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FAO

Opinion: Why Agriculture Cannot Afford to Overlook Women Farmers

Imagine a team where only half the players receive training, equipment and support. That team cannot perform at its full potential. The same is true in agriculture. Women farmers are essential across Europe and Central Asia. They grow food, raise livestock, run farms and sustain rural economies. They work the same land as men, share responsibility for farms and support their families, yet too often their work is treated as secondary, invisible or merely “helping”. As a result, they may not have the same access to the training, resources and opportunities needed to make their hard work more productive. When women cannot fulfil their potential as farmers, agriculture cannot fulfil its potential either. The International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026 brings renewed global attention to women’s essential contribution to agriculture. As part of the Year, FAO’s “100 Women Heroes in Agrifood Systems and Rural Development” initiative is honouring twenty‑five women from across the region for their achievements, innovation, resilience and leadership. But beyond these individual success stories lies a reality that can’t be overlooked. Countless women do the same indispensable work every day without equal recognition, resources or opportunities. The cost of these inequalities is also economic. FAO estimates that closing gender gaps in farm productivity and wages could generate nearly USD 1 trillion in global gains and reduce food insecurity for up to 45 million people. Across Europe and Central Asia, there has been considerable progress in strengthening the legal and policy frameworks that promote equal opportunities for women and men, but these need translating into real improvements in rural women’s lives. In agriculture and rural development, persistent gender gaps limit women’s productivity and fulfilment of potential as individuals and farmers. Social expectations and discriminatory practices reinforce these barriers, shaping who is seen as a farmer, who makes decisions and who controls income and productive resources. Even when women play a central role in farming, their work is often undervalued, unpaid or simply invisible. They lack essential support to grow farms and businesses, and young women are often discouraged from farming as a viable career or taking on farm management. Closing these gaps requires sector‑specific policies and actions that explicitly recognize women as farmers and entrepreneurs. For example, governments can ensure that agricultural statistics systematically capture women’s contributions; enable women’s registration as farmers in their own right; and guarantee that extension and rural advisory services reach women as well as men. Such measures will strengthen women’s access to land, finance, inputs, technology, knowledge and markets – while sending a clear institutional signal that women should be recognized as farmers. The next challenge is to ensure that recognition translates into policies, institutions and services that respond to women farmers’ realities, needs and aspirations. This is particularly important in Europe and Central Asia, where rural areas face the growing pressures of climate change, water scarcity, increasing strain on natural resources, ageing populations and young people leaving rural areas. These pressures do not affect everyone equally. When women have less access to agricultural training – including...

Public Service

Opinion: I Spent 15 Years in Government. Here Is What the State Can Learn Next

Zhandos Sabit spent more than 15 years in Kazakhstan’s public service, including the Ministry of National Economy, a regional akimat, and the Prosecutor General’s Office. He now works in the private sector. In March 2014, I went to a meeting in Astana on the development of the machine-building industry. It was held at the then Ministry of Industry and New Technologies. Officials from central and local bodies came, along with the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs and several business owners. I was there as a representative of a state body. When the entrepreneurs began to talk about problems in the industry that we had never heard of, and about how to solve them, I was surprised. They were asking how to increase local content. We were asking whether a proposal complied with current legislation. It turned out that we civil servants knew the resolutions and laws of the sector, and not much beyond that. We sat at one table and spoke about different things. I have seen the same in other sectors since. My former colleagues may take offense, but I will say what I think: many civil servants, myself included in those years, were lawyers and bureaucrats first. That is how the system trains us. Faced with a problem, the first question is whether an idea contradicts the law, and only rarely whether the idea works. Nobody can be blamed for this, because the rules are what an official is held responsible for. It does mean that civil servants should lean on people who know a sector from the inside and take their suggestions seriously. I saw another side of this when I worked in a regional akimat. We prepared a road map for developing the communications sector in the region and agreed it with the central body. Wherever an item needed a decision from the center or money from the republican budget, the central body either struck it out or rewrote it as “study the issue”, with “provide information” as the expected result. I understand why: the center answers for the budget and for every precedent it sets. But how long can an issue be studied? Colleagues in the region put it bluntly: go and fight for the money from the republican budget yourselves. An idea can sit for years between two levels of government, and nobody has done anything wrong. Kazakhstan’s “Listening State” concept raises a question: what happens to what the state hears? I spent more than 15 years in public service, and my proposal comes from that work. Kazakhstan already has channels for individual appeals, and eOtinish is one of them. They are there to answer a person. My proposal is the next step: a platform for solving problems that keep coming back. Its unit would be a problem together with a proposed solution, not a letter. Appeals, petitions, input from business associations, and regional statistics are kept in separate places today, and an AI-assisted system could read them together. If dozens of complaints about delayed...

Central Asia-U.S. Relations

Opinion: Central Asia Is More Than Minerals

For years, Central Asia was one of those regions that Washington periodically rediscovered and then forgot. Officials visited and announced new initiatives, but the relationship hardly changed. That is no longer the case. Many pundits see the current surge of American interest in Central Asia through the lens of transactional foreign policy: nowadays the focus has been on critical minerals, supply-chain security, and competition with China. Valid so far as it goes, this approach misses the larger story. Central Asia is not suddenly important because of its minerals or because Washington has decided that it is. Increasingly, Washington must pay attention to Central Asia because the region itself is changing, and in largely positive directions. Over three decades, American investors largely dismissed the region as too poorly governed and too distant. Now the region itself is working to change the conditions that made it unattractive. The transformation is far from complete, but it is real. When the Central Asian states emerged from the Soviet Union in 1991, they faced grave disadvantages. State enterprises dominated their economies, and they fell short of Western investors’ expectations in both the rule of law and transparency. While such problems have not disappeared, they are everywhere being worked on. Uzbekistan provides the clearest example. Since 2017, Tashkent has undertaken reforms to liberalize its economy and improve the environment for private investment. The World Bank now describes Uzbekistan as one of the world's top reformers. Kazakhstan has also built more sophisticated financial and regulatory institutions. Its goal is to position itself as a regional hub for logistics, energy, and finance. The World Bank's new 2026–31 country strategy emphasizes a "business-ready Kazakhstan," with greater private-sector participation, improved infrastructure, and better natural-resource management. The pace of change in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan has been slower, for understandable reasons. Kyrgyzstan’s early political reforms long left the government rudderless, Tajikistan endured a five-year civil war, and Turkmenistan was stymied by Russia’s total control of its gas industry. Now these countries, too, are belatedly advancing. Central Asia has not become Switzerland. Corruption, political interference, and governance problems still afflict the countries’ economies, and the OECD continues to identify these as important obstacles to investment. The question is not whether Central Asia has solved these problems but whether it has changed enough to become investable. The answer increasingly is yes, it has. Moscow's offensive in Ukraine accelerated changes Washington had sought for decades. Secondary sanctions compelled Central Asians to develop new commercial avenues not subject to international restrictions. While Central Asian governments maintain important relations with Russia, they all seek pragmatic alternatives that reduce their former reliance on Moscow. The countries are expanding regional cooperation while reaching across the Caspian to the South Caucasus and beyond. The resulting Middle Corridor promises direct access to global markets. The measure of its success will be whether Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan gain trans-Caspian pipelines to transport their resources directly to Europe. In short, Central Asia is doing what Washington has long wanted it to do: become more...

Cold War

Opinion: Weaponizing Faith – The Cold War Roots of Central Asia’s Security Dilemma

Central Asia’s contemporary security dilemma is partly rooted in Cold War strategies that transformed Muslim identity into a factor of geopolitical competition. Washington viewed Soviet Central Asia’s Muslim populations as a potential pressure point against Moscow. The Soviet Union itself mobilized Central Asian Muslim personnel during its intervention in Afghanistan. These policies did not alone create later radical movements, but they contributed to a regional environment where existing grievances, ideological narratives, and transnational networks could be redirected and intensified. The origins of Washington’s interest in Soviet Muslim populations as a strategic factor emerged during the final years of the Cold War. In 1977, the Nationalities Working Group, an interagency task force within the National Security Council, was established to examine vulnerabilities among the Soviet Union’s non-Russian nationalities. Declassified U.S. records show that American officials studied ethnic, cultural, and religious identities as possible sources of pressure against Moscow. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, this approach became part of Washington’s broader effort to weaken Soviet influence. Through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the United States provided assistance to Afghan resistance organizations, while Saudi Arabia contributed significant financial support. Pakistan’s military government under General Zia-ul-Haq favored Islamist factions among Afghan resistance groups, helping connect military assistance with religious mobilization against Soviet forces. During his visit to the Khyber Pass in early February 1980, U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski addressed Afghan resistance fighters, declaring: "That land over there is yours. You will go back to it one day because your cause is right and God is on your side." The remarks reflected how the anti-Soviet struggle was framed not only in geopolitical terms but also through religious language and symbolism. [caption id="attachment_56711" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] Soviet T-62 tank leaving Afghanistan; image: U.S. Department of Defense.[/caption] The Afghan conflict was also fought through education and information campaigns. Between 1986 and 1992, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funded an approximately $50 million educational program through the University of Nebraska–Omaha’s Center for Afghanistan Studies for Afghan refugees and schools. Research has shown that some textbooks incorporated violent imagery, references to weapons and combat, and themes glorifying holy war and the duty of martyrdom. Produced for wartime Afghanistan, these materials reflected, and arguably helped sustain, a militarized ideological environment. Islamic religious life in Central Asia had its own deeper roots. Despite Soviet restrictions, religious learning survived through underground hujra networks and unofficial scholarship. Figures such as Muhammadjon Hindustoniy-Rustamov, born in the Fergana Valley and later one of Soviet Central Asia’s most influential unofficial Islamic scholars, shaped generations of students even as Afghanistan became an arena of international rivalry during the 1980s. Moscow also used Central Asian Muslim identity for strategic purposes. The 154th Separate Spetsnaz Detachment, known as the “Muslim Battalion,” was composed largely of Uzbek, Tajik, and Turkmen soldiers from the Soviet Turkestan Military District. The unit participated in Operation Storm-333 in December 1979, the Soviet operation that killed Afghan President Hafizullah Amin and installed Babrak Karmal. The selection of Central Asian...

Opinion

From Lenin to Kenesary: What Kazakhstan’s Renamed Streets Say About Power

In July 2026, a new constitutional law on Kazakhstan’s administrative-territorial structure came into force. It retained a layered process for changing place names: local authorities must consider residents’ views, while onomastic commissions review proposals before final decisions are made. The previous legal framework dated to 1993. Replacing it with a constitutional law did not dismantle the machinery of onomastic policy but consolidated the roles of public consultation, local government and official commissions. The law formalized a system built over three decades, during which thousands of streets were renamed but the country’s urban map changed at markedly different speeds. Kazakhstan’s experience is often described as a simple substitution of Lenin with Abai and communist terminology with the symbols of independence. The geography of renaming suggests something more precise: a centralized nation-building project whose reach depends on local demography and the political cost of opposition. Research documenting 6,832 cases across 37 cities between 1991 and 2019 shows the disparity. Five cities accounted for 72% of all recorded renamings: Shymkent had 1,767, Almaty 1,064, Astana 860, Aktobe 783, and Kyzylorda 470. Pavlodar recorded 34, Petropavl 28, Oskemen 23, and Rudny only two. Raw totals partly reflect city size and urban expansion, but the study’s statistical analysis identified both city status and ethnic composition as significant factors. Renaming occurred less frequently where the share of Slavic residents was higher, a pattern the author interpreted as evidence of greater state caution in ethnically mixed cities. The procedure helps explain why a national symbolic agenda produced such local variation. Proposals move through public consultation, local representative and executive bodies, and onomastic commissions. These stages do not guarantee that public preferences will determine the outcome, but they create points at which opposition can slow or redirect a proposal. Astana, extensively rebuilt after becoming the capital in 1997, could remake its urban identity quickly. Established industrial cities in the north and east moved more carefully. The contrast between what disappeared and what survived is equally revealing. Explicitly ideological names associated with Lenin, Marx, Engels, and the October Revolution became far less common, while Almaty retained streets named after Soviet scientists, writers, and figures connected to Kazakhstan’s development. The authorities did not treat every Soviet reference alike. They separated communist ideology from cultural and intellectual contribution, producing selective de-Sovietization rather than wholesale symbolic purification. Municipal practice further complicates a purely nationalist reading. Official data from Kyzylorda for 2025 lists 874 city streets: 497 named after individuals, 270 after localities and water features, and 107 carrying conventional names. This snapshot does not identify which streets were renamed, but it shows that the present naming system encompasses historical figures, local geography, and ordinary municipal conventions. In the expanding Arai-Shugyla neighborhood, seven previously unnamed streets received names drawn from localities and water features. Onomastic policy was therefore organizing new urban space as well as redistributing historical visibility. Naming new streets and replacing old ones use the same administrative machinery, although their political consequences are not always comparable. The politics became clearer when...

Central Asia - Iran Relations

Opinion: Why Central Asia Cannot Afford to Abandon the Iranian Route

Kazakhstan had barely secured a foothold in Iran’s largest commercial port when renewed military escalation made the southern route risky again. The problem for Central Asia is that Iran is more than a trading partner. For a region without direct access to the open sea, it provides one of the few overland routes to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. On June 28, Kazakhstan and Iran signed a 27-year build-operate-transfer (BOT) agreement for a Kazakh transport and logistics terminal at Shahid Rajaee Port in Bandar Abbas. The agreement allocates two years for construction and the following 25 for operation. Astana expects the terminal to provide more direct access to markets in the Gulf, South and Southeast Asia, and East Africa. The project almost immediately found itself in a different reality. In July, U.S. strikes hit Iranian railway and coastal infrastructure. The Aq Taqeh Khan bridge on a rail route connecting Iran with Turkmenistan and, further north, with Kazakhstan, was damaged. There was no confirmed halt to Central Asian freight traffic, but military risk was no longer an abstract concern for carriers. That risk has now been compounded by a new U.S. sanctions campaign. On August 24, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent launched what Washington calls Operation Economic Outcast, combining direct sanctions with pressure on Iran’s foreign economic partners. The United States said it would set timelines for other countries to shut down economic activity with Iran, while the scope of secondary sanctions was expanded to cover five areas: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. Nearly 60 Iran-linked individuals, entities, and vessels were also sanctioned. The United States has not publicly identified which countries could face penalties first. War and sanctions can make the Iranian route more expensive, slower, and more dangerous. They cannot change geography. Iran gives Central Asia overland access to ports on the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. From Bandar Abbas and Chabahar, cargo can move onward toward India, the Gulf states, and East Africa. Iran also provides a western overland route toward Turkey. This is one of the fundamental differences between the Iranian route and the Middle Corridor, which crosses the Caspian Sea before continuing through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey. The Middle Corridor requires cargo to move between rail and maritime transport. Iran offers the possibility of a continuous overland chain while also providing access to ports connected to the Indian Ocean. For Kazakhstan, the southern route is already more than a plan. Trade with Iran increased by 26.4% in 2025 to $430.2 million. Freight traffic along the International North-South Transport Corridor reached 3.5 million tons, while rail traffic between Kazakhstan and Iran increased by 69%. It is this expanding transport network that is now exposed to greater military and sanctions risks. There is another factor. A free trade agreement between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, entered into force on May 15, 2025. It significantly reduced tariff barriers to trade in goods between the two sides. Uzbekistan offers...