DEC. 29 2020 (The Bulletin) — The British Army is studying Azerbaijan’s victory in a war with Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh last year as a template for future conflicts, the Guardian newspaper reported. It said that the British Army was impressed with Azerbaijan’s use of Turkish drones.
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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021
DEC. 28 2020 (The Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s army blamed an Armenian group for attacking one of its units and killing a soldier in Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian officials said there had been sporadic fighting in the region but denied that its forces had attacked Azerbaijani forces. Azerbaijan took control of most of Nagorno-Karabakh after a Russia-imposed peace deal ended a war last year.
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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021
DEC. 27 2020 (The Bulletin) — In a move heavily infused with symbolism, state-owned International Bank of Azerbaijan opened its first cash machine in Shusha, the largest town taken by Azerbaijani forces from Armenia during a six-week war for control of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh that ended in November. Azerbaijani business has rushed to follow soldiers and open up operations in the region.
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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021
ALMATY/DEC. 23 2020 (The Bulletin) — The Caspian Sea, which provides a livelihood for thousands of people and acts as a fulcrum for international transit routes through the Central Asia and South Caucasus region, is shrinking, new scientific research showed (Dec. 23).
The report produced by universities in Germany and the Netherlands said that the Caspian Sea could lose up to a third of its water by 2100, with water level dropping by 18m, marooning previously important ports hundreds of kilometres inland.
The report’s authors said they wanted to use the threat to the Caspian Sea to highlight the dangers of global warming to inland seas and lakes.
“A massive warning signal is the projected catastrophic drop in water levels for the Caspian Sea, the largest lake in the world, which could hit stakeholders unprepared,” the report said.
Previous studies have warned that the Caspian Sea has been shrinking since the 1990s but not this quickly.
Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan border the Caspian Sea, which lies at the centre of a series of transport corridors that ultimately connect East Asia with Europe.
The Caspian Sea also hosts the region’s oil and gas industry and is a wildlife reserve, supporting seals, and migratory birds. The report showed how vast areas of the northern section of the Caspian Sea could dry up, with Atyrau in Kazakhstan effectively being stranded hundreds of kilometres from the shore.
Central Asia’s reputation for ecological disasters is already secure with the shrinking of the Aral Sea, which is shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. It shrank in the 1960s and 1970s to half its original size because of Soviet schemes to siphon off its tributaries to irrigate cotton fields.
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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021
JULY 31 (The Bulletin) — If there was doubt about the direction of travel for media and human rights in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the past fortnight has dispelled it.
First Tajikistan and Azerbaijan teamed up to block a second term for two highly thought-of senior officials at the Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Solrun Gisladottir, as head of its vote monitoring unit ODHIR, and Harlem Desir, the OSCE’s media representative. All 57 members of the OSCE have to agree on each of the key appointments and Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, with some support from Turkey, said that Desir and Gisladottir had been biased against them.
In truth, Desir and Gisladottir had just been clear on calling out Tajikistan and Azerbaijan for what they are. Serial abuses of democratic principles, media freedom and civil rights.
And then there is also the death in a Kyrgyz prison of Azimzhan Askarov. He was an ethnic Uzbek whose mistake was to irritate the Kyrgyz authorities in the south of the country in the years before inter-ethnic fighting broke out in 2010. The police in Kyrgyzstan are dominated by ethnic Kyrgyz and Askarov accused them of bias against Uzbeks, torture and abuse.
He was arrested in the aftermath of the fighting in 2010 and accused of murdering a policeman. Human rights groups and Western diplomats said that the charges were fabricated but their protests were ignored and Askarov was imprisoned for life.
Even when it was clear that Askarov was gravely ill, the authorities in Kyrgyzstan refused to grant him any clemency. Human Rights Watch accused the Kyrgyz authorities of wanting Askarov to die in prison.
So, there we have it. Tajikistan and Azerbaijan undermine one of the more effective on-the-ground peace-making organisations and Kyrgyzstan targets an annoying Uzbek human rights activist to die in one of its prisons.
Myopic, narcissistic and nihilist, their true colours have been visible for all to see over the past fortnight.
The region is less stable without an effective OSCE and less equitable without Askarov.
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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020
JULY 30 (The Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank cut its core interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 6.75%, its lowest rate for more than four years, to try to stimulate lending and its economy. Like the rest of the region, analysts have said that the coronavirus pandemic may tip Azerbaijan’s economy into a recession, although it is protected by cash earned from oil and gas sales.
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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020
JULY 30 (The Bulletin) — Turkey sent soldiers to Azerbaijan for a high-profile joint military exercise with the Azerbaijani military. The military exercise was deliberately high-profile as Turkey wanted to send a message to Armenia that it was supporting Azerbaijan, one of its closest allies, in the neighbours’ dispute over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Earlier in July at least 15 soldiers were killed when fighting broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the worst in four years.
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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020
JULY 28 (The Bulletin) — The authorities in Azerbaijan sent opposition leader Mammad Ibrahim to pretrial detention ahead of his trial for organising an illegal rally. Police detained Mr Ibrahim and around 30 other opposition activists linked to the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party at a protest on July 14/15 that called for intensified military action against Armenia around the disputed region Nagorno-Karabakh. Opposition groups have accused the government of using the protests and anti-coronavirus lockdowns to target opposition activists.
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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020
JULY 27 (The Bulletin) — Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, said that extra gas sales from the Caspian Sea project Shah Deniz 2 will push up Azerbaijan’s GDP over the next few years, countering the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. It predicted GDP growth of 3.7% in 2021-23. Oil and gas sales generate 40% of Azerbaijan’s GDP.
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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020
JULY 24 (The Bulletin) — Russian President Vladimir Putin described fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh earlier in July that killed at least 15 soldiers as “very sensitive”. Analysts had been looking for official reaction from Mr Putin on the fighting, the worst for four years. They have said that he was likely to have applied pressure to both sides to stop the fighting escalating.
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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020