Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkemnistan are also awaiting the outcome of the confrontation between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris with interest, considering the disruptive effects of world events on the region's prospects. Also hanging in the balance is the future of the ‘5+1’ contact format through which the White House has tried to gain footholds in the former Soviet area in recent years.
‘There are no serious problems between our countries,’ assures Dushanbe, and in regional organisations, Tajiks are the first to support the Russians' arguments. But in the meantime, disappointment is growing over the Russian authorities' relations with migrants who have suffered outrage and violent forms of discrimination since the Krokus City Hall bombing.
In view of the growing difficulties in Russia, it is becoming increasingly important to find effective alternatives, considering that money from working abroad constitutes a very important slice of the GDP of Central Asian countries, ranging from 10% in Uzbekistan to 40% in Tajikistan. An issue that is intertwined with the question of Afghans in Germany.
The region's main river flows through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and finally empties into the languishing Aral Sea. Its flow is steadily decreasing due to climate change but also due to intensive exploitation for agricultural purposes, aggravated by competition between individual countries. But according to experts, with bottom-up initiatives it would still be possible to snatch it from its decline.
On trial behind closed doors are the leaders of the opposition movement Group 24, Sukhrob Zafare and Nasimdžon Šarifov. Having disappeared from Istanbul where they had been living in exile for ten years, the Prosecutor General announced last August that they were in a prison in the capital of Tajikistan. Banned as an ‘extremist association’ the organisation is not allowed to participate in any way in the political and social life of the country.
After a recent renovation, it attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world to Khudžand, the country's second largest city. It testifies not only to local traditions, but is also a landmark of a still faltering economy that wants to find its way back to regional and global trade.
