324 U.S. discovers huge Mineral Deposits in Afghanistan - using charts from the Soviet occupation

U.S. discovers huge Mineral Deposits in Afghanistan - using charts from the Soviet occupation

(1) U.S. discovers huge Mineral Deposits in Afghanistan - using charts from the Soviet occupation
(2) Russia Says Afghan Drug Trade Threatens World Peace
(3) Afghanistan: US funds Government, but also Warlords. Karzai courts the Taliban
(4) US cannot afford another Afghanistan or Iraq, warns Defence Secretary
(5) Kyrgyzstan's government blocks fuel supplies to US airbase
(6) War in Afghanistan is spreading to Kyrgyzstan - Kashgar Times
(7) Fergana was homeland of Zoroastrian religion
(8) Iran gets its birth rate down from 6.6 children per woman in 1970 to 1.9 today

(1) U.S. discovers huge Mineral Deposits in Afghanistan - using charts from the Soviet occupation

From: Michael <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 14.06.2010 10:19 AM

U.S. Discovers Nearly $1 Trillion in Afghan Mineral Deposits

By JAMES RISEN

Published: June 13, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits -- including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium -- are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.

American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.

So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.

Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.

“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.

Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”

With virtually no mining industry or infrastructure in place today, it will take decades for Afghanistan to exploit its mineral wealth fully. “This is a country that has no mining culture,” said Jack Medlin, a geologist in the United States Geological Survey’s international affairs program. “They’ve had some small artisanal mines, but now there could be some very, very large mines that will require more than just a gold pan.”

The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency.

The Pentagon task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development. International accounting firms that have expertise in mining contracts have been hired to consult with the Afghan Ministry of Mines, and technical data is being prepared to turn over to multinational mining companies and other potential foreign investors. The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange to start seeking bids on mineral rights by next fall, officials said.

“The Ministry of Mines is not ready to handle this,” Mr. Brinkley said. “We are trying to help them get ready.”

Like much of the recent history of the country, the story of the discovery of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth is one of missed opportunities and the distractions of war.

In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989.

During the chaos of the 1990s, when Afghanistan was mired in civil war and later ruled by the Taliban, a small group of Afghan geologists protected the charts by taking them home, and returned them to the Geological Survey’s library only after the American invasion and the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

“There were maps, but the development did not take place, because you had 30 to 35 years of war,” said Ahmad Hujabre, an Afghan engineer who worked for the Ministry of Mines in the 1970s.

Armed with the old Russian charts, the United States Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006, using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 percent of the country.

The data from those flights was so promising that in 2007, the geologists returned for an even more sophisticated study, using an old British bomber equipped with instruments that offered a three-dimensional profile of mineral deposits below the earth’s surface. It was the most comprehensive geologic survey of Afghanistan ever conducted.

The handful of American geologists who pored over the new data said the results were astonishing.

But the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments. In 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data. Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information — and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits.

Soon, the Pentagon business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai.

So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer of both, United States officials said. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan.

Just this month, American geologists working with the Pentagon team have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium. Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which now has the world’s largest known lithium reserves.

For the geologists who are now scouring some of the most remote stretches of Afghanistan to complete the technical studies necessary before the international bidding process is begun, there is a growing sense that they are in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers.

“On the ground, it’s very, very, promising,” Mr. Medlin said. “Actually, it’s pretty amazing.”

(2) Russia Says Afghan Drug Trade Threatens World Peace

From: Dr. Gunther Kümel <sapere--aude@web.de> Date: 10.06.2010 10:37 PM

Brian Padden | Singapore 06 June 2010

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Russia-Says-Afghan-Drug-Trade-Threatens-World-Peace-95719289.html

Brian Padden | Singapore

06 June 2010

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday Afghan drug trafficking should be classified as a threat to international peace and security. The Russian Deputy Prime Minster made his remarks at an Asia security conference in Singapore.

Speaking to defense officials and analysts at an annual Asia security summit in Singapore, Sergei Ivanov, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister, said the Taliban and other extremists groups that control most of Afghanistan are supported by the illegal drug trade.

"Large part of the population of Afghanistan is involved in the cultivation and production of opium and opium products such as heroin," he said. "Narcotics have become the important source of financial support for insurgency groups including the Taliban and not only to them."

Afghan farmers produce 90 percent of the world's heroin. The opiates are often smuggled north through Central Asia and Russia to Europe, Asia and America, and generate billions of dollars in revenue. In Russia, Ivanov has said that opium consumption is having a destabilizing effect and that 30,000 addicts die each year from narcotics like heroin. The Russian Deputy Prime Minister called for increased international efforts to stem the flow of Afghan opiates at the source.

"The whole international community and, first of all, those who took the responsibility for ensuring peace and stability in Afghanistan, namely the International Security Assistance Force, should make a strong commitment to fight this drug threat," said Ivanov.

The Deputy Prime Minister's comments were seen by many at the conference as a criticism of the U.S.-led coalition of NATO states fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Ivanov said while the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s may have ultimately failed, it did succeed in cracking down on the drug trade by burning the fields and providing economic alternatives to local farmers. He said today the international community should follow the Soviet's example.

"The Soviet Union invested money in cultivating normal agriculture and then buy the products, the agricultural products at a price higher than the market," he said. "Of course in the Soviet Union the market price was quite relative.

Ivanov's criticism of the U.S.-led coalition's drug policy in Afghanistan is not new. And the coalition has been funding programs meant to encourage farmers to plant alternative crops, such as wheat and cotton.

But Ivanov says more effort is needed and Russia is willing to help. It already provides logistical, transport and intelligence support to international forces in the region. But he said with memories of the Soviet defeat there still strong, never again will Russian soldiers be sent to Afghanistan.

(3) Afghanistan: US funds Government, but also Warlords. Karzai courts the Taliban

From: efgh1951 <efgh1951@yahoo.com> Date: 10.06.2010 03:37 AM

Afghanistan: Funding both sides

Delegates in Shangra-La pledge eternal war in Afghanistan, as the US creates new and very dangerous allies there, reports Eric Walberg

War junkies popped their champagne corks on 7 June to celebrate the 104th month of US military engagement in Afghanistan, America's longest war in history (Vietnam lasted 103 months). Presumably they toasted the five NATO soldiers killed on 6 June. Troop deaths have skyrocketed this year and NATO forces are continuing to "mow the grass", killing dozens of "Taliban" every day, and lots of civilians, though no one seems to know just how many of each or how to tell the difference. In any case, what's the point of questioning numbers provided by those doing the killing?

Washington's main ally looked like it was about to change its tune with the new Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition in Britain. After early hints that the British might follow the Dutch and Canadians and decamp from the failed war next year, Conservative Defence Secretary Liam Fox has now backtracked. At the appropriately named Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last week he asked himself, "Should we be there? And my answer was, unequivocally, still yes."

The "still" speaks volumes. His colleague US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, also attending the Dialogue, clearly had given him a dressing down about the lack of enthusiasm Fox showed during his visit to Afghanistan two weeks ago. Fox had asked himself then what his troops were doing in a "broken 13th-century country", and he and Foreign Secretary Hague answered -- without consulting with Gates -- that they should come home as soon as possible. This about-face caused not even a ripple in the Western media. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov mocked his fellow Shangri-La-ers by noting that soon NATO will beat the Soviet record there of ten years.

Meanwhile in Kabul, 1,600 delegates came to President Hamid Karzai's loya jirga and endorsed his plan to seek peace with the Taliban, including an amnesty and job incentives to induce Taliban fighters to give up arms. Unfazed, Taliban militants greeted the jirga by launching three rockets at the gathering though no attendees were reported killed. The delegates were far outnumbered by the 12,000 security personnel. The Taliban issued a statement saying that the jirga did not represent the Afghan people and was aimed at securing the interest of foreigners. Even Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami called the conference a "useless exercise".

The only outcome was that Karzai agreed to a review of all Taliban suspects being held in the country's prisons and the release of any militant arrested on doubtful evidence. Oh, and he fired Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and General Director for National Security Amrullah Saleh for not preventing an attack on the jirga. Interestingly, both men were US favourites, and had earned a reputation for being reformists. Saleh -- I'm not making this up -- has been a CIA agent since the 1990s.

NATO, US and Afghan forces are proceeding with their biggest offensive yet in Kandahar. Foreign troop numbers will peak at 150,000 by August and by July 2011 will gradually be withdrawn according to US President Barack Obama's plan. But whether Obama realises it or not, US generals are not planning to leave -- ever -- and America's longest war is poised to become America's first "everlasting war" in the words of Congressman Michael Honda.

No better evidence of this are Army building plans; in particular, the $100 million expansion of US Special Operations headquarters in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, and the 700 bases the US has built in the country. Construction on the new HQs is supposed to take a year, just when the US is supposedly to begin drawing down its forces in Afghanistan.

The latest innovations in US policy in Afghanistan to improve security are both foolish and dangerous. The lesser is the new 5,000 Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP), the "cream" of the 104,000 member police force the West is paying for (an ancop gets more than double the regular cop's $165 per month). It earned a resounding D- in Marja, where more than 300 ancops were deployed following the NATO surge, and were accused in a US report of "drug use, petty corruption and a lack of commitment" including abandoning or setting up illegal checkpoints to shake down motorists. "They refused to work at night, they refused to go out on patrols and refused to stand post more than three hours," complained Staff Sargeant Joseph Wright.

The Yanks and their quislings almost started a war between themselves when US officials forced the Afghans to submit to urinalysis to weed out the dope smokers. Most of the ancops are Tajik who don't speak Pashtun, and, dressed up and paid by the invaders, are as much the enemy to the Marja residents as the Americans. No wonder the ancops don't want to patrol or work at night.

This attempt to build a western-style police force from recruits who have no use for the invaders except as milkcows pales beside the more "successful" US strategy to support private armies and warlords. They despise the Karzai government and will no doubt spawn the country's future brutal military dictator who will, as a local leader at arms length from the invader, finally bring the country to heel. He may well be one Matiullah Khan, an illiterate former highway patrol commander, now the head of a private army that guards NATO supply convoys and fights Taliban insurgents alongside American Special Forces. He effectively controls the local government in Oruzgan Province, and has local officials "removed" if they aren't up to scratch. "What should we do?" he asked the New York Times haughtily. "The officials are cowards and thieves."

Matiullahs are sprouting up "like grass", fertilised by huge cash payments from the Americans, loose cannons undermining the local governments which NATO is supposedly trying to strengthen, spreading violence and chaos when thwarted. Matiullah now completely controls the US supply route, opening the highway from Kandahar one day a week, charging $1200 per truck and "earning" (read: extorting) $2.5 million a month for his ragtag band of mercenaries. He even charges simple Afghans a toll for use of the public road. The Ministry of the Interior pays for 600 of his 1,500 fighters, despite the fact that the force is not under the government's control. "Matiullah is not part of the government, he is stronger than the government, and he can do anything he wants," said Essa, a tribal elder in Tirin Kot.

Matiullah's operation is one of at least 23 private security companies working in the Kandahar area alone, which Karzai's brother Ahmed, Kandahar's official warlord, is now bringing together under his control. These mercenaries kill people who refuse to use their "security services" and one Ruhullah has even destroyed entire villages. They bribe the Taliban to allow safe passage, enlist them to do their dirty work, and, like Ahmed Karzai himself, are involved in the opium trade.

In a dispute over territory and cash, Karzai's cousin Rashid Popal, head of another such private army/ security company, Watan Risk Management and Compass Security, was caught red-handed colluding with Taliban, allowing them to attack a convoy headed for Kabul in which a Afghan driver and a soldier were killed and their truck burned. Within two weeks, and with more than 1,000 trucks backed up, Karzai allowed his dear cousin to resume his "safeguarding".

"We're funding both sides of the war," a NATO official in Kabul said. Matiullah's US paymaster General Carter said he fears that the legions of unregulated Afghan security companies have a financial interest in prolonging chaos. Well, yes. And is the Pope Catholic?

What seems to be the real US policy in the AfPak region is something along the lines of:
*quell the Taliban in AfPak with Pakistan's help (Pakistan's defence budge will increase 17 per cent next year, funded largely by the US)
*keep Afghanistan in a state of low-level war that justifies long term NATO presence
*bring Pakistan and India together enough to create a sense of stability in the region under US hegemony.

Either Obama is a very smooth liar or he is being duped by his military with their new HQs and 700 bases. Maybe he's playing a new kind of "chicken" with them, gambling that they will fail spectacularly due to the creative use of US dollars by both sides in Afghanistan (and Pakistan?), and will have to throw in the towel, letting him proceed to rebuild America without their manic delusions of world conquest. That would make him a devil's advocate at best. Otherwise, he will join Karzai's "cowards and thieves" in the history books.
***
Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/

(4) US cannot afford another Afghanistan or Iraq, warns Defence Secretary

Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, has said military spending must be cut by up to $15 billion a year and that the US cannot afford to enter into another Afghanistan or Iraq.

Alex Spillius in Washington

Published: 6:11PM BST 09 May 2010

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7701718/US-cannot-afford-another-Afghanistan-or-Iraq-warns-Defence-Secretary.html

Mr Gates said that America would be forced to take tight budgets into consideration before launching any military action against Iran.

His plans would see cuts in spending on its bureaucracy and on equipment designed for a repeat of the Second World War rather than the smaller wars of the 21st century.

However, he said he would protect the military's ability to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said that defence spending had doubled since the September 11, 2001 attacks, and that the severe recession guaranteed that "the gusher has been turned off and will stay off for a good period of time".

In a speech at the Eisenhower Presidential Library to mark the 65th anniversary of the German surrender, he said: "I do think that as we look to the future, particularly for the next couple of years or so while we're in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think the Congress and the president would look long and hard at another military operation that would cost us $100 billion a year.

"If there's a realy threat out there, the president and Congress will spend whatever it takes to protect the nation. But in situations where there are real choices, I think this would be a factor."

"The Defence Department must take a hard look at every aspect of how it is organized, staffed and operated - indeed, every aspect of how it does business."

The challenges facing the Pentagon in some ways mirror those confronting Britain as it seeks to adequately fund the military in a recession.

According to Mr Gates and many of his colleagues, the US military has more fat to cut, particularly from its officialdom and top brass. US defence spending as a proportion of gross domestic product in recent years has been about 4.5 per cent, compared to 2.5 per cent in Britain.

He said that the Pentagon had habitually overstated what warships, aircraft and vehicles it needed in the post-Cold War world.

"Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?" he asked.

While the US Navy had shrunk since the end of the Cold War, its battle fleet was still larger than the next 13 navies combined. At $535 billion, excluding $136 billion spent on the two wars, US military spending in 2010 was more than the rest of the world's combined.

Mr Gates, promising to see his changes through, said slicing two or three per cent off the budget would guarantee the ability to modernize the Pentagon's fighting forces.

His for "root-and-branch" changes and his questioning of whether the current number of headquarters, flag-officers and commands were necessary could trigger a struggle with groups in the Pentagon that have major clout in Congress.

Congressman with districts where production jobs may be lost have already objected to his existing plans for cuts and are likely to continue battling further demands for belt-tightening.

Jacques Gansler, who served as the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer from 1997 until 2001, said he would struggle to convince those members would he said would say: "'We all want to make savings but not in my district".'

Mr Gates has already managed to persuade Congress to stop production of the Air Force's F-22 stealth fighter at 187 aircraft, and is embroiled in a struggle to drop the production of an alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets.

He has eased out the Navy's DDG-1000 stealth destroyer, ending the programme with its third ship, and instead restarted the older but still quite capable DDG-51.

In his speech the defence secretary took aim at the multiple layers of approval required for service requests.

"Consider that a request for a dog-handling team in Afghanistan - or for any other unit - has to go through no fewer than five four-star headquarters in order to be processed, validated, and eventually dealt with," he said.

He continued: "Two decades after the end of the Cold War led to steep cuts in US forces in Europe, our military still has more than 40 generals, admirals, or civilian equivalents based on the continent. Yet we scold our allies over the bloat in Nato headquarters."

(5) Kyrgyzstan's government blocks fuel supplies to US airbase

Kyrgystan's government, swept to power in the April revolution, has started blocking fuel supplies to the US Manas airbase, temporarily disabling a crucial hub for its ongoing war in Afghanistan, it has emerged.

By Richard Orange

June 3, 2010

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/kyrgyzstan/7798010/Kyrgyzstans-government-blocks-fuel-supplies-to-US-airbase.html

Edil Baisalov, chief of staff for the landlocked Central Asian country confirmed that the authorities had blocked Manas's fuel sub-contractors, which are believed to have links to Maksim Bakiyev, the son of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the previous President.

"One thing that's changed for them is that now they have to deal with a state of Kyrgyzstan which is not owned by their family, but by the people of Kyrgyzstan," he said. "Let us just say that they do not have full papers." The US military confirmed that it had suspended flights of its KC-135 refuelling aircraft amid talks with the Kyrgyz government.

The US Congress House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in April launched an investigation into Mina Corp, the company which holds the Department of Defence contract to supply Manas, seeking to discover the ownership of the Gilbraltar-listed company and look into its role in the country.

The Kyrgyz interim government on April 30 launched a corruption investigation into six companies which it claimed were owned by the son of the former President Maksim Bakiyev: Manas Fuel Services, Kyrgyz Aviation, Central Asia Fuel, Aviation Fuel Service, Aircraft Petrol Ltd, and Central Asia Trade Group.

Mr Baisalov stressed that the government's problems were with these suppliers and not with the US government or Mina Corp.

Before he was ousted, President Bakiyev threatened to close the Manas base, which has long irked Russia, but he agreed to keep the base open after Washington more than tripled the rent.

Just ten days after taking power, interim President Roza Otunbayeva quashed US fears that the new government would close the base, extending the lease on the airbase by one year to July 2011.

(6) War in Afghanistan is spreading to Kyrgyzstan - Kashgar Times

http://www.kashgartimes.com/?p=5

Kyrgyzstan feels heat from Afghan war

Posted on 07 April 2010

The war in Afghanistan is spreading to the Central Asian Republics–namely Kyrgyzstan. This has serious implications for China, Russia and the region. The SCO was created to assist the Central Asian Republics to maintain their status quo–however the ISAF presence and the NATO supply routes through Kyrgyzstan have brought the war to Kyrgyzstan.

As it is the governments in the Central Asian republics face an onslaught of attacks from the disenfranchised and poor populations. The IMU is a major factor in trying to overthrow dictatorial regimes in the capitals of the Central Asian Republics.

(Reuters) – Kyrgyz riot police fired tear gas and flash grenades to disperse protesters in the capital Bishkek on Wednesday, witnesses said, the second day of unrest linked to mounting public anger over a weaker economy and corruption.

WORLD

Below are some key facts about Kyrgyzstan:

THE ECONOMY AND GROWING UNREST

* Kyrgyzstan’s economy grew by 2.3 percent in 2009, down from 8.4 percent a year earlier, as the impoverished Central Asian state was hit by the global crisis.

* Kyrgyz migrant laborers, working mostly in Russia, used to be one of the key sources of the country’s foreign currency revenues. But Russia’s own woes have left many of them unemployed or doing jobs that pay less.

* Last month Kyrgyzstan marked five years since a violent revolt when protesters stormed the presidential headquarters in the capital Bishkek and brought Bakiyev to power.

* With public discontent growing, Bakiyev has been accused of failing to rein in corruption and shield the country’s population from growing poverty. Over the past months, international rights groups have accused the authorities of cracking down on dissenting voices.

* On a visit to the country this month, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Kyrgyzstan to protect human rights after protesters shouted “help us” as he drove to the Central Asian state’s parliament.

RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES

* Kyrgyzstan was the target of cross-border raids by Islamic guerrillas in 1999 and 2000. It embraced Washington’s campaign to root out Afghanistan’s Taliban and invited U.S. forces to launch operations from its territory.

* Kyrgyzstan hosts both a Russian and U.S. military airbase. U.S. forces set up their base in Kyrgyzstan when they overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan late in 2001 and used the Manas base to support operations in Afghanistan.

* Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted in February 2009 to approve the closure of the U.S. base after securing pledges of $2 billion in aid and credit from Russia. Washington later agreed to pay $180 million to Kyrgyzstan to keep the base open.

* U.S. General David Petraeus met leaders in Kyrgyzstan last month, a day after the United States said it would build an anti-terrorism center there. The visit by Petraeus was likely to irritate Moscow which has seen Kyrgyzstan as part of its sphere of influence. The presence of the two bases has come to symbolize Russia-U.S. rivalry in the region.

COUNTRY DETAILS

* Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous, landlocked ex-Soviet republic bordering China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

* Most of its 5.5 million people are Turkic-speaking Muslims who have lived in poverty since the economy collapsed in the 1990s.

(7) Fergana was homeland of Zoroastrian religion

Map of Uzbekistan, showing Fergana:
http://www.sairamtourism.com/userfiles/Uzbekistan%20Map.jpg

Map of Central Asia, showing the road between Osh (in Kyrgyzstan) and Kashgar (in Xinjiang, China):
http://www.china-holiday.com/english/chinatravel/city/irkeshtam.asp

Map of Kyrgyzstan showing the road between Osh and Kashgar (in Xinjiang, China):
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwealth/kyrgyzstan_pol96.jpg

== Fergana

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Fergana

Fergana or Farghana is a city (population: 214,000), the capital of Fergana Province in eastern Uzbekistan, at the southern edge of the Fergana Valley in southern Central Asia, cutting across the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Fergana is about 420 km east of Tashkent, and about 75 km west of Andijan.

History

The fertile Fergana Valley was an important conduit on the Silk Roads (more precisely the North Silk Road), which connected the ancient Chinese capital of Xi'an to the west over the Wushao Ling Mountain Pass to Wuwei and emerging in Kashgar before linking to ancient Parthia, or on to the north of the Aral and Caspian Seas to ports on the Black Sea.

The ancient kingdom referred to as Dayuan ?? ('Great Yuan', literally 'Great Ionians') in the Chinese chronicles is now generally accepted as being in the Ferghana Valley. It is sometimes, though less commonly, written as Dawan ??. Dayuan were Greeks, the descendants of the Greek colonists that were settled by Alexander the Great in Ferghana in 329 BCE, and prospered within the Hellenistic realm of the Seleucids and Greco-Bactrians, until they were isolated by the migrations of the Yuezhi around 160 BCE. It has been suggested that the name "Yuan" was simply a transliteration of the words “Yona”, or “Yavana”, used throughout antiquity in Asia to designate Greeks (“Ionians”). Their capital was Alexandria Eschate.

The earliest Chinese visitor was the ambassador Zhang Qian, who passed through on his way to visit the Da Yuezhi or 'Great Yuezhi' c. 127/126 BCE. The Shiji, Chap. 123 says:

"Dayuan lies southwest of the territory of the Xiongnu, some 10,000 li [4,158 km] directly west of China. The people are also settled on the land, plowing the fields and growing rice and wheat. They also make wine out of grapes. The region has many fine horses which sweat blood;[apparently due to skin parasites which caused sores] their forebears are supposed to have been foaled from heavenly horses. The people live in houses in fortified cities, there being some seventy or more cities of various sizes in the region. The population numbers several hundred thousand. The people fight with bows and spears and can shoot from horseback. Dayuan is bordered on the north by Kangju, on the west by the kingdom of the Great Yuezhi, on the southwest by Daxia (Bactria), on the northeast by the land of the Wusun, and on the east by Yumi (Keriya) and Yutian (Khotan)."

Da Yuan appears as a powerful state in both the Shiji and the Hanshu. However, after Xian, king of Yarkand, conquered it about the middle of the 1st century CE, it gradually lost importance. The Hou Hanshu adds that Da Yuan sent tribute and offerings to the Chinese court in 130 CE along with Kashgar and Yarkand. After that, it is referred to as Liyi ?? (preferably read Suyi ??), and is specifically stated to be a dependency of Kangju.

By the time of the Weilüe (in the 3rd century CE), the old capital, Alexandria Eschate (modern Khujand), had become a separate kingdom called 'Northern Wuyi.'

Zoroastrian literature identifies the area as the Zoroastrian homeland. Fergana also played a central role in the history of the Mughal dynasty of South Asia in that Omar Sheikh Mirza, chieftain of Farghana, was the father of Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), founder of the Mughal dynasty in India. At Mirza's death in 1498, Babur became chief, although he was still a minor. ... ==

http://www.protocolprofessionals.com/articles_silk_road.htm

The Silk Road
The Ancient Highway for Globalisation
 
By Keyvan Tabari

The wall separating the two great civilizations of the ancient world, Persia and China was real; it was physical. The Pamir Mountains are so called, meaning the “foot of Mitra”, because they were so high: they were the closest that man got to the Sun God of Mithraism, the ancient Persian religion. Passage through these mountains is still extremely difficult. I experienced this on the morning of September 12 of last year. I was at the Irkeshtam Pass. We had to cross the Kyrgyz Republic on a rutted segment of the Silk Road to get from China to Uzbekistan. Beyond the barbed wire that separated us, Kyrgyzstan looked forbidding. An unshaven young man with an automatic weapon slung on his shoulders was ruffling through the pages of my passport. He said a few words to another man standing next to him. My eyes were averted to the grey brown parka the latter was wearing. There were food stains on it. I did not understand what was spoken between them. There were two more young men. They were short and stocky. They were curious about us. There were 13 of us, tourists who had come from China. Our bus had left. We could not return to China , for we had gone through the Chinese immigration checkpoint. Our luggage was on the ground. We were waiting for our Kyrgyz guide without whom we could not enter this country. Inexplicably, there was no sign of him. The landscape was scraggy and barren - no trees. A dirt road led to the horizon.

That day we did make it to Sari Tash and then to Osh at the border of Uzbekistan and beyond. The real miracle was that people had done it as early as centuries before Christ. A good evidence for this is the Manichaean manuscripts found in the ancient city of Goachang , near Turpan, Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan). They reveal the exodus from Iran of the followers of Mani, the ancient Persian prophet who challenged the official creed, Zoroastrianism. Goachang, which I had visited just a few days before, was in a desert 260 feet below the sea level! Note, however, the equally remarkable fact that from early on the exchange across these formidable barriers was not just of goods but also of ideas.

As it is in human history, the basic ideas have not changed that much; their applications have changed due to the change in the circumstances. Take the first insertion of Persian power to this area. It was to eliminate the terror caused by the marauding Sakas (Sycthians) that in 530 B.C brought Cyrus the Great here. Some two centuries later, Alexander the Great came this way in his relentless ambition to expand his empire. A hundred years after that, the Chinese Emperor Wudi sent his emissary, Zhang Qian, to Ferghana valley in present day Uzbekistan in a quest for alliance with the Yuezhi people against their common enemy, the Huns.

It was not only security, peace, and stability that preoccupied the travelers of the Silk Road. The territory they traversed in Central Asian was controlled by the Sogdians, who were Persian speaking and Zoroastrian. They were, however, tolerant of other creeds, and received in their midst the followers of other religions: Manichaeism, Judaism, Christianity, Nestorianism, and Buddhism. In Samarkand's Afrosiob History Museum I saw a series of magnificent 7th century Sogdian murals, more than six feet high, that covered a circular room. A bridal procession depicted a princess astride a white elephant who led several maids, camel-riders, horsemen, and swans. The ruler of Samarkand was in another panel, accepting offerings from foreigners: Chinese with gifts of silk, Turks with long hair, Koreans with pigtails, and villagers from the mountain of Pamir. In the next frame was a Chinese beauty sailing in a boat and, on the banks of the water, several horsemen hunting a leopard.

The Sogdians were pivotal as the channel for the transmission of Buddhism to China from the Kushans in India. In Dunhaung, west of Xinjiang in China , I visited caves that have yielded invaluable manuscripts about this phenomenon. Due to shortage of paper, these Buddhist religious texts were written on whatever scarps which could be found, including the reverse side of ordinary commercial and personal correspondence. Based on these documents, Dunhuangology has become a special field that has revealed as much about Chinese Buddhism as it has about the social and economic history of the globalizing highway that passed through here. Many of these documents are in the old Persian language of the Sogdians. In the fifth and sixth centuries, glass, horses, and perfumes were imported here from the West and raw silk was exported from China. In other parts of the Silk Road , westbound caravans brought furs, ceramics, cinnamon bark, rhubarb, and bronze weapons; while the eastbound traffic contained gold, precious metals and stones, textiles, ivory, and coral.

By the 8th century the Persians had learned the art of sericulture from the Chinese. They, in turn, transferred a most valuable technology of their own to China , the irrigation system of karez which I saw in the outskirts of Turpan. A succession of wells connected by underground channels which used gravity to bring water from high elevations, karez ( a Persian word, interchangeable with qanat ) was vital for the agrarian society of these arid lands.

The Silk Road continued to be the main channel for Globalization even after the sea routes gradually eroded its commercial role. By the end of the 8th century ships from the Middle East were regularly calling on the Chinese city of Guangzhou ( Canton ). The spread of Islam, however, came by land. After the battle of Talas in 751 sealed its domination of Central Asia, Islam introduced a complex mix of religion, art, and architecture, imbued with local elements, which spread to the frontiers of Xian, the ancient capital of China. For many centauries, the polyglot and multiethnic peoples of Turkestan , a vast territory that extended west from Xian to the Caspian Sea, identified themselves simply as Muslims. With Samarkand and Bukhara as their pivot, from the 10th century to the mid 15 th century they established the most advanced civilization of the time, the Persian Islamic civilization. With the exception of the Persian Samanids, the rulers were mostly Mongol and Turks - nomads who adopted Persian culture and language. The scope of their ambition was universal. Genghis Khan's descendants-who even ruled China for sometime- were succeeded by Tamerlane and his descendants, and then the chiefs of various Turkic tribes. ...

(8) Iran gets its birth rate down from 6.6 children per woman in 1970 to 1.9 today

http://www.newint.org/features/2010/01/01/policies/

IRAN

Achieved the fastest fertility decline in the world, from 6.6 children per woman in 1970 to 1.9 today.

How did they do it?

The country’s religious leaders who came to power in the 1979 Revolution abolished the beginnings of a family planning system – soldiers were needed for the war with Iraq. But in 1989, after the end of the war, a major policy change occurred. Iranian population experts managed to convince the religious leadership that high fertility rates were no longer in the country’s interests.

The Government mobilized a comprehensive ‘quality of life’ campaign, with family planning classes for all and free contraception. Women as well as men were given condoms.

The campaign coincided with a dramatic increase in the educational level of younger women, especially in the rural areas. In 1976 only 10 per cent of rural women  aged 20 to 24 were literate. This increased to 37 per cent in 1986, then 78 per cent in 1996, and by 2006 it was 91 per cent.

Farzaneh Roudi, of the Population Reference Bureau, comments: ‘People outside Iran imagine that the family planning programme must have been coercive but it wasn’t. There was widespread public education about family planning; everyone was talking about it. Women had more control over their own fertility than in the time of the Shah. And it didn’t lead to many more boys being born than girls, as in some other countries.’