APRIL 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a visit to Seoul, Uzbekistan’s military signed deals with its South Korean counterparts aimed at deepening cooperation. South Korea’s influence in Central Asia, where it has large diasporas, is an important issue to monitor.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s deputy PM, Abdyrakhman Mamataliev, said there were now 330 Kyrgyz nationals fighting for the radical IS group in Syria. It’s not possible to confirm this number, but if it is accurate this would be a major worry for Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan and Armenia blamed each other for more clashes along the border of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan said that five Armenian soldiers had been killed in shootouts; the Armenia-backed government in Nagorno-Karabakh said that one Azerbaijani soldier had been killed.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Another Georgian national has been killed fighting for Ukrainian government forces against pro-Russia rebels in east Ukraine, Georgian media reported. It’s unclear exactly how many Georgians have been killed in Ukraine but some media say that it is probably as many as seven.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia has delivered four Su-30SM fighter jets to Kazakhstan, media reported, part of a major overhaul of the Kazakh air force. By 2020, reports said, Kazakhstan is planning on buying another 32 fighter jets from Russia. Kazakhstan has spent billions upgrading its military.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan has built a 22,000km barb wire fence along its borders with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, media reported, highlighting the often strained border issues in Central Asia.
AKIpress, a Bishkek-based news agency, said that most of the barb was erected along the border with Uzbekistan.
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have a long-standing quarrel over borders and over the last few years there has been an increase in the number of incidents between the two neighbours along their shared border. These could be locals wandering into no-go areas, or a stand-off between soldiers. The tensest area is around the city of Osh in south Kyrgyzstan, which is part of the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan.
The borders of Central Asia are complex. Historians have said that Soviet officials deliberately drew the borders to divide people.
Analysts have also said that tension over borders is one of Central Asia’s most serious flashpoints.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Special forces from Kyrgyzstan, China, Russia, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan — all members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) — began exercises in Kyrgyzstan, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Analysts say the SCO is a military alliance.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iranian defence minister Hossein Dehghan travelled to Baku for talks with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev in a ground-breaking diplomatic initiative.
The neighbours have been fierce regional rivals over the past few years and at times it has looked as if the rhetoric was going to lead to war.
But since President Hassan Rouhani came to power in Iran in 2013, relations have soothed. Perhaps, also, the diplomatic push by the United States and Iran to patch up their differences has helped.
Iranian news agencies quoted Mr Dehqan as saying: “The two countries enjoy common geopolitics and their common interests and threats have increased the necessity for the expansion of multilateral cooperation more than ever.”
But it’s not all that straight forward. Azerbaijan supports Saudi Arabia-led efforts in Yemen where its forces are leading a counter- attack against rebels backed by Iran, and Baku has also improved relations with Israel, Iran’s sworn enemy.
Still, realpolitik may prevail and the rivals could patch up their differences.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a move designed to stop young Muslims heading off to Syria to fight for the radical group IS, Georgia plans to outlaw membership of any foreign group considered to be a terrorist organisation.
Current legislation does not deal with this issue and the authorities want more power to arrest both those people heading off to Syria to join IS and people who have returned to Georgia.
The focus in Georgia of IS recruitment is the Pankisi Gorge, on the border of Russia’s North Caucasus region.
Pankisi, which lies 2-1/2 hours drive from Tbilisi to the northeast, on the border with Chechnya, has a population of 10,000 and the majority of them are Kists, an Islamic ethnic group similar to Chechens.
Media reports have said that 20 to 80 men have headed out of the Pankisi Gorge to fight for IS in Syria.
Tbilisi rules with a light touch in the Pankisi Gorge which has a history of producing radical Muslim fighters dating back to the Chechen wars of the 1990s and the early 2000s.
Khaso Khangoshvili a member of the the Council of Elders, the 35-people body that de facto governs Pankisi, believes that the stricter laws will help.
“The new law will improve the situation, but the government should care more about the economy of our region,” he told the Bulletin.
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(News report from Issue No. 228, published on April 22 2015)
APRIL 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – An ex-Kazakh spy chief and a member of the presidential guard went on trial in Vienna accused of murdering two bankers in 2007 (April 14). The chief suspect in the case, Rakhat Aliyev, former son-in-law of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, was found hanged in his prison earlier this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 227, published on April 15 2015)