SEP. 24 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s imports from neighbouring Iran have increased four-fold since 2008 to $1.3b, the Iranian government news agency Fars reported, quoting Hamid Goozaliyan, the trade attaché at the Iranian embassy in Ashgabat. Iran has been pushing for better relations with Central Asia since the mid-2000s.
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(News report from Issue No. 106, published on Sep. 28 2012)
SEP. 14 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – When Hungary allowed Ramil Safarov, a convicted murderer, to return to his native Azerbaijan it triggered a storm that encapsulates tensions in the South Caucasus.
Safarov was attending a military course in Budapest in 2004 when he crept into the room of Gurgen Markaryan, an Armenian army officer, and killed him with axe. It was brutal. Safarov smashed his axe into the sleeping Armenian several times, nearly severing his head.
But, after years in prison, he returned back to Azerbaijan and was immediately pardoned.
To Azerbaijanis, Safarov is a hero. He was promoted to major and given compensation for the time he spent in prison. In Armenia, though, he is a callous murderer.
The problem lies, of course, in a war over the mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh fought between Armenian-backed forces and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. A ceasefire was brokered in 1994 but Azerbaijan and Armenia are still technically at war. Almost every week a skirmish along the borders of Nagorno-Karabakh kills a soldier.
Oil wealth has allowed Azerbaijan to re-arm over the past few years while Armenia, short of friends in the region, has looked to build a new alliance with neighbouring Iran.
The pardoning of Safarov has stoked tension at an already dangerous period.
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(News report from Issue No. 104, published on Sep. 14 2012)
AUG. 28 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Richard Morningstar, the new US ambassador to Azerbaijan, arrived in Baku, ending a year of uncertainty. Matthew Bryza, a former senior US diplomat in the South Caucasus, had been appointed US envoy to Azerbaijan in Feb. 2011 but the US senate blocked his permanent promotion to the job, which he quit in January.
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(News report from Issue No. 103, published on Aug. 31 2012)
AUG. 31 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Non-Aligned Movement has been many things in its 51-year history.
Created in the Cold War as a middle way for developing countries to avoid aligning with either the US-lead Western bloc or the Soviet-lead Eastern bloc, it has reinvented itself over the past 20 years. Now NAM, as it’s more commonly known, promotes the Developing World, is an advocate of disarmament and a critic of what it views as aggressive US foreign policy.
The 16th NAM summit (there is one every three years) also has another use for Central Asia and South Caucasus watchers. Tehran is hosting the summit and, in front of the world’s media, the Iranians have been eager to pull in as much support as possible.
According to the media 137 countries have sent delegations. Most are headed by a foreign minister but 24 presidents, three kings and eight prime ministers have apparently also turned up. And these include Turkmen President Kurbangkuly Berdymukhamedov, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and Armenian President Serzh Saaksyan.
This is insightful. Iran has been making a concerted effort over the past few years to woo the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. It’s clear from the seniority of the NAM delegates where Iran has forged the closest bonds.
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(News report from Issue No. 103, published on Aug. 31 2012)
AUG. 24 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Two news stories in the past week highlight the increasingly close friendship between Armenia and Iran. Both countries need allies and, some say, they appear to be embracing each other.
Armenia has two overtly hostile neighbours, Azerbaijan and Turkey, and Iran is dealing with US-lead sanctions, imposed because of concerns that it is trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Recently, Iran has looked to Central Asia and the South Caucasus for allies but it’s with Armenia that it appears to have struck up a particularly close partnership. A new gas pipeline is being built between the countries, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Yerevan in Dec. 2011 and Armenian president Serzh Sarksyan is due in Tehran next month.
Now Reuters news agency, in a report based mainly on UN sources and Western intelligence information, said that Iran is trying to use Armenian banks to circumnavigate international banking sanctions. Armenian banking officials denied this and there was no suggestion in the article of any illegal transactions.
On Aug. 23, Armenian media also reported that the Iranian government had asked Armenia to open a consulate in the city of Tabriz. This may only be a small statement of diplomatic intent but it’s yet more concrete evidence of how the Armenia-Iran relationship is evolving.
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(News report from Issue No. 102, published on Aug. 24 2012)
AUG. 15 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake met Uzbek President Islam Karimov in Tashkent to discuss ongoing plans for the US military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan through Uzbekistan in 2014, media reported. Uzbekistan is a controversial partner for the US because of concerns about it human rights record.
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(News report from Issue No. 101, published on Aug. 17 2012)
AUG. 7 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iranian authorities started the trial of two Azerbaijani poets arrested in May for illegally entering the country, media reported. The trial of the two poets is politically sensitive and will further strain relations between the two neighbours. Azerbaijan has called for the release of the poets.
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(News report from Issue No. 100, published on Aug. 10 2012)
AUG. 8 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia and Russia, close allies, defused a potential row after Armenian president Serzh Sarksyan and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed a new price for gas during talks in Moscow, media reported. Russia, which supplies Armenia with gas at a subsidised rate, had wanted to increase prices towards market levels.
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(News report from Issue No. 100, published on Aug. 10 2012)
AUG. 2 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s lower house of parliament passed a decree that will prevent it from either joining any military alliance in the future or hosting any foreign military bases. Media had speculated that the US may be looking to open a base on Uzbek territory after Uzbekistan withdrew from the Russia-lead CSTO military alliance earlier this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 099, published on Aug. 3 2012)
JULY 24 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan became the first country in Central Asia to scrap its visa regime for Western countries. President Almazbek Atambayev signed into law a bill passed last month by parliament that allows citizens of 44 countries — including EU countries and the US — to stay for 60 days without a visa.
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(News report from Issue No. 098, published on July 27 2012)