In the upcoming days we will start to see more preparations for the Nowruz celebrations. Primarily a holiday that is celebrated by people of Persian backgrounds,and extends as far as Albania and Kosovo. In Tajikistan and other Central Asian countries the festivities before the 20th of March start with Buzkashi games. The term Buzkashi means 'goat grabbing' and it involves players on horseback, called Chapandaz,galloping through a field at amazing speeds fighting over a decapitated dead goat. The goal of the game is to successfully pick up the goat and clear it over the other teams goal line. The game has no other rules, there is no protection worn on the players and horses; and strangely enough it has no rounds or time limits. Here is a clip of a game going into full action:



In recent news there has been a lot of publicity given to the famous Persian poet Rudaki. Born in the village of Rudak (Panjurd) in Khorasan, now located in Tajikistan, Rudaki was the first great literary genius of the modern Persian language who composed poetry in "New Persian," which is written in the Perso-Arabic alphabet script. Now the great Rudaki can be found in four different languages. The cultural ministries of Tajikistan and Iran have gotten together to translate a selection of his poetry from 858 to 941. The languages that were chosen were, English, Russian and also incorporating the Cyrillic alphabet into the translations. This has been good news in Tajik-Iranian relations considering there has been plenty of animosity towards each other in the past few years. There was even speculations that modern relations between the two countries would be cut with no chance of reconciliation. There was even loud speculations within the Tajik government that Rakhmonov would not receive the yearly invite from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was announced yesterday that the invite was given along with President Karzai, the three will celebrate Nowruz in Iran.

Some of the actions initiated from the Tajik side were putting up red lights in international circles, especially the Tajik's government call for all Tajik student to abandon their education in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries to come back to Tajikistan. The main underlying reason for this was Rakhmonov's anti-terrorism strategy. The country has been going through many reforms to try to phase out any chance for terrorist-like activity. The problem here is that the government is very subjective in their interpretation of what is terrorist-like and not what the international community would approve. By pulling out the students from Iran the Tajik government made a firm stance against extremist actions and views, inciting speculation that Tajikistan regards Iran as a extremist country. Many other Central Asian countries have been instantiating similar programs, mainly to avoid what their counterpart republics have been going through, i.e. Chechnya.

Also in recent news Kazakhstan has started construction on a solar panel plant. The city of Astana will be the new home of Kazatomprom Solar Panel Plant. The project will cost 33 to 34 billion tenge (233 million US dollars). The company has projected a 50 MW worth of solar cell panels on a yearly basis, and a future expansion to 100 MW. Kazatomprom is Kazakhstan's national operator for exports of uranium and its compounds, rare metals, nuclear power plant fuel, special equipment, and dual-use materials.