标签： Asia

Nestled in the mountainous terrain of central Tajikistan, the communities strung along the proposed Obigarm-Nurobod transport corridor have long grappled with isolation. Limited connectivity cut residents off from regional markets, essential healthcare, and sustainable work opportunities — and women in these remote areas bore the brunt of this exclusion. Today, a major infrastructure project funded by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is rewriting this story, delivering far more than just paved roads and river crossings. Beyond improved mobility, the initiative is pioneering a new inclusive development model that empowers local women through skills training and economic independence, creating ripple effects that strengthen entire families and communities.

The Obigarm-Nurobod Road Project, a flagship infrastructure investment for central Tajikistan, centers on the construction of a critical long-span bridge and connecting road segments designed to boost regional connectivity and withstand extreme weather events. But project partners — including the AIIB and the China International Development Cooperation Agency — made the unconventional choice to pair core infrastructure construction with a standalone community development program focused explicitly on advancing women’s economic participation. Local organizations like the Center for the Development of Crafts and Modern Professional Skills in Roghun, led by director Jurayeva Safiya, have stepped in to deliver these on-the-ground programs.

Jurayeva’s center, a purpose-built training hub with 12 fully equipped classrooms, offers short, accessible vocational courses in high-demand local trades ranging from tailoring and baking to traditional handicraft production and food processing. It complements these practical skills with foundational training in financial literacy and small business planning, designed to turn learners from passive aid recipients into self-sustaining entrepreneurs. For many participants, this model has already delivered life-changing results. Jurayeva points to the story of one single mother of four, who entered the program with no marketable skills and no independent income. After completing a 12-week sewing course, she launched her own home-based tailoring business, now running it alongside her daughters and earning a stable income that lets her support her family without outside assistance.

“This is not charity — this is a genuine turning point,” Jurayeva explained. “When we give a woman the opportunity to build her own skill and her own business, she doesn’t just change her own life. She changes the future of her children, and she transforms the entire home.” Children grow up watching their mothers make decisions, build businesses, and succeed, she says, creating a intergenerational cycle of empowerment that extends far beyond the original training program. “When we teach a woman a profession, we aren’t just supporting one individual — we are lifting up an entire community,” she added.

Already, early completed segments of the road project have delivered immediate tangible benefits for residents: travel times between mountain villages and regional district centers have dropped sharply, making daily commutes and emergency trips safer and more accessible. The improved corridor has also unlocked new access to regional markets that were previously too costly and time-consuming to reach, opening up new sales opportunities for local producers, many of whom are women. Looking ahead, the initiative plans to scale its women’s empowerment programming to expand its impact. Under the upcoming expansion, the entrepreneurship support program will train at least 340 women from communities along the road route, provide small grants and essential equipment for roughly 60 women-led microbusinesses, and open a new dedicated training center in Nurobod that includes on-site childcare to remove barriers for mothers looking to participate.

Development leaders say the project’s integrated model offers a replicable blueprint for global infrastructure investment. “When development partners align financing, concessional resources, technical assistance, and on-the-ground development expertise, infrastructure becomes more inclusive, more resilient, and far more impactful,” explained Hun Kim, chief partnerships officer and director general of the AIIB’s Sectors, Themes and Financial Solutions Department. Speaking at a sub-forum of the Third High-Level Conference of the Forum on Global Action for Shared Development this week, Kim noted that the initiative is not a one-off pilot, but a model that can be replicated and expanded in other developing regions with the right cross-sector partnerships.

Yao Shuai, deputy director of the Institute of International Development Cooperation at the China Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under China’s Ministry of Commerce, emphasized that centering women in development projects goes to the core of sustainable social progress. “When women shift from being passive recipients of development benefits to active participants in community governance and local development, the sustainability and social stability of an aid project are fundamentally enhanced,” Yao explained. The project, she added, reflects China’s long-standing approach to international development cooperation, which pairs large-scale landmark infrastructure projects with small, targeted “livelihood-focused” interventions through multilateral cooperation.

This “integration of large and small, hard and soft infrastructure” model addresses the region’s critical connectivity gaps while ensuring that the economic benefits of new infrastructure reach marginalized groups, particularly women. By embedding gender-focused programming and vocational training into the project from its earliest design stages, local communities are able to participate throughout the entire project cycle, strengthening local ownership of the initiative. “By enhancing women’s economic independence during infrastructure development, such approaches integrate gender equality into the process and help elevate women’s role in local governance and social development,” Yao noted, adding that the model helps build more inclusive, resilient social structures across developing countries.

Growing geopolitical friction has gripped the strategic Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy shipping chokepoints, after planned peace negotiations between the United States and Iran collapsed in Islamabad, Pakistan earlier this week. The breakdown of talks has triggered a sharp escalation of hostile rhetoric and military posturing, while a fragile extension of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has failed to ease broader regional volatility.

In a provocative social media announcement this week, former US President Donald Trump issued a direct order to the US Navy, instructing forces to immediately “shoot and kill” any Iranian small craft caught laying sea mines in the strait’s international waters. Trump emphasized there should be “no hesitation” in carrying out the order, adding that ongoing US minesweeping operations in the waterway would be tripled in intensity. The president also drew widespread condemnation after reposting a user-generated video that endorsed calls to kill Iranian leaders who refuse to accept a negotiated peace deal.

Iranian officials have roundly rejected the US threats, framing the rhetoric as blatant aggression against Iranian sovereignty. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei highlighted that Trump’s repost of the call to assassinate Iranian leadership marks an unprecedented violation of basic diplomatic norms. Top Iranian government figures, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, have pushed back against US claims of internal division among Iranian factions, issuing a unified public statement emphasizing national solidarity. “In Iran, there are no radicals or moderates; we are all ‘Iranian’ and ‘revolutionary’, and with the iron unity of the nation and government, with complete obedience to the Supreme Leader of the Revolution, we will make the aggressor criminal regret his actions,” the leaders posted on their social media accounts.

The recent escalation comes on the heels of the cancellation of high-stakes US-Iran peace talks scheduled for Wednesday in the Pakistani capital, just as an existing US-Iran ceasefire was set to expire. Trump ultimately extended the ceasefire deadline hours ahead of its expiration, avoiding an immediate full escalation. Despite the collapse of this week’s meeting, three anonymous Pakistani sources reported Friday that talks could resume imminently, with Araghchi expected to arrive in Islamabad Friday night. Two Pakistani government sources added that a US logistics and security delegation has already deployed to the city to prepare for new negotiations. Neither Washington nor Tehran has issued an official response to these reports as of press time.

Regional analysts warn that the tit-for-tat escalation at the Strait of Hormuz is a deliberate coercive strategy that carries severe risks. Nagapushpa Devendra, a West Asia analyst and research scholar at Germany’s University of Erfurt, told China Daily that Trump’s positioning is designed to force Iran back to the negotiating table through pressure, even as he publicly claims he faces no time pressure to end the conflict. Devendra noted that Iran has shown no willingness to concede, and instead is prepared to leverage its control over the strait to counter US pressure. The most likely outcome of this dynamic, she explained, is an extended protracted standoff, marked by increased vessel seizures, higher risk of accidental military clashes, and growing volatility for global energy and shipping markets. Diplomatically, she added, the escalation risks eroding US allied support in the region while drawing Israel deeper into an expanding regional crisis.

The United Nations has warned that the ongoing US-Iran conflict has already triggered devastating humanitarian consequences across the Middle East and beyond. Alexander De Croo, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, told Reuters that the conflict has already pushed more than 30 million people back into extreme poverty, with food insecurity projected to worsen sharply in the coming months. “Even if the war stopped tomorrow, those effects, you already have them, and they will be pushing back more than 30 million people into poverty,” De Croo said, also warning of secondary impacts including widespread energy shortages and a collapse of remittance flows that support millions of vulnerable households across the region.

In a further show of military buildup, US Central Command announced Thursday that a third American aircraft carrier strike group, led by the Nimitz-class USS George H.W. Bush, has arrived in the command’s area of responsibility, which covers all US military operations in the Middle East, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Parallel to the US-Iran escalation, the conflict between Israel and Lebanon has entered a new phase after the two sides agreed to extend their existing ceasefire for an additional three weeks during Thursday’s White House talks brokered by Trump. The extension comes one day after an Israeli airstrike across the border killed five people, including veteran Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, who worked for local newspaper Al-Akhbar. The strike marked the deadliest day in Lebanon since the original ceasefire took effect on April 16, Reuters reported.

Despite the ceasefire extension, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has rejected the terms of the truce, reserving its right to respond to any Israeli aggression during the 21-day period. Hezbollah MP Ali Fayad said that extending the ceasefire “makes no sense” in light of ongoing Israeli hostile acts, adding that the continuation of attacks gives “the resistance the right to respond at the appropriate time.” Mourners gathered in Lebanon Thursday to lay Khalil to rest, throwing flowers on her coffin as she was carried through funeral processions.

Xinhua News Agency and other international agencies contributed reporting to this article.

On a pre-dawn Saturday in northwestern Turkey, delegations and attendees from Australia, New Zealand, and host nation Turkey assembled along the historic shoreline of Gallipoli to honor the 111th anniversary of one of the First World War’s most consequential military campaigns. The memorial service kicked off at 5:30 a.m. local time, timed to match the exact moment 111 years prior when soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) first came ashore on this stony beach at dawn on April 25, 1915.

Stretching over an hour, the solemn gathering featured somber hymns, interfaith prayers, and wreath-laying rituals, with diplomatic representatives from dozens of nations across the globe joining the tribute to the fallen. The Gallipoli operation itself was a core component of a British-led Allied offensive designed to topple the Ottoman Empire during WWI. The campaign’s strategic goal was to seize control of the Dardanelles Strait, open a year-round supply and military route from the Mediterranean to Istanbul, and force the Ottoman Empire out of the war. After eight months of brutal, close-quarters combat, the offensive ended in total Allied defeat, leaving more than 100,000 young soldiers dead from both sides scattered across the peninsula’s battlefields.

Beyond its strategic impact on the First World War, the Gallipoli campaign left a lasting legacy that reshaped three nations: for Australia and New Zealand, the shared sacrifice of ANZAC soldiers became a foundational moment that forged their distinct modern national identities. For Turkey, the successful defense of Gallipoli launched the military career of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who would go on to lead the Turkish War of Independence and found the modern Turkish Republic. Most remarkably, the heavy mutual loss of life ultimately laid the groundwork for a lasting, respectful friendship between the three former adversaries.

In her opening address to the gathered crowd, New Zealand Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro highlighted this transformative legacy. “From great suffering, understanding can grow. From former enemies, friendships can blossom. The relationship between Turkey, Australia and New Zealand is built on remembrance, respect and recognition of our shared humanity,” Kiro said.

Following opening remarks, Turkish Colonel Fatih Cansiz recited a iconic tribute written by Ataturk in 1934, words that have been read at every major Gallipoli commemoration for nearly a century. “Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours,” Cansiz read, echoing Ataturk’s message of universal respect for all fallen soldiers regardless of which side they fought on.