APRIL 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A landmine killed three Azerbaijani soldiers on the border between Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region controlled by Armenia-backed separatists, and Azerbaijan, media reported. The deaths highlight the fragile cease-fire that covers Nagorno-Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said he wanted to prioritise upgrading the navy over the next year, media reported. Analysts have warned of the militarisation of the Caspian Sea, split between Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan jailed three Tajik women for spying, potentially straining relations with neighbouring Tajikistan. The women were found guilty of photographing military hardware and passing on the information to Tajik agents. Relations between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are generally strained.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
APRIL 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan officially joined the Russia-led CIS free trade zone, a rare collegiate move by the generally unilateral Uzbek leadership.
Russian President Vladimir Putin officially signed Uzbekistan in as a member of the group, a few weeks after Russia’s parliament had approved the plan.
The timing, for Uzbekistan, is slightly unfortunate. Uzbek president Islam Karimov agreed the move towards Russia in December last year when close ties were considered vital.
The United States was withdrawing from Central Asia, its main interest had been as a launch pad for missions to Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan no doubt wanted to balance China’s growing influence against Russia.
Uzbekistan pulls in most of its remittance cash from Russia, a vital plank of its economy.
Now, though, after its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, Russia is seen as a global pariah and increasingly heavy sanctions are set to appear.
Still, as a simple free trade agreement, rather than a global statement of geo-political intent, it is still a useful move for Uzbekistan.
It allows for the free movement of goods in the free trade zone, abolishes duties and taxes and introduces anti-dumping regulations.
The other signatures are Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Tajikistan. They signed up to the agreement in 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
APRIL 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Local mullahs in Tajikistan are worried about the increasing number of young men heading off to Syria to join radical Islamist groups fighting against Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad.
Officials in Tajikistan, both government and religious, fear that the young men will return from Syria radicalised and ferment anti-government feelings.
Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon speaks out regularly against the potential drift north of the Taliban once NATO leaves Afghanistan.
Media quoted one mullah in a regional town besmirching anybody who moved to Syria to fight for the rebels.
“Such behaviour is “the way of lost souls and the way of the devil,” said Haidar Sharifzoda, head of the main mosque in the city of Kulyab.
Kulyab is in Khatlon province, Mr Rakhmon’s home region and power-base. It has also previously been considered a bastion of secular thinking. Last month, a 26-year-old man from Kulyab was reported killed in Syria.
The number of Central Asians currently fighting in Syria has been placed at anywhere between several hundred and several thousand. Many are disillusioned migrants working in Russian cities.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
MARCH 31 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Checkpoints along the disputed Kyrgyz-Tajik border have re-opened for the first time since a shootout between border-guards in January, media reported. The border is disputed between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, one of a number or territorial flashpoints across Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)
MARCH 31 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — After a meeting of the Chinese and Tajik defence ministers in Dushanbe, China pledged to help boost Tajikistan’s military, media reported. China has ramped up its support to Tajikistan over the past couple of years. It has built roads, dug mines and helped upgrade the Tajik military.
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(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)
APRIL 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Under new rules designed to quash Islamic radicals, internet cafes in Uzbekistan will have to install surveillance cameras. The order was signed into law on March 19. Uzbekistan has increased surveillance generally, angering human rights campaigners.
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(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)
MARCH 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Radical Islamists fighting government forces in Syria’s civil war have attacked and killed people living in a predominantly ethnic Armenian town, news reports have said.
An estimated 2,000 Christian Armenians have fled the city of Kesab in western Syria for Latakia, a nearby town, reports said.
Syria has been home to a large Armenian minority for the past hundred years but thousands have fled to Yerevan since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011.
The civil war in Syria presents president Serzh Sargsyan and his government a major headache both externally and domestically.
On a pre-planned trip to a conference in Brussels, Mr Sargsyan voiced his concern and offered help.
The attack is blamed on the Nursa Front, affiliated to Al Qaeda.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Disagreements over the pagan Nowruz celebration, marking the beginning of spring have highlighted fault lines in Kyrgyz society.
While the state-affiliated Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Kyrgyzstan (SAMK) views celebrating Nowruz as an acceptable part of pre-Islamic Kyrgyz tradition, more hard-line clerics, perhaps with a more Arab influence, called on believers to ignore the holiday completely in the run up to March 21.
The debate brings into focus the sharp rise of nontraditional Islam, imported from the Arab world, in Central Asia.
Nowruz — a key event in the calendar of all five Central Asian states and also Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey — is not celebrated in other parts of the Muslim world.
In February, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev expressed alarm at signs of “Arab culture, including the appearance of women wearing hijab, something alien to the gentler Kyrgyz traditional Islam.
As well as a gulf between the views of secularists like Mr Atambayev and practicing Muslims, Kyrgyzstan is also witnessing what a local religion expert called a “battle for control of mosques between different Jamaats.
As if to illustrate the point, last month the deputy Imam of a mosque in Kara-Suu, a southern city, was arrested for organising radical activity.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)