MAY 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s weapons manufacturers have developed a drone, media reported. Azerbaijan, which is still officially at war with Armenia, has been increasing military spending. It has close links with the Russian and Israeli defence sectors.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 232, published on May 20 2015)
MAY 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Online reports have said that one of Tajikistan’s most senior police chiefs Gulmurod Halimov, who has been missing since April, has tried to cross into Syria to fight for the extremist group IS. These reports cannot be confirmed but, if they are true, it will embarrass the Tajik government.
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(News report from Issue No. 232, published on May 20 2015)
MAY 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s government approved a plan to split the country’s much-loathed interior ministry in two.
The idea is to spin off the security and intelligence responsibilities of the interior ministry and unravel a merger created by former president Mikheil Saakashvili. He joined the two ministries together in the early part of his 2004-13 administration under the premise of cutting costs. Since then, though, its unpopularity has grown and opposition parties have pledged to break it up.
The most eye-catching part of the reform is placing the new State Security Service under parliamentary control to increase surveillance over it. The head of the State Security Service will be elected for one six year term only.
These reforms will, probably, prove popular with ordinary Georgians. They are also important at a former Soviet Union level too as they once again show Georgia’s ambitions.
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(News report from Issue No. 232, published on May 20 2015)
MAY 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an interview with the AP news agency, Georgian president Giorgi Margvelashvili said Russia would use its military to grab more territory in the former Soviet Union. Georgia has been warning about excessive Russian aggression since the two neighbours fought a brief war in 2008.
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(News report from Issue No. 232, published on May 20 2015)
MAY 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – One of Tajikistan’s most senior police chiefs has gone missing, Radio Free Europe/Radio liberty reported. Gulmurod Halimov, commander of the interior ministry’s special forces unit OMON, has not been seen since leaving home in Dushanbe on April 23.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s government scrubbed the Armenian flag from a photo posted on its website of a parade in Moscow to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany by the Soviet Union, media reported. Azerbaijan and Armenia are still officially at war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek cinemas are showing a slickly made feature-length film which appears designed to project the government’s version of events in the town of Andijan 10 years ago when soldiers killed hundreds of people.
The 2-1/2 hour long film, called Sotqin and made by the government backed UzFilm studios, tells the story of two disenchanted brothers from a provincial town.
With the help of a foreign spy and agitators linked to Western non-governmental organisations they become increasingly religious and are persuaded to launch an attack on government buildings with a group of Islamic extremists.
Human rights groups have accused the Uzbek government of using the film, released in March, as a propaganda tool.
“It [the Uzbek government] wants to provide its own narrative — a quite strident, assertive narrative that Andijan for us is closed and any violence that was committed — or any harm that was done — was done by outsiders, not by us,” Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia programme director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Uzbekistan has always disputed the widely-accepted Western version of the Andijan killings of May 13 2005. It has said that 187 people died in Anijan and that most were armed Islamic extremists. Human rights groups said that the death toll was far higher and that those killed were unarmed civilians.
The killings in Andijan triggered an international outcry. Uzbekistan was seen as a pariah state and was shunned by the West. This changed, though, over the past few years because NATO has needed Uzbekistan to help it withdraw its military kit from Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ahead of a EU summit in Riga later this month, Georgian president Georgy Margvelashvili travelled to Brussels to meet the EU President Donald Tusk, NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg. Georgia sees the Riga summit a chance to press its pro-EU agenda.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s interior ministry said that it would not prose- cute men who have fought for the extremist IS group in Syria or Iraq if they repent and want to return home. Tajikistan is increasingly concerned about the number of young men who have moved to Syria to fight for IS.
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(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)
MAY 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan and Turkey began joint military exercises, underling their close alliance and highlighting just how isolated Armenia is. Media reported that the drills would continue until May 16. Azerbaijan and Turkey share an animosity for Armenia.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 231, published on May 13 2015)