OCT. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Uzbekistan sentenced five residents of the Tashkent region to between three and eight years in prison for drug trafficking. The court said that the group, which worked seasonally in Kyrgyzstan, repeatedly smuggled drugs into Uzbekistan. Police found around 10 kilos of opiates in their apartments.
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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)
MARCH 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Alleged drug smugglers from Afghanistan freed two Tajik road workers they had kidnapped last week. The Tajik border service said in a statement that the two men were caught during a cross border raid and were released after a ransom was paid. Tajikistan is concerned about worsening security around its border with Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
SEPT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US embassy in Dushanbe donated tactical military equipment worth $260,000 to the Tajik special security forces (OMON) to use against drug traffickers in the south of the country, local media reported. The donation is controversial because Tajikistan has previously used its special forces against government opponents.
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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Apparently aimed at showing off their determination to crack- down on the drugs trade from Afghanistan, Uzbek security officials burnt 1.4 tonnes of drugs — including opium and heroin — at a factory outside Tashkent in front of foreign diplomats.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
APRIL 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The United States will give Uzbekistan boats and vehicles to counter the drugs trade, media reported quoting its embassy in Tashkent.
The extra military kit, worth $6.2m, will irritate human rights campaigners. They say that Uzbekistan is one of the world’s worst human rights abusers. The US says it has to deal with Uzbekistan because Realpolitik demands it.
The US is withdrawing its military kit from Afghanistan mainly through Uzbekistan.
It has already said that it will leave behind surplus kit that it deems non-lethal. These are vehicles, trucks, body armour and night vision goggles.
“The goal of this Project is to assist law enforcement agencies of the Republic of Uzbekistan to develop investigative leads for disrupting and dismantling major drug trafficking organisations involved in illicit trade of drugs, psychotropic substances and their precursors,” the US embassy in Tashkent said on its website.
As well as hitting the drugs trade, the US may also be planning to quietly help Uzbekistan bolster its border defences against incursions from the Taliban.
Central Asian states have said that they are worried about the spread north of the Taliban once NATO quits Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)
SEPT. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s efforts to introduce biometric data are gaining momentum.
From 2015 many of the world’s most developed countries will not admit holders of non-biometric passports into their territories. It is highly unlikely that Kyrgyzstan will meet that deadline, officials say, but frequent travellers will be able to get theirs early.
Building a biometric database would also help Kyrgyzstan combat terrorism; drug and human trafficking.
But not everyone is keen on empowering the police. Dinara Oshurahunova, head of the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, an NGO that promotes citizens’ rights said that the police would use the data to blackmail ordinary people.
“Biometric data is undoubtedly necessary but considering our law enforcement structures are unreformed and almost completely criminalised, I would not want them to have access to this data,” she said.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
MAY 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s restive southeast is threatening to boil over again after a special forces operation near Khorog, capital of Gorno-Badakhshan region, led to four deaths and a week of protests.
The deaths and the subsequent protests underline the difficulty that Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon has in imposing central government will on this restive part of the country.
The target of the operation was given as drug traffickers. That, though, may have been a euphemism for a local anti-government warlord.
The special forces operation killed two people in broad daylight and injured several others, angering locals who then protested and tried to storm the security forces headquarters. Reports said that two protesters were killed and more injured when security forces fired on the crowd.
The whole operation is reminiscent of a security operation in the same area two years ago. Back then, the army had to virtually close off the area and engage in street to street fighting with rebels. Dushanbe may have committed another blunder in a part of the country where its authority has been limited ever since a civil war in the 1990s.
Gorno-Badakhshan, whose population backed the ill-fated United Tajik Opposition in that conflict, is a hub of anti-government resentment.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A senior Turkmen official accused Afghan insurgents of killing three border guards, the second alleged shootings this year.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) quoted Asal Khan, the acting governor of Ghormach district in northern Afghanistan, as saying that insurgents attacked a Turkmen border post on May 24.
Turkmen officials haven’t confirmed the attack, RFE/RL said.
If the attack is confirmed it will be important to ascertain quickly who the apparent insurgents are. Are they smugglers — Turkmenistan is, afterall, on the heroin route from Afghanistan to Europe — or are they Taliban?
If the answer is Taliban, then Central Asian governments will fret. They have said that they are worried about the spread north of the Taliban after the withdrawal of most NATO forces from Afghanistan by the end of this year.
In March, three Turkmen border guards also died after an apparent attack by insurgents. Is this the beginning of a more worrying development along Central Asia’s borders?
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kamchibek Kolbayev, Kyrgyzstan’s most prominent crime lord, is set to be released from jail in June having served 1-1/2 years of a 5-year sentence, media reported.
The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a non-profit organisation, refers to Kolbayev as “a serious drug pipeline entrepreneur” and a key middleman in the heroin trade moving out of Afghanistan.
Kyrgyz officials have long been accused of enmeshment in this trade and civil activists are saying that his let-off stinks of a deal.
Put on an international drug barons list by Washington in 2011, Kolbayev was extradited to Kyrgyzstan from Dubai in December 2012 and charged with various crimes including kidnap and criminal conspiracy. During his trial, Kolbayev was noted for his debonair appearance and composure.
Kolbayev’s release signals continuing rule-of-law of issues in Kyrgyzstan. In April 2013 a political scandal blew up over the release on medical grounds and subsequent departure to Grozny of Kolbayev’s main rival, ethnic Chechen mobster Aziz Batukayev.
Batukayev, it turned out, was not ill at all.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
FEB. 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — It’s been a bad week for senior officials in Tajikistan. Media reported that a court in Dushanbe had sent the daughter-in-law of a senior Tajik diplomat to prison for 12-1/2 years for drug smuggling and that President Emomali Rakhmon had sacked the head of the Tajik railway company after his son was involved in a deadly crash.
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(News report from Issue No. 170, published on Feb. 5 2014)