceful protest. In January 2023, a court sentenced him to 16 years in prison on charges including organising mass riots and attempting to seize power.

His conviction has remained one of the most prominent symbols of the post-Nukus crackdown. In 2025, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that his detention was arbitrary and called on Uzbekistan to release him and provide reparations.

The pressure has extended beyond those directly prosecuted over the July demonstrations.

In February 2024, Uzbekistan’s Supreme Court designated the opposition movement Alga Karakalpakstan as “extremist” and banned its activities. Its leader, Aman Sagidullaev, who lives in Norway, had already been prosecuted in absentia and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Other people have subsequently been prosecuted for alleged membership in the organisation.

Uzbekistan has also pursued Karakalpak activists living abroad. Several diaspora activists in Kazakhstan were prosecuted in absentia, while Kazakh authorities detained others following extradition requests from Uzbekistan. Among them was Aqylbek Muratbai, a Karakalpak activist living in Almaty whose case Novastan has followed closely.

The crackdown therefore became transnational. Leaving Uzbekistan did not necessarily place Karakalpak activists beyond the reach of Uzbek criminal proceedings or extradition requests.

Accountability for the state’s own actions, meanwhile, has proceeded very differently. A parliamentary commission established to investigate the July 2022 events submitted its findings to parliament in December 2024, but the report was not made public. Human Rights Watch reported in 2025 that no one had been held accountable for 20 of the 21 deaths and that no senior official had been prosecuted over the excessive use of force.

The asymmetry is striking: numerous protesters and activists have faced prosecution, while accountability for the state’s use of lethal force has remained extremely limited.

The aftermath of Nukus therefore reveals the boundaries of political responsiveness under Mirziyoyev. The government could reverse the constitutional proposal that triggered the unrest, but it remained unwilling to accept autonomous political mobilisation challenging the state’s authority – or to subject the state’s own conduct to equivalent scrutiny.

What Nukus tells us about the limits of reform

“New Uzbekistan” is best understood as an authoritarian political system undergoing significant modernisation.

Its leaders have recognised that economic openness, administrative reform, better relations with neighbouring countries and international engagement can strengthen rather than weaken the state. They have also demonstrated that public pressure can sometimes require policy concessions.

But those changes have not extended to political pluralism, independent accountability or the redistribution of political power.

This brings us back to the initial question: what happens to a society when people are afraid not only of what might happen to them, but of what they might say about what has already happened?

Roma Egorov’s Andijan Polka matters because it returns through theatre to an episode long surrounded by silence. Nukus demonstrates that, despite significant political and economic change under Mirziyoyev, the state continues to influence the boundaries within which dissent, political mobilisation and collective memory can be expressed.

The contrast between Andijan and Nukus is therefore not a story of an authoritarian state simply becoming less violent. It is a story of an authoritarian system becoming more adaptive.

Karimov responded to a major political challenge with mass violence, denial and isolation. Mirziyoyev combined force with concession and political management. His withdrawal of the constitutional amendments demonstrated a flexibility largely absent under his predecessor, but the prosecutions, restrictions on political mobilisation and continuing lack of accountability demonstrated the limits of that flexibility.

The question is therefore no longer simply whether Uzbekistan has changed. It clearly has.

The more difficult question is how much of the past – and how much of the present – can be openly remembered, discussed and challenged in the “New Uzbekistan”.

Egorov’s return to Andijan through theatre suggests that memory can survive even when political space is restricted. Nukus poses the next test. The “New Uzbekistan” may have changed the way the state responds to dissent, but it has not yet resolved the fundamental question of what happens when citizens demand not only that the government change its policies, but that it answer for violence committed in its name.

Originally from Uzbekistan, Aliya Zaynullina is a human rights activist with a background in political science and law from Sciences Po Paris and Leiden University. Her work focuses on authoritarian regimes, human rights, feminist movements and foreign policy in Central Asia.

The post How New Is the “New Uzbekistan”? The Legacy of the Nukus Protests appeared first on Novastan English.

Gulnoza Ismailova heads Uzbekistan’s El-Yurt Umidi Foundation, which supports Uzbek students and professionals pursuing education and training at leading institutions abroad. Her career has spanned academia, diplomacy, public administration and the Central Election Commission.

In this interview with Novastan Editor-in-Chief Mathieu Lemoine, she discusses Uzbekistan’s growing investment in human capital, the return of internationally trained specialists, cooperation with European universities, the changing expectations of young Uzbeks and the Foundation’s ambition to move “from mobility to co-creation.”

Novastan: To begin, could you introduce yourself to our readers? Your career has taken you through academia, diplomacy, public administration, the Central Election Commission and now El-Yurt Umidi. Looking back, what experiences have most shaped your understanding of Uzbekistan’s development?

Gulnoza Ismailova: Looking back, I realise that every stage of my career has shown me a different dimension of Uzbekistan’s transformation.

I began my career in academia, working with young people preparing for careers in the civil service and diplomacy. Those years convinced me that successful reforms always begin with people. They also showed me that Uzbekistan’s development depends on strengthening our own institutions while engaging confidently with the world, learning from international experience and sharing our own ideas and achievements.

My years in public administration taught me another important lesson: successful reforms are never simply about adopting the right policies. They also depend on strong institutions, professional civil servants and the trust of citizens. Building that trust takes time, consistency and people who genuinely believe in public service.

Together, these experiences naturally led me to my current role at the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation. If there is one lesson my career has taught me, it is that lasting reform begins with people. Strategies and institutions provide the framework, but it is talented and committed professionals who turn ambition into reality. That lesson continues to shape the way I think about education, public service and leadership today.

For readers who may not yet be familiar with it, what is the mission of El-Yurt Umidi? What challenge was the Foundation created to address?

Many people assume that the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation is simply a scholarship programme, but our mission is much broader.

The Foundation was created because the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, recognised that reforms require people with the right knowledge and international experience. A country can invest in infrastructure and technology, but without qualified specialists it is very difficult to achieve lasting change. That is where we come in.

Each year, we support around 500 talented young people who want to study or undertake professional training at universities and educational institutions included in the world’s top 300 rankings. Our scholars specialise in many different fields, from healthcare and engineering to public administration, education and digital technologies. What unites them is their desire to contribute to the country’s development.

Investing in human capital has become one of Uzbekistan’s key priorities. The economy is changing, technology is changing and the skills countries need are changing as well. If we want to remain competitive, we must prepare people who can work to international standards and introduce new ideas into our institutions and industries.

How has the way Uzbekistan thinks about education, talent and international cooperation evolved over the past decade?

I think the biggest change has been in the way we look at talent. Ten or fifteen years ago, studying abroad was often seen primarily as an individual achievement. Today, it is increasingly viewed as an investment in the country’s future.

There is also a much stronger understanding that education does not end with earning a diploma. We live in a world where technology, economies and labour markets are changing very quickly. Continuous learning, international exposure and the ability to adapt have become essential, both for individuals and for institutions.

The same shift has taken place in international cooperation. It is no longer simply about signing agreements or organising official visits. Today, partnerships are expected to produce tangible results, including joint research, academic exchanges, dual-degree programmes, scholarships, professional training and innovation. The emphasis is on creating long-term relationships that benefit both sides.

When selecting scholarship recipients, what qualities do you look for beyond academic excellence? What kind of future leaders does Uzbekistan hope to cultivate?

Academic excellence is certainly important, but it is only one part of the picture. High test results or admission to a prestigious university do not automatically mean that someone will make a lasting contribution to the country.

We also look for motivation, a clear sense of purpose and a genuine commitment to Uzbekistan’s development. We want to understand why a candidate has chosen a particular field of study and how they see themselves applying that knowledge when they return.

Another quality we value is curiosity. The world is changing so quickly that technical knowledge alone is not enough. We are looking for people who are open to new ideas, willing to learn from different cultures and able to work across disciplines and borders. These qualities are becoming just as important as academic achievement.

Many countries worry that students who study abroad will never return. How has Uzbekistan approached this challenge?

This is a question that every country investing in international education has to consider. There is no single solution, and I do not believe it is only about requiring graduates to come back. The more important question is whether they have meaningful opportunities when they return.

In Uzbekistan, our approach combines commitment and opportunity. El-Yurt Umidi scholars agree to return and work in Uzbekistan after completing their studies: three years for master’s graduates and five years for bachelor’s and doctoral graduates. We hope they see this not merely as a contractual obligation, but as an opportunity and a privilege to contribute to the country’s development at a time of profound transformation.

That commitment must be matched by real opportunities. Over the past several years, Uzbekistan has changed significantly. As reforms have accelerated, so has the demand for professionals with international education and experience across public administration, higher education, healthcare, industry and many other sectors.

Of course, our graduates may receive attractive opportunities abroad. What encourages them to return is the feeling that they can make a real difference here. They come back at a time when new ideas are welcomed, institutions are evolving and there is genuine space to contribute. Many tell us that this sense of purpose is one of the strongest reasons for building their careers in Uzbekistan.

Could you share some examples of former scholarship recipients whose experience abroad has made a tangible contribution to Uzbekistan?

There are many inspiring stories, and what I find most rewarding is seeing how differently our graduates contribute after returning to Uzbekistan.

One example is Bobur Turaev, a paediatric cardiac surgeon who studied at University College London with the support of the Foundation. After returning home, he became part of a team that successfully performed a highly complex heart-valve reconstruction on a six-year-old child using the patient’s own tissue. Today, he performs numerous life-saving paediatric heart operations, giving children the chance to grow up healthy and offering their families hope for the future.

Another example is Islombek Ismailov, a lecturer at Urgench State University. After completing his studies abroad, he dedicated himself to nurturing young mathematical talent. Under his guidance, his students have achieved outstanding results in international competitions. At the RUDN Math Olymp in 2025, they won one gold, one silver and two bronze medals. At the VI International Open Mathematics Olympiad in Ashgabat in 2026, they earned two gold, three silver and two bronze medals, while the university’s teams also received silver and bronze medals in the team competition. Editor’s note: RUDN Math Olymp is an international mathematics competition organised by RUDN University, also known as the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia.

I would also mention Husniddin Khidirov, who is involved in strategic projects at the Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Company. He is applying the knowledge and international experience he gained abroad to one of Uzbekistan’s most important industries, helping strengthen the company’s strategic planning and project-management capacity.

These stories are very different, but they share a common thread. One graduate is helping save children’s lives, another is mentoring future mathematicians and another is contributing to the modernisation of a strategic industry. They remind us that the value of a scholarship extends far beyond the individual recipient.

This is how we assess the impact of our programme. We certainly look at the number of scholarships awarded, but what matters even more is what happens afterwards: whether our graduates improve institutions, introduce new ideas, advance research, mentor young people or contribute to the country’s development in other meaningful ways.

Which fields of study are currently the highest priority for Uzbekistan?

At the moment, our highest priority is STEM disciplines, as they provide the foundation for innovation, industrial development and economic competitiveness, all of which are central to Uzbekistan’s long-term development strategy.

Beyond STEM, we also focus on sectors that are driving the country’s economic transformation. These include energy, manufacturing, transport and logistics, agriculture and food production, tourism and services, healthcare, education and public administration.

We prioritise these fields because they are directly linked to Uzbekistan’s development goals. The country is modernising its economy, expanding digital infrastructure, improving public services, strengthening its healthcare and education systems and creating higher-value industries. Achieving these ambitions requires specialists who not only possess strong technical expertise, but also understand international standards and best practices.

As the country’s needs continue to evolve, our scholarship priorities evolve as well. We regularly review priority fields to ensure they remain aligned with Uzbekistan’s economic strategy and the skills that will be needed in the years ahead.

You have worked at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy, the Academy of Public Administration and now El-Yurt Umidi. How has the relationship between universities and public institutions changed?

I think there has been a very noticeable shift over the past decade. When I worked at the Academy of Public Administration and later at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy, cooperation between universities and public institutions certainly existed, but it was often limited to traditional areas such as internships, guest lectures or recruitment.

Today, the relationship is much more strategic. Universities are increasingly seen as partners in national development rather than simply as providers of education. Government institutions are working more closely with universities to identify the skills the country needs, develop new academic programmes, support research and innovation and prepare specialists for priority sectors of the economy.

At the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation, we see this transformation every day. We work closely with ministries, universities and employers to ensure that scholarship priorities reflect Uzbekistan’s long-term development goals.

Of course, there is still room for further progress. We need even closer cooperation between universities, government and industry to ensure that graduates have the skills employers are looking for and that research contributes more directly to innovation and economic development.

Compared with ten years ago, however, I believe we have made significant progress. There is now a shared understanding that developing human capital is a collective responsibility and that universities and public institutions achieve much more when they work together than when they work separately.

During your time at the Academy of Public Administration, you helped train future civil servants. What qualities do today’s public officials need that perhaps were not emphasised a generation ago?

The fundamental values of public service, including integrity, professionalism and responsibility, remain as important as ever. But I believe the expectations placed on public officials today are quite different from those of a generation ago.

One of the biggest changes is that we have become much more people-centred in the way we think about public administration. In the past, greater emphasis was often placed on hierarchy and administrative procedures. Since 2016, the focus has increasingly been on serving citizens, understanding their needs and improving the quality of public services. Ultimately, the success of any reform is measured by the difference it makes in people’s lives.

This shift requires a different set of skills. Today’s public officials need to be adaptable, open to new ideas and comfortable working across institutions. They need to use data and evidence to inform decisions, communicate effectively and build partnerships with universities, businesses, civil society and international organisations. Public administration has become much more collaborative.

I also believe that international exposure has become an important asset. It is not about copying what other countries do, but about learning from global experience and adapting successful practices to Uzbekistan’s own context. That is one of the reasons why the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation’s targeted traineeships are so valuable.

International education is about much more than acquiring technical knowledge. What ways of thinking do Uzbek students bring back from studying abroad?

I think the greatest benefit of international education is not simply acquiring new knowledge or technical skills. It is learning to understand context.

Today, almost any information can be found online. You can watch lectures from the world’s leading universities, read textbooks, access scientific journals and even learn new technical skills without leaving your home. But what you cannot learn from a textbook or the internet is how things actually work in practice.

When students study abroad, they are exposed to different academic cultures, institutions and ways of solving problems. They begin to see that every policy, institution and management system is shaped by its own history, culture and social context.

That experience changes the questions they ask. Instead of saying, “This is how they do it abroad, so we should do the same,” they begin to ask, “Why does this work in this particular context, and how can we adapt the underlying principles to Uzbekistan?”

I think that is a much more mature way of approaching reform. The ability to interpret context is one of the most valuable outcomes of international education. It is also one of the reasons why our graduates are often able to become effective agents of change within their own institutions.

Europe remains an important destination for Uzbek students. Beyond rankings, what makes European universities particularly valuable partners?

It is their educational philosophy. The mission of many European universities is not simply to produce highly qualified specialists, but to educate responsible citizens and future leaders who understand their role in society. This humanistic tradition has shaped European higher education for centuries and remains one of its greatest strengths.

Students are encouraged to think independently, question assumptions, engage in respectful debate and reflect on the broader social impact of their work. In other words, universities cultivate judgement, not just expertise. They place great emphasis on holistic development alongside academic achievement, helping students develop intellectual curiosity, ethical responsibility and a strong sense of civic engagement.

For us, this is particularly valuable. Uzbekistan needs highly qualified professionals, but it also needs people who are prepared to take responsibility, contribute to public life and help strengthen institutions.

That is why we look beyond rankings when choosing international partners. We value universities whose academic culture is built on openness, academic integrity, critical inquiry and a commitment to serving society. Those qualities help shape graduates who are not only excellent professionals, but also active citizens and future leaders capable of contributing to Uzbekistan’s long-term development.

What opportunities would you encourage French and European universities to explore in Uzbekistan?

I would encourage them to think beyond the traditional model of international cooperation. Student mobility will always remain important, but I believe the greatest opportunities now lie in building long-term institutional partnerships.

Our ambition is to move from mobility to co-creation: from simply sending students abroad to creating knowledge, innovation and solutions together.

I see particularly strong potential in joint research projects, dual-degree programmes, faculty exchanges, the co-supervision of doctoral students and collaborative research centres in areas such as green technologies, water and environmental sustainability, healthcare, space and engineering. These are fields where international cooperation can generate tangible benefits for both Uzbekistan and Europe.

I also believe there is significant untapped potential in strengthening cooperation between universities and industry. One example is our recent partnership involving the French National School of Civil Aviation, ENAC, Airbus and Tashkent State Transport University to develop a joint educational programme in civil aviation.

Initiatives like this demonstrate how academia, government and industry can work together to prepare specialists whose skills are directly relevant to the labour market, while also supporting technological development and innovation.

Can educational cooperation achieve things that traditional diplomacy cannot?

I believe higher education is one of the most powerful forms of diplomacy. Governments can sign agreements, but it is people who build lasting relationships. Universities create those human connections.

Every student, researcher or professor who spends time in another country gains something much more valuable than academic knowledge. They develop friendships, professional networks and a deeper understanding of another culture. Those relationships often last for decades and continue long after a particular project or government programme has ended.

In that sense, educational cooperation can sometimes achieve things that traditional diplomacy cannot. Diplomacy operates through governments, while universities connect societies. They build trust, encourage dialogue and create communities of people who continue working together throughout their careers.

I also believe education creates a different kind of ambassador. When students study abroad, they represent their country every day, not through official speeches, but through their work, their values and their interactions with others. At the same time, they return home with a deeper understanding of another society.

Political priorities may change over time, but relationships built through education, research and shared knowledge tend to endure. That is why I see higher education not only as an investment in human capital, but also as an investment in peace, mutual understanding and the future of Uzbekistan’s partnership with Europe.

Uzbekistan is becoming increasingly visible in Europe, yet many people still know relatively little about it. What would you most like European audiences to understand about the country today?

I think the biggest misconception is that many people still have an outdated image of Uzbekistan. Over the past several years, Uzbekistan has changed remarkably, and it is transforming much faster than many people outside the region realise. Today, it is a country of opportunities, yet perceptions often take longer to change than reality.

I would also encourage people to look beyond the headlines and discover Uzbekistan’s rich intellectual, scientific and cultural heritage. Central Asia has been a crossroads of civilisations for centuries, and Uzbekistan has a long tradition of scholarship, science and cultural exchange. Today, we are building on that heritage while embracing new ideas and international cooperation.

Finally, I hope more people will see Uzbekistan not simply as a country seeking partners, but as a partner with something meaningful to contribute. We believe international cooperation works best when it is based on mutual respect, shared learning and common goals.

Whether in higher education, research or innovation, we see our relationship with Europe as a genuine partnership, one in which both sides learn from each other and grow together.

Having worked with several generations of students and young professionals, how would you describe today’s young Uzbeks?

If I had to describe today’s young Uzbeks in a few words, I would say they are full of hope, dynamic, highly motivated and remarkably diverse.

They have a wide range of interests and aspirations. Some are passionate about artificial intelligence and engineering, others about entrepreneurship, science, public service, culture or the creative industries. This diversity is one of the greatest strengths of today’s generation.

I also find them to be much more globally connected than previous generations. As both an educator and a mother, I see this not only through the thousands of scholarship applicants I meet, but also through my own children. Their curiosity, confidence and ability to navigate an increasingly interconnected world reflect the qualities I see in so many young Uzbeks today.

What impresses me most is their confidence during interviews. They communicate easily across cultures and are eager to learn from the best universities around the world. At the same time, many of them have a strong desire to contribute to Uzbekistan’s future. They do not see international education as an opportunity to leave the country forever, but as a way to gain knowledge and experience that they can bring home.

Their expectations are also changing. They want opportunities to grow, to be challenged and to have their ideas heard. They value merit, openness and continuous learning, and they are looking for environments where initiative and creativity are encouraged.

Women are playing an increasingly visible role in Uzbekistan’s public and professional life. What trends have you observed among female scholarship recipients?

Over the past several years, I have seen a very encouraging change. More and more young women are pursuing international education, taking on leadership roles and building successful careers in fields in which women were traditionally underrepresented.

This progress has not happened by chance. It reflects the strong political commitment of the President of Uzbekistan to expanding opportunities for women and ensuring that girls’ education and women’s leadership are recognised as national priorities.

As a result, society has become increasingly supportive of women’s education, and today we see more women serving in senior leadership and decision-making positions across government, academia and the private sector.

At the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation, we see this trend very clearly. Nearly 30 per cent of our scholarship recipients are women, and every year we meet more talented young women studying engineering, artificial intelligence, medicine, public administration, economics and many other fields. They are ambitious, highly motivated and increasingly confident in pursuing their professional goals.

At the same time, I believe there is still more we can do, particularly in STEM disciplines, where women remain underrepresented around the world. This is not simply a question of representation. Countries are stronger when they are able to benefit from the talents of all their people.

That is why we are working with the British Council to launch a joint Women in STEM scholarship initiative. The programme is designed to support talented Uzbek women pursuing studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, while also encouraging more young women to consider careers in these fields.

We see this as an investment not only in individual scholars, but also in the future scientific and technological capacity of Uzbekistan.

Artificial intelligence, digitalisation and the green transition are transforming labour markets worldwide. How is El-Yurt Umidi adapting?

The pace of technological change means that no scholarship programme can remain static. We have to anticipate the skills that will be needed not only today, but five or ten years from now.

At the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation, we regularly review our scholarship quotas for priority fields to ensure they remain aligned with Uzbekistan’s national development priorities and the changing demands of the global economy.

This is an ongoing process. Every year, we assess emerging trends, consult with ministries, universities and industry and adjust our priorities accordingly.

Today, we are placing particular emphasis on areas such as artificial intelligence, information and communication technologies, cybersecurity, biotechnology, advanced engineering, renewable energy and other STEM disciplines.

At the same time, we recognise that technological transformation also requires strong expertise in public policy, education, healthcare and management to ensure that innovations are implemented effectively and responsibly.

But I believe the future will depend on more than technical expertise alone. The professionals who thrive in the coming decades will be those who combine deep knowledge in their field with adaptability, critical thinking, digital literacy and the ability to work across disciplines and cultures.

As technologies evolve, the ability to continuously learn, unlearn and relearn may become the most important skill of all.

Across the different institutions where you have worked, what have been the most encouraging changes in Uzbekistan’s governance? What challenges remain?

The most encouraging change, in my view, has been the transformation of public administration itself.

Today, there is a much stronger focus on strategic planning, project management, digital transformation, evidence-based policymaking and performance measurement. Public institutions are increasingly expected not only to implement policies, but also to think strategically, anticipate future challenges and evaluate the real impact of their work.

We have also seen a major shift towards a more people-centred approach to governance. A good example is the mahallabay approach, which brings public services and decision-making closer to communities by identifying needs and solving problems at the neighbourhood, or mahalla, level.

Today, success is measured not simply by whether a task has been completed, but by whether it improves people’s lives. I believe this represents an important evolution in the philosophy of public administration.

At the same time, every reform brings new expectations. One of the greatest challenges is ensuring that these new approaches become embedded in institutional culture rather than depending on the enthusiasm of individual leaders or teams.

Strategic planning, project management and digital transformation are not simply new management tools. They require new ways of thinking, stronger coordination across institutions and continuous investment in people’s skills.

Looking ahead, what would success look like for El-Yurt Umidi in ten years’ time?

I am a very ambitious person when it comes to investing in people and in my country’s future.

I hope the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation will be known not simply as a scholarship foundation, but as one of the key institutions driving Uzbekistan’s human-capital development.

I hope the Foundation will strengthen its broader strategic role. Beyond supporting individual scholars, we want to help identify the skills Uzbekistan will need in the future, strengthen cooperation between education, government and industry and contribute to shaping national human-capital policies.

In other words, I would like the El-Yurt Umidi Foundation to become not only a scholarship provider, but also a centre of expertise in talent development and workforce planning.

Internationally, I hope we will be recognised as a trusted partner by leading universities, research institutions and governments around the world. Our ambition is to move from mobility to co-creation, from sending students abroad to building long-term partnerships in education, research and innovation that create value for everyone involved.

I would like people to look back and say that El-Yurt Umidi helped shape a generation of professionals who transformed Uzbekistan not only through their knowledge and expertise, but through their integrity, openness and commitment to serving society.

If, in ten years’ time, our graduates are strengthening institutions, advancing science, improving healthcare, modernising industry and building lasting bridges between Uzbekistan and the rest of the world, I believe we will have fulfilled our mission.

Finally, what message would you like to send to European universities, researchers, students and policymakers about Uzbekistan today?

My message would be very simple: this is the right time to engage with Uzbekistan.

I would encourage European universities, researchers and policymakers to look beyond old perceptions and discover today’s Uzbekistan for themselves. You will find talented young people, ambitious universities, committed institutions and partners who are genuinely interested in learning, collaborating and creating knowledge together.

Uzbekistan is a country with a rich history, a vibrant culture and a young generation determined to shape a better future. We are proud of our heritage, but we are equally excited about the future we are building, one that is open, innovative and connected to the world.

I would also encourage students and researchers to consider Uzbekistan as a place for academic exchange, joint research and innovation. International cooperation should always be a two-way process. We have much to learn from Europe, but we also have our own experience, perspectives and ideas to contribute.

I sincerely hope that more European colleagues will visit our country, meet our people and experience Uzbekistan first-hand. I am confident they will discover not only a reliable academic and research partner, but also the warmth, hospitality and openness that define our nation.

The best way to understand today’s Uzbekistan is to experience it.

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

The post “This is the right time to engage with Uzbekistan”: Gulnoza Ismailova on education, talent and the country’s future 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.

As Uzbekistani President Shavkat Mirziyoyev prepares to travel to Minsk on 8-9 July, the visit is expected to produce another series of agreements on trade, industry and regional cooperation. At first glance, it may appear to be just another bilateral meeting between two post-Soviet states. In reality, it illustrates one of the most overlooked geopolitical developments in Eurasia.

Read more on Novastan: Kazakhstan’s gradual divorce from Russia

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Belarus has become increasingly isolated from Europe. Political dialogue with the European Union has largely frozen, Western sanctions have multiplied, and Minsk’s dependence on Moscow has deepened. Yet while much of Europe has turned away from Belarus, Central Asia has not. On the contrary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and especially Uzbekistan have continued to strengthen political dialogue, industrial cooperation, educational exchanges and trade with Minsk.

This apparent paradox reveals much about both Belarus and Central Asia. For Brussels, Belarus has become primarily a sanctions problem and Russia’s closest ally. For Tashkent, Astana or Dushanbe, however, Belarus remains something rather different: a producer of tractors, buses and mining equipment, an engineering partner, an educational destination and a familiar interlocutor with decades of technical expertise. That difference in perception lies at the heart of Belarus’s enduring relevance across the region.

The war that changed everything – but not everything

The war in Ukraine undoubtedly transformed Belarusian foreign policy.

Before 2022, Minsk balanced relations between Russia and the West while simultaneously cultivating long-standing ties across the former Soviet space. Afterwards, its room for manoeuvre narrowed dramatically. Unable to restore normal political relations with Europe in the foreseeable future, Belarus increasingly looked east.

If the first phase after 2022 was one of survival, the second has become one of adaptation.

Read more on Novastan: The Vocabulary of Reform: Why Central Asia Is Reimagining Its Political Traditions

Central Asia has emerged as one of the principal beneficiaries of this strategic reorientation. Unlike Europe, the five Central Asian republics never sought to isolate Belarus politically. None endorsed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and several – particularly Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan – carefully defended the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Yet they also chose not to sever relations with Minsk.

Instead, they compartmentalised them.

Political disagreements over Ukraine did not prevent cooperation in agriculture, heavy industry, transport, education or food security. This pragmatic approach reflects the increasingly confident multi-vector diplomacy that has characterised Central Asia over the past decade.

Belarus’s comparative advantage

Unlike China, Belarus cannot finance billion-dollar infrastructure projects.

Unlike Russia, it does not provide security guarantees.

Unlike the European Union, it does not offer grants, regulatory convergence or accession prospects.

Its comparative advantage lies elsewhere.

Belarus remains one of the few post-Soviet states that preserved much of its industrial base after 1991. Companies such as MTZ, MAZ, BelAZ, Gomselmash, Bobruiskagromash and Amkodor continue to manufacture tractors, buses, heavy trucks, harvesters, mining equipment and construction machinery that remain highly competitive across Eurasia.

For Central Asian governments seeking to modernise agriculture, develop mining industries or improve municipal transport, Belarus offers something few other partners can provide: reliable industrial technologies adapted to post-Soviet realities and available at competitive prices.

In that sense, Belarus has become Eurasia’s overlooked industrial power.

Uzbekistan: from friendly relations to strategic partnership

Nowhere has Belarus’s eastern strategy been more successful than in Uzbekistan.

The relationship began to accelerate after Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power in 2016 and launched sweeping economic reforms. Successive presidential visits – including Alexander Lukashenko’s trips to Tashkent and Mirziyoyev’s visits to Minsk – have transformed bilateral relations from cordial political dialogue into an increasingly comprehensive economic partnership.

Trade has expanded dramatically, approaching one billion US dollars annually, while both governments openly discuss reaching two billion dollars over the coming years.

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

More importantly, cooperation has moved beyond exports.

Belarusian and Uzbek partners are developing industrial projects valued at around 800 million dollars, spanning agricultural machinery, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and food processing. Hundreds of enterprises involving Belarusian capital now operate in Uzbekistan, making the country Belarus’s fastest-growing economic partner in Central Asia.

Preparations for Mirziyoyev’s current visit have themselves demonstrated the depth of the relationship. Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Shuleiko and Uzbekistan’s Minister of Investment, Industry and Trade Laziz Kudratov have spent recent weeks coordinating the agenda, with discussions focusing not only on bilateral trade but also on investment projects and preparations for the next Forum of Regions.

Beyond presidential diplomacy

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Belarus-Uzbekistan relations is that they are no longer centred exclusively on presidents.

The Forum of Regions, launched in 2019, has become an institutional mechanism linking provinces, municipalities, universities, chambers of commerce and businesses. Belarusian regions now cooperate directly with counterparts in Samarkand, Bukhara, Fergana and Tashkent, creating relationships that continue independently of high-level political visits.

This gradual institutionalisation distinguishes Belarus from many other external partners in Central Asia. Rather than relying solely on summit diplomacy, Minsk has invested in long-term cooperation between local authorities, universities and companies.

Kazakhstan: industrial integration

Kazakhstan remains Belarus’s largest economic partner in Central Asia.

Bilateral trade reached approximately 1.1 billion dollars in 2024, while industrial integration has become increasingly sophisticated. Rather than merely exporting machinery, Belarus has helped establish fourteen joint industrial projects worth nearly 280 million dollars, eleven of which are already operational.

Assembly plants now manufacture MTZ tractors, MAZ trucks and Gomselmash agricultural equipment within Kazakhstan itself. More than one thousand enterprises involving Belarusian participation operate across the country, supported by around 170 official Belarusian dealers.

These figures illustrate an important evolution. Belarus is no longer simply exporting products to Central Asia. Increasingly, it is participating directly in local manufacturing and industrial development.

Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan: smaller economies, growing ambitions

Belarus’s engagement is no less significant in the region’s smaller economies.

In Tajikistan, cooperation has progressively shifted from trade towards manufacturing. In the Hisor district near Dushanbe, Belarusian companies assemble MTZ tractors, Gomselmash harvesters and Bobruiskagromash agricultural equipment, allowing Tajik farmers to access machinery adapted to local conditions while supporting domestic production. More than thirty Belarusian distribution companies now operate in the country, reflecting Minsk’s long-term commitment to the Tajik market.

Kyrgyzstan has likewise sought to deepen economic ties. Both governments have adopted ambitious roadmaps to increase bilateral trade, focusing on agriculture, food processing, machinery and logistics. As fellow members of the Eurasian Economic Union, Minsk and Bishkek also benefit from institutional frameworks that facilitate commercial cooperation.

Turkmenistan presents a somewhat different picture. While economic relations remain constrained by Ashgabat’s relatively closed economy, education has emerged as one of the strongest pillars of the bilateral relationship. Around 4,000 Turkmen students are estimated to study in Belarus, particularly in engineering, medicine and technical disciplines. These graduates often return home with professional networks that strengthen long-term cooperation between the two countries.

Soft power without ideology: Tradition as State Legitimacy

Unlike Russia, Türkiye or China, Belarus has never projected influence through grand geopolitical narratives.

Its soft power is considerably quieter.

It is found in universities rather than television channels, engineering schools rather than cultural institutes, and technical cooperation rather than ideological messaging.

Belarusian State University, Belarusian National Technical University and Belarusian State Medical University continue to attract students from across Central Asia, offering Russian-language education, recognised technical qualifications and comparatively affordable tuition.

For many Central Asian families, Belarus represents a practical alternative. It offers a familiar academic environment outside Russia, while maintaining close links with industries that remain highly relevant to Central Asian development.

Education therefore performs several functions simultaneously. It generates revenue for Belarusian universities, strengthens professional networks and creates generations of engineers, doctors and public officials familiar with Belarusian institutions and technologies.

This represents a distinctly Belarusian model of soft power: practical, technocratic and long-term.

Beyond tractors: exporting institutions

Tajikistan follows a different path.

Belarus is also seeking to export institutions alongside industrial products.

One telling example is the growing role of the Belarusian Universal Commodity Exchange (BUCE). In 2025, BUCE signed a cooperation agreement with Kazakhstan’s Caspiy Commodity Exchange, aiming to improve commodity trading, develop electronic trading platforms and facilitate commercial exchanges between Belarus and Central Asia.

While less visible than presidential summits, such initiatives illustrate Minsk’s efforts to integrate itself into the region’s economic architecture.

Belarus has also promoted specialised business forums, including the Belarus-Central Asia Economic Forum held in Brest in 2026, bringing together companies interested in expanding into Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Such initiatives demonstrate that Belarus’s eastern engagement is becoming increasingly institutionalised rather than remaining dependent upon political goodwill alone.

A different understanding of Eurasia

Ultimately, however, this story is not simply about Belarus.

It is about Central Asia.

For more than three decades, the region has refined what is often described as a multi-vector foreign policy. Rather than aligning exclusively with one geopolitical centre, Central Asian governments seek productive relations with multiple partners simultaneously.

Russia remains indispensable in security matters.

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

China has become the region’s principal economic partner and infrastructure investor.

Türkiye has significantly expanded its cultural, educational and political presence.

The European Union offers investment, regulatory cooperation and connectivity through initiatives such as the Global Gateway.

Japan and South Korea remain valued partners in technology and industrial development.

Belarus occupies a different niche.

It neither competes with these actors nor seeks to replace them. Instead, it provides industrial expertise, engineering education, agricultural technology and manufacturing partnerships that complement rather than challenge Central Asia’s broader foreign policy strategy.

This helps explain why relations have continued to deepen despite the war in Ukraine.

Central Asian governments have not ignored Belarus’s international isolation. They have simply concluded that practical cooperation remains in their national interest.

Looking east

As Shavkat Mirziyoyev arrives in Minsk, observers will understandably focus on the agreements signed, the trade figures announced and the diplomatic symbolism of the visit.

Yet its broader significance lies elsewhere.

The visit reflects the emergence of a Eurasia whose political geography no longer corresponds neatly to the map of sanctions.

While Europe has largely distanced itself from Belarus, Central Asia has continued to engage it through industry, education, agriculture, regional diplomacy and technical cooperation.

This does not mean that Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or their neighbours have chosen Belarus over Europe, or Russia over the West. Quite the opposite. Their continued engagement with Minsk illustrates the essence of multi-vector diplomacy: the refusal to view international relations as a zero-sum choice between competing blocs.

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

For Belarus, Central Asia has become an increasingly important diplomatic and economic outlet at a time when options elsewhere have narrowed. For Central Asia, Belarus remains a useful partner whose industrial capabilities, educational institutions and technical expertise continue to meet concrete national needs.

The geography of sanctions, it turns out, is not the geography of diplomacy.

Belarus did not escape isolation after 2022. But it has worked to avoid irrelevance. By looking east, Minsk has found not a substitute for Europe, but a region willing to judge it less by geopolitical alignment than by practical cooperation. And in an increasingly fragmented international order, that may prove to be one of the most consequential shifts in Eurasian diplomacy that few outside the region have noticed.

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

The post Minsk’s Eastern Bet: Why Central Asia Matters More Than Ever 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.

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

A story too large to stay in the past

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

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

The story behind the epic

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

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

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

Why Manas matters so much to Kyrgyz people

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

Manas in school and education

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

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

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

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

Manas in everyday life

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

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

The political uses of Manas

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

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

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

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

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

A national epic, but also a political risk

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

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

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

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

Why Manas still matters today

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

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

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

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

Maya Ivanova for Novastan

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

On 10 February, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov dismissed Kamchybek Tashiev, head of the State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, and a central figure in power for several years. His removal, followed by dismissals targeting those close to him in several institutions, brings an end to an alliance that had structured Kyrgyzstan’s political-security apparatus.

The ruling tandem that had dominated Kyrgyzstan for more than five years has finally cracked. On 10 February, by dismissing Kamchybek Tashiev, head of the State Committee for National Security, by decree, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov did not merely end a long-standing collaboration with his closest ally. He also regained control of the coercive apparatus that had until then been one of the pillars of the system established since he came to power in 2020.

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For more than five years, Kamchybek Tashiev had been the most powerful man in Kyrgyzstan after the president, overseeing the main anti-corruption investigations. He appeared publicly during spectacular arrests and embodied an increasingly omnipresent security apparatus. A co-founder of the Mekentchil party and a key actor in the political upheavals that brought the tandem to the top of the state, he had gradually turned the security services into a pillar of the regime. In a political system marked by the personalisation of power, his influence extended far beyond the institutional framework of his position.

Under his leadership, the GKNB became one of the nerve centres of the state. Its prerogatives expanded, its resources increased and its visibility grew. Internal promotions, the allocation of housing to officers, nepotism and direct interventions in the management of sensitive economic cases: Kamchybek Tashiev had gradually built a network of authority and loyalty that structured the regime’s balance.

Kamchybek Tashiev, security architect of Sadyr Japarov’s regime

Kamchybek Tashiev began his political career in 2007 as minister of emergency situations. After disagreements with former Prime Minister Daniyar Usenov, he left his post in 2009, before siding with the opposition during the Kyrgyz revolution of 2010. These events enabled him to found his party, Ata-Zhurt, in 2006, and to win the early parliamentary elections of 10 October 2010 with 15.89% of the vote and 28 seats.

He thus returned to political life as a member of Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Council from 2010 to 2013. In 2014, Ata-Jurt merged with Respublika in an attempt to win the 2015 parliamentary elections, but this merger displeased Kamchybek Tashiev, who left the party and joined Mekenchil, which he had co-founded with Sadyr Japarov on 16 June 2010 and which brought together many members of Ata-Jurt.

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The parliamentary elections of 4 October 2020 once again turned into a conflict extending beyond the political sphere, with major demonstrations from 5 to 15 October 2020. Amid this new socio-political chaos, former Prime Minister Sadyr Japarov and his supporters, including Kamchybek Tashiev, increased pressure on former President Sooronbay Jeenbekov, who resigned on 15 October 2020. As a result, Sadyr Japarov became acting president and appointed Kamchybek Tashiev head of the GKNB on 16 October that year.

Also read on Novastan : Condamnation d’Almazbek Atambaïev : retour sur le parcours mouvementé des anciens présidents du Kirghizstan

His influence was also visible during the border clashes with Tajikistan in April 2021 and September 2022. As head of the GKNB, the body overseeing the border guards, Kamchybek Tashiev played a central role in managing operations and ceasefire negotiations. These crises strengthened his image as a strongman guaranteeing Kyrgyzstan’s territorial integrity.

Dismantling extended to several institutions

Tashiev’s departure has been accompanied by a wider reorganisation. Within the GKNB itself, his deputies for state security were removed, and a new acting head was appointed without delay.

President Japarov then stated that an Investigative Committee would be created and would report directly to the president, while the GKNB’s area of competence would be reduced. The agency will henceforth focus on intelligence, counterintelligence, counterterrorism and organised crime, Radio Azattyq noted. “It is necessary to depoliticise the State Committee for National Security and free it from the influence of political parties, ideologies and various stakeholders,” assured Jumgalbek Shabdanbekov, the new GKNB chief appointed on 19 February, in an interview with the local newspaper Vecherny Bishkek.

But the reshuffle goes far beyond the security apparatus alone. The minister of natural resources, ecology and technical supervision, Meder Mashiev, as well as his deputy minister, Bolot Jusupbekov, were dismissed. In the south of the country, considered Tashiev’s electoral stronghold, mayors, notably in Osh and Manas, are being replaced.

Also read on Novastan : Les pistonnés : portraits au vitriol des enfants des présidents kirghiz

Even more significantly, people directly close to Kamchybek Tashiev have been targeted. While the parliamentary mandate of his brother, Shaiyrbek Tashiev, has not so far been called into question despite rumours of dismissal, the head of the transport prosecutor’s office, Nurgazy Matisakov, who is Tashiev’s nephew, has been removed. These decisions reflect a desire to neutralise not only one figure, but an entire family and political network.

A shift ahead of the presidential election

This rupture comes one year before the 2027 presidential election, in a climate marked by criticism of the economic and energy situation, as well as by a petition calling for an early vote.

Also read on Novastan : Le Kirghizstan s’inquiète d’une crise énergétique majeure cet hiver

Presidential statements, however, have sought to ease tensions. On 13 February, the head of state told the state news agency Kabar that there was no division between his supporters and those of his former ally, assuring that his “friendship with Kamchybek Tashiev will continue”. A few days later, he added: “We remain friends. But he will not resume public office. He needs to rest and focus on his health.”

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The end of the tandem between Sadyr Japarov and Kamchybek Tashiev thus marks a phase of increased concentration of power in the hands of the presidency. It remains to be seen whether this centralisation will durably strengthen the stability of Kyrgyzstan’s system, or whether it will reveal new fault lines within the political elites.

Lenny Cabrol Noto
Contributor 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 Kyrgyzstan, after the dismissal of the GKNB chief, the political-security apparatus is reshuffled appeared first on Novastan English.

The visit to Bishkek on 26 February by EU sanctions envoy David O’Sullivan reflects the European Union’s tougher stance on the circumvention of sanctions targeting Russia in the region. Kyrgyzstan could thus become the first country targeted by heavy counter-sanctions from Brussels.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Central Asia has become a strategic link in parallel trade flows allowing Russia to keep its economy afloat. Faced with this situation, the European Union is sharply toughening its tone, placing Kyrgyzstan on the front line of its new pressure strategy.

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Bishkek’s role as a re-export platform is now documented. Analyses show a surge in Kyrgyz imports from China, notably trucks, components and industrial parts, which are then re-exported to the Russian market.

According to internal European Commission documents cited by Kazakh media outlet Kursiv, imports of so-called “priority” goods, often dual-use civilian and military products, from the European Union to Kyrgyzstan have increased by around 800% since 2022. Over the same period, Kyrgyz exports to Russia have jumped by around 1,200%, fuelling suspicions of re-export to the Russian market.

This circuit allows Moscow to bypass Western restrictions, while undermining international rules on trade transparency.

Activation of the “anti-circumvention” tool

For the first time, Brussels is considering deploying its most coercive instrument: the sanctions anti-circumvention tool. This mechanism, which would be part of a twentieth sanctions package – delayed by Hungary’s veto – would make it possible to ban the export of certain products to a third country without having to provide irrefutable proof of their re-export, as reported by Reuters.

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The targeted measures could include export bans on industrial machine tools, including CNC machines, and radio equipment, as well as action against the financial sector. A Kyrgyz cryptocurrency company is reportedly under scrutiny for allegedly supporting financial interests linked to Russia.

Discussions are focused instead on targeted measures, Radio Free Europe explains, such as listing Kyrgyz companies or financial institutions if they facilitate the circumvention of restrictions against Moscow.

A major diplomatic crisis

This Western pressure is considerably straining relations between the EU and Bishkek, at a time when the country is also trying to move closer to the United States. David O’Sullivan, the EU’s special envoy for sanctions, personally urged the local authorities to change their policy.

“We are not asking Kyrgyzstan not to have trade relations with Russia. We are only asking that this trade relationship not involve the deliberate circumvention of our sanctions,” he stressed during his visit to Bishkek on 26 February.

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Kyrgyzstan’s response has so far been direct, according to sources quoted by the British daily Financial Times: the country reportedly threatened to take the European Union to international courts if such sanctions were imposed. These allegations were immediately denied by the Kyrgyz government, local media outlet 24.kg reported in early March.

Roman Fuster
Contributor 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 Kyrgyzstan in the EU’s sights for the twentieth sanctions package against Russia appeared first on Novastan English.

A recent report by a UN group reveals that the Taliban have sharply reduced the number of their security forces, disproportionately so in the region bordering Tajikistan. These budget cuts coincide with a resurgence of attacks along the border between the two countries. These developments are helping to reshape the previously strained relations between Kabul and Dushanbe.

Haibatullah Akhundzada, Afghanistan’s de facto leader, has ordered a 20% reduction in the number of security forces in response to budgetary constraints. This is according to a report by the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, submitted to the UN Security Council Committee last December.

However, these staff reductions are disproportionate near the border with Tajikistan. According to the document, out of more than 4,000 commanders and officers dismissed nationwide, around 1,000 were in Badakhshan province, which borders Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous region.

Takhar, another province bordering Tajikistan’s Khatlon region, is also among the three other provinces most affected by the measure. These security force cuts, ordered last April, coincided with a resurgence of armed clashes linked to drug trafficking at the border in late 2025. On 26 and 30 November, five Chinese workers were killed and the same number injured on Tajikistani soil in attacks launched from Afghanistan, while two Tajik officers and three attackers were killed on 23 December, according to media outlet Asia-Plus.

A resurgence of border clashes in late 2025

Since then, Taliban representatives have issued several statements of support, accusing “ill-intentioned circles” or “enemies” of seeking to undermine Afghanistan’s relations with Tajikistan and China. Indeed, it is certain that these attacks were not carried out by the Taliban. They have even said they arrested suspects in the border region, without providing details, according to Afghan media outlet Tolo News.

Also read on Novastan : Au Tadjikistan, la mort de cinq Chinois relance les inquiétudes sur l’instabilité à la frontière avec l’Afghanistan

The motives of those behind the attacks are difficult to determine. In the case of the most recent attack, which killed Tajik officers, Afghan media outlet Hasht-e Subh claims that the attackers were members of Jamaat Ansarullah, a terrorist group based in Afghanistan, hostile to the Tajik government and mainly made up of Tajik citizens.

In the case of the attacks against Chinese workers, uncertainty remains. For researcher Mélanie Sadozaï, affiliated with the University of Regensburg’s Department of Interdisciplinary and Multiscalar Area Studies, whose research focuses on the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border, it is impossible to accuse any specific armed group with certainty. Interviewed by Novastan, she suggests that the attacks may have been retaliation by “drug traffickers who do not want China to be present, as this could disrupt their activities”.

“One cannot rule out either that these were ordinary people rejecting China’s activities in the region, as China extracts mineral resources under bilateral agreements with Tajikistan and Afghanistan,” Mélanie Sadozaï continues. “People are well aware that Chinese companies come to ‘plunder’ their resources without redistributing them. It could also be an act of revenge, but again, it is difficult to say,” she adds.

A new forced cooperation

In this context, a reduction in Taliban personnel responsible for maintaining order at the border can only be viewed negatively on the Tajikistani side, as relations between the two countries have taken a new turn in recent months.

After the Taliban seized power in 2021, Tajikistan positioned itself as Afghanistan’s only neighbour openly hostile to Kabul’s new rulers. While other neighbouring countries quickly adopted a pragmatic stance and, without officially recognising the Taliban, maintained ties with them for economic reasons, Tajikistan has continued to stand apart.

Also read on Novastan : L’Afghanistan taliban, un faisceau de menaces sur les pays d’Asie centrale

But open hostility is now turning into forced cooperation. Barely two weeks before the attacks against the Chinese workers, a Tajikistani delegation visited Kabul to meet its counterparts and discuss counterterrorism cooperation, the fight against drug trafficking and the porous shared border, Tolo News reported. Similarly, the governors of Afghanistan’s Balkh and Badakhshan provinces had travelled respectively to the Tajikistani capital, Dushanbe, and to Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan region, although these visits were not publicised.

The latest attacks have accelerated this rapprochement at the highest level: for the first time since 2021, the foreign ministers of Tajikistan and Afghanistan held phone calls, with two taking place in December, Asia-Plus reported.

The political impossibility of recognising the Taliban

The Tajikistani authorities delayed this moment for as long as they could, and are now trying to find a way out of this diplomatic impasse. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has long presented himself as a bulwark against religious extremism: real diplomatic contact with the Taliban would be difficult to legitimise, both within Tajikistan and abroad.

Emomali Rahmon’s clear stance against the Taliban and his support for the Afghan opposition in exile earned him invitations to the European Parliament and to France shortly after the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, helping to ensure the continuation of international financial assistance on which Tajikistan heavily depends. Openly collaborating with the Taliban is therefore not an option if it risks jeopardising such important funding.

Domestically, Dushanbe also wants to present itself as the protector of ethnic Tajiks, portraying them as oppressed by the Pashtun Taliban. During the Taliban’s first period in power from 1996 to 2001, the Tajikistani president supported Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Afghan resistance, who visited Tajikistan several times. That support is now extended to his son, who is also effectively based in Tajikistan, and, to some extent, to the Afghan embassy, which has become a stronghold of the former regime.

This animosity is mutual: the Taliban appear to maintain cordial relations with Sharofiddin Gadoev, one of the exiled leaders of the opposition to the Tajikistani regime. He was invited to take part in discussions in Afghanistan last May.

Economic and security emergencies

In reality, economic realities had already forced the hand of the Tajikistani authorities. Electricity exports to Afghanistan have not stopped, showing that discussions, even if purely economic, have taken place between the two sides, Eurasianet reported. Other large-scale projects suggest that completely cutting off communication between the two countries was never truly conceivable, notably the CASA-1000 electricity export project.

But it is the security situation that is genuinely accelerating diplomatic contact. Bruce Pannier, a fellow with the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, notes that it was the launch of a missile towards Tajikistan in May 2022 that prompted the first formal contact between the Taliban and the Tajikistani authorities.

Moreover, ironically, it is the fight against extremism that has pushed Emomali Rahmon to open dialogue with the Taliban. After the Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow, carried out by Tajikistani citizens recruited by the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISKP, it became necessary to combat the involvement of Tajikistani citizens in international terrorism, both for obvious security reasons and for Tajikistan’s international image.

Also read on Novastan : Après l’attentat en Russie, les Tadjiks face à une xénophobie massive

Yet the fight against terrorism requires deeper cooperation with the Taliban, for whom these groups also represent a threat. Tajikistani citizens are sometimes actively recruited from Afghan territory, notably by ISKP.

Following Russia

Finally, Tajikistan’s uncompromising rejection of the Taliban was beginning to entail a level of isolation difficult for a small country to manage. Dushanbe’s gradual shift could be attributed to Moscow’s official recognition of the Taliban last July. Russia may expect an ally that still largely depends on it to follow its lead by also treating the Taliban as acceptable interlocutors.

Tajikistan is thus caught between the importance of Western funding and its relationship with Russia, which it cannot risk weakening. The country is one of the most remittance-dependent in the world: remittances accounted for more than 45% of GDP in 2024, mainly coming from migrant workers in Russia. A deterioration in relations with Moscow would therefore raise fears of even worse conditions for Tajik migrants, followed by catastrophic repercussions for the country’s economy.

A rapprochement with limits

However, Mélanie Sadozaï stresses that this rapprochement has limits. “Although we are beginning to see a few photographs of official meetings between the Taliban and Tajikistani authorities, all of this is taking place in the framework of trade, energy and economic cooperation, but really in the security sphere. It is very likely that this is the maximum Tajikistan can do,” she says.

As for transferring the Afghan embassy into Taliban hands, this remains highly unlikely. Here too, Mélanie Sadozaï believes that “support for the opposition is in fact fairly discreet and was mostly rhetorical. I imagine Tajikistan has no reason to stop supporting it or to expel Mohammad Zahir Aghbar,” the ambassador of the former regime, who remains in office, “and I think it can very well play both sides: maintain its current relations with the resistance while dealing with the Taliban. The two are not incompatible.”

Also read on Novastan : Le Tadjikistan reconnaît une vaste opération d’expulsion d’Afghans

Moreover, while media reports have stated that the Afghan consulate in Khorog, in Gorno-Badakhshan, had passed into Taliban hands, creating a dual authority with the embassy loyal to the former regime, Mélanie Sadozaï says she has always found the Taliban consulate closed and inaccessible since it was damaged by an avalanche in February 2023.

A worrying situation for Tajikistan and its relations with China

The fact remains that the lack of resources on the Afghan side and the latest attacks are a problem for all parties, whether they are directed against the Tajik government or against Chinese workers. A deterioration in relations with China would be extremely problematic for Tajikistan: the country’s infrastructure relies on partnerships or loans linked to China, loans that Dushanbe is struggling to repay.

China has taken the situation very seriously, calling on Tajikistan to shed light on these events and guarantee the safety of Chinese citizens on its territory. In a rare move, the Chinese embassy in Dushanbe asked its citizens to leave border areas and remain cautious.

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“If the Chinese workers who were targeted are indeed employees of road construction companies, this creates an obvious problem for Tajikistan: the possibility that, in the long term, China might end up leaving and not finishing the projects it has started,” Mélanie Sadozaï says.

It is therefore possible that Dushanbe will seek to further protect its border, although no official announcement has been made on the matter. With the war in Ukraine, it seems unlikely that Russia will once again invest resources in the border, which Tajikistan has protected alone since 2004. “As for China, its army does not patrol along the border, but one possibility is that security will be reinforced around Chinese infrastructure, which is now very numerous along the border,” the researcher concludes.

Judith Robert
Author for Novastan

Proofread by Anaïs Boulard

The post Lack of resources in Afghanistan undermines security on the border with Tajikistan 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

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

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

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.

It has been one year since the Organization of Turkic States approved the implementation of a common Turkic alphabet, designed for uniform use in all member states. Under the guise of bolstering Turkic unity, Ankara has spearheaded the initiative with the aim to draw the Central Asian states into its political orbit. However, due to limited funds, lack of political incentives, and preexisting linguistic policy, the Central Asian states have largely chosen to ignore the common alphabet entirely. 

In September 2024, the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) announced to the world the creation of a 34-letter common Turkic alphabet based on the Latin script, approved on paper by all member states. The initiative, spearheaded by Türkiye, has been in the works since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Now one year since the common alphabet’s announcement, the manoeuvre has yet to make the large waves in the Central Asian information space that Türkiye had initially hoped for.

The proposed common alphabet exists within the larger regional debate surrounding the political futures of the Central Asian languages. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of the newly independent republics began the process of transitioning their languages from a Cyrillic to a Latin-based script. However, in Central Asia, the decision of switching to a Latin script remains a fierce debate across the region even three decades later. 

Türkiye, under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s expansionist foreign policy, has offered a guiding hand by leading the OTS initiative to create a common Turkic alphabet. Türkiye first adopted the Latin script in 1928 as a part of its early independence-era modernisation reforms. By encouraging the Central Asian states to undergo a similar process, Türkiye also aims to cement its position as the dominant centre of the Turkic world.

So far, Erdoğan’s plan has not cultivated many strong allies in Central Asia’s political elite. Most states in the region remain embroiled within national debates over the post-Soviet future of their titular languages, making Central Asian governments particularly resistant to carry out such a monumental linguistic shift at the international level.

Competition for “Middle Power” Status

In the year since the OTS announcement, regional heavyweights Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan remain resistant in adopting the common Turkic alphabet within their borders. According to Nargiza Muratalieva, a Bishkek-based political scientist, “Kazakhstan is not ready to share its leadership in Central Asia, given its attempts to promote itself as a middle power.” Kazakhstan has spent the post-Soviet decades centralizing Central Asian political power within its own borders, with the goal to secure a respected “middle power” status to both the region and the international community at large. Uzbekistan, the largest Central Asian country by population and second largest in terms of GDP, shares similar ambitions. Both countries view the Turkish-led OTS alphabet as an attempt by Türkiye to cement itself as the dominant power in the region, and thus, a threat to their respective national directives.

Read more on Novastan: The Lexicon of Kazakh Decolonisation

While both nations have yet to consider the implementation of the common Turkic alphabet, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have independently embarked on national plans to switch the script of their titular languages from Cyrillic to Latin. In both cases, the political leadership has underestimated the difficulty of this task, leading to much longer timelines for the initiative than initially expected. Currently, both states are stuck in a transitional state where both scripts are used interchangeably. Critics complain that the current linguistic paralysis in the countries is both confusing for citizens and financially taxing for administrations. The Diplomat reports that the 2018 budgetary estimate for Kazakhstan’s Latinization program sat at US$664 million, equivalent to roughly 39% of Kazakhstan’s GDP for that year.

The challenges Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have faced implementing a Latin script have meant that neither government seems willing to invest in the OTS alphabet as a third system for their citizens to learn and their country to switch to. Even Turkmenistan — a state which successfully phased out Cyrillic usage in the 1990s — remains resistant to the OTS plan to change their national standard. Largely closed off from the outside world and averse to foreign influence, the common Turkic alphabet offers few advantages to Ashgabat.

Kyrgyzstan: The Cyrillic Exception

At the unveiling ceremony of the common Turkic alphabet, all eyes were on Kyrgyzstan. To mark the alphabet’s adoption, Erdoğan gifted each represented nation a copy of two books translated into the new alphabet. One of the books was a novel written by Chinghiz Aitmatov, a regionally renowned author hailing from Kyrgyzstan. Erdoğan’s choice was hardly coincidental. Kyrgyzstan today is the only Turkic state to not even attempt to switch the national script away from Cyrillic.

Western analysts attribute Kyrgyzstan’s continued use of Cyrillic to the close relationship with Russia the country has maintained through its post-Soviet independence. Russia largely views increased Turkish influence in Central Asia as a threat to its foothold in the region, and acts to mitigate the country’s power in states like Kyrgyzstan where it still holds considerable influence. However, in the case of Kyrgyzstan’s refusal to adopt the OTS Latin-based alphabet, Muratalieva believes the reasons are more pragmatic than political. “The simplest explanation is the lack of financial resources to accept and to introduce this alphabet on a national level,” Muratalieva explains. While Türkiye has spearheaded the alphabet initiative on paper, the country has remained resistant to supplying funds to OTS member states interested in making the national switch. The lack of available funds severely limits the capacity of financially-limited states like Kyrgyzstan, the smallest economy of the OTS bloc.

When Sadyr Japarov, the president of Kyrgyzstan, was asked about his opinion on the linguistic future of the Kyrgyz language, he stated that “it is too early to talk about transitioning the Kyrgyz language to the Latin alphabet”, RFE/RL reports. Muratalieva believes Japarov’s strategy is to watch and wait how its larger regional neighbours Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan fare in their respective transitions to a Latin-based script. “If one of them succeeds, Kyrgyzstan will follow,” she theorizes.

Azerbaijan as a Potential Model

Not all hope is lost for Turkish power in Central Asia. Azerbaijan, while outside the region, provides a model for the post-Soviet Turkic states open to cooperation with Türkiye, showing how partnership with the state can lead to successful development. Türkiye and Azerbaijan have been close allies ever since the country gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. This strategic partnership has allowed for Azerbaijan to largely chart its own path, both economically and politically distant from Russia. 

One of the first directives Azerbaijan embarked on after independence was the complete transition of its national language from Cyrillic to Latin, a goal it achieved by the turn of the century. The Azerbaijani Latin-based script in its modern form is now very closely related to both the Turkish standard script and the newly proposed OTS alphabet. Such linguistic integration between the two nations has opened many new doors for transnational partnership, successes closely monitored by the Central Asian states.

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Since the beginning of the Russo-Ukraine War, Central Asian states have become increasingly hesitant of close partnership with Russia. Regional leadership fears Russia’s close geographic proximity to their borders may lead to future military conflict. Türkiye, attempting to offer an alternative to Russian partnership in the region, markets its distance from Central Asia as a compelling security guarantee. While maintaining territorial distance from potential Central Asian partners, Türkiye benefits from cultural and religious closeness to the region’s common Turkic heritage. The common Turkic alphabet is only one of many pathways the country is intent to forge with Central Asia through the leverage of common Turkic traditions. Turkish soft power in Central Asia, while currently marginal, is steadily increasing with time.

Türkiye has made it clear that it is willing to take on administrative and economic sacrifices to implement the new alphabet within its own borders, but has maintained its reluctance to take on the financial burdens necessary to implement the script in the Central Asian Turkic states. Combined with Türkiye’s unwillingness to meddle in preexisting linguistic turmoil in Central Asia or directly confront Russia’s lingering cultural influence over the region, has enough time passed to call the OTS common alphabet project a failure? Likely so. 

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Joseph Fisher for Novastan

The post Dead in the Water: Has the Common Turkic Alphabet Failed to Boost Turkish Influence in Central Asia? appeared first on Novastan English.