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ASTANA (TCA) — JSC KazTransGas, Kazakhstan’s national gas transportation company, and PetroChina International Company Limited have signed a sales agreement on the supply of 5 billion cubic meters of Kazakh natural gas to China during one calendar year. The expected export revenue of KazTransGas should be about US $1 billion, the Kazakh company said.
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TASHKENT (TCA) — Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev reiterated the two neighboring countries’ readiness for closer cooperation during Atambayev’s official visit to Tashkent on October 5, RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service reported.
TASHKENT (TCA) — Given Tashkent’s security concerns over the rising insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan and Uzbekistan’s close-to-zero military cooperation with the US, the new Uzbek president is seeking more military, and security, cooperation with Russia, which is proven by the ongoing joint Russian-Uzbek military exercises in Uzbekistan. We are republishing this article by John C. K. Daly on the issue, originally published by The Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor:
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BISHKEK (TCA) — The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has assisted fifteen women farmers from mountainous areas of Osh and Naryn Oblasts in Kyrgyzstan to launch greenhouse vegetable production. In 1800 square meters of greenhouses they plan to grow cucumbers and tomatoes to sell during the off-season. These partnerships promote women’s entrepreneurship in agriculture and provide much needed additional income while also improving nutrition by making vegetables easily available to households in the community during times when access to vegetables is scarce, the US Embassy in Bishkek said on October 5.
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ASTANA (TCA) — The modernization of Kazakhstan’s agribusiness sector through the introduction of state-of-the-art information systems, like the Collect Mobile application for milk processors, was one of the key themes in a roundtable organized by the Dairy Union of Kazakhstan and the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs and supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Astana on 29 September, the EBRD press office reported.
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BISHKEK (TCA) — Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov has said that the Daesh (Islamic State) extremist group has given up the idea of establishing a caliphate in the Middle East and is now trying to create a global terrorist network using their foothold in Afghanistan to plot attacks in Russia, China, Iran, India, and Central Asia countries, Sputnik news agency reports.
“The bandits are most actively moving [from Syria and Iraq] to the territory of Afghanistan, where Daesh positions have already been established, from where they receive the opportunity to infiltrate into Central Asia, Iran, China, and India. Using the Afghan foothold, the terrorists are also attempting to carry out attacks against Russia,” Bortnikov said at a meeting of Russia’s special services chiefs in the city of Krasnodar on October 4.
Bortnikov also said that terror groups managed to establish close ties with ethnic criminal groups in both Europe and Russia.
“The gang leaders established strong ties with major ethnic organized criminal groups, which supply them with arms, documents necessary for legalization, and support them in other ways,” the FSB director said, adding that “the leaders of international terrorist structures are broadly using migration flows to achieve their goals, which makes it possible for militants and terrorists to enter target countries under the disguise of refugees or labor migrants with the borders being fully or partially open.”
According to Bortnikov, international terrorist groups have given up the idea of establishing a caliphate in Syria and Iraq in the face of a total defeat and set the new goal of creating a global terror network.
