Author: Oqil Rahimov

After Tajiks were charged with a deadly attack in Moscow, the country has cracked down on signs of Islam. But experts say it’s not addressing the causes of terrorism. People in Tajikistan were expecting a government crackdown after Tajik men were arrested and charged with a terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall in March. But it still seemed excessive to Nilufar, a 27-year-old education professional, when she saw local authorities with scissors outside a K.F.C. in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital, trimming beards that were deemed too long. Excessive, but not so surprising. In the span of a month, Nilufar herself…

After two days of lengthy negotiations in Doha, Hamas has named Yahya Sinwar as its new overall chief, replacing Ismail Haniyeh who was assassinated in Tehran last week. Since 2017, Sinwar has served as the group’s leader inside the Gaza strip. He will now become leader of its political wing. The Hamas leadership unanimously chose Sinwar to lead the movement, a senior Hamas official told the BBC. The announcement comes at a moment of soaring tensions in the Middle East, as Iran and its allies threaten retaliation for the killing of Haniyeh, which they blame on Israel. Israel has not…

The European Union announced on Friday that it will begin accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova to join the 27-member political and economic bloc starting next week. All 27 members agreed to the Ukraine and Moldova joining the European Union. Negotiations will begin for both countries on Tuesday in Luxembourg, the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union said on X. The move comes at a critical time for both nations with Ukraine in the middle of an invasion by Russia and Moldova facing a Russian-led insurgence by a breakaway state. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the European Union for its “robust political…

The terrorist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall in March 2024, which left 140 people dead, has sparked a crackdown on central Asian workers living in Russia, and put the relationship between the region and Russia under increasing strain. The four suspected gunmen under arrest are all citizens of Tajikistan, a central Asian nation that was once part of the Soviet Union. Following the Crocus City attack, Russian police started rounding up and deporting workers who are originally from Tajikistan, as well as from Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The attack, which Russia has blamed on Ukraine, also sparked massive police raids, document checks of migrants…

The president of Iran was on Sunday night feared dead after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed in a mountainous region. The lives of Ebrahim Raisi and Hossein Amirabdollahian, his foreign minister, were “at risk”, an Iranian official said during a large search and rescue mission. Ahmad Vahidi, the Iranian interior minister, blamed the crash, which came just a month after Tehran launched an unprecedented missile and drone attack against Israel, on poor weather conditions. State media described the incident as an “accident”. The chief of staff of the Iranian military ordered the entire army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)…

Dubai (27/2) Tajikistan’s existential project to build the colossal 335-meter-high Roghun hydropower dam is proceeding apace, but costs are spiralling, and to a level that is making it hard to see where the government is going to find the funds needed to finish the work. To complicate matters for Dushanbe, this is happening against the backdrop of calls from environmental watchdogs for international development lenders to pause the allocation of any future funds to Tajikistan pending a fresh assessment of the project. The extent of the budget overshoot is striking. In a press conference on February 16, Finance Minister Faiziddin…

Uzbekistan was the first country which offered us this brotherly support, said President Ilham Aliyev as he addressed the Forum titled “Karabakh: Back Home After 30 Years. Accomplishments and Challenges” co-organized by ADA University and the Center of Analysis of International Relations, Trend reports. “With my brother President Mirziyoyev, we jointly inaugurated the school, which was named after the great son of Uzbek people Mirzo Ulugbek in Fuzuli. And this was a great contribution to reconstruction and also great contribution to our brotherly relations, because people of Azerbaijan, not only those who live in Fuzuli, will never forget that,” the head of…

Uzbekistan has attracted $7.5bn in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the first nine months of 2023, according to its Institute of Macroeconomic and Regional Studies (IMRS). The investment volume in fixed assets between January and September amounted to $18.4bn, 11.8% more than during the same period last year. Experts from the IMRE used as part of the reporting process the Investment Performance Index (IPI), which looks at capital injections into regions and the region’s contribution to the country’s development. Syrdarya took first place both on the IPI and for FDI in Uzbekistan, while the country’s capital Tashkent came fourth. Uzbekistan has been looking…

Toronto, Alaska (16/11 – 50) Our lives are being maneuvered and we are being manipulated by unelected, insidious forces, toward objectives not necessarily in the people’s interest. Now that the so-called “pandemic”, declared by the mysterious self-appointed World Health Organization, and followed obediently by governments everywhere, has been decreed “finished”, we should devote a moment to introspection, considering who is running the show and for whose benefit, as governments gaily abdicated their vested responsibility to govern. Pandemic is over? I hope they told those killer viruses who destroyed the population of Europe and North America. What? Oh, just 1% mortality?…

Municipal buses, gifted to the city of Jalal-Abad for the City Day celebration, are currently operational on designated routes. Due to the absence of compressed natural gas refueling stations in Jalal-Abad region, the buses currently refuel in neighboring Uzbekistan. It’s expected that they will to continue to do so until the end of 2023. The buses started operating on December 1 covering five city routes and cross the border through the Bek-Abad checkpoint in Suzak district. The head of the municipal bus depot Avtandil Maksutov assured that this temporary arrangement, refueling with compressed natural gas in Uzbekistan twice a week,…