For decades Gulf money has poured into luxury property markets, trophy assets and the world’s best-known financial centres. But increasingly it is heading to a former Silk Road hub, where ageing gas infrastructure, a rapidly growing population and economic reforms offer the opportunity to invest in a new energy system. Uzbekistan is the largest market for Saudi Arabian utilities group […]

Fighting between Taliban and the Freedom Front continued for a third consecutive day on Sunday in parts of the northeastern province of Badakhshan, local sources said, as both sides issued conflicting accounts of the battlefield and claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on each other. Residents told Amu TV that intermittent clashes continued overnight in the districts of Zebak, Yaftal […]

Taliban said on Sunday that Uzbekistan is seeking to accelerate the implementation of joint economic projects, following meetings in Kabul between senior Taliban officials and an Uzbek delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Jamshid Khojayev. According to a Taliban statement, Khojayev said Tashkent wants to speed up projects already agreed upon with Taliban and begin implementing commitments made in the […]

Fighting between Taliban and the Freedom Front continued in parts of Badakhshan on Monday, according to local residents and sources within the Taliban, as clashes entered a second week. Residents and Taliban sources in the province told Amu TV that fighting continued for several hours overnight in different parts of Zebak district, which has emerged as the center of the […]

For over a century, the Western civil service model was hailed as the gold standard of modern governance. Today, especially in the US, we are witnessing loyalty replace merit and brazen corruption go unchecked. Drawing on China’s 2,000 years of bureaucratic history, Professor Fan Yongpeng argues that the system was a superficial transplant from the start and is now regressing […]