Tag Archives: Kyrgyzstan

Marks & Spencer says to set up retail websites for Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan

MARCH 9 (The Bulletin) — British retailer Marks & Spencer said that it was launching websites in 46 new markets to sell its clothes, including in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The expansion is part of a plan by Marks & Spencer to wring more value out of its brand from international markets. By opening websites targeting consumers in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Marks & Spencer is acknowledging that both markets have matured. Marks & Spencer has operated shops in Baku and Almaty since 2014 and 2012.

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— This story was published in issue 475 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on March 15 2021

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Women in region march against violence

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MARCH 8 (The Bulletin) — Women in Central Asia and the South Caucasus’ biggest cities marched in protests against domestic violence on International Women’s Day. The region, known for its unreformed macho overtones, has one of the worst records in the world for domestic violence. Activists have said the coronavirus lockdowns have exacerbated the issue. Last year the women’s rights march in Bishkek was attacked by masked men. This year it passed off without incident.

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— This story was published in issue 475 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on March 15 2021

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Kyrgyzstan increases interest rate by 0.5%

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FEB. 24 2021 (The Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s Central Bank increased its key interest rate by half a percentage point to 5.5% to counter rising inflation, its first rise since February 2020. The coronavirus pandemic and a coup in October has pressured the Kyrgyz som which is trading at around 84/$1, a fall of around 20%. This fall in the value of the som has pushed up inflation.

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— This story was published in issue 474 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on March 5 2021

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Comment — The politics of the portrait in Central Asia

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FEB. 11 2021 (The Bulletin) — Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, the new boy in the Central Asia and South Caucasus leaders’ club, is playing portrait politics. He told officials this week that he didn’t want to see any fawning portraits of himself in their offices, in businesses around the country, schools or universities.

Japarov is keen to frame himself as a man of the people and he has clearly decided that the age-old custom of hanging portraits of the leader in offices is not something that he wants to go in for.

But it is not as if his predecessor indulged it much, either. Sooronbai Jeenbekov, who Japarov deposed in a coup in October, appeared more modest than most of his Central Asian contemporaries and very few offices carried portraits of him.

The politics of the presidential portrait is one worth considering in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. It is a gauge of personality cults and how the elite want to project their legitimacy and, dare I say it, primacy over ordinary people.

In Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev is still the only portrait hung in offices and official buildings. He is everywhere. His successor Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is nowhere and very much plays the role of appointed official to Nazarbayev’s First President of the Nation act. For Nazarbayev, his legacy based on building modern-day Kazakhstan is central to his self-image. And the portraits, as well as statues and the renamed capital city, reinforce this message.

In Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, leaders’ portraits are ubiquitous too. In Uzbekistan, based on pre-Soviet Khanate tradition, it is the custom to promote the image of the leader. In Tajikistan and Turkmenistan it is a different story. Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov are busy building dynasties. Both men are grooming their sons as heirs and this requires legitimacy. Hence the portraits, reinforcing their self-styled images as the embodiment of the nation.

Azerbaijan has already established dynastic rule. Ilham Aliyev took over from his father, Heydar, in 2003 and he is careful to remind ordinary people of this dynastic legitimacy by encouraging offices to hang both his portrait and the portrait of his father on the wall.

As for Armenia and Georgia, the leaders eschew portraits. They are also, the least stable countries in the region, other than Kyrgyzstan.

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— This story was first published in issue 471 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Eurasian Economic Union wants to streamline migrant worker processes

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ALMATY/FEB. 5 2021 (The Bulletin) — The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) wants to speed up the digitalisation of labour migrants’ documents to help member states recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

At a meeting of heads of governments of EAEU member states in Almaty, Russian PM Mikhail Mishustin said that reviving labour markets, cutting down on paperwork through digital records and providing vaccines so that people can travel for work was vitally important for the bloc.

“This is a single service that you can use to find vacancies, draw up the necessary documents, including medical insurance and it will also help with the choice of housing,” he said of a digitalisation plan.

Critics of the EAEU — which has been in operation since 2015 and, alongside Russia includes Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan as members — have said that the bloc pushes the Kremlin’s agenda and that it is cumbersome, creates red tape and is slow to get things done.

They also said that the plan put forward by Mr Mishustin may be a case in point. He envisages it coming into action in 2022.

But pressure is building on the EAEU to reform and to become more nimble. At the Almaty meeting, Kyrgyz’s PM Ulubek Maripov described the need to tear down barriers that slow labour movement in the EAEU as “acute”.

Russia attracts millions of labour migrants from Central Asia each year, generating huge remittance flows. This dried up in 2020 because of the pandemic. Businesses in Russia now complain about a lack of cheap labour and in Central Asia, governments report a sharp drop in remittances.

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— This story was first published in issue 471 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Police in Bishkek arrest former Beeline country chief

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FEB. 4 2021 (The Bulletin) — Police in Kyrgyzstan arrested Yevgeny Krazhan, the former head of Sky Mobile telecoms, which trades under the Beeline brand, for alleged corruption. The Beeline brand belongs to New York-listed Veon. Corruption is rife in Kyrgyzstan and media reported that the arrest of Mr Krazhan, a Ukrainian, is linked to an investigation into corruption by officials in the state communications agency.

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— This story was first published in issue 471 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

New Kyrgyz government sworn-in

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FEB. 3 2021 (The Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan swore in a new government with Ulubek Maripov, a 42-year-old technocrat who had headed up the government’s Account Chamber, as the PM. Media reported that the number of cabinet ministers had been cut to 16 from 48. Reports also said that the government was going to re-establish the Ministry of Defence, which had been cut in a shake-up in 2015 by then-president Almazbek Atambayev. He had folded the ministry’s powers into a State Committee for Defence Affairs.

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— This story was first published in issue 471 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Kyrgyz prosecutors consider criminal case against Jeenbekov

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BISHKEK/FEB. 2 2021 (The Bulletin) — Kyrgyz state prosecutors said they were considering opening a criminal investigation into former president Sooronbai Jeenbekov focused on his orders to security forces in October when they clashed with demonstrators in Bishkek, killing one person.

Shortly after the Prosecutor’s announcement, Mr Jeenbekov and his wife flew out of Kyrgyzstan for what his representative said was a Hajj to Saudi Arabia. Analysts said, though, that he may flee into exile, a tactic used by other former Kyrgyz presidents to avoid prosecutions.

In 2005, deposed Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev flew to Moscow and in 2010 Kurmanbek Bakiyev was given asylum in Belarus. Of the other two former presidents, Roza Otunbayeva lives in Bishkek, but stays out of politics, and Almazbek Atambayev is in prison.

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— This story was first published in issue 471 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Comment — Vaccine programmes show geo-political bent

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JAN. 22 2021 (The Bulletin) — Governments in the region are taking different approaches to vaccinating their populations against Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. And it makes for instructive analysis.

In Georgia, the most pro-Western country in the region, the government has said it intends to start inoculating its population next month with the Pfizer vaccine. Sputnik-V, the Russian Covid-19 vaccine, doesn’t even feature in the thinking of the EU-dreaming, NATO-aiming Georgian government.

In Armenia, though, Sputnik-V is at the top of the list, although its inoculation ambitions are more limited. Economically, Armenia has been hit the hardest by the coronavirus pandemic and it plans to inoculate just the 10% of the population that it considers to be most at risk.

You may have expected Azerbaijan to also prioritise using Sputnik-V to get on top of the coronavirus but, instead, it has placed its cornerstone order with China and its vaccine Sinovac. This reflects growing tension, and possibly even rivalry, between Azerbaijan and Russia. Azerbaijan heavily leaned on Turkey to defeat Armenia in a six-week war for control of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and in the process appears to have secured Turkey a foothold in the South Caucasus, irritating the Kremlin. Azerbaijan has also completed construction of a gas pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to Europe and will come into direct competition with Russia.

Azerbaijan hasn’t ignored Sputnik-V altogether and has put in an order, spreading its bets, a tactic it uses, some would say, in its foreign policy.

On the other side of the Caspian Sea, it’s a more opaque, or should that be confused, outlook for vaccine orders. Turkmenistan, which officially denies that it has ever had a case of Covid-19 within its borders was the first country in the region to approve the use of Sputnik-V. Why?

In Kazakhstan, the authorities have said that they will use the Sputnik-V vaccine to inoculate a third of the population by the end of the year and in Uzbekistan, one of the test centres for Sinovac, the government there has said it will deploy a mix of the Russian and Chinese vaccines to inoculate its population. Uzbekistan, with a population double the size of Kazakhstan’s, has the biggest inoculation logistics challenge.

Bottom of the list are Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Reflecting their far poorer status, both countries are relying on donations from Russia and China as well as the UN’s COVAX scheme for their inoculation cover. Officials in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have said that the coronavirus pandemic has largely passed. This is, like their vaccine rollout plans, largely wishful thinking.

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— This story was first published in issue 469 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Fire destroys top Georgian restaurant in Central Asia

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BISHKEK/JAN. 22 2021 (The Bulletin) — A late-night fire destroyed the Pur Pur Georgian restaurant in central Bishkek, considered by many to be the best Georgian restaurant in Central Asia.

Nobody was hurt in the blaze at the site just off Bishkek’s Philharmomic Square. Police have said that they are investigating the cause of the fire and have declined to comment on speculation of arson.

Pur Pur became a favourite venue for Bishkek-based diplomats wanting to wine and dine contacts and also a favoured hang-out for Central Asia’s small and thirsty foreign press corps. The Lonely Plant guidebook described the shabby-chic Pur Pur as serving “perhaps the best Georgian food this side of the Caspian” with tables groaning under “gigantic khachipuri and flowing decanters of house wine”.

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— This story was first published in issue 469 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin