Bags full of cash, armored cars, and an overbearing defense secretary: The former U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan recalls the frenetic days after 9/11, when Washington suddenly discovered the country.
The Silk Road Economic Belt the overland component of Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) promises to bind China to Central Asia and beyond through a new infrastructural network. Connecting through China’s far western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, the belt, alongside a network of pipelines and highways constructed since the early 2000s, is part of a