OCT. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has ordered 60 T-129 ATAK helicopters from Turkey for $3b, media reported, part of a major upgrade to its military. Azerbaijan has openly said that it is spending a large chunk of its oil wealth on updating and modernising its military.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7/8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov paid an official visit to Uzbekistan where he discussed security and water scarcity issues with Uzbek President Islam Karimov. An increase in fighting in Afghanistan has become a major concern for the two leaders.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia and the US are right to be increasingly concerned about intensifying fighting in northern Afghanistan.
The question is what can they do about it, if anything?
This week, Russia said it was sending a batch of attack helicopters to its base in Tajikistan. Russia is clearly in a belligerent mood, as its air strikes in Syria have also shown.
For most ordinary Tajiks, as the Bulletin reports, the attack helicopters are welcome in the country, although it is not entirely clear when Russia would actually use them.
For the US, the priority is to protect its own. It has said it is going to spend $200m strengthening its embassy in Turkmenistan.
No doubt the current embassy needed an upgrade but don’t be fooled by the cleverly spun press releases.
The US is not spending $200m rebuilding its embassy to re-affirm its commitment to Turkmenistan. It is spending $200m rebuilding its embassy on the outskirts of Ashgabat because it is nervous and the strategy now is to prioritise protection over everything else. This will be an embassy with big walls and prison-style security cut off from the rest of Turkmenistan.
Both the Russian and the US moves are a response to the Taliban threat over the border and the radical Islamic threat internally.
These threats appear to be growing, although there is debate over just how strong IS recruitment really is in the region. Both Russia and the US and the rest of Central Asia will have to get used to them.
By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Highlighting the close relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey, the head of the Turkish General Staff, Hulusi Akar, visited Baku. In Baku, General Akar met his Azerbaijani counterpart and, as expected, emphasised Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan’s position on Nagorno-Karabakh which it disputes with Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 8/9 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — After an on-off build-up lasting months, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko visited Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana a meeting that could upset relations between Kazakhstan and Russia.
Mr Poroshenko’s visit to Astana is a diplomatic victory for Mr Nazarbayev who wants to be viewed as a potential peace broker between Kiev and Moscow over the civil war in eastern Ukraine. Mr Nazarbayev visited Kiev last December.
At a joint press conference, Mr Poroshenko thanked Mr Nazarbayev for his support “of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Kazakhstan has to tread a careful diplomatic tightrope as it needs to appease both its Western backers, who support Ukraine, and also Russia, with which it has close economic and political ties.
Kazakhstan has not recognised Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
During his visit, Mr Poroshenko also met with Kazakh prime minister Karim Massimov to discuss trade opportunities that will emerge in 2016 with the establishment of a free trade zone between Ukraine and the European Union and with Kazakhstan’s accession to the World Trade Organisation.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov reshuffled his top security officials, according to state media. Begench Gundogdiyev, minister of defence, was demoted to head of the navy. The head of the national security service, Yaylym Berdiyev was appointed as the new defence minister.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s ministry of defence accused Armenian backed forces in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh of killing three Azerbaijani soldiers. The accusation marks another escalation in tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing civilians last week.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – So the fate of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) appears to have been sealed by the country’s highest court. It is, apparently, a terrorist organisation that helped plan a couple of attacks last month on police checkpoints which killed two dozen people.
A former deputy defence minister has been named as the mastermind of the attacks but the IRPT also played an important role, the court said.
This is the culmination of a ramping up of pressure on the IRPT this year. Its leaders have been forced out of the country, some of its top Dushanbe-based officials have been attacked in the street and various courts have banned it for, firstly not being big enough and secondly for its involvement in the September attacks.
To really prove its case, the Tajik judiciary needs to release more concrete evidence to the international community of the IRPT’s apparent involvement in the attacks. At the moment it just doesn’t stack up.
Instead, as an analyst told the Bulletin’s correspondent in Dushanbe, it feels like a blatant attack on political opponents.
This is dangerous for Tajikistan. What Tajikistan needs is a moderate opposition group that is going to challenge the authorities and President Emomali Rakhmon through the normal channels. What it’ll get instead, with the crushing of opposition groups, is a vacuum that radical Islamists can exploit.
Tajikistan stands at a cross- roads. By banning the IRPT, the authorities are disenfranchising part of its population and taking another step along the wrong path.
By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan security forces killed two men they said were linked to former deputy minister Gen. Abdukhalim Nazarzoda. Tajik authorities have accused Nazarzoda of plotting attacks on police checkpoints that killed more than two dozen people in Dushanbe and a nearby town last month. Nazarzoda was killed during a special operation.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US embassy in Tashkent said that an unidentified man threw two homemade grenades over the wall of the compound.
One of the grenades exploded but didn’t injure anybody, the embassy said in a statement. No group has claimed responsibility. The embassy closed immediately after the attack although it reopened the following day.
“At approximately 7:30 am on Monday, September 28 an unidenti- fied assailant tossed two improvised incendiary devices onto embassy grounds,” the embassy said in a state- ment.
“One of the incendiary devices exploded. Immediately following the explosion the embassy went on lock- down. No one was injured in the blast.”
The attack will be a major concern for the US. Governments in Central Asia have spoken of the increased threat from radical Islam, although some of the evidence has been dis- puted. It’s still unclear if this attack was linked to radical Islam or to something else but it would have been unsettling.
In 2004, car bombs targeted both the US and Israeli embassies. Two security guards were killed outside the Israeli embassy.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)