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) to be put to use. More than 65 search and rescue teams, medical crews and drones were deployed to the area near Jolfa, a city on the border with Azerbaijan, some 375 miles north-west of Tehran.

But the rescue effort was hampered by thick fog and the arduous terrain. Searches using helicopters had to be called off when darkness fell.

“It is dark and it has started raining, but the search continues. Rescue teams have reached the area… however, the rain has created mud, making the search difficult,” a reporter told state TV.

The national broadcaster stopped its regular programming to show prayers being held for Mr Raisi across the country, while live coverage of rescue teams combing the mountains played in a corner of the screen.

The helicopter the officials were travelling in was a Bell 212 acquired by the Iranian military in the 1970s, during the last years of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s reign.

Iran operates a variety of helicopters – most dating to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution – and international sanctions have made it difficult to obtain spare parts for them.

Mr Raisi had been in Azerbaijan early on Sunday to inaugurate a dam with his counterpart Ilham Aliyev. After visiting one site, the president and his entourage took off in a convoy of three helicopters to inaugurate another when contact was lost with his aircraft.

“At around 1pm, the president left Tabriz to inaugurate two projects but the helicopter lost contact shortly after leaving,” said Mohsen Mansouri, the head of the search and rescue teams.

Also on board the missing helicopter were the province’s Friday Prayer leader and the local governor.

“Three helicopters left Tabriz but, half an hour later, two of them lost contact with the one carrying the president,” the official said. “The army, IRGC, police, Red Crescent and everyone are looking for the helicopter. Progress is slow due to the weather conditions and the challenging terrain of the region.”

The Iranian border forces said late on Sunday that they were close to the crash site, although the helicopter had still not been located.

An Iranian official has told state TV that brief contact was made with one of the passengers and one of the crew members after it crashed. However, Hossein Hatami, the representative of Kalibar, where the helicopter crashed, said that no such contact had been established with the passengers. “There is no information about any of the passengers inside the helicopter, and access to their mobile antennas has not been possible,” he said.

Iran’s cabinet, chaired by first vice-president Mohammad Mokhber, held an emergency meeting on Sunday night, after which the health minister and executive vice-president were instructed to travel to the area.

The crash comes at a time of widespread dissent within Iran. The country’s clerical rulers face international pressure over Tehran’s support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, as well as its nuclear programme. Tehran has recently begun enriching uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader who holds ultimate power in the country, sought to reassure citizens, saying there would be no disruption to state affairs.

“The people of Iran should not worry, there will be no disruption in the work of the country,” he said. “We hope that Almighty God will return the respected and honourable president and his companions to the arms of the nation. Everyone should pray for the health of this group of servants.”

The country’s presidential spokesman said Iran was going through a “difficult” situation.

“We are experiencing difficult and complicated conditions. It is the right of the people and the media to be aware of the latest news about the president’s helicopter accident,” Ali Bahadori Jahromi said. “In these moments, patience, prayer and trust in relief groups are the way forward.”

Mr Raisi, a hardliner who formerly led Iran’s judiciary, quickly ascended the ranks of the Islamic Republic, and is now considered a potential successor to the supreme leader.

He won Iran’s closely stage-managed 2021 presidential election, a vote marked by the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

His victory brought all branches of power under the control of hardliners, after eight years in which the presidency had been held by Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist who entered into a nuclear deal with Washington.

However, Mr Raisi’s standing may have been dented by widespread protests against clerical rule and a failure to turn around Iran’s economy, hamstrung by Western sanctions.

He was sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, when he served as a member of the “death chamber” that decided their fates.

Raisi presided over crackdown on protests

Under Mr Raisi, Iran has continued arming proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

He also presided over the crackdown on several nationwide protest movements, the most recent being those that swept the country after the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained for improperly wearing a headscarf.

More than 500 people were killed and 22,000 detained in the months-long crackdown by the morality police and security services.

Mr Abdollahian, 60, has been Iran’s foreign minister since 2021 and is known for his support of the Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and the US.

According to the constitution, the vice-president would assume power after the death of a president, with elections to follow.

Russia, now one of Iran’s closest allies, offered its help in the search for Mr Raisi. “Russia is ready to extend all necessary help in the search for the missing helicopter and the investigation of the reasons for the incident,” Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministry spokesman, said.

The US State Department said it was closely following the incident, and Joe Biden, the US president, had been briefed on the situation.

Ilham Aliyev, the Azeri president who had been with Mr Raisi on Sunday morning, said: “Today, after bidding a friendly farewell to the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, we were profoundly troubled by the news of a helicopter carrying the top delegation crash-landing in Iran.”

Source: The Telegraph

The post Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi feared dead in helicopter crash appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

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

The post She Was at the Top of the State Department. Now She’s Ready to Talk appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

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

The post Hong Kong Bans Protest Anthem After Court Case Win appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

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

The post In Tajikistan, discover the ruins of a once mighty Silk Road kingdom appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

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

The post Delusional, or prophetic? One IDF General Warned a Massacre Would Happen appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

They might as well have been sitting ducks.

They are the tatzpitaniyot, mostly female soldiers stationed on the IDF bases near the Gaza Strip, their eyes glued to security cameras and other feeds of the border. Last Saturday morning, the Hamas terrorists who entered some of those bases with hang gliders shot at cameras and jammed some communications systems. They shot at the combat soldiers who were stationed at those bases, as well as at the tatzpitaniyot.

“Yes, they surprised us, and we weren’t ready for it,” said a female soldier at one of the bases who shared her harrowing story on social media. “Half of the force was home for Sukkot…and we had no intelligence about this…I took care of the injured while terrorists walked around my base, my second home, and murdered my friends. I prepared for this moment for two years, but nothing can prepare you for the moment of truth.” 

As Israel readies for a possible ground invasion of the Gaza Strip following the massive surprise attack last Saturday that killed some 900 Israelis and left the country reeling, Israelis are grappling with how the soldiers in the south were left so unprotected, and how the intelligence lapse — one that carries an eerie echo of the Yom Kippur War surprise attack almost 50 years ago to the day that Hamas brazenly struck southern Israel — was so glaring.

Some details of the initial cabinet meeting on Saturday night have leaked, and ministers were reportedly blindsided, having not been given any indication that an invasion or war was on the way in their weekly briefings with the prime minister’s military secretary. Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis asked flat-out in the meeting: “What happened to Israel’s intelligence?” 

The full picture will likely become clearer when the fog of war dissipates and a commission of inquiry investigates, as has become the custom in Israel after wars in the past 50 years. In the short term, as Israelis ask themselves, “How did this happen?” several possible explanations have already come to light.

The Conceptzia

“We were apparently dependent on a conceptzia that Hamas wanted money from Qatar and was deterred,” former IDF Military Intelligence Directorate head Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin told JI. “For every surprise, the surprisers come up with a distraction, and that is what we saw.”

After the Yom Kippur War, one of the answers to how Israel was surprised by an attack from Egypt and Syria was the “conceptzia.” The word literally translates to “preconception,” and it refers to groupthink or an idea that captivated the whole cabinet, without consideration of the alternatives.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu combatted reports on Monday that the extent of the conceptzia was such that he did not heed a warning that war was coming. According to AP, Egypt had warned Israel that “something big” was coming from Gaza, but the IDF was too busy with terrorism in the West Bank. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said he had not received any warnings and had not spoken with Egyptian Intelligence Minister Abbas Kamel since returning to office this year. 

“We were apparently dependent on a conceptzia that Hamas wanted money from Qatar and was deterred,” former IDF Military Intelligence Directorate head Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin told JI. “For every surprise, the surprisers come up with a distraction, and that is what we saw.”

Israel built its defense plans “on the idea that Hamas was not interested in a war. They distracted us and kept us busy with other violations on the [border] fence,” Yadlin said.

“It’s clear that there was a tactical and conceptual surprise that led to a strategic failing — though it can be turned around,” he added.

Hamas “duped” Israel intentionally over the past two years, by pretending that economic incentives such as aid from Doha and increased permits for Gazans to work in Israel were working, Reuters reported. In the meantime, Hamas trained 1,000 terrorists for the invasion, reportedly without telling them exactly what they were preparing to do.

Former National Security Adviser Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said in a briefing to reporters that Israel’s allies had claimed Hamas had “more responsibility,” and was busier managing the Gaza Strip than preparing to fight Israel.

“We stupidly began to believe that it was true, so we made a mistake,” Amidror said. “We won’t make this mistake again and we will destroy Hamas, slowly but surely.”

A senior defense official who left his post this year spoke on condition of anonymity because he only wanted to support the war effort on the record. 

“At some point in recent months, Hamas changed their strategy from supporting stability and quiet, as it did in Operation Shield and Arrow” — in May, when only Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacked Israel — “to an all-out war. They are giving their maximum,” he said.

The ex-official speculated that the “change in policy is connected to trying to destroy Israel’s ability to make peace with Saudi Arabia, which is a clear Iranian goal.”

While he said his former colleagues indicated to him this week that there was an inkling of Hamas’ plans, the official said the intelligence gap “disturbs me, because it goes deep.”

In addition, he argued that the IDF should have been able to defend the towns close to the Gaza border even if they were totally surprised.

“I don’t know why there were not enough soldiers in the towns. It could be that they were in the West Bank, but we should have been prepared regardless of the intelligence,” he said.

After an Egyptian police officer crossed into Israel and shot three IDF soldiers in June, “we should have known that our front positions were not working as they should.”

Blinded lookouts

Another element of Hamas’ attack that delayed Israel’s ability to respond effectively was its targeting of bases in the south where tatzpitaniyot, who watch cameras and other feeds of the border, are stationed.

“In my worst dreams, I could not have imagined something like this,” one tatzpitanit wrote. “I woke up for a 4 a.m. shift that turned out to be a nightmare. I never thought I’d see something like this from my lookout point in my life. I did the best I can, until a sniper shot my camera.”

One tatzpitanit who finished her service earlier this year told JI that she was going back to her old base, because there was no one left who knew how to do the lookouts’ job.

Some of the tatzpitanyiot on bases attacked by Hamas told harrowing stories on social media.

“In my worst dreams, I could not have imagined something like this,” one wrote. “I woke up for a 4 a.m. shift that turned out to be a nightmare. I never thought I’d see something like this from my lookout point in my life. I did the best I can, until a sniper shot my camera.”

She described “crazy noise, blood everywhere,” while she spent “16 hours locked in a small war room with a lot of hope and prayers.”The Hottest Place in Hell, an Israeli independent investigative journalism site, published a message it received from another tatzpitanit, who had only finished her training four days before the war began.

“We received a message that there was an invasion, that terrorists entered Israel…all along the line there were large numbers of terrorists and the forces weren’t making it in time to stop them, it was a psychotic number of terrorists. They started shooting at our cameras, until we weren’t able to look out. They told us the only thing to do is to run to the war room, while we heard rocket sirens and rockets fell by us. I ran like I had never run before,” she said.

All of the tatzpitaniyot were told to leave their positions and hide behind their large computer systems, as combat soldiers came to protect them.

“There was a Golani unit and they were all erased, very quickly, killed one after the other. They started bringing the injured to our war room. I started helping take care of them as much as possible because I was afraid to get out from behind the computer[.] I feared for my life.” 

The soldiers, according to the accounts in Hottest Place in Hell, did not eat for 26 hours and did not have enough water, were in a hot room with no air conditioning because of the power outage and had to use cups and trash cans because there was no toilet.

At one point, the terrorists tried to light the building on fire, and the soldiers had to decide whether to stay in a building on fire or run out to where they would be shot or captured, but soldiers managed to put out the fire quickly. Terrorists shot at the doors, and the soldiers saw that they were stealing IDF uniforms.

“There were so many terrorists and so many killed and injured. No one knew what to do, and we were all crying and hysterical. I don’t know how I survived,” she said.

Eventually, they were evacuated under fire: “We saw corpses on the way to the bus,” she recalled.

The retired officer who predicted it all

From the start of the war, an interview with Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Brick on an Israeli Jewish-interest cable news channel Hidabrut went viral. In the video from July, the former IDF ombudsman seemed to predict exactly what happened on Sunday.

Brick, 76, was an Israeli general who fought in the Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War, officially retiring from the army in 1999. He then became the IDF ombudsman in 2008-2018, after which he began publicly criticizing the IDF for its lack of preparedness. 

A series of newspaper op-eds, as well as a lengthy article in the journal Hashiloach that Brick wrote in 2020, drew significant attention in Israel for its warning that the IDF, especially its highest-ranking officers, has lost its fighting spirit.

In the last month, Brick wrote articles warning that Israel is not prepared. In Haaretz, he wrote: “Netanyahu, the next war is near. Declare a national state of emergency.” In Maariv: “Though the political leadership abandoned our security, I will continue to fight without fear.” In Israel Hayom the headline was: “Residents of the north, prepare to defend yourselves ahead of the next war: No one else will do it.” 

In the viral video, Brick chillingly describes the nightmare scenario that came true this week.

“A massacre can happen here and the State of Israel doesn’t understand it,” he said.

Hamas is preparing “to enter a number of towns on foot. The likelihood it will happen is very high, whether they come in the thousands or hundreds,” he said.

“If you’re a resident sitting in a shelter, they’ll come to the shelter, throw a grenade and you’re dead. Not just you, everyone, they’ll sit there and be slaughtered,” Brick warned.

He called on Israelis to prepare to defend their towns.

“No one else will be there,” Brick continued in the video. “The army won’t be there. The army is small today, and the things it wants to send won’t arrive because of roadblocks…You have to be able to fight with your own body to defend your town, and in order to be able to do that you have to prepare the town to fight.”

“The army won’t be there for you in a war,” he emphasized. “In the first hours, you will be in the shelters because of the rockets, but the moment that word gets out that [terrorists] are on the ground, get into position and fight for your lives.”

Brick said that towns near the Gaza border should dig trenches and set up positions, have backup water and medical supplies, and more.

He criticized the IDF for taking local security teams’ weapons, a decision the military made two years ago because of theft. Brick said that “everyone under 70, most of whom were in the army and know how to shoot,” should have access to a weapon and should be trained.

“No one is saying this, and we’re in a lawless situation,” Brick lamented. “[The security establishment] is just telling people ‘hide,’ but not what to do if a terrorist arrives. Who will stop the terrorists? The army can’t do it today.”

“All kinds of details are coming out about all of [Hamas’] preparations, distractions by holding demonstrations by the border fence, shooting at cameras, taking over the Southern Command base and disrupting its ability to command the whole area,” Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University said.

Brick is a controversial figure. Some of the responses to his video claim that he is attempting to deflect blame from Netanyahu, since Brick said the problems began when National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz and MK Gadi Eisencot, also of National Union, were IDF chiefs of staff.

One former senior defense official who spoke with JI said “Brick says so much nonsense that sometimes some of it ends up being right.”

Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said in a conversation with JI that, while Brick correctly predicted part of what happened, much of it still remains unexplained.

“The security in the towns is really problematic and not developed enough,” he said. “In places with more guns and people who were better trained, they were able to kill terrorists. But the things Brick spoke about are more about the local level of supplies and fighting. It doesn’t explain what happened here.”

“All kinds of details are coming out about all of [Hamas’] preparations, distractions by holding demonstrations by the border fence, shooting at cameras, taking over the Southern Command base and disrupting its ability to command the whole area,” Michael said, “but I still don’t understand how an event like this can happen, how they can shut down the whole border fence and why it took three hours for more forces to arrive. I have no answers. So many senior officers were killed.”

Michael and Yadlin both said that an investigation is likely.

“I think a lot of heads will roll,” Michael said.

Now, the government must set “totally different goals” to the fighting between Israel and Hamas since 2009, Michael said.

“The reaction will be totally different and the result must be totally different. It can be that some good can come out of all of this bad. We can create a reality where we improve the army. Now, we understand the army is too small and we need a bigger IDF for our missions, just like the Ukrainians understood in their war,” he said. 

Michaeli warned that Israel is “heading into a long campaign that will exact a price. There are no free lunches. We need a lot of patience and unity and wisdom from our leaders – military and political – and I want to believe that we will find it and in the end, from this whole mess, we can hope for something good.”

Source: Jewish Insider

The post Israel’s Intel Failure: ‘How Did This Happen?’ appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Sri Lanka has told hundreds of thousands of Russians and some Ukrainians staying in the country to escape the war that they must leave in the next two weeks, immigration officers said.

The immigration controller issued a notice to the tourism ministry asking Russian and Ukrainian people staying on extended tourist visas to leave Sri Lanka within two weeks from 23 February.

Just over 288,000 Russians and nearly 20,000 Ukrainians have traveled to Sri Lanka in the last two years since the war began, according to official data.

Commissioner-General of Immigration said the “government is not granting further visa extensions” as the “flight situation has now normalised”.

However, the office of president Ranil Wickremesinghe ordered an investigation of the notice to the tourism ministry in an apparent bid to prevent diplomatic tensions.

The president’s office said that the notice had been issued without prior cabinet approval and the government had not officially decided to revoke the visa extensions, reported the Sri Lankan newspaper Daily Mirror.

The exact number of visitors who extended their stay beyond the typical 30-day tourist visa duration remains unclear.

However, concerns have been raised over thousands of Russians and a smaller number of Ukrainians staying in the country for an extended period of time and even setting up their own restaurants and nightclubs.

Tourism minister Harin Fernando told Daily Mirror that the ministry has been receiving complaints of some Russian tourists running unregistered and illegal businesses in the southern part of the country.

Raids were conducted by the authorities following discussions with the Immigration Department, he said.

It comes amid a furious social media backlash over Russian-run businesses with a “whites only” policy that strictly bars locals. These businesses include bars, restaurants, water sports and vehicle hiring services.

In a bid to boost tourism and recover from its worst economic crisis since 2022, Sri Lanka began granting 30-days visas on arrival and extensions for up to six months.

In April 2022, the nation defaulted on its $46bn (£36 bn) foreign debt. The economic crisis triggered violent street protests for several months and ultimately culminated in the resignation of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa three months later.

Source: Independent

The post Sri Lanka ends visas for hundreds of thousands of Russians staying there to avoid war appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

At the beginning of the ceremony, a minute’s silence was observed to pay respect to the memory of all the martyrs of the Great War of Liberation and to express sincere condolences to the families and friends of the victims of the tragic terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow on March 22.

Twenty-six freedom fighters from different districts of Bangladesh were felicitated with commemorative gifts and certificates in the programme.

The freedom fighters expressed gratitude and thanks to the organizers for this honor.

In his welcome speech, the director of Russian House in Dhaka Pavel Dvoychenkov highlighted the historically friendly role of Russia in the great liberation war of Bangladesh and the overall development of post-war Bangladesh.

Land Minister Narayan Chandra Chand and the Director General of the Bangladesh National Museum Md. Kamruzzaman gratefully recalled the humanitarian and economic assistance in the reconstruction of war-torn Bangladesh, including the struggle for independence of Bangladesh.

They also said that the independence of Bangladesh would never have been possible without the cooperation of Russia.

Source: UNB

The post Independence Day event: Russian House honours freedom fighters, highlights Moscow’s key role in emergence of Bangladesh appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

A diverse group of Pamiri and Ismaili interest groups gathered to discuss the terror attack in Moscow. “We reject the notion this were Pamiris or Ismailis representing us”, said one of the spokespeople, who want to remain anonymous out of fear of persecution by the Tajik authorities. 

“They are Takfiris”, he said. Non-believers, apostates to the cause. The majlis (meeting) was called after Moscow was quick to blame Tajik immigrants for the terror attacks. Previous warnings were ignored by Moscow. “We as a Pamiri community do not belief in the use of violence against the innocent. We understand the suffering and pain caused by such an attack.”, he added. 

The leaders assembled in Dushanbe and represented most of the diaspora in Tajikistan and abroad. “The attempt to taint us with the terrorists is rejected.”, he added. 

The post Tajikistan: These are no Muslims appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

SINGAPORE – The Chinese embassy in Singapore on March 18 asked its citizens in the Republic to “stay away” from gambling, adding that cross-border gambling violates Chinese laws.

The embassy, in a statement on its official WeChat account, “solemnly reminded” Chinese citizens in Singapore to steer clear of gambling, which is strictly prohibited by law in China.

“Even if overseas casinos are opened legally, cross-border gambling by Chinese citizens is suspected of violating the laws of our country and face the risk of punitive actions,” said the embassy, warning that embassies may not be able to provide consular protection for illegal gambling violations.

Using a Chinese idiom to describe how 10 out of 10 bets lead to cheating incidents or losses, the embassy said in its notice that people who gamble face the risk of running up debts, financial ruin and the destruction of their families.

Cross-border gambling may also be related to illegal activities not limited to scams, money laundering, kidnapping and smuggling, the embassy added.

Those who know of Chinese citizens operating casinos overseas or approaching fellow Chinese to gamble were also urged to report it through official reporting platforms or to the Singapore police.

In response to a question from Reuters at a news conference in China, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said the country’s position on cross-border gambling is clear, according to Chinese media reports.

He said Chinese capital cannot be invested in overseas casinos, and Chinese citizens are not allowed to run overseas casinos.

Overseas casinos also should not invite Chinese citizens to gamble on their premises, he added.

The Straits Times has contacted the Chinese embassy, Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa for comment.

Apart from state-sanctioned lotteries, gambling is banned in China. But that has prompted organisations such as the Guangdong Club, which operates an online gambling platform, to register itself overseas in Costa Rica.

Special administrative region Macau is the only part of China where gambling activities are legal.

China, through its embassies, has previously reminded its citizens in countries including Malaysia, Italy, Angola, Sri Lanka and South Korea that travelling abroad to gamble is illegal.

China has been working with countries in South-east Asia to deter cross-border gambling.

In September 2023, six Asean member nations – Malaysia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines – signed an agreement to collaborate on combatting transnational gambling crime in the region.

The agreement notably targeted organised crime groups that have lured thousands of people to work in casinos or scam compounds under the guise of jobs paying lucrative wages.

Source

The post Chinese embassy urges its citizens in Singapore to ‘stay away’ from gambling appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.