As Victoria Nuland steps down, she gets real about a world on fire.

Victoria Nuland has long been known as a relentless, even pugnacious, U.S. diplomat, with a strong belief in American power. The approach sometimes got her in trouble, but it rarely held her back.

Nuland recently left the State Department after serving at its highest levels, first as the Biden administration’s undersecretary of State for political affairs, and, for several months, acting deputy secretary of State. She previously was a career diplomat who held an array of roles under presidents both Republican and Democratic; her first posting more than three decades ago was as a consular officer in China.

In an exit interview with POLITICO Magazine, Nuland discussed her time in public service — dismissing chatter that she was passed over for a promotion — as well as her views on where American foreign policy has gone wrong and right.

Notably, she said the United States was not quick enough to realize and prevent the expansionist ambitions of both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

A longtime champion of Ukraine and the effort to counter Russia, she also warned about the perils of Donald Trump blowing up NATO if he wins back the White House in November.

“Don’t throw it out,” she said of the trans-Atlantic alliance, “because you would never be able to re-create it again.”

The following has been edited for length and clarity:

How’s life on the outside?

Life is wonderful. I am doing a lot of projects that I had put off, seeing a lot of people that I love, and I’m staying involved in ways that are meaningful. I’m speaking on foreign policy issues I care about — whether it is Ukraine or ensuring that the United States leads strongly in the world. I’m getting a chance to prepare for my classes in the fall and work with the next generation of foreign policy leaders. I’ll be at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Why leave the Biden administration, really? People said you felt passed over for the deputy secretary of State job. Is that true?

I actually didn’t compete for the deputy secretary of State job. I loved being undersecretary for political affairs. I love working with Secretary [Antony] Blinken. But as you know, I’ve done three years altogether and I’ve done eight months plus in both jobs, and so it was just the right time for me and my family to do something different.

Do you have any regrets from your time in the role?

I think whenever you finish a job like this, you wish you’d been able to do more on more issues. Travel more, touch more people, get more done faster, ensure the U.S. was leading strongly on as many continents as possible, mentor more of the next generation. And you’re always constrained by time, by resources, by the crises that overwhelm the inbox. So you always want to have done more.

Can Ukraine win this war against Russia? And how do you define winning?

Let’s start with the fact that Putin has already failed in his objective. He wanted to flatten Ukraine. He wanted to ensure that they had no sovereignty, independence, agency, no democratic future — because a democratic Ukraine, a European Ukraine, is a threat to his model for Russia, among other things, and because it’s the first building block for his larger territorial ambitions.

Can Ukraine succeed? Absolutely. Can Ukraine come out of this more sovereign, more economically independent, stronger, more European than it is now? Absolutely. And I think it will. But we’ve got to stay with it. We’ve got to make sure our allies stay with it.

And we have to accelerate a lot of the initiatives that were in the supplemental, like helping Ukraine build that highly deterrent military force of the future, like deploying these longer-range weapons to strategic effect, like ensuring that the critical infrastructure and the energy sector are protected, like building up our own defense industrial base and that of our allies and Ukraine’s again, so that we and Ukraine are building faster than Russia and China.

But can it get all its territory back, including Crimea?

It can definitely get to a place where it’s strong enough, I believe, and where Putin is stymied enough to go to the negotiating table from a position of strength. It’ll be up to the Ukrainian people what their territorial ambitions should be. But there are certain things that are existential.

Any deal that they cut in their interest and in the larger global interest has to be a deal that Putin is compelled to stick to. We can’t be doing this every six months, every three years. It has to actually lead to a deal that includes Russian withdrawal.

Putin is a master at what we call rope-a-dope negotiating, where he never actually cuts the deal. It has to be a deal that ensures that whatever is decided on Crimea, it can’t be remilitarized such that it’s a dagger at the heart of the center of Ukraine.

Was it a mistake not to push the Ukrainians harder to go for some sort of negotiated end to the war in 2022, especially the fall of 2022?

They were not in a strong enough position then. They’re not in a strong enough position now. The only deal Putin would have cut then, the only deal that he would cut today, at least before he sees what happens in our election, is a deal in which he says, “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.” And that’s not sustainable.

You’ve had a long career, especially when it comes to Europe. Where did the U.S. go wrong in its understanding of Russia?

With regard to both Russia and China, after the end of the Cold War, the prevailing wisdom among all of us — right, left and center — was that if you could knit Moscow and Beijing into the open and free global order that we had benefited from for so many years, that they would become prosperous, and they would become strong contributing members of that order. And that’s what we tried for a very long time.

That works if you have a leadership that is fundamentally accepting the current system. But once you have leaders who are telling their populations that this system keeps their country down, doesn’t allow it to have its rightful place, that has a territorial definition of greatness, that is bent on economic, political and or military coercion — that’s antithetical to this order, and then our policy has to change.

Did we realize fast enough Putin’s ambitions and Xi Jinping’s ambitions, and did we do enough to ensure that those ambitions stayed inside their own nations and didn’t spill out and coerce others? 20/20 hindsight? Probably not.

How much of it comes down to what particular guy is running the show? I sometimes wonder, could things be different if it wasn’t Putin in charge? If it wasn’t Xi? How much of it comes down to the dude at the top?

In highly centralized societies, which both China and Russia have historically been, without an electoral refresh of the kind that we all go through in the democratic world, it matters hugely, because it’s that human who’s defining what greatness means. It’s that human who’s deciding how to maintain order in that society. It’s that human — allowing them to speak, allowing a free press, allowing protests, allowing alternative political parties — who’s going to shape the options. And that constrains obviously the kind of relationship we can have.

What is the lesson we should learn about foreign policy in general when it comes to the experiences we’ve had in Russia and China?

We should always try to talk both to leaders and to people, to the extent that we’re allowed. We should always offer an opportunity to work together in common interest.

But if the ideology is inherently expansionist, is inherently illiberal, is inherently trying to change the system that benefits us, we’ve got to build protections and resilience for ourselves, for our friends and allies, and particularly for those neighbors of those countries who are likely to be on the front line of that first push.

Where do you see the Israel-Hamas war heading?

Essentially, there are two paths on the table. There is continuing this war with all of the destruction and horror and lack of clarity about how you end Hamas’ reign of terror.

The other path is the route that the administration and allies and partners and a lot of countries in the Gulf are pushing, and a lot of Israelis want, which is: a hostage deal leads to a long-term cease-fire, leads to a better future for Palestinians both in the West Bank and in Gaza, leads to Saudi-Israel normalization and a path to two states, and a region where the ideology and the violence that Hamas is offering is beaten by more opening, more opportunity, more peace, more stability.

Are you saying that because you believe it or because it’s the Biden administration’s position?

I’m saying it because, anything other than that, this is going to happen again and again and again.

If you could go back in time on that one, what, if anything, should the U.S. have done differently?

Beginning with the Trump administration, everybody fell in love with regional normalization as the cure-all for the instability and grievances and insecurity in the Middle East. And that’s a part of it.

But if you leave out the Palestinian issue, then somebody’s going to seize it and run with it, and that’s what Hamas did. I also think that both we and the Israelis knew too little about the terror state that had been established in Gaza.

You’re going to be teaching at Columbia, the epicenter of campus protests over this situation. If you could offer these protesters some advice as someone with significant policymaking experience, what would it be?

Peaceful protest is part of the fabric of who we are and the fact that we allow it, and the Chinese don’t and the Russians don’t, makes us Americans. But when that protest becomes violent, when it impinges on other people’s human rights or denigrates others, then you veer toward coercion.

So, express your views, ask for concrete paths forward. But stay away from violence, make sure that it’s actually indigenous to the campus, that you’re not becoming the tool of outside agitators. And be respectful of alternative views as you expect people to respect your views.

What if you are peaceful? And you say what you want and the people in charge just say, ‘Oh, that’s very nice, thank you,’ and then they ignore you and they keep doing what they’ve been doing for years. How do you do just keep pushing on that front? Do you join the government?

I would certainly say if you care enough to devote all day, every day to political change, come join the folks who are setting policy, commit your life to public service. I didn’t expect that that’s where my life would lead, but it’s been incredibly rewarding.

There are many, many ways to change policy, but being on the inside is not only extremely rewarding, but you can actually get stuff done.

If Trump wins, and leaves NATO or limits America’s role in NATO, does the alliance fall apart? What happens?

First and foremost, America suffers. Because if you look at every single one of the challenges we have globally, even as we make the security commitment to Europe, it is the European countries who have contributed more to Ukraine — on the security side, on the economic side, etc. It is the European countries who have to adapt their policies toward China if you want to have an impact on China’s eagerness to coerce others. It’s the European countries who we need to help fund the Haiti mission, to help defeat terrorism in Africa, and provide prosperity.

If we are not part of that family, on a daily basis, we are standing alone, our own influence in the world is greatly reduced, and we have no influence over how they choose to spend their energy and resources. And they’re less powerful in doing it without us.

What about this idea that look, we’re the U.S. at the end of the day. We’re the superpower. Whether we’re in NATO or not, people are going to come along with us. Isn’t there something to that argument?

I’ve worked for six presidents, Republicans and Democrats. I always believed that a new president with a fresh mandate from the American people should look at every global problem with fresh eyes, bring new solutions, and should have that opportunity, working with Congress, working with the American people, working with allies and partners.

That’s a different thing than turning your back on bedrock, bipartisan institutions and policies that have protected Americans and advanced our own prosperity and global influence for 70 years.

Why do you want to throw out what’s working and what benefits us for no other reason than you’ve had a fit of pique? Work within the institution to make it work better. Don’t throw it out, because you would never be able to re-create it again.

Does the rest of the world fear the United States?

Is fear what we want from the rest of the world?

Sometimes.

I think what we want from the rest of the world is they see us leading in a manner that advances their own security, advances their own prosperity, creates this community of nations that can handle global problems — whether they are terrorist problems, whether they are health problems, whether they’re environmental problems — and we do it in a primarily self-interested but unselfish way, and we’re creating that community.

They should only fear us if they’re opponents of a largely liberal democratic way of advancing human prosperity. And in that context, if they are viciously invading a neighbor, if they are coercing a little state because they can, then I hope they would fear our reaction and the reaction that we will build with other democracies who want to protect the system that favors freedom.

Do you ever plan to go back into government?

I love what I did for 35 years. I’ve always loved it. And I continue to love it. So in the right circumstances, of course.

Source: Politico

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Researchers have tracked more activity by an influence campaign linked to Russia that spreads disinformation and propaganda in the U.S., Germany and Ukraine through a vast network of social media accounts and fake websites.

The campaign, attributed to the Russia-linked influence operation network called Doppelgänger, has been active since at least May 2022. The U.S. tech company Meta previously referred to Doppelgänger as the “largest” and “most aggressively persistent” malign network sponsored by Russia.

Researchers from Recorded Future’s Insikt Group are currently tracking over 2,000 inauthentic social media accounts associated with Dopplegänger, but say the actual number could be even higher. The Record is an editorially independent unit of Recorded Future.

According to Insikt, the impact of Doppelgänger’s activity on users in Germany, Ukraine, and the U.S. is limited.

“Despite the campaign’s high volume, we did not identify any significant engagement from authentic social media users,” researchers said in a report published Tuesday. “Viewership and other engagement metrics — reshares, likes, and replies — were negligible across the network.”

And yet, Doppelgänger’s activity is worth paying attention to, researchers said, as its operators are constantly improving their tools and tactics and are “willing to invest in extra measures to evade detection.”

Meta warned last week that foreign groups are looking to expand their influence operations as 2024 is an important year for elections around the world.

Insikt did not specify which social media networks the Doppelgänger operation used.

Fake tales of decline

In the campaign analyzed by Insikt, Doppelgänger focused on three targets — Ukraine, Germany and the U.S.

In an operation against Ukraine, a Russia-linked threat actor created over 800 social media accounts that shared links to fake articles impersonating multiple reputable Ukrainian news organizations. These articles “spread narratives undermining Ukraine’s military strength, political stability, and international relationships with Ukraine’s Western allies.”

For example, some of them suggested that the U.S. prioritizes the war in Israel more than the one in Ukraine or sowed doubts about Ukraine’s ability to win the war.

In a campaign that targeted Germany and the U.S., a Russian network operator created fake news outlets producing propaganda content, which was then shared on social media, the researchers said.

Unlike impersonating existing Western news sources, as commonly seen with Doppelgänger so far, these outlets appear to be an attempt to create seemingly new and original sources, researchers said. “This evolving approach likely aims to establish a long-term influence network by evading detection efforts to identify inauthentic impersonators.”

The campaign’s goal in Germany was to share fake narratives of “Germany’s domestic decline due to migration, economic policies, and continued support for Ukraine,” Insikt said.

In the U.S., the threat actor promoted hostile articles criticizing the LGBTQ+ movement (which was recently outlawed in Russia) and raised doubts about U.S. military competence. One of the fake websites linked to Doppelgänger produced election-related content, which was likely generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

“This campaign likely intends to exploit US societal and political divisions ahead of the 2024 US election,” researchers said.

Kremlin-approved tactics

Influence operations like Doppelgänger are common tactics used by Russia as part of its information warfare.

Doppelgänger was previously linked to two Russian companies: Structura National Technologies and Social Design Agency, whose clients include several Russian government agencies, local government entities, state-owned enterprises and private companies.

Both companies were sanctioned by the European Union in August for their involvement in Doppelgänger.

In November, the U.S. government also linked these two entities to a disinformation campaign across Latin America aimed at undermining support for Ukraine and discrediting the U.S. and NATO.

In its previous campaigns, Doppelgänger also targeted the U.S. and seven European countries, with a specific focus on Germany and France. The network’s most common tactic is the impersonation of media outlets or political organizations, such as the French Ministry of Public Affairs, the German Ministry of the Interior, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The network’s evolution indicates that it can “have long-term societal impacts,” while the likely use of generative AI to create written content demonstrates “the evolving use of AI in Russian information warfare campaigns.”

“As the popularity of generative AI grows, malign influence actors, including Doppelgänger, will very likely increasingly leverage AI to produce scalable influence content,” researchers said.

Source: The Record

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The High Court had last year rejected the government’s request for Glory to Hong Kong to be banned, saying it would have “chilling effects” on free speech.

But on Wednesday an appeal court overturned that ruling.

The move is likely to deepen concerns about freedoms being further eroded in the city.

Amnesty International said the government’s ban was “as ludicrous as it is dangerous”.

The US, meanwhile, said it was “the latest blow to the international reputation” of the city.

In the court’s ruling on Wednesday, it said that the song can still be used for “academic” or “news” activities.

But its melodies and lyrics can not be broadcast, performed, shared or reproduced in any setting where the user intends to “incite others to commit secession” or is used “with seditious intention” against the Hong Kong government. Those convicted of breaching the ban on the anthem could face up to life imprisonment.

It is also illegal for people to use the song to advocate for Hong Kong’s separation from China, and to present it as the anthem of the territory.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman on Wednesday said banning the song was a “necessary measure by (Hong Kong) to fulfil its responsibility of safeguarding national security”.

Amnesty’s China Director, Sarah Brooks said: “Banning ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ not only represents a senseless attack on Hong Kongers’ freedom of expression; it also violates international human rights law.

“Singing a protest song should never be a crime, nor is it a threat to ‘national security’.”

Hong Kong is part of China, but has had some autonomy since the end of British rule in 1997. Campaigners say that democratic freedoms have been gradually eroded since then.

The song Glory to Hong Kong – sung in the territory’s native dialect Cantonese – emerged during pro-democracy protests in 2019 against a controversial extradition law and later became the unofficial anthem of the movement.

Its lyrics include lines such as “Liberate Hong Kong” and “Revolution of our times. May people reign, proud and free, now and evermore. Glory be to thee Hong Kong”.

While the new ban will specifically codify when the song’s use is illegal, people in Hong Kong had already been punished under national security laws for playing it.

In 2022, a harmonica player was arrested for playing the song outside the British consulate in Hong Kong to mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

The song has been banned in schools since 2020.

Officials had also petitioned internet giants like Google to remove the protest song from their search results and video platforms – something the sites refused to do.

The song has also at times been mistakenly played as the city’s anthem at official events like international sporting matches, something that has angered authorities.

On Thursday, the appeal court said pursuing a ban on the song’s use in political contexts fell within the remit of current national security laws.

It said that because it was hard to prosecute individual criminal acts, “a more effective way to safeguard national security was to ask” would be to ask internet platforms to “stop facilitating the acts being carried out on their platforms”.

Source: BBC

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Two years in the war of Russian aggression against the Ukraine the balance is grim. Let us take stock. Leadership. The EU model of command and control consist of an old grumpy old general, an Austrian, who nobody has heard before, taking a political control of a pretty large army based of a defeatist model. The question to pose is the General who often is compared with Franz Josef I. suitable for modern command? The likely answer is no.

The European play wars.

The Europeans appear to be out of the fight. NATO command is in contradiction with EU command with different levels of leadership taking active role in the war against Russia. The ground war in the Ukraine is just one of the examples. Is the potential NATO and EU partner pulling the weight? After Avdiivka where a devasting judgment by one battalion commander removed a considerable element of its front, critics of the Ukrainian battle doctrine are louder.

Demoralized, worn out, short of ammunition, the Ukrainian army packed up and left, leaving a gap in the front line promptly exploited by the Russians. Life was lost, ground captured while the U.S. haggled over war aid. Politics cost life with both, the European and its American allies to take the blame.

Josep Borrell was quoted, “Europe is in danger, as I have said this many times. We live in an era of strategic competition and complex security threats. We see the return of power politics, with hybrid threats growing, interdependence being increasingly conflictual and soft power being weaponized.”

In the meantime, the EU high command produces glossy brochures of their paper victory. It writes, “The overall objective remains to involve the enlarged military and civilian community serving Europe’s security and defense, in building up and consolidating a most needed common European Defence culture”. It reads like the who-is-who to operate “inter-operationability” congratulating each other for a “job well done”. However, the Russian reality is a bit different in Africa and the Ukraine.

Enter the French.

War command of the Europeans is that the Germans don’t want to fight, the Americans don’t want to take on the Russians, who is left? The French, the Baltic states, and the leftover of the old eastern bloc with little appetite to take on the Slavic monster, the Russian overlords. U.S. policy is to strategically “exhaust” the Russians.

The French 3 REI, of the famed French Foreign Legion surprise upped the stakes of the game. So did the American weapons supplies. Rockets nevertheless hit the Russian depots assembly points, Ukrainian special forces unleashed a series of fires and explosions, and Russian spies were arrested in Bavaria. So far, the hot war is heating up with each side holding their peace.

War will lead to more violence, more injuries, more deaths. On both sides.

The shifting of strategic balance.

Taken the kinetic out of the question, the hybrid option lacks consistency. Central command of the European lack the spirit to fight to win. Political debates are given way. No Double Cross committee leads the propaganda efforts against the Russian Federation anywhere on the planet. The bureaucracy is stifling, the legal framework is prohibitive and not responsive. Operational security is limited to the involvement of the Central Intelligence aiding the Ukrainians, however what if does not address the changes of political winds in Washington and in Brussels. Recent adventures in Niger, Mali, Afghanistan does not give confidence in Washington capability to counter Russian disinformation efforts.

Russian beware.

The question no one asked how is Russia functioning? Its economic picture does not sound right. The oil richness does not translate to individual wealth creation. The supply chain is disrupted with shortages of beef, chicken, and potatoes.

For now, the public stands behind Vladimir Putin. How long is the question. Whereas the older generation steadfast defends the president, polls show discontent within the younger generation of Russians. The revolution will come from within.  

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The international human rights organization Freedom House called Tajikistan one of the “most repressive” countries in the world in 2023.

In its new report, the organization gave Tajikistan just 5 points out of 100. Freedom House’s annual report “Freedom in the World – 2024. The Growing Damage of Unfair Elections and Armed Conflicts” was published on February 29.

“The level of freedoms in Tajikistan decreased by two points in 2023 due to ongoing actions to suppress freedom of expression and discrimination against the Pamiri minority,” said Catherine Groth, Middle East and North Africa research analyst at Freedom House.

“It had a bad effect”

She sent her opinion on the situation in Tajikistan in writing to the editorial office of Radio Ozodi. According to her, over the past ten years – from 2013 to 2023 – a sharp decline in the level of freedom can be observed in Tajikistan.

“This situation is bad for political rights and civil liberties and is the result of the leadership of autocratic President Emomali Rahmon, who has been in power since 1992,” Groth explained.

Officials in Tajikistan have not yet expressed their opinion on the report, but in the past they have always reproached human rights organizations for biased and one-sided coverage of the issue.

For example, the authorities deny the existence of political prisoners from among the opposition and their supporters, as well as well-known bloggers and journalists, claiming that they were punished for the crimes committed. Although the convicts themselves, their relatives and supporters consider the criminal cases against them to be politically motivated.

Freedom House researchers say that since the crackdown on protesters in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in 2022 and the arrest of dozens of people, including at least eight journalists and bloggers, attacks on civil liberties have been on the rise.

“Journalists and bloggers who have expressed their views in writing and orally have been harassed and threatened by the authorities. Several journalists have been arrested and imprisoned for long periods in the past year, and the authorities continue to suppress and censor the free press,” the report said.

According to the authors of the report, such pressure on the press has led to the fact that even ordinary citizens in Tajikistan are now trying to be careful in expressing their opinions in order to avoid persecution.

“Additional Measures to Suppress the Pamiris”

Catherine Groth also stressed the deterioration of the situation of national minorities, in particular the Pamir diaspora. She points out that “in 2023, the Pamiri community faced even harsher discrimination, and the authorities took additional measures to suppress the Pamiris.”

Officials in Tajikistan have previously said they disagree with the position of international organizations that portray the Pamiris as a national and religious minority.

“The Muslims of the Pamirs are followers of the Ismaili sect in Islam and a religious minority widely persecuted in Tajikistan. In 2023, they faced severe restrictions on their religious freedoms. Authorities restricted the places where they prayed and fined several people for organizing prayers inside their homes. In addition to this restriction of religious freedoms, Pamiri activists and ordinary citizens have faced arbitrary arrest and harassment, and even more Pamiris have fled for fear of persecution,” Catherine Groth added.

In August 2023, the authorities confirmed that they had banned five NGOs in Gorno-Badakhshan in the past six months, and the reason for this decision, they said, was that these organizations had “links to criminal groups.”

As part of the operation to suppress protests in the region, the Tajik government said that these measures were taken in order to strengthen the “factor of strengthening security,” and called the arrests “a way to prevent crimes against public order and officials of the Ministry of Defense.” However, Pamiri activists and opponents of the Tajik government say the purpose of the operation was to suppress dissidents and dissatisfied citizens with the government’s policies.

Freedom House says Russia’s two-year-old war in Ukraine has affected all of Central Asia.

Tajikistan’s economy remains heavily dependent on the income of migrant workers in Russia. As a result of the border conflicts between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the level of hostility between the border population has sharply increased and the security of the residents of both states is suffering. Negotiations between Dushanbe and Bishkek continued throughout 2023, although the level of diplomatic relations between the two countries remained at a low level until the end of the year.

Source: Pamir Inside

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The president of Tajikistan likes to wrap himself in the robes of Islam.

Literally, in some cases. 

In January 2016, Emomali Rahmon performed a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, and took several members of his family along too. His office documented the event by releasing images of the leader covered only in the seamless white garment that must be worn by Muslims performing this rite.

The pictures were doubly striking since the Tajik authorities had for many years been actively repressing pious Muslims. They continue to do so today.

This plays out in absurd ways. From time to time, police will go on the hunt for young men with beards, carting them off to the nearest barber for a shave. Women are chided for wearing the hijab on the grounds that it is not a traditionally Tajik form of dress.

It feels like a paradox for this to be happening in a country where the vast majority of people self-describe as Sunni Muslims. But it isn’t.

What Rahmon’s corrupt and authoritarian regime wants is an antiseptic and lightly worn form of Islam. One that promotes folkish conservatism, compliance and consensus. People may by all means pray and believe, but those things should be confined solely to the mosque. 

And not any mosque at that. In the years after Rahmon paid his visit to Mecca, the government forced the closure of thousands of informally run and unregulated neighborhood mini-mosques dotted around the country. The only permitted places of worship operate under the close scrutiny of the government. State-appointed imams up and down Tajikistan deliver dull, facsimile sermons.

And the regime systematically worked to dilute incoming generations’ familiarity with their own faith.

From 2010, the government started forcing young people studying at Islamic places of learning abroad to return home. Rahmon argued that Tajiks going to foreign Islamic schools, or madrasas, were “not becoming mullahs, but terrorists.”

In 2016, the authorities introduced a ban on private religious schools. Two years after that, it became illegal for children to study the principles of Islam in either mosques or madrasas. The job of teaching about religion was accordingly transferred to state educational institutions. But poorly funded Tajik schools and teachers are ill-equipped to provide basic instruction in subjects like maths and science, let alone religion.

And then, in 2021, the government introduced severe penalties for teaching religion via the internet.

Nusratullo Mirzoyev, the first deputy chairman of the State Committee for National Security (GKNB), justified this cascade of clampdowns as precautionary measures.

“According to studies, 95 percent of young people who joined radical groups and movements got their primary education in private religious schools,” he said.

Even studying the Arabic language was for a time rendered difficult by an informal prohibition. 

The result is a country increasingly populated by the religiously semi-literate. Tajiks are told from birth that they are Muslims, but then purposely denied the right or ability to make sense of that identity.

Conditions could not be more ideal for recruiters from militant organizations like the Islamic State. A 2008 analysis by Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, concluded that “far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly.”

“Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices. Very few have been brought up in strongly religious households,” the analysis argued.

The authors had extremist recruits in the West in mind when they wrote those words. But they are just as valid in Tajikistan, whose government has added a few push factors of its own for good measure.

Anywhere north of 1.3 million Tajiks, mostly men, have been compelled by lack of opportunity in their home country to relocate to Russia. Once there, they endure a life of financial privation and routine humiliations at the hands of police and unscrupulous employers. Their dwellings are typically crowded apartments, hostels and dormitories, or even the very same building sites where they work.

Away from the family unit and shorn of the solidarity provided by tight-knit communities, some vulnerable men in those circumstances – and it should be stressed that the numbers are small in relative terms – are ripe for recruitment. Ample research points to how extremist groups use social networks, personal relationships, and specific sentiments of perceived deprivation or grievances when identifying and enlisting members. 

The Crocus City Hall massacre will not, however, give the Tajik government any pause for thought.

In a speech to mark the Nowruz spring equinox holiday, President Rahmon said that what happened last week was a warning to “all of us, especially parents, to once again devote even more serious attention to the education of children.”

“We should protect teenagers and young people from the influence of such destructive and terrifying groups and movements, and we should not allow our children to harm the good name of the Tajik nation,” he said.

What he means by devoting greater attention to education is not teaching Tajik young people more about Islam. Quite the opposite.

Source: Sub Stack

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At first glance, it doesn’t look like much, just a rectangular meadow in the Pamir foothills of central Tajikistan. But there was a time when this ground reverberated with the thunder of hooves.

Occupying a broad saddle, high above the mighty Panj River, this meadow is believed to be an ancient arena for the Central Asian sport of buzkashi, or dead goat polo. The playing field was a centerpiece of a once sprawling settlement, a political and religious capital inhabited for centuries but since lost to history.

What the whole 15-hectare site amounts to, according to those responsible for its conservation, is the most important archaeological site in Tajikistan. It is a keystone of national efforts to resurrect a distinctly Tajik identity from the country’s fragmented history—and a potential magnet for travelers who are already drawn to the legendary road that snakes along the Panj Valley, the Pamir Highway.

Its rediscovery has drawn comparisons with Machu Picchu in terms of historical importance, if not outright spectacle. Archaeologists have dubbed it Kala-i Kukhna, or Castle Karon, the fortress “located at a height.”

A key archaeological discovery in Tajikistan

It was 2012 when Yusufsho Yakubov, chief archaeologist at the National Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan, was summoned to Darvoz district to investigate an incongruous mound of rubble above the small village of Ruzvat, in the western outriders of the Pamir Mountains. For centuries a crossroads of trade and empire, Tajikistan is littered with long-abandoned citadels and caravanserai built during the heyday of the Silk Road. 

But Yakubov, a veteran scientist, now 87, immedediately thought that they had stumbled upon something extraordinary. “For years the site had endured only as a rumor,” he told me in July, when I met him in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital. “I knew it was a special place within an hour of being there.”

As Yakubov’s team went to work on the mound, they began to unearth an intact building, around 20 feet square, its mud-brick walls topped with a dome. Closer inspection led Yakubov to conclude that it was a “fire temple,” which once would have sheltered an eternal flame, a relic of the Zoroastrian religion that spread out of Persia, modern-day Iran, with the rise of the Achaemenid Empire in the sixth century B.C.

Other discoveries soon followed. Archaic mausoleums dotted the surrounding hills. The excavation of a suspected water temple and observatory, alongside the remnants of a substantial defensive wall, augmented Yakubov’s supposition that Karon may have been a place of special ceremonial prestige. Evidence of winemaking and gold processing pointed to a once thriving economy. Coins found in the vicinity of the fire temple date back to the second century A.D.

(Some of the most magnificent frescoes can be found in the “Paris of the Balkans.”

Karon is located at the western edge of Gorno-Badakshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), a vast province dominated by the Pamirs, where the scattered population is often at odds with the government in Dushanbe. As such, the uncovering of the Karon story holds significance not just as a milestone of Tajik history, but as an emblem of nation-building—part of a slate of “patriotic projects” that has seen the Dushanbe skyline transformed with extravagant monuments.

For all its historical significance, however, Karon’s timeline remains subject to conjecture. “From the size of the site it might have been a medium-sized town,” says Pavel Lurje, head of Central Asian Studies at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, who worked alongside Yakubov for three seasons. “Such settlements are extremely rare in the highlands of Central Asia where even today the life is essentially rural. Karon is a true enigma.”

By the Middle Ages, Lurje believes, the settlement at Karon had fallen into decline. Sparse literary sources suggest that the last of its population relocated to the Panj Valley in the early 17th century, perhaps prompted by the drying out of local mountain springs. By now Zoroastrianism had long since been displaced by Islam as the region’s dominant religion, though exactly what motivated the concealment of Yakubov’s fire temple remains uncertain.

What does seem clear is that the last chapter in a long period of forgetting came with the Soviet era, which required the erasure of local culture in the service of revolutionary communism. Soon after Tajikistan was absorbed into the U.S.S.R., in 1929, Soviet engineers began construction of the M41, the spectacular road that traverses the high plateaus of Murghob, and onto the trading hub of Osh, in Kyrgyzstan, which would come to be known colloquially as the Pamir Highway.

The importance of Castle Karon now

Today, the nearest major settlement to Karon, Qalai Khumb, also called Darvoz, is a staging post for long-distance truckers and an increasing number of foreign travelers, who drive and cycle in their dust-plumes. The simple restaurant in the center of town, with its balcony protruding over the raging Obikhumbob River, is always busy.

But whatever mule trails once crossed the passes were forgotten generations ago—until now. As you ascend the southern hill, you can start to appreciate the strategic importance of the site and the scale of the settlement that once occupied it. At the crest, a knot of ruins comprise Karon’s best preserved complex, believed to be the remnants of a royal enclosure.

Looking back down to the pass, the polo field is cradled by tapering meadows. Faint ribs stratify the western hill—evidence, Yakubov claims, of stadium bleachers that could have accommodated 10,000 spectators. To fill the arena today, you would need to lure people from miles in every direction.

Despite the uncertainties surrounding its history, champions of the region—and Tajikistan tourism more generally—are hoping it may one day serve as an anchor site for heritage tourism. A modern luxury hotel, the Karon Palace, opened in Qalai Khumb in 2015. A small museum, designed to house the wealth of coins, pottery, and other artifacts that Yakubov’s team has unearthed, is in the planning stages. Huge swaths of the site are yet to be disinterred.

“It might not have the grandeur of Samarkand,” said Yakubov, referring to the Silk Road city in Uzbekistan, famed for its Islamic architecture. “But it is just as important to the story of Central Asia.”

What to know

How to get there: Travelers require a permit in order to visit GBAO; these can usually be obtained in advance through your tour operator or local embassy.

Qalai Khumb is located around 230 miles from Dushanbe by road. Buses and shared taxis go from the Badakhshan bus station and take around 12 hours.

Outfitters: Recommended tour agencies specializing in the Pamir region include Orom Travel and Paramount Journey in Tajikistan, and Silk Road Adventures in the U.K.

Where to stay: Karon Palace is a modern, comfortable hotel in the center of Qalai Khumb. Simple and more affordable accommodations can be found at one of the numerous homestays that are signposted on the main road.

What to do: For most travelers, Qalai Khumb is a stopping point on the road to Khorog, and the central Pamir valleys. The Tajik National Park is the country’s only UNESCO World Heritage site. Comprising 10,000 square miles of the Pamir range, it’s a spectacular region of stark desert plateaus and snow-bound peaks rising above 23,000 feet and a mecca for trekkers and climbers.

Castle Karon is one of a number of cultural sites in the Pamir region, including the thermal springs of Garm Chashma and the spectacular Yamchun Fortress, high above the Wakhan Corridor.

Source: National Geographic

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Jake Paul and Mike Tyson have been encouraged to cancel their ‘mismatch’ showdown.

‘Iron Mike’ is set to step back in the ring aged 58 to take on YouTube star Jake Paul in a blockbuster summer fight, a fight which has seen him given medical warnings given their 31-year age difference.

Tyson has been documenting his training in footage posted to social media, with some fans surprisingly impressed by his punch power and suggesting he will beat Paul.

And his new footage crushing the pads with trainer Rafael Cordeiro, has been met by new pleas from fans for Paul to abandon the fight plans.

One commented: “Jake, you can still say no. It’s okay.

Another agreed: “Wow, if just one of those punches lands, Paul will be in the ICU.”

One fan suggested: “Jake’s gonna need to borrow some of those pads from Mike’s trainer.”

A fan observed: “Look at his coaches’ face, he is fearing for his life.”

One even wrote: “If Mike Tyson doesn’t win… this was fixed.”

But not all fans were convinced by the footage, with one writing: “Run Tyson. Get your wind back. You’re gonna need it for this fight trust me.”

One pleaded: “Hey Champ, can you show us a video of you hitting mitts or the heavy bag for 3 mins straight? If not just cancel it!”

A fan predicted: “I hope you all know Mike isn’t beating Jakey.”

Although a final user concluded: “It’s okay to back out Jake Paul or Mike Tyson, I’m just saying..”

Paul himself even responded to the footage, writing in the comments: “He’s the best ever. The most brutal and vicious, and most ruthless champion there’s ever been. And I will defeat him.”

It is clear Tyson is still one of the best around in short bursts, but it remains to be seen if he can keep up his work for an eight-round period.

The former undisputed champion already suffered a damaging defeat to the end of his professional career losing three of his four final fights before retirement in 2005.

Paul will be the younger and fresher fighter at just 26 despite having far less experience in the ring.

This will be his 11th professional fight, a record that boast nine wins and six knockouts though Tyson is the biggest name on an impressive list so far.

And it seems like Paul is bigger. Three-weight champion Shane Mosley said: “He’s 230 pounds. He’s big, really big. He said he feels as fast as he does at 185.”

Still, a proportion of fans are still certain that Paul will lose, after seeing training footage compared side-by-side.

Tyson’s trainer has insisted the veteran is working harder than ever, and will be primed in time for their summer battle.

A cancellation certainly seems unlikely as over 108,000 people have signed up for access to the ticket pre-sale, according to Paul’s promoter Most Valuable Promotions.

They tweeted earlier this month: “As of this morning #PaulTyson / #TaylorSerrano has over 108K signed up for access to the ticket pre-sale.

“Next week we will announce press conference dates and the ticket on-sale date. Pre-sale will be two days prior to on-sale.”

Source: Talk Sport

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Polls show that a large percentage of Israeli citizens have lost faith in the future of their nation

Major General (Reserve) in the Israeli Army, and former ombudsman for the occupation forces, Yitzhak Brick, has sounded an alarm over the growing inefficacy of the country’s army to win a possible war.

Warning that the Israeli occupation forces have turned into an “air force army,” Brick criticized the leadership in Tel Aviv for their “sensitivity” towards human losses on the ground.

“Whoever wants to completely avoid losing on the battlefield, completely loses the deterrence of the army and the ability to win the war. This way of thinking and managing the security echelons will eventually lead to much heavier losses in the war,” the former official said in a column published on 10 May by Channel 12.

Brick went on to add that Israel’s land army and reserve system have been continuously ignored: “We lost the inter-arm combat capability and became a one-dimensional Air Force army that alone could not win a war.”

He goes on to highlight that the occupation forces in general, and the land army in particular, “are not ready for war.”

The warning comes on the heels of a number of polls showing that a large portion of Israeli citizens have lost faith in the future of their nation.

A poll published by the Pnima Movement at the start of the month showed that 40 percent of Israelis were not optimistic about the country’s future. It also showed that 33 percent of Israeli youth are seriously considering emigrating out of the occupied territory.

Meanwhile, at least 75 percent of Israeli Arabs believe Jews have no right to sovereignty in occupied Palestine, according to a survey by Habithonistim–Protectors of Israel published on 9 May.

In an article published in Yedioth Ahronoth on 7 May, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak expressed fears of the imminent demise of Israel before the 80th anniversary of its founding.

“Throughout Jewish history, the Jews did not rule for more than eighty years, except in the two kingdoms of David and the Hasmonean dynasty, and in both periods, their disintegration began in the eighth decade,” Barak said.

Earlier this year, former Air Force chief Amikam Norkin said Israel no longer enjoys superiority and freedom over the skies of Lebanon, highlighting that this reality was apparent to the Israeli military establishment after Hezbollah began manufacturing its own drones.

In the weeks after this statement by the Israeli official, Iran notified Tel Aviv that the army of the Islamic Republic has missiles pointed at all of their nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons sites.

Source: The Cradle

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Yitzhak Brick might be the only Israeli military official to see what was coming. And he’s been warning of it for some time. He also does not see a ground invasion of Gaza as the only option. And Israel must prepare for a multi-front war given the situation in the north. Brick cautioned, among other things, of problems with the competence of ground forces and made it clear that the ground invasion does not have to be a mandatory step. But according to Brick, Israel urgently needs to “change its hard disk,” i.e. make fundamental changes.

General Brick has been warning for years about the horror we saw in southern Israel on that accursed Shabbat morning a week ago. But his assessment was dismissed by the defense establishment and the political leadership. Brick was even called delusional by many.

“There could be a massacre, the State of Israel has not yet recognized the danger,” Brick warned. “We feel among the people that everything is fine and there is no threat, but the public is not told that powers (Hamas) are preparing. These are equipped, trained fighters who will cross the border on foot and attack and occupy our settlements in the south. The likelihood of this happening is very high. Hamas will conquer settlements, throw grenades into bunkers and shelters and cause a massacre. The local residents, you and me, must defend these communities because the army will not be there.” Brick said these words months ago, but no one wanted to listen to him. After the massacre in the south, everyone now has an ear for retired general, even Bibi.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Brick spoke this week about the continuation of the war against terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, as well as developments on the Lebanese border. The general made it clear to Netanyahu that his position was to continue the surgical strikes, divide the armed forces and find a solution through a hermetic siege of the Gaza Strip. His view contrasts with the attitude of the military staff, which assumes that no success in the Gaza Strip is possible without an Israeli ground invasion.

Brick warned that the Israel Defense Forces have turned into a primarily air-based military, and criticized the army leadership for its sensitivity to human losses on the ground. “The current situation of the land forces is tragic, they are not ready for war. Emergency supplies are not available, exercises have stopped and the battalions have not trained in years. There is also no weapons training and education, and the army is not capable of carrying out an attack.” The former ombudsman added that technology alone is not enough to win wars. “The truth is that an imaginary reality has been created by the general staff and spread throughout the army. The soldiers have lost their motivation and fighting spirit in recent years, and many are not ready to go into battle.”

“To completely avoid losses on the battlefield is to hinder the army’s ability to win the war. This type of thinking will ultimately lead to heavier casualties in war,” Brick told Channel 12 back in May.

Brick added that Israel’s ground forces and reserve system have been constantly ignored: “We have lost the ability to field an effective army and have become a one-dimensional aerial power that cannot win a war on its own.” In his view, Israel’s ground forces are not ready for war. The warning follows a series of polls showing that a large portion of Israeli citizens have lost faith in their country’s future. This was particularly evident over the last year, when the people were divided over political and judicial issues.

“In my role as general, I have visited more than 1,400 units and spoken to tens of thousands of commanders and soldiers, three to four times a week, four hours in each unit. I know the army on the ground better than anyone in the Israel Defense Forces,” Brick said years ago. “I have seen soldiers who do not take care of their weapons before leaving the base. No army in the world behaves like this. The soldiers carry their smartphones with them everywhere. Commands are sent via WhatsApp groups. These phones are being tracked by the enemy.”

Not only that, but commands are said to have been sent via email and then deleted, meaning no follow-up action is possible. “Our system has lost all control. Have we gone crazy? I cannot sleep at night. Our ground forces and armored corps are not ready for war,” Brick continually warned.

“What I present to you here is something you will not hear from the top IDF officials. Not only do many of the commanders not know anything, but even those who do know are afraid to speak out lest they be punished,” he wrote, calling on members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to speak to the rank-and-file soldiers and address the issue. “Let them show you what is going on, share with them their problems and difficulties. It will not be the division, brigade and battalion commanders from whom you will learn about the reality that exists in the field. You should learn it from those for whom it is the routine of their life… Their statements are the truth.”

Israel’s entire security apparatus has failed and relied too heavily on technology, with an unhealthy dash of arrogance. But as is typically the case, those who don’t go with the flow and call out the glaring problems are dismissed as lunatics, like General Brick, who saw the danger before anyone else.

Source: Israel Today

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