Tag Archives: security

Georgian police arrest US man

FEB. 15 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Georgia said that they had arrested a US citizen who is wanted in Uzbekistan on terrorism charges. They didn’t give any more details of the detained man except that they had started extradition proceedings. The man was arrested in the Black Sea town of Batumi. The countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus are trying to dampen growing Islamic extremism activity in the region.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)

Kazakhstan to spend $74m on cyber security

ALMATY, FEB. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh Finance ministry said it will spend 23.9b tenge ($74.2m) reinforcing its cyber security in a programme it has dubbed CyberGuard, although government critics have said that monitoring opposition activists rather than Islamic terrorists is the main aim of the project.

The project was ordered by Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev who identified in his annual state-of-the-nation speech on Jan. 30 lax cyber security as a problem in fighting Islamic extremists.

Beibut Atamkulov, head of the CyberGuardprogramme, said that progress on the programme had been swift.

“There is a centralised system of communication management called digital border,” he told the media. “We have created security certificates which will allow us to restrict access to illegal information that is encrypted within the borders of our country.”

Experts said this certificate will increase government control over what citizens are sending, receiving and reading on the internet.

Arman Abdrasilov, an Astana- based cyber expert, told The Bulletin that Kazakhstan was copying Russia.

“This is the path Russia has passed along, saying it needed this to tackle terrorism and therefore justifying access to private conversations. We have simply copied the Russian experience,” he said.

Amnesty International human rights group released a report on Feb. 9 on the crackdown of dissenters in social media. The report said the so-called “national security certificate allows the authorities to scan communications sent over the HTTPS protocol, and block access to individual webpages.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)

S. Ossetia court sentences Georgian man

FEB. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia sentenced a Georgian man to 20 years in jail for sabotage and terrorism, media reported, in a move that is likely to inflame tensions with Tbilisi. The man, 49 year-old Giorgi Giunashvili, was accused of slipping over the de facto border between South Ossetia and Georgia to attack targets. The Georgian government has called the imprisonment illegal.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)

Kazakh special forces kill Islamists

FEB. 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh special forces killed six alleged Islamic extremists and arrested 15 more in raids in January in Almaty, media reported quoting the interior ministry. The ministry said they also found arms caches, including grenades. Central Asian countries have been on alert to counter a perceived growth in recruitment by Islamic extremists.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)

Azerbaijan tries to close OSCE office in Armenia

FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The United States warned Azerbaijan that it shouldn’t try to force the closure of the OSCE office in Yerevan, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website reported. It said that Azerbaijan may be trying to close Europe’s main security and democracy watchdog after it voted against extending its mission because it was based in Yerevan. The OSCE is heavily involved with monitoring a ceasefire around Nagorno-Karabakh, disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Azerbaijan closed the OSCE office in Baku in 2015.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Georgia tempts rebel areas with EU visa-free access

TBILISI, FEB. 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia was accused of baiting its rebel regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia with its recently won visa-free access to the European Union.

The row is a reminder to the EU that closer ties with Georgia come with attachments to the Georgia Russia stand-off over the two Georgian breakaway states. Georgia and Russia fought a brief war over the two regions less than a decade ago which ended in Russian soldiers temporarily occupying part of Georgia and the Kremlin recognising both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent.

In a speech shortly after the Euro- pean Parliament voted to approve 90-day visa-free access to Georgia and Ukraine to the 26-nation Schengen Area, Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili said that people living in the breakaway regions could also enjoy the easier access to the EU if they reapplied for a Georgian passport.

“We are happy that our Abkhazian and Ossetian citizens will join us in enjoying every benefit offered by close relations with Europe,” he said. The rebel regions were not amused and said Mr Kvirikashvili was trying to leverage political capital out of the European Parliament vote by trying to persuade people living in South Ossetia and Abkhazia to move back to Georgia. Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgian president from 2004 until 2013, deployed similar sweetener tactics, by building public swimming pools next to South Ossetia and holding rock concerts within earshot of Tskhinvali, its capital.

The authorities in Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast, released a statement.

“It is obvious that after a complete failure of the idea of the so-called neutral passports, the Georgian government decided to use another type of bait in the form of visa liberalization for citizens of the Republic of Abkhazia. It is clear that the Georgian government’s attempt will fail,” it said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Georgia to change breakaway region’s name

FEB. 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a jibe at Georgia’s central government, the rebel authorities in the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia called a referendum on April 9 to vote to rename the region South Ossetia-Alania. Alania is the semi-mythical term for the combined region of North and South Ossetia. North Ossetia lies inside Russia, which the South Ossetian rebels want to join. The Kremlin has recognised South Ossetia’s independence since a war with Georgia in 2008. Only staunch Russian allies have followed this lead.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)f

Hackers attack Kazakh websites

ALMATY, JAN. 30 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hackers attacked 21 Kazakh government websites, the ministry of information said, raising concerns over the state’s cyber security.

The sites were attacked on Jan. 28. The ministry blamed the servers that hosted the websites but IT expert said the vulnerability of government websites was a well-known problem.

In a press statement, the Kazakh information ministry said: “These [hacking] cases happened because of an absence of control from the owners of internet resources who did not update the systems in time, proper protection, identification of the incident and signing a contract with unreliable clients.”

Arman Abdrasilov, a Kazakh cyber security expert, said that the hacking had been far wider than just the government websites. He said that, in total, 323 websites had been attacked.

He told The Conway Bulletin that government websites are regularly attacked but that the government covers the hacks.

“Twenty-one sites at once. It says that this is a systematic mistake and links back to the government’s attitude in general. We’ve been raising the [vulnerability] questions for at least three years,” Mr Abdrasilov said.

“Security of the whole system is equal to the security of its weakest part.”

The next day (Jan.31), Nazarbayev talked about cyber security threats in his annual state-of-the-nation address. He ordered security services to boost their various defences.

The hacked websites included the north Kazakhstan regional government website and the natural resources department in the Almaty city government.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Georgia sends soldiers to support EU mission in Africa

JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia sent a platoon of 30 soldiers to serve under a France-lead European Union mission in the Central African Republic. The Georgians’ main mission is to defend the EU mission’s base. This is the first deployment of Georgian soldiers to the Central African Republic for two years. Georgia uses its military as an extension of its foreign policy and has sent military support to missions linked to the EU and NATO, two Western institutions that it wants to join.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Afghan authorities arrest Kazakh national

JAN. 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Afghanistan have arrested a Kazakh national on suspicion of having links to terrorism, media reported quoting the Afghan foreign ministry. Media reports said that the man was from Atyrau and that he had been arrested in the northern part of Afghanistan. Kazakhstan has been trying to dampen an increase in recruitment by the radical IS group but it is rare for Kazakhs to be arrested in Afghanistan for links to Islamic extremists.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)