NOV. 7 (The Bulletin) — Irish budget airline Ryanair started flying to Georgia. The inaugural flight was from Marseille to Kutaisi, Georgia’s second city which has developed a reputation as a hub for budget airlines flying into Georgia. Ryanair will fly to Kutaisi from Marseille and Bologna twice a week. Tourism has boomed in Georgia this year, driving up the number of airlines flying to the country.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
NOV. 8 (The Bulletin) — Quoting environmental campaigners, Reuters reported that waste heap is in danger of collapsing into a river in southern Kyrgyzstan that feeds into the water supply system of millions of people living downstream in the Fergana Valley. Soviet uranium mining built up the slag heaps which have been neglected, said the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development which is raising cash for a project to reinforce the slag dumps
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
TBILISI/Nov. 8 (The Bulletin) — Right-wing nationalists in Georgia clashed with police outside a cinema in Tbilisi that was screening a film about a homosexual love affair.
At least one person was injured when protesters threw rocks at people queuing to watch the film at the Amirani cinema in central Tbilisi. Police dressed in riot gear arrested at least 20 people.
Eyewitnesses said that hundreds of anti-gay rights demonstrators blocked the road leading to the cinema.
“Long live Georgia!” and “Shame!” they shouted. Some demonstrators burnt a rainbow flag, a symbol of gay pride. Many were holding crosses. The Orthodox Church, a powerful institution in Georgia, has denounced the film.
The Swedish-Georgian film ‘And then we danced’ documents a love affair between two male ballet dancers in Georgia’s national ballet. The film shows the difficulties of conducting a gay relationship in Georgia where conservative values are rooted into society.
Far-right supporters in Georgia have attacked Gay Pride events in Georgia previously and also targeted foreigners. Although the government and most of the population wants to join the EU, Georgia also has a reputation for sustaining a society which is suspicious of reform.
Critics of the ruling Georgian Dream government have accused it of not doing enough to clamp down in homophobic sentiment in Georgian society. It has previously been supported by the Georgian Orthodox Church and also by nationalist parties.
On his Facebook page, the film’s director, Levan Akin, wrote that these were “dark times”. “Some far right groups and the Church have basically condemned the film and are planning to stop people from entering the sold out screenings,” he wrote.
‘And then we danced’ was released in Europe May and has won numerous awards.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
Shares in Bank of Georgia surged 11% after it reported “outstanding” Q3 results. They are now trading at around the price they were being sold for a the end of August but still significantly below the heights reached in mid-May.
Banking stock in Georgia is sensitive to the country’s economy performance and, although the Georgian economy has grown markedly this year, analysts are concerned that inflation is catching up and will undermine it.
In its Q3 report, Bank of Georgia said, importantly, that it had reduced its exposure to high risk loans and that it was now better positioned to deal with vagaries thrown up by the Georgian economy.
TBC Bank, Bank of Georgia’s local rival, also saw its stock rise by 3.6%.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin
— The Tajik government blamed IS for an attack near Dushanbe on Nov. 6 and two days later the extremist group took responsibility but there are still plenty of questions, writes James Kilner
A few hours after an attack on a military checkpoint around 60km west of Dushanbe, there were notably more armed police on the streets of the Tajik capital. Earlier a roads that runs through opulent gardens outside the Presidential Palace had been eerily quiet. There were also fire-engines, military and civilian, parked down side streets. They hadn’t been there the day before.
Surely the extra armed police, the fire-engines and the empty street leading past the Presidential Palace were linked to the attack, blamed on the extremist group IS, that had killed 17 people that morning.
Not necessarily, I was told.
The attack happened on the 25th anniversary of the adoption of Tajikistan’s constitution, one of those anniversaries that former Soviet states like to celebrate, and according to people walking along Rudaki, the main street in Dushanbe, the extra security would have been in place regardless of the alleged attack.
It all seemed rather odd. An alledged IS attack had occurred hours earlier, only an hour’s drive from central Dushanbe and this was the sum total of the extra security precautions?
Details of the attack were also emerging that three fresh questions on its veracity. Of the 17 people killed, 15 were apparently IS fighters. How did a heavily-armed and highly motivated IS unit with the element of surprise apparently lose a firefight so conclusively? Fifteen dead attackers compared to two dead government soldiers.
The government also released a handful of grim photos from what it said was the shoot-out location. Some of the dead bodies shown on the photos had had their hands tied behind their back. Does this mean that Tajik forces had actually captured several of the attackers and then killed them? Was the attack in some way staged?
Previously, the Tajik government has been too eager to press its claims that IS is a major threat to its stability. This line, the government appears to reason, will generate financial support from donors. And the timing for the Nov. 6 attack appears to have been good for the Tajik government as Pres. Emomali Rakhmon was not in the country. Instead, he was glad-handing EU leaders in Europe.
Although IS claimed responsibility, the attack doesn’t really carry its hallmarks. For many, the questions of who and why the attack happened are still out there.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
NOV. 6 (The Bulletin) — The authorities in Belarus refused an extradition request made by the Tajik government for opposition activist Farhod Odinaev because of potential torture concerns. The Belarussian authorities had arrested Mr Odinaev in September as he travelled from Russia to Poland for a conference. Mr Odinaev had been a member of the now-banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin
NOV. 9 (The Bulletin) — Highlighting the ascendancy of Serdar Berdymukhamedov, his father, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov awarded him a prestigious award for work, state-owned media reported. Serdar Berdymukhamedov is governor of the Ahal region and is thought-of as a potential successor for his father.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin
The biggest mover this week was the Georgian lari which fell by half a percentage point to 2.9591/$1, its lowest rate against the US dollar for at least five years.
Analysts said that the drop in lari value was linked to concern about rising inflation that has undermined strong economic growth this year.
Economists also expect the region’s other big currency, the Kazakh tenge, to fall. In a Reuters poll of seven analysts, four said that the tenge would fall further this year. All seven said that it would be trading at a lower value in 12 months time than it does currently.
They said that a government budget gap between spending and income was a concern. Reuters reported that the government deficit was 813b tenge ($2.1b) on Oct. 1, triple the deficit of one year earlier. This has weighed on the performance of the tenge this year which has fallen from 380.96/$1 to nearly 389/$1.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.
NOV. 8 (The Bulletin) — Armenia’s Central Bank said that economic growth this year would hit around 7%, far exceeding initial expectations of 4.9%. It said that manufacturing output, construction and strong private consumption had all spurred the growth. The government of PM Nikol Pashinyan has been been talking up its economic policies since a revolution in 2018.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin
NURAFSHON/Tajikistan/Nov. 11 – According to the two elderly men standing outside the gates of the abandoned factory, this used to be a thriving town of 5,000 people. Now it is desolate, a memorial to the Soviet Union’s hubris.
Dilapidated ‘monogorods’, with their abandoned factories, were once a feature of the former Soviet Union. Over the past few years, though, they have become harder to find.
Through its planned economy the Soviet Union built thousands of towns and cities around single factories or mines. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 so did its industry and so did the ‘monogorods’. A reminder of a failed past, many of these ‘monogorods’ have now been spruced up. In Tajikistan, though, on the poor fringe of the former Soviet Union this isn’t the case.
In Nurafshon, a stray dog ambled across the deserted main street and a woman pushed a pram along the cracked pavement. In one shaded corner of the empty square, a group of old men huddled over a chess set.
The midday sun beat down on this treeless mountain plateau near Tajikistan’s border with Uzbekistan. It sparkled, mischievously, off the sign of the long-closed cafe, preserved, almost perfectly, by the dry air.
“All the young men have left,” one of the elderly men said. “They need to find work and there hasn’t been any here since 1992 when the factory closed.”
This factory in Nurafshon used to produce strip lighting, and on an industrial scale. Why this factory here, though, in this remote corner of Moscow’s former hegemony?
The question was greeted with a shrug.
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— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin.