OCT. 31 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Underlining Kazakhstan’s links with NATO countries, Kazakh defence minister Adilbek Dzhaksybekov flew to London for talks with his British counterpart Philip Hammond. Kazakhstan wants British advice on how to professionalise its military. Earlier this year the Kazakh government announced that it would end conscription.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Officials from NATO, the US-led Western military alliance, will open a training centre in Baku when they visit the Azerbaijani capital on Nov. 18, media reported. Azerbaijan has deployed a small detachment of soldiers to support NATO’s campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moving closer to NATO is a snub to Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — If proof was needed that a cease-fire between Azerbaijan and Armenia around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh was increasingly fragile, Russia may have given it.
Colonel Andrei Ruzinsky, commander of the Russian forces based in Armenia, said that Russia’s military would back Armenia if Azerbaijan ever tried to take back control of the province.
His intervention was interesting and, perhaps, well timed. Over the past few weeks there have been a number of small fire-fights between the two sides, more, it appears, than normal.
A shaky 1994 cease-fire keeps Armenia and Azerbaijan apart around Nagorno-Karabakh. The region is controlled by Armenian-backed rebels but Azerbaijan has said it wants to reclaim the region.
And it has built up the military firepower to do this.
Armenia’s military is far smaller than Azerbaijan’s but it has the backing of Russia.
While Azerbaijan has steered towards Europe and the West, Armenia has looked to Russia for support. It is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation and pledged to enter the Customs Union. Russia is the main driver and backer of both groups.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
NOV. 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a meeting in Ashgabat, Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko and his Turkmen counterpart Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov agreed to build a factory to produce unmanned aerial drones. Media reports said Turkmenistan wants the drones to patrol its borders.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
OCT. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s government has approved a deal to merge its air defence systems with Kazakhstan, media reported. A deal to merge air defence capabilities was originally signed in January. Combining air defence systems will edge Kazakhstan further towards Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armaments is big business in Azerbaijan. The government has increased its defence budget rapidly over the past decade and also built up a domestic industry. Azerbaijan media said that its defence manufacturing sector had grown by 250% in the first nine months of the year.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia will double the number of warplanes at its base at Kant outside Bishkek, media quoted Viktor Sevastyanov, a senior Russian air force commander, as saying. Earlier this month the US started withdrawing its forces from its own base in Kyrgyzstan. It will end operations at the Manas air base by mid-2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 158, published on Oct. 30 2013)
OCT. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The US military started withdrawing from the Manas airbase outside Bishkek. It has leased the base from the Kyrgyz government since 2001 and turned it into one of the biggest transit centres for forces flying to Afghanistan. The US has to complete its withdrawal from Manas by July 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 16 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov made his first state visit to the EU in nearly three years when he landed in Riga on Oct. 16.
Mr Karimov was officially in the Latvian capital to discuss bilateral relations and trade with Latvia’s president, Andris Berzins, as well as the withdrawal from Afghanistan of NATO forces. Latvia is a member of NATO and has supplied the US-led military alliance in Afghanistan with soldiers.
For Mr Karimov, though, there were other important reasons to visit Latvia. Until relatively recently, the EU had considered Uzbekistan a pariah state for various human rights abuses. European leaders are still wary of hosting Mr Karimov and he hadn’t been on a state visit to the EU since flying to Brussels in January 2011 to meet the EU and NATO chiefs.
An invitation to visit Latvia, an EU member since 2004, therefore carries more significance than it might normally. The publicity of a state visit to an EU member country would play well in the Uzbek press and television networks.
Latvia also takes over the EU presidency in 2015, so courting it now may be a clever strategy for Mr Karimov.
And then, of course, there is the small matter of a corruption investigation involving Sweden-based mobile operator TeliaSonera and payments allegedly made to Gulnara Karimova, Mr Karimov’s daughter, for a 3G licence in Uzbekistan in 2007. Investigators are looking into the role that a Latvian bank may have played in these alleged deals.
A useful trip to Latvia, then, for Mr Karimov.
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(News report from Issue No. 157, published on Oct. 23 2013)
OCT. 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A train carrying 200 Tajik soldiers through Uzbekistan derailed, injuring dozens, media reported. The train had to pass through a sliver of Uzbek territory en route from Dushanbe to northern Tajikistan. Tajikistan blamed the Uzbek authorities for the accident, raising tension between the two neighbours.
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(News report from Issue No. 156, published on Oct. 16 2013)