JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing two of its soldiers along the border to the dispute region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Separatists backed by Armenia control Nagorno-Karabakh but peace, or a relative peace, is only held by a 1994 UN-brokered ceasefire. There are weekly shootings along the border.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Uzbek Border Guard Service has beefed up its units along its frontier with Afghanistan, citing intelligence that the Taliban was mustering its forces, although some analysts and Afghan security officials questioned the level of the threat.
Central Asian governments have said that the withdrawal of NATO from Afghanistan will worsen its own border security.
Two weeks ago, Zamir Kabulov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for Afghanistan said that the Taliban was planning a wide offensive on Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in April.
Even with the Russian warning and the Uzbek military build-up, the Tajik-language service of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty quoted Afghan general Abdusabur Nusrati refuting reports of the Taliban build-up.
An Uzbek analyst who declined to be named was also sceptical over just how acute the Taliban threat was.
Instead he suggested that the move may be linked to the up and coming presidential election set for March 29. He said that the security issue may play into President Islam Karimov’s image as the tough man of Uzbekistan.
“The country is preparing for presidential elections in only three months,” he said. “To my mind this statements is another indication that he is eyeing another bid as president.”
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A video distributed by the extremist group IS reportedly shows a Kazakh boy aged 10-years-old shooting dead two men who are said to have worked for the Russian intelligence agencies. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said that the boy appears to be the same boy shown in an IS propaganda video at the end of last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s ministry of culture has said it may ban British tour operator Regent Holidays after the company started advertising trips to Nagorno-Karabakh via Armenia. Azerbaijan and Armenia are still officially at war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
DEC. 29 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — Senior officials, and perhaps even heads of government, from Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France have tentatively agreed to meet in Astana for talks later this month on how to resolve the ongoing civil war in Ukraine. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is keen to project Astana as a global centre for conflict disputes.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
DEC. 17 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — Villagers in north Afghanistan have threatened to attack Turkmen soldiers who have set up guard posts 30km inside Afghan territory as a buffer against attacks from the Taliban, media reported. Turkmen officials have said that their forces have repelled several Taliban attacks.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
>>Aliyev charged in Austria, Ketebayev arrested in Spain>>
DEC. 30 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his associates have scored two more notable victories over their opponents.
A court in Austria charged Rakhat Aliyev, Mr Nazarbayev’s former son-in-law, with kidnapping and murdering two bankers in 2007 in Kazakhstan. Three days earlier, police in Spain arrested Muratbek Ketebayev, a Kazakh opposition leader linked to the 2011 uprising in the town of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan.
Mr Ketebayev was co-founder of the Alga! Party which was close to Mukhtar Ablyazov, for many year’s Mr Nazarbayev’s main opponent until his arrest in France in 2013.
Mr Nazarbayev has been after the extradition of both Mr Aliyev and Mr Ketebayev for years. He wants to avenge what he considers his betrayal by Mr Aliyev in the mid-2000s when he was married to Dariga Nazarbayeva, Mr Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, and also the uprising at Zhanaozen when police shot dead 15 protesters, triggering the most serious crisis of his presidency.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
DEC. 16 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kloop news website in Kyrgyzstan said the authorities blocked access to it after it posted a video apparently showing young Kazakh children fighting for the radical IS group in Syria. The owners of the website accused the government of over-reacting and pandering to Kazakhstan which has decreed the video illegal.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
JAN. 5 2015, (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik militants fighting for the radical Islamic group IS in Syria have reportedly said they want to return home to attack Tajikistan. This is Central Asian leaders’ worst nightmare. They fear radicalised and battle-hardened Islamic fighters will return to fight in their home countries.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
DEC. 19 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Khujand, north Tajikistan, convicted 11 men of belonging to the banned militant group Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Alongside the growing lure of the radical group IS, the governments of Central Asia fear signs that the IMU is gaining momentum. It has launched attacks previously in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)