APRIL 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s air force took part in what media said was its first ever night exercise. Azerbaijan has spent millions of dollars upgrading its military over the past few years. The night air exercise may be part of a bigger show of strength aimed at Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Former Georgian defence minister Irakli Alasania accused his successor, Mindia Janelidze, of ditching a deal to buy air-to-ground missiles from France, media reported. Mr Alasania, sacked last year, said scrapping the deal weakened Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Construction of the Turkmenbashi International Sea Port on the Caspian Sea has been ongoing since 2013 but the Turkmen authorities have only just officially appointed a controlling agent to check on progress of the project, according to press reports.
The Italian company Rina Services have now been made the official controllers of the project.
The Turkmenbashi International Sea Port is a crucial piece of infrastructure for Turkmenistan as it should open it up further to Europe.
Inaugurated in August 2013 by Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, then PM and now president, the new Turkmenbashi port is being built by the Turkish company Gap Insaat for $1.5b.
Rina Services will be awarded $10m to act as the controller, a key third-party role to check the progress and the execution of the project.
The company, based out of the port city of Genoa, has certified Dragon Oil’s pipelines in Turkmenistan and is also active in Kazakhstan, where it audits and supervises Kashagan’s D-Island.
Michele Francioni, CEO at Rina Services, told the Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore: “(Rina Services) has had a presence there [Turkmenistan] for some time with deeply rooted local organisations.”
According to the plan, construction should be completed by 2017 . The port should facilitate east-west trade.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Already two years in the works, the law on “foreign agents” might be ready for approval by the Kyrgyz parliament within the next couple of months, according to the latest public statements.
If approved by parliament, the bill would label as “foreign agents” all non-governmental organisations that receive foreign capital for their activities.
The law is similar to one brought in by Russia’s parliament a few years ago and has triggered an outcry from NGOs in Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan is also particularly dependent on NGOs.
In March, a parliamentary committee approved the draft law and sent it to parliament. The main proponent, Nurkamil Madaliyev, of the conservative Ar-Namys party justified his position stating that “many local non-profits are interfering in the political life of the country” and foreign funding is crucial to their activities.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The media lobby group the Committee to Protect Journalists accused Kyrgyzstan of having no regard for independent journalism after it deported US journalist Umar Farooq. Mr Farooq had been in Osh investigating ethnic clashes in 2010.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ukraine rejected Georgia’s request to extradite former president Mikheil Saakashvili, media reported. The government in Kiev, which is locked in a battle for control of eastern Ukraine with Russia, has appointed Mr Saakashvili as a special adviser. He is wanted in Georgia for alleged crimes.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will give car-makers 35b tenge ($188m) to help them survive the economic downturn, media reported quoting First Vice Minister for the Economy, Marat Kussainov. Kazakhstan’s car-makers have been hit hard by the sharp drop in the rouble because Russia was one of its biggest markets.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
APRIL 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – People in Kazakhstan, it appears, are still rushing to buy cheap Russian goods.
Official data showed that in February Kazakhs across the country bought 3.5 times more roubles than they did a year earlier.
In some areas, the rise was even bigger. In Mangistau, western Kazakhstan, the increase between February 2014 and February 2015 was nearly 19 times, Almaty the increase was 18 times and in Kyzylorda region of southern Kazakhstan the increase was nearly 35 times.
Russian goods have become far cheaper over the last few months because of the near 50% devaluation of the Russian rouble. Most Central Asian states have also devalued their own currencies but Kazakhstan has said that it will resist a sudden cut.
It knocked 20% off the value of its tenge currency last year and sees defending it as the best way to retain credibility.
Still, analysts have said that it is only a matter of time before Kazakhstan relents and cuts the tenge by up to 40%.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
BAKU, APRIL 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – – Gulnara Makhmedova, a 62-year old refugee from the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh stood in front of a crumbling Soviet apartment block tucked behind the whitewashed faculty of medicine at Baku State University.
Just a few hundred yards away luxury cars were parked up in front of haute couture shops and expensive restaurants.
Gulnara lives with five members of her family in a one-bedroom apartment. In her apartment block, electricity runs for only a few hours a day and the water that trickles out of the tap is brown.
“My family has been waiting for a new flat for over twenty years now,” she said.
Gulnara is one of around 600,000 internally displaced refugees from the conflict which pitted Azerbaijani forces against Armenian-backed separatists after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Only a fragile 1994 cease-fire now keeps Nagorno-Karabakh from falling back into war.
They live in a precarious state of destitution in Azerbaijan’s sprawling capital.
“We all hoped we could start a new life here, but we only found ourselves living in worse conditions than the ones we left behind,” she said, pointing at the disintegrating mould stained ceiling of her apartment.
“When we arrived in Baku back in 1993 we immediately understood we were not welcome here as we represented a living reminder of Azerbaijan’s defeat,” she told the Bulletin referring to the thousands of civilians who fled Agdam, her hometown after an Armenian defeat of Azerbaijan.
Analysts have said that there may be another reason why Gulnara and her family are made to live in broken Soviet apartment blocks. It may suit Azerbaijani president Ilham ALiyev and his government to be able to show domestic television and visiting dignitaries the human suffering that the smouldering Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has generated.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)
MARCH 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Air Baltic, based in Riga, and Uzbekistan Airways have announced a planned codeshare on a route to New York, media reported. The deal matches Uzbekistan Airway’s aspirations to increase its various service.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)