Central Asia and the Scourge of Loans
(Translated)
Al-Rayah Newspaper - Issue 587 - 18/02/2026
By: Ustaadh Ahmad Hadi

Central Asia was historically a single region and state, with exceptionally fertile lands and a unified people adhering to Sunni Islam and the Hanafi school of thought. This region was rich and prosperous, boasting a high level of civilization and culture, and its people enjoyed well-being and prosperity.

This region was a wealthy and flourishing territory, distinguished by a high level of civilization and culture, with its peoples enjoying prosperity and affluence.

The entire world regarded Central Asia as a single, integrated state and a unified, resource-rich region. When the Russians overran it, they continued their occupation and military expansion until they succeeded in fully subjugating and controlling it. After consolidating total control over it, they artificially divided it into five separate entities in order to facilitate its administration and domination.

Russia transformed Central Asia into its resource-rich backyard, turning each of its states into a separate colony, incapable of autonomous development or establishing independent industries of its own. It reduced the peoples of the region to mere labor forces tasked with supplying it with agricultural products and raw materials. Uzbekistan was designated for cotton cultivation, Kazakhstan for wheat cultivation, Kyrgyzstan for livestock breeding, Tajikistan for fruit and vegetable production, and Turkmenistan for cattle breeding. Russia also plundered all of Central Asia’s mineral wealth, extracting it as raw materials to be processed in its own factories, leaving the region’s peoples with no genuine share in industrialization or value-added production.

Even after 1991, despite Central Asia’s formal independence from Russia, Moscow continues to view it as a raw-materials base and its own backyard.

Following the independence of the Central Asian states, the forcibly imposed communist system, along with its political ideology and economic model, collapsed entirely, leading to the disintegration of everything and the derailment of normal conditions. As a result, tens of millions were compelled to leave their homelands in search of employment and livelihood, becoming migrant workers in Russia, Turkey, South Korea, and other countries.

Confronted with the comprehensive breakdown that afflicted the region, and turned its states into exhausted, impoverished entities, their leaders resorted to a policy of begging, seeking loans from Western countries, Russia, the United States, and China.

The Western countries and the United States began providing loans under extremely harsh conditions and after long, humiliating waiting periods, with one of the most prominent conditions being the allocation of these funds to non-productive sectors, that generate no real economic return, such as road construction or water-supply projects.

To ensure compliance with these conditions, those countries dispatched their experts and monitors to track disbursement, and exercise direct oversight. In reality, only about thirty percent of those loans were actually spent, while the leaders of these states were instructed in how to establish offshore companies abroad, and in methods of embezzlement and fund diversion.

Thus, the burden of unpayable debt was placed squarely on the shoulders of the peoples, while foreign debt ballooned day by day; rulers mortgaged natural and mineral resources to secure fresh loans, only to flee to foreign countries when repayment came due, leaving their land drowning in debt and crises.

Western countries operate according to the principle of “take, then demand more and ensure compliance with conditions,” disbursing loans with shrewdness and precise calculations, using them as an instrument to impose their political and economic influence, and expand their sphere of control. At the same time, they seek to diminish Russian influence in the region through the mechanism of conditional lending, and financial-economic dependencies, that render debtor states subservient to their will and bound by their conditions and policies.

In contrast to the Western countries, China does not impose the same volume of political and procedural conditions when extending loans, nor does it dispatch monitors or experts to oversee expenditure. It fully understands that those lands’ leaders will plunder these loans and will not direct them toward establishing factories or productive projects. China knows in advance that the states will be unable to repay on schedule. China provides loans with great ease and speed, yet when repayment deadlines arrive, it accepts neither deferment nor leniency, instead applying intense and resolute pressure. If a state defaults, China seizes territory, takes control of mines and natural resources, and converts them into its outright property as compensation for the unpaid debts.

Owing to the ease of obtaining Chinese loans without oversight or clear conditions, the states’ leaders began competing among themselves to borrow from Beijing, placing their lands, peoples, and futures on the gambling table. By 2025, China had become the largest provider of loans to Central Asia.

China not only provides loans, but also sends its teams, experts, and workers to the region. Matters reached the point where Uzbekistan confiscated agricultural land from its own farmers, and handed it over to Chinese agricultural workers.

At present, tens of thousands of Chinese have poured into Kyrgyzstan, settling in mining operations, road projects, and housing developments. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have also established visa-free direct-entry arrangements, facilitating the flow of Chinese people and economic activity. Today, the scene is that the Chinese are expanding everywhere, in every sector, and in all Central Asian countries, until their presence is evident in every step and every field.

Central Asia’s foreign debt according to 2025–2026 estimates: Kazakhstan $172 billion, Uzbekistan $77 billion, Kyrgyzstan $12 billion, Tajikistan $7 billion, Turkmenistan approximately $5 billion; yielding a rough total of $273 billion.

It is noteworthy that debt in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is growing rapidly. While Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have less debt, its ratio to GDP is large. The countries that provide loans to Central Asia view it as a single, integrated region and a comprehensive economic opportunity, not as separate lands or disparate entities. They extend loans to all the states simultaneously, without exception, capitalizing on the region’s integrated economic reality to broaden their political and economic influence on a wider scale.

O Muslims of Central Asia, your land is one and your state is one, so unify and do not divide among yourselves. Your soil is rich in gold, your lands are fertile, and your natural treasures are sufficient to make hundreds of countries prosperous and wealthy. You have no need of foreign debt. Instead, all the major powers are in need of you. Through weak rulers, their local agents, the major powers seek to impose democracy on their own terms, compel you to accept their version of human rights, divert your resources into sectors that bring no real benefit, and offer trifling loans in order to render you humiliated and severed from your Deen. Do not believe them, and do not deceive yourselves. Your strength and your Islam lie in restoring a rightly-guided leader who implements the Shariah rulings of Islam in its true state, and protects your land, your Deen, and your future.