Author: Kenneth Drake

Kyrgyzstan, with its long border with China and once host to an air base crucial to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, had long been known as an “island of democracy” in a sea of autocratic states in Central Asia.  It hosted a robust civil society, a population appreciative of democratic values and secularism, and a relatively independent judiciary. Three times — in 2005, 2010, and 2020 —  the people of Kyrgyzstan voted out corrupt leaders in an effort to put the country back on a democratic path. But a new – and disturbing – Kyrgyzstan is emerging.  In recent years, it has fallen dramatically…

Columns of military equipment moved to the east of Poland. The General Staff of the Polish Army announced the start of Operation Safe Podlachie . It was decided to send a thousand soldiers and about 200 units of military equipment to the east of the country, to the border with Belarus. “The purpose of the operation is the training presence of ground forces and the demonstration of our will and ability to immediately respond to attempts to destabilize the situation on our border,” the General Staff said in a statement. What is happening on the eastern border of Poland and what is the main threat for Poles in…

Exports to Russia more than doubled, imports from next-door China almost tripled, and a whole range of products that Kyrgyzstan was not known for exporting in the past were sent abroad. And that is just what can be gleaned from the often incomplete official data. The year that Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and became the target of extensive Western-led sanctions turned out to be a strange one for Kyrgyzstan’s external trade. That is in no small part due to an apparent spike in reexporting — the process of exporting imported goods to third countries, typically with minimal…

Susanna Karazakova is from Rostock, Germany. Ten years ago she knew practically nothing about Kyrgyzstan, and now she has a Kyrgyz surname and has no plans to leave this country.  — How did you end up in Kyrgyzstan? — I first came here in 2013. At that time I was studying at Humboldt University in Berlin at the Department of Geography, we had an excursion to Kazakhstan, after which we decided to spend a week on Issyk-Kul Lake. We enjoyed it. But it was difficult, because we spoke neither Russian nor Kyrgyz. We communicated with the locals almost with the help of gestures. After that I came to the country several more times for holidays, and in 2015 I decided to try to stay here for a long time. I graduated from university and moved to Bishkek. I didn’t…

The “Tiangong Dialogue” between representatives of students from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) countries and crew members of China’s Shenzhou-15 spacecraft attracted many young Kyrgyz participants on Thursday. During the online dialogue, the youth representatives from China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia and other countries had the opportunity to ask questions to three astronauts of Shenzhou-15. In the auditorium of Bishkek State University, young students from all over the country listened attentively to the questions and answers between the Chinese astronauts and the young people from SCO countries, and applauded enthusiastically from time to time. Nurislan Obolbekov, a sixth-grade student…

Flora Kyrgyzstan’s flora can be divided by altitudinal zoning. Different plants grow at different altitudes in the mountains. In the northern part of the country, steppes, meadow-steppes, meadows, bushes and forests are more common. In the south, because of the dry climate, there are no forests and alpine meadows; instead, semi-deserts and deserts are more common. Trees are more common at lower latitudes in the mountains, while the higher altitudes are mostly grassy and clear. There are thousands of species of plants in Kyrgyzstan, of which about 600 are useful wild-growing flora, and 200 officinal plants. Officinal plants, or those…

A Central Asian state bordering China, Kyrgyzstan became independent with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It has some oil and gas and a developing gold mining sector, but relies on imports for most of its energy needs. Resentment at widespread poverty and ethnic divisions between north and south have spilled over into violence, and three presidents have been swept from power by popular discontent since independence. Settled by Kyrgyz tribes from southern Siberia in the 17th Century, the area was ruled by various regional powers before coming under Russian and then Soviet rule. Most of its six…

The first agreement included; financing the housing program project to construct houses through a soft development loan of $100 million. The Saudi Fund for Development (SFD), represented by its CEO, Mr. Sultan bin Abdulrahman Al-Marshad, signed, today in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, with the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, represented by His Excellency Minister of Finance, Mr. Almaz Baketaev, two agreements funded by the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) through soft development loans worth $130 million. The signing ceremony was attended by His Excellency Deputy Ambassador of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques to the Kyrgyz…

“All Lebanese musicians have left the country. It’s no longer possible to make it here,” Lebanese conductor Harout Fazlian told L’Orient-Le Jour. The Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, which Fazlian led before the 2019 economic crisis, no longer exists. More than half of the orchestra’s 90 musicians were recruited from abroad, mainly Romania, more than 20 years ago. They were meant to make up for the lack of personnel in some categories such as wind instruments. “Foreign musicians had to train Lebanese musicians to play their instruments,” said conductor Toufic Maatouk. “In addition to the current crisis, Lebanon lacks a cultural and music…