NOV. 30 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Kazakhstan said they had arrested six accomplices of a gunman who killed seven people in the southern city of Taraz in November, local media reported. The attack was the latest in a worsening series of violence linked to Muslim extremists.
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(News report from Issue No. 67, published on Dec. 1 2011)
NOV. 20 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek media reported an explosion on a railway in Uzbekistan which is used for carrying supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan. Uzbek authorities said Islamic militants may have attacked the railway. Uzbekistan is considered vital to the US supply line running across Central Asia into Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 66, published on Nov. 23 2011)
NOV. 12 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A gunman, described by the authorities as a jihadist, killed seven people in Taraz, south Kazakhstan, and then blew himself up. This is the latest in a series of attacks linked to Islamic militants this year. Importantly, it shifted the attacks from the west of the country towards Almaty.
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(News report from Issue No. 65, published on Nov. 16 2011)
NOV. 16 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A row over Tajikistan’s imprisonment of two ethnic Russian pilots for smuggling has escalated and threatens to do long-term damage to Tajik-Russian relations.
As reported in the Conway Bulletin issue of Nov. 8, Russia reacted with indignant fury at the 8-1/2 year prison sentences handed out by a provincial Tajik court on Nov. 8 2011 to Vladimir Sadovnichy, a Russian citizen, and Alexei Rudenko, an Estonian citizen.
The Russian foreign ministry said the sentences would damage Tajikistan. Since then immigration officers in Russia have rounded up hundreds of Tajik workers.
Around 300 have already been expelled for not having the correct paperwork, according to Russian media. If many more are sent back home it will begin to hurt Tajikistan as almost half its national income derives from remittances.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says the immigration officials’ actions are a coincidence and not revenge for the prison sentences.
Most commentators, though, don’t see it that way.
Central to the row is what Sadvonichy and Rudenko were doing when they landed their two cargo planes in Tajikistan without permission on a routine Kabul-Moscow flight. They say they desperately needed fuel. Tajik officials say they were trying to smuggle in a jet engine.
Already strained by negotiations earlier this year over Russia’s lease of a military base in Tajikistan, Tajik-Russian relations are now taking another battering.
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(News report from Issue No. 65, published on Nov. 16 2011)
NOV. 11 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Tajikistan sentenced 28 people to jail for supporting militant Islamic groups, local media reported. Tajikistan’s authorities are trying to quell a strengthening Islamic insurgency. Courts in Tajikistan periodically sentence large groups of people to jail for supporting insurgents.
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(News report from Issue No. 65, published on Nov. 16 2011)
NOV. 9 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia needs more democratic reforms before it can join NATO, the organisation’s Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a meeting in Tbilisi. Under President Mikheil Saakashvili Georgia has pushed hard to join NATO. According to local media, Georgia has nearly 1,000 soldiers in Afghanistan fighting with NATO forces.
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(News report from Issue No. 65, published on Nov. 16 2011)
NOV. 7 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a meeting in St Petersburg, PMs from the six countries in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) said they wanted to set up a development bank. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are members of the SCO which is lead by Russia and China. Many analysts see the SCO as a bulwark against western interests in the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 64, published on Nov. 8 2011)
NOV. 7 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh police in the Caspian Sea town of Atyrau arrested three men for two bomb blasts last week, media reported. The city’s prosecutor said the men belonged to an Islamic terrorist group that wanted to scare the authorities. One bomber died in the attack.
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(News report from Issue No. 64, published on Nov. 8 2011)
OCT. 31 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A suspected suicide bomber attacked two government buildings in Atyrau, a major Kazakh oil city. The blasts only killed the bomber and caused no significant damage. It was, though, the second attack this year and it raised the prospect of a sustained campaign by militant Islamists in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 63, published on Nov. 1 2011)
NOV. 1 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – In his first policy statement after winning a presidential election, Kyrgyzstan’s pro-Russia PM Almazbek Atambayev said the US will have to quit an airbase outside Bishkek when its lease expires in 2014. The airbase has been vital to NATO efforts in Afghanistan which also wind up in 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 63, published on Nov. 1 2011)