APRIL 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Security forces in Tajikistan said they had prevented a terrorist attack on TALCO, the aluminium smelter that forms the backbone of Tajikistan’s economy, media reported. According to a Tajik government spokesman, criminals had planned to detonate bombs at the plant.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Perhaps with the turmoil in Ukraine in mind, Kazakh security forces held nationwide drills to test their readiness to quash protests. Kazakh officials are particularly nervous that Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine last month may encourage other regions with large Russian minorities to try to secede.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Controlled by the state and with Ukraine’s revolution still fresh in the mind, media reported that mosques in Uzbekistan have been preaching about the joys of refraining from discontent and remaining humble.
Information leaking out of Uzbekistan points to a fairly crude attempt to control the masses through the mosques.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, funded by the US government, quoted one resident of the town of Andijan in the east of Uzbekistan who had listened to the Friday sermon at his local mosque.
“Complaining and criticising is testamount to betrayal,” the unnamed man quoted the imam as saying.
Unsurprisingly, Uzbekistan was opposed to the revolution in Ukraine, mainly because it didn’t want it to set a precedent.
Uzbekistan is also wary of religion. It blames radical Islamists for a series of attacks against government targets in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan named the speaker of the parliament, Hovik Abrahamyan, as the new PM.
Mr Abrahamyan’s brief is a tough one.
His predecessor quit abruptly at the start of the month the day after the Constitutional Court ruled that the government’s landmark pension reforms were illegal.
The reforms have been deeply unpopular, as are pension reforms throughout the world which try to make people work for longer and accept a smaller payout.
That mess, essential for sorting out Armenia’s damaged social security system, has to be sorted out.
There’s also the small matter of a vote of no confidence to deal with later this month. Armenia’s economy is stalling and its foreign policy at times feels adrift from its people — it has lurch towards Russia’s Customs Union at the expense of greater EU integration.
Mr Abrahamyan, a 56-year-old economist who has been speaker of parliament since 2008, is going to have to prove a tough operator in his new job.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — China’s state-owned Sinopec bought the Kazakhstan business unit of Russia’s Lukoil for $1.2b. The deal to buy 50% of Caspian Investment Resources ltd (CIR) underlines the shift in Kazakhstan’s energy sector away from Russia towards China. Sinopec already owned the other 50% of CIR.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Uzbek government has taken control of buildings in the centre of Tashkent previously owned by Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, media reported. The buildings are just the latest assets to be taken from Ms Karimova who is reportedly under house arrest.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said that he wanted to develop the energy reserves in Turkmenistan’s sector of the Caspian Sea. Under Mr Berdymukhamedov’s 7-year presidency Turkmenistan has propelled itself into becoming one of the biggest energy suppliers in the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom officially took over KyrgyzGaz, the previously state-owned gas company. Gazprom’s takeover of debt-straddled KyrgyzGaz — to be renamed Gazprom-Kyrgyzstan — gives the Kremlin increased leveraged over Bishkek.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Eager to boost oil production, Kazakhstan has said that it wants to increase output from its current projects to make up for the shortfall created by the longer-than- expected shutdown at Kashagan. Kashagan had been expected to turn Kazakhstan into a major energy superpower but instead is currently under repair.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh courts badly need to root out corruption, Kazakhstan’s Secretary of State Adilbek Dzhaksybekov said. His comments are a rare admission from a Kazakh government official that more needs to be done to reform corruption institutions.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)