The reported shoot-out near the Uzbek and Afghan borders will concern Russia and China as well. The attack in Tajikistan could have broad implications for Central Asia DUSHANBE: A deadly attack on a Tajik border post reported early on Wednesday is disturbing for many reasons, including the fact Tajik officials are blaming the so-called Islamic State (IS) militant group for the …

An estimated one million people, mostly Muslim minorities, are being held in detention centers across the Xinjiang region in China, writes Iris Oppelaar, a multimedia journalist, in the Voices on Central Asia. Common reasons for detention include studying Islam and praying or having family members who live abroad. China maintains that these detention centers are “vocational education centers,” although numerous reports …

  HAH Report Shelley Fairweather-Vega, a Seattle-based writer and translator. She translates literature from Russian and Uzbek languages into English. She collaborates with authors, academics, and activists around the world and has worked on projects as varied as Russian poetry, Uzbek historical fiction, popular science, romance, and detective stories. She is a founder of the literary translation circle in Seattle, …

President Sooronbai Jeenbekov highlighted digital transformation goals for Kyrgyzstan  Herald Report Bishkek, (Kyrgyzstan): Technology experts, academics, researchers and government officials at an international conference highlighted the increasing role of information and communication technology in the governance system, public and private enterprise management, education and research. They discussed the latest approaches to solving intriguing challenges in the fields of data collection and …

By Ghulam Amin Beg When Harrison’s Op-Ed was published in the New York Times in 2010, it was taken by many Indian, Pakistani, Russian, European, South Asian newspapers, online blogs etc., and opinions, analysis and comments were made some condemning Pakistan and China for taking over Gilgit-Baltistan. Foreign office officials in Peking and Islamabad rejected the article as baseless, absurd …

TASHKENT Nine countries in Central and West Asia on Friday signed a historic declaration that will accelerate cross-border cooperation on energy issues and move the region a step closer to the creation of a regional energy market, a statement issued by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said. According to the statement, energy ministers and leaders from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the …

By Ghulam Amin Beg On Tuesday, September 14, 2010, I had written this article and published on the Simurgh Institute blog, which received several comments and further elaborations. The article analyzed the opinion post by Selig S. Harrison published in the New York Times in August the same year under the title, ‘China’s Discreet Hold on Pakistan’s Northern Borderlands’. Today, …

    Herald Report Some 300 children from four villages in the Vahdat district of Tajikistan must make a treacherous journey to school, walking between three and four kilometers every day, each way. Some wade through a river, but when the waters rise, they must cross a high, rickety suspension bridge, says a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) report. Vahdat …

Herald Report The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Tajik authorities to investigate the “apparently targeted disruption” of the embattled independent news agency’s websites and to help ensure they are accessible. The New York-based media-freedom watchdog made the call on September 10 after Dushanbe-based media group Asia-Plus reported that its main websites and business e-mails had stopped working …

Its a great news for snow leopards and local herding communities: the Mongolian government has decided to expand the Tost Nature Reserve in the country’s South Gobi province by 150 sq.km, says Snow Leopard Trust newsletter. In doing so, the government also revoked a mining license that had threatened a water source that is critical for people and wildlife. Herald …