Category Archives: Uncategorised

Tajik opposition leader freed

SEPT. 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Tajik court freed a high-ranking member of the Islamic Renaissance Party as part of a mass amnesty. Zurafo Rakhmoni was the only high-ranking woman arrested last year after an alleged attempted coup. She was serving a two-year sentence. More than 12,000 prisoners were freed in the amnesty. Ms Rakhmoni was the only one to be freed among jailed IRPT leaders.

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(News report from Issue No. 295, published on Sept. 9 2016)

Kazakh court starts Tuleshov’s trial

SEPT. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The military court in Astana started the trial of Kazakh businessmanTokhtar Tuleshov, arrested in January on charges of plotting to overthrow the government. Tuleshov, who owns a beer factory in the southern city of Shymkent, was said to be behind the protests against the land reform in Kazakhstan, which mushroomed in several Kazakh cities in the spring.

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(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)

Uzbeks worry about the future

BISHKEK, AUG. 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human rights activists and Western analysts have lauded the death of Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s only post-Soviet leader and a man they detest for his cruel human rights abuses, but many ordinary Uzbeks are more worried about the potential instability that could follow.

A Conway Bulletin correspondent in Bishkek spoke to people in Uzbekistan who all said that Karimov’s death this week from a stroke was a worrying moment for the country.

Murodjan, a 26-year-old businessman who lives in the southern Uzbek city of Gulistan, said Karimov had done a lot for Uzbekistan.

“Any young politician who comes after him will struggle to maintain stability,” he told the Bulletin.

During his 25-year reign, Mr Karimov often talked up the dangers posed by Islamic radicals. His opponents said that he played the security card too strongly and that it was simply an excuse to crackdown on dissidents. They said that massive human rights abuses showed what a tyrant he was.

And yet the West appreciated the stability Mr Karimov was able to impose, using Uzbekistan as a key transit route for sending military kit into and out of neighbouring Afghanistan during NATO’s war against the Taliban.

Abror, 24, who lives in Tahskent, told the Bulletin before confirmation of Karimov’s death that he hoped the news was wrong.

“The authorities informed us that his health state is stable, I really hope this is the case,” he said.

He will be disappointed.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Uzbek President Karimov dies

SEPT. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan declared that President Islam Karimov, its first and only leader since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, had died.

Throughout Friday speculation had been mounting that Karimov, who was 78, had died after a stroke six days earlier but it took until around 10pm local time for Uzbekistan’s government to confirmed it.

“On September 2 2016 after a long illness, President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov, an outstanding statesman and politician, died,” the Interfax news agency quoted from an official statement.

A news reader on an Uzbek government station later said that the funeral would be held on Saturday Sept. 3 and that there would be three days of official mourning.

Karimov was reviled by human rights activists for his abuses and cruelty but Western governments, and many Uzbeks, appreciated the stability that he imposed, although often through repressive police operations, on Central Asia’s most populous country.

After independence in 1991, Karimov steadily increased the state’s control over the country, forfeiting its natural place as Central Asia’s economic and cultural hub to neighbouring Almaty in Kazakhstan by closing off its people and its economy.

Karimov brooked no dissent. Dissidents and opposition were imprisoned and beaten. In 2005 Uzbek soldiers shot dead an estimated 300 people protesting against the government in the eastern town of Andijan.

The question now for Uzbekistan is who takes over. Karimov didn’t, publicly at least, lay out a succession plan and his eldest daughter, Gulnara Karimova, who had been considered his natural successor has been under house arrest since 2014.

Media reported that PM Shavkat Mirziyoev had been appointed to head Karimov’s funeral committee. Some analysts said that this indicated that he was headed for the top job.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Samsung cancels Kazakh power plant deal

ALMATY, SEPT. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — South Korea’s Samsung pulled out of a $2.5b deal with Kazakhstan to build a coal-fired power plant on the shores of Lake Balkhash in the south of the country because of the low oil prices.

A collapse in oil prices since 2014 has hit Kazakhstan’s finances hard, forcing the government to cancel projects. Although there has been no response from the Kazakh government, the inference from Samsung’s statement is that it was worried that Kazakhstan would not be able to buy as much electricity as they had agreed.

“Samsung C&T exercised the put option regarding all of its Balkhash thermal power plant shares, 50% plus one share,” the company said in a statement. “[This] is a demand for Samruk Energy to acquire all the shares within 60 days from the date of notice for $192.5m.”

Samsung stopped construction work on the power plant 12 months ago after a disagreement with the Kazakh government over the agreed price it would pay for buying electricity from the plant, the first indicator that the deal may be running into serious trouble.

For Kazakhstan, Samsung’s decision to cancel the contract is a blow for two reasons — it is damaging for Kazakhstan’s reputation as a place to do business and also places further pressure on its current Soviet-era energy production system. Demand for electricity has been booming because of rising population and living standards. The Balkhash power plant had been considered essential for maintaining Kazakhstan’s power production.

In January, another South Korean company, LG Chem, dropped its plans to build a $4.2b petrochemical complex in Kazakhstan due to sustained low oil prices.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Kazakh president to visit Japan

AUG. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will visit Japan in November, foreign minister Yerlan Idrissov told Interfax after meeting a Japanese parliamentary delegation in Astana. The Japanese and Kazakh sides also discussed joint industrial projects for the next two years. Mr Nazarbayev has been eager to woo potential foreign investors, especially during this economic downturn.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Comment: Uzbekistan’s quiet handover of power

SEPT. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After years of jostling, the real battle for power in a post-Karimov Uzbekistan has started.

President Islam Karimov, who has ruled since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has died after suffering a stroke. Officially this means that the Speaker of the Senate, Nigmatulla Yuldashev, will take over for three months. Long-term, though, the picture is more complicated.

Uzbekistan has been in the throes of a proxy war over succession for two years, ever since Karimov’s eldest daughter Gulnara Karimova was placed under house arrest and her closest associates imprisoned for financial crimes. She had been seen as Karimov’s natural, if unpopular, heir-apparent.

Her fall from grace left PM Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Rustam Azimov, the finance minister, as the front runners for the top job.

The orchestrator-in-chief, it was assumed, was Rustam Inoyatov, the Uzbek secret police chief, who popped up in a rare photo during a visit to China in 2014. Reports from Uzbekistan, a notoriously repressive and reclusive regime, have suggested that he has been keeping a lid as best as possible on warring factions within the elite.

Certainly, Karimov appears to have played a reduced role in organising his succession since 2014. It is doubtful he ever wanted to place Gulnara, the daughter he doted over, under house arrest.

Gulnara’s sister, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, has been the most vocal senior Uzbek over Karimov’s illness but she has little support and lives in Europe and has previously shown no interest in power.

So, it’s likely the Uzbek regime will agree on an insider to take over from Karimov, either one of the front-runners or – and perhaps this is more likely – an obscure bureaucrat who comes with neither a power base nor an agenda. A compromise figure acceptable to Uzbekistan’s power-groups.

This method has been tried and tested with relative success in Central Asia previously with the handover of power to Kurbangbuly Berdymukhamedov, an obscure former dentist, in Turkmenistan when Saparmurat Niyazov died suddenly in 2006. Berdymukhamedov has opened up Turkmenistan’s economy and made it a major source of gas to China. He has also built up a fairly serious personality cult.

Uzbekistan is a more complicated country than Turkmenistan but the power brokers inside the Uzbek government trying to work out their post-Karimov game plan do have a Turkmen blueprint to work from.

They may well choose to follow it.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Kazmunaigas to stop takeover efforts on KMG EP

AUG. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After a failed takeover offer, Kazmunaigas will not make a new offer for its London-traded subsidiary KMG EP, Sauat Mynbayev, managing director of Kazmunaigas said. Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company owns 63% of KMG EP, its exploration and production subsidiary. In July, Kazmunaigas had offered $9/GDR to KMG EP minority shareholders, but minority shareholders rejected the offer, dealing a blow to the Kazakh energy company’s prestige.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Azerbaijan halts currency trades

SEPT. 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Banks in Azerbaijan’s capital have stopped selling foreign currency as demand soared after the Azerbaijani manat started to depreciate, triggering memories of the currency’s double devaluation last year.

The news will be disappointing to Central Banks across the Central Asia and South Caucasus region who had hoped to have moved away from the currency crises of 2014 and 2015.

According to sources in Baku, the manat traded at 1.68/$1, 5% lower than last month. They said that many Azerbaijanis now fear that another crisis is around the corner and have tried to hoard foreign currency. Bloomberg reported that 15 banks in Baku and the city’s international airport had stopped selling US dollars, a sign that demand had surpassed availability.

Azerbaijan’s economy is particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of oil prices, which have collapsed since 2014, and it is set to shrink this year for the first time since the mid-1990s.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Kyrgyz president snubs predecessor

AUG. 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Former Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva walked out of a speech being delivered by the current President Almazbek Atambayev, her protege and successor, after he criticised her for approving a constitution which he has said is flawed. The rare public putdown of Ms Otunbayeva, who ruled as an interim president after a revolution in 2010 until 2011, was delivered at a ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union. Kyrgyzstan is to hold a referendum later this year on tweaks to the constitution which Mr Atambayev is said are essential.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)