Tag Archives: security

Tension drops in east Tajikistan

MAY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -Tension has eased in south-east Tajikistan after officials agreed to launch an investigation into the causes of violence that killed several people a week earlier, media reported. The government’s authority is limited in the region of Gorno-Badakhshan. In 2012, security forces fought pitch battles to control the area after they tried to arrest a local warlord.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)

US contractor jailed in Bishkek

MAY 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Controversy has always stalked the US air base outside Bishkek and even as it wrapped up its mission in Kyrgyzstan on June 3 scandal hovered.

The military facility’s closing ceremony came only a few days after a local court sentenced one of its contractors to four years in jail on hooliganism charges.

Brandon Cornelius, a service manager at the so-called Manas Transit Center, was arrested in the early hours of March 9 after a drunken pursuit of a 22-year old girl. Although the girl did not push through sexual harassment charges, Cornelius allegedly attacked the arresting police officers.

The court verdict was a typically inglorious footnote to the Transit Center, which began life in 2001 as a major logistical hub for the US-led war in Afghanistan but has grown increasingly unpopular with locals.

In 2006, US soldier Zachary Hatfield shot a Kyrgyz man. Hatfield said he was threatened with a knife. He was transferred back to the United States, escaping punishment.

Although estimates of the Transit Center’s annual contribution to the local economy exceed $200 million, many Kyrgyz will be happy to see the back of US soldiers and hard-drinking defence contractors. A February 2014 poll backed by Gallup found 59% of Kyrgyz respondents viewed the Transit Center negatively, compared to 18% positively.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)

Kazakhstan increases military spending

May 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -Kazakhstan is considering buying Predator drones from US company General Atomics, media reported. A final deal has not yet been signed but the news is another sign that Kazakhstan is investing heavily in its military. A senior official at the ministry of defence told IHS that Kazakhstan planned to sign 30 arms deals worth $1.2b.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)

Tajik military strikes cause protests

MAY 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s restive southeast is threatening to boil over again after a special forces operation near Khorog, capital of Gorno-Badakhshan region, led to four deaths and a week of protests.

The deaths and the subsequent protests underline the difficulty that Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon has in imposing central government will on this restive part of the country.

The target of the operation was given as drug traffickers. That, though, may have been a euphemism for a local anti-government warlord.

The special forces operation killed two people in broad daylight and injured several others, angering locals who then protested and tried to storm the security forces headquarters. Reports said that two protesters were killed and more injured when security forces fired on the crowd.

The whole operation is reminiscent of a security operation in the same area two years ago. Back then, the army had to virtually close off the area and engage in street to street fighting with rebels. Dushanbe may have committed another blunder in a part of the country where its authority has been limited ever since a civil war in the 1990s.

Gorno-Badakhshan, whose population backed the ill-fated United Tajik Opposition in that conflict, is a hub of anti-government resentment.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)

Turkmen guards killed on border

MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A senior Turkmen official accused Afghan insurgents of killing three border guards, the second alleged shootings this year.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) quoted Asal Khan, the acting governor of Ghormach district in northern Afghanistan, as saying that insurgents attacked a Turkmen border post on May 24.

Turkmen officials haven’t confirmed the attack, RFE/RL said.

If the attack is confirmed it will be important to ascertain quickly who the apparent insurgents are. Are they smugglers — Turkmenistan is, afterall, on the heroin route from Afghanistan to Europe — or are they Taliban?

If the answer is Taliban, then Central Asian governments will fret. They have said that they are worried about the spread north of the Taliban after the withdrawal of most NATO forces from Afghanistan by the end of this year.

In March, three Turkmen border guards also died after an apparent attack by insurgents. Is this the beginning of a more worrying development along Central Asia’s borders?

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)

Kazakhstan increases penalties on terrorism crimes

MAY 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh lawmakers have drafted a new bill which will impose a prison sentence of up to six years on anybody who fails to report information on attacks linked to terrorism, media reported. Critics of the bill say a new law could be abused by the security services.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)

Russia’s Crimea grab impacts north Kazakhstan

PAVLODAR/Kazakhstan, MAY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Vitaly couldn’t get his words out fast enough. His jowly cheeks seemed to wobble with enthusiasm.

“Yes, if Putin did say that he wanted northern Kazakhstan we would support it,” he said. Putin was a reference, of course, to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

His friend shot him a quick look and interjected.

“But we’re happy to be part of Kazakhstan too. This is our home,” he said, shoving his hands into his tracksuit trousers. “Pavlodar is a comfortable place to live.”

The men, who were in their mid-20s, were standing on a scruffy street near the centre of this city of 330,000 people in northern Kazakhstan. It was built by the Russian empire on the banks of the serene Irtysh River which flows more than 4,000km from western Kazakhstan, into Russia’s Siberia and the Ob river system that eventually disgorges into the Arctic Sea.

From Pavlodar, the Russian border is barely 100km away.

Since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March, attention in Kazakhstan has focused on its northern regions. Here ethnic Russians outnumber Kazakhs and Russian, not Kazakh, is the main language spoken. Firebrand Russian politicians have urged Putin to turn it into Russia.

Pavlodar feels harmonious but there is an underlying tension that is not hard to find. And it worries people.

Anara, an ethnic Kazakh lawyer, was walking home from work along one of Pavlodar’s wide, tree-lined streets.

“People have always lived well together but after Crimea people are talking about it. What happens if Putin decides he wants to take northern Kazakhstan?” she said. “In Pavlodar and Petropavlovsk the main language is Russian. He could do it.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)

Kazakhstan fights terrorism – linked crimes

MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Almaty sentenced a 29-year-old man to seven years in jail for calling on Kazakhs to support militant Islamists fighting in Syria. Kamil Abdulin was found guilty of spreading terrorist propaganda and citing religious discord. Kazakhstan has increased penalties on people found guilty of terrorism-linked crimes.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)

Russia bolsters forces in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan

MAY 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia views Central Asia as an imminent conflict zone and has bolstered operations at its military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said at the third Moscow Conference on International Security.

The Kant air base outside Bishkek, he said, in particular had seen a significant increase in manpower and airpower in the past couple of years.

This coincides with the US drawdown from its own airbase outside Bishkek as operations to Afghanistan have slowed.

But neither Moscow’s airbase at Kant nor its military installation outside Dushanbe, Tajikistan, both operating under the auspices of the Russia-led regional security group the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), have played any major role in ensuring Central Asian stability. During revolution and ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, as well as clashes between pro and anti-government forces in Tajikistan’s east in 2012, the Russians were nowhere to be seen.

Mr Shoigu’s comments could be interpreted as a sign that Moscow is readying to become a regional security guarantor now that Washington is exiting the region.

That said, the comments may also just be another round of posturing by Russia in its so-called near abroad.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)

Kazakhstan signs joint air defence agreement with Russia

May 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s upper house of parliament ratified a joint air defence agreement with Russia media reported. The deal further binds Russia and Kazakhstan’s militaries. Russia already had a similar deal in place with Belarus and has been working on a deal incorporating Armenia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)