“Almost 90 percent of the leaders of Kazakhstan youth consider themselves believers, with 86 percent of them professing Islam,” according to a survey conducted by sociologist Madina Nurgaliyeva and leading her to warn that “religiosity among young Kazakhstanis is at a critically high level.”
On June 28, three suicide bombers entered the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, where they killed 45 people and injured 229. Although only one of the terrorist was from Russia (the other two were Uzbek and Kyrgyz), it is almost certain that that their last words to one another were in Russian. It is estimated that between 5,000 to 7,000 Russian-speaking jihadists have made Russian the second most popular language of ISIL, after Arabic.
In December Kazakhstan Paramount Engineering (KPE), a joint venture between South Africa’s Paramount Group and Kazakhstan Engineering, began production at a facility to build armored vehicles in Kazakhstan.
Wegen Geldwäschevorwürfen fror ein amerikanisches Gericht das Vermögen der beiden kasachischen Oligarchen Muchtar Albjasow und Viktor Chrapunov ein. Ihrer Selbstdarstellung als Oppositionelle mit Asylanspruch widerspricht das deutsche Auslandsbüro der kasachischen Opposition.
Nagorno-Karabakh, the former Soviet Union’s oldest and most dangerous conflict, is waking up again. The 1994 ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan is under severe strain. Where there was occasional sniper fire two years ago, mortars are now being fired. Rockets are raining down on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and the ceasefire line east of Karabakh itself. There have been around a dozen casualties in the last week.
On a recent snowy winter’s evening in Kazakhstan’s capital, arts buffs flocked to the state-of-the-art opera house.
Political divisions prevent the global community from reversing the rise of the Islamic State group, Kazakhstan's top diplomat said, urging world leaders to unite efforts to combat extremism.
