JUNE 6 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad postponed a trip to Yerevan, media reported without giving a reason. Iran-Armenia ties have strengthened in the last year. Public Radio of Armenia quoted Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi saying that Iran-Armenia trade increased by 38% in 2010.
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(News report from Issue No. 43, published on June 6 2011)
MAY 30 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov unveiled his country’s first military deployment to Afghanistan on May 27, nine days after the lower house of parliament agreed the mission. Kazakhstan will send four officers to Kabul in a non-combat capacity, he told a parliamentary committee.
The Kazakh mission to Afghanistan will probably not decisively tip the 10 year war NATO’s way but it is steeped in symbolism. The deployment will mean that soldiers from Central Asia, which is predominantly Muslim, will for the first time be serving alongside NATO forces fighting the Taliban.
In reality, the Central Asian states have been heavily involved in NATO’s war in Afghanistan for years, allowing NATO to use their airports, military bases, roads and railways to re-supply forces fighting the Taliban.
The Central Asian states have earned millions of US dollars from this supply chain deal but actually sending soldiers to Afghanistan is a far bigger step, as the Taliban recognised when it reacted to the announcement with a thinly veiled warning to Kazakhstan.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is adept at playing off different superpowers and Kazakhstan maintains good relations with Russia and China as well as with the United States.
He has also fostered increasingly close relations with NATO. Sending soldiers to support the war in Afghanistan now makes Kazakhstan a member of the US-led coalition fighting the Taliban and that’s important, no matter how big the contingent.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)
MAY 27 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – During a meeting in Washington, Kazakhstan moved closer to entering the World Trade Organisation (WTO) after it reached an agreement on allowing US services access to the Kazakh market, media reported. Zhanar Aitzhanova, the Kazakh minister for economic integration, said Kazakhstan could possibly join the WTO in 2012.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)
MAY 28 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will visit Yerevan on June 6 to discuss Iran-Armenia relations, said Iran’s Press TV. The report said it would be Mr Ahmadinejad’s first trip to Armenia since 2007.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)
MAY 27 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted to ban from the country Kimmo Kiljunen, a Finnish former parliamentarian, who wrote a report on ethnic violence last year that killed more than 400 people. Mr Kiljunen’s report implicated Kyrgyz security forces. Parliament said Mr Kiljunen was a threat to national security.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)
MAY 18 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to New Delhi, Uzbek President Islam Karimov signed 34 deals with Indian PM Manmohan Singh on trade, communications, security and energy, media reported. India has heavily increased its presence in Central Asia this year, securing energy deals with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 41, published on May 24 2011)
MAY 20 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia officially recognised the killings by Tsarist Russia of thousands of ethnic Circassians living around the Black Sea in 19th century as genocide. Georgia is the first country in the world to label the killings as genocide and risks further damaging relations with Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 41, published on May 24 2011)
MAY 18 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian websites reported that soldiers in South Ossetia had shot and injured two Georgians. South Ossetia said the Georgians had entered its territory illegally and its forces had returned fire after they were shot at. The incident is one of the most serious since a Georgia-Russia war in 2008.
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(News report from Issue No. 41, published on May 24 2011)
MAY 16 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a sign of Kyrgyzstan’s growing strategic importance and Turkmenistan’s increasing openness and clout as a global gas supplier, Britain said it will open an embassy in Bishkek by 2015 (May 10) and the US appointed a new ambassador to Ashgabat (May 16).
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(News report from Issue No. 40, published on May 17 2011)
MAY 9 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Six years after withdrawing its guards from the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, Russia wants to return.
The Kremlin feels Tajikistan cannot control its borders effectively and is worried about a wave of Islamic militants and drugs seeping through the country after NATO forces withdraw from neighbouring Afghanistan in 2014, sources in Moscow have told the media Tajikistan is already fighting Islamic militants and is one of the main transit routes for drugs leaving Afghanistan for Russia and Europe.
But there may be more at stake. Russia is competing with the United States and China for influence over Tajikistan and controlling the border with Afghanistan would give it major leverage. Not only is Tajikistan a major access point into and out of Afghanistan but its mountains, rivers and dams control a large proportion of the water supply for the other Central Asian states. Controlling water supplies in Central Asia, equates to power.
Russia maintains a large base in Tajikistan but its military presence there is far reduced from the 1990s and to re-position its soldiers on the border it first needs to win over Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon.
And, to say the least, Mr Rakhmon is sceptical of the benefits of the Russian border guards.
The WikiLeaks website recently published a US diplomatic cable written in December 2005 in which the ambassador quoted Mr Rakhmon describing how he had personally ordered the Russian border guards to leave. Mr Rakhmon was convinced the Russian border guards were plotting a coup.
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(News report from Issue No. 39, published on May 9 2011)