DEC. 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a populist show of tenderness towards ordinary Kazakhs, President Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered the state pension to be increased by 20% next year. His apparent show of magnanimity coincided with the country’s 25th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union. Pensions are paid in tenge, which has lost half its value since 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)
DEC. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Security forces in Turkmenistan have detained dozens of people with alleged links to Turkey’s Gulen movement, Eurasianet reported quoting relatives. Turkey, one of Turkmenistan’s biggest foreign allies, accuses followers of the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen of a failed coup in July. It has asked its allies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus to persecute Gulenists.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)
DEC. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s Central Bank said that Tojiksodirotbank (TSB), the country’s troubled second-largest lender, has completed its temporary administration period and will now resume banking activities.
The Central Bank intervened in TSB in May, saving the bank from bankruptcy. It cut staff numbers and injected 2b somoni ($254m) into the bank, becoming an 80% shareholder. Sources cited by the Avesta news agency also said the government had injected 1.2b somoni ($152m) into Agroinvestbank and hundreds of millions of somoni into Fononbank and Tochprombank to save them from going bankrupt too.
These banks had suffered a liquidity shortage triggered by a fall in the value of the somoni and a steep rise in bad loans. Savers and government employees, who received salaries through banks were unable to access their funds.
Now, TSB said it will soon resume regular banking activity.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)f
DEC. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s GDP was 3.9% lower in the nine months to the end of October this year compared to the same period in 2015, the country’s statistics committee reported, confirming the country’s sharp economic downturn. A collapse in oil prices and a recession in Russia have dragged down Azerbaijan’s oil dependent economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)
DEC. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — AZAL, Azerbaijan’s flagship carrier, said it will establish a subsidiary to operate low-cost flights. The new company, BUTA Airways, will take over from the Azaljet brand used this year for AZAL’s low-cost flights. Azalet had not been a separate company. AZAL will own 100% of BUTA, which will start operations in late 2017.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)
DEC. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Parliament voted to renew a textile deal with Uzbekistan after dropping the agreement five years ago because of concerns over child labour, drawing anger from human rights groups who said that modern day slavery was being excused.
Under the EU-Uzbekistan trade deal, originally agreed in 1999 but suspended in 2011, tariffs on Uzbek cotton will be dropped. It is a major boost for Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev who appears to want to improve the country’s image after the death in September of Islam Karimov.
The vote was passed by 564 in favour versus 100 against the motion, with 41 abstentions.
Commenting on the vote, MEP Maria Arena, said: “This consent is the result of the progress and commitments made by Uzbekistan in the fight against forced and child labour. But as adult forced labour remains a strong concern, we will follow the situation closely and if there are serious human rights violations or any regress on these issues, MEPs will not hesitate to ask the Council and the Commission to suspend the entire partnership agreement.”
Last month the European Parliament’s influential International Trade Committee had voted to recommend that a deal was approved.
Uzbekistan has appeared to respond to pressure to clean up its employment issues. This year the UN’s International Labour Organisation monitored the harvest in Uzbekistan and said that while doctors and teachers were forced to work in the cotton fields, there were far few children working.
Cotton is a major cash earner for Uzbekistan. It is the fifth largest cotton producer in the world.
Human rights group, though, were less than impressed. “Adopting this Protocol now sends the wrong message to Tashkent,” Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, said. “Do members want to be seen by Uzbekistan’s millions of victims of forced labour as the parliament that turned a blind eye to their suffering?”
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)
DEC. 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The family of Rakhat Aliyev, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev’s former son-in-law who was found dead in an Austrian prison cell in February 2015, called for an investigation into his death to be reopened. At a press conference the family presented a German expert who said that he thought Aliyev had been murdered. An Austrian investigation ruled that Aliyev had killed himself. Aliyev had been married to Dariga Nazarbayeva, Pres. Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter. He had fallen out with his father-in-law in 2007.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)
DEC. 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The EU and human rights groups criticised Azerbaijan for sentencing to 10 years two anti-government activists who said they were tortured by police. The day before, a court had sentenced Bayram Mammadov and Giyas Ibrahimov on drug related charges. They were detained earlier this year for graffiting anti-government slogans on a statue of former Azerbaijani leader Heydar Aliyev. The drug-related charges were added later and their supporters say they have been made up to increase prison sentences.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)f
DEC. 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — US President-elect Donald Trump’s business cancelled a licensing deal it had made in Azerbaijan, media reported. Mr Trump had been criticised during the US presidential campaign for making a deal to lend his name to a hotel development project in Baku linked to senior members of the Azerbaijani elite who had previously been accused of money laundering.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)f
DEC. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Georgian Dream coalition government in Georgia stands on the brink of a great victory. It may have been former President Mikheil Saakashvili who set the ball rolling for more integration with the EU for Georgia but he has been vanquished by the Georgian Dream. To the victor the spoils.
Now — once the mechanism to kick out any countries whose citizens abuse the system has been approved, and this EU sources say is a mere formality — Georgians holding biometric passports will be able to enter the 26-country Schengen area for up to 90 days.
By early next year Georgians will be able to avoid the tiring, often boring and sometimes humiliating visa process. Instead they’ll be able to confidently stroll up to immigration queues handover their passport, flash a smile and then skip over into the EU.
And good for them.
This hasn’t been an easy or even straight forward process. There have been plenty of times when the EU could have pulled the process. Instead both the EU and Georgia have stuck to the script. Just. The big wobble was created by the Syria refugee crisis. Suddenly, once the impact of hundreds of thousands of hungry and impoverished refugees had been absorbed by Europe, and Germany in particular, the EU was less keen to allow visa-free access to Georgia, and also to Ukraine as it happens.
Of course though, the perceived threat of Georgian people flows was overblown. There are only 4m people in Georgia and they are not all involved in organised crime, as the German government seemed to imply at one point. The vast majority also don’t want to migrate to Europe. They just want to be treated as equals.
Perhaps, though, geopolitical forces also propelled the process along again. With Russia seemingly dominant in eastern Ukraine and in the Middle East, the EU may have wanted to remind the Kremlin that soft power and the slow pull of European values can be influential. By agreeing to grant Georgia, and Ukraine, visa-free access to the Schengen area, the EU is making itself relevant.
Make no mistake, Georgia’s westward European trajectory is as geopolitically charged as it ever was.
By Giulia Bernardi, The Conway Bulletin’s Tbilisi correspondent
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)