Tag Archives: Tajikistan

China to pay for new Tajik parliament

JULY 19 2017 (The Bulletin) — Tajikistan said that China had agreed to give it $230m to build a new parliament building in Dushanbe, more evidence that Beijing is exerting increasing influence in Central Asia by spending billions of dollars on various infrastructure and investment schemes. Earlier this year Tajikistan said that Saudi Arabia was prepared to pay $200m to fund the new parliament building.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Tajikistan targets opposition activist

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JULY 18 2017 (The Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee accused the Tajik authorities of intimidating 10 relatives of anti- government activists who had taken part in a conference in Germany earlier in the month to mark the anniversary of the the end of the civil war 20 years earlier. HRW said that local officials had threatened the activists with having their property confiscated and banned them from leaving the country.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Telia writes down Ucell, Uzbek subsidiary

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JULY 14 2017 (The Bulletin) — Telia, the Swedish-Finnish telecoms company, said that it had written off the value of Ucell, its Uzbek subsidiary, by 2b Swedish krona ($245m) to 1.3b krona ($160m) because of currency and regulatory risks. It wants to sell out of Central Asia after a corruption row focused on its Uzbekistan unit. Earlier this year it sold its majority stake in Tajikistan’s Tcell to the Aga Khan. It appears to be having more difficulty offloading Ucell and its majority stakes in Kazakhstan’s Kcell, Azerbaijan’s Azercell and Georgia’s Geocell.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Tajikistan sets up fashion commission

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JULY 21 2017 (The Bulletin) — Concerned about so-called ‘Alien’ clothing, the Tajik government has set up a special commission to persuade ordinary Tajiks to dress in traditional clothes, media reported. Officials in Tajikistan are worried about the spread of extremist Islam and have waged various campaigns against beards that they consider to be too long and also against women’s clothes considered to be too conservative, such as the hijab.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Tajik President daughter heads bank

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JULY 18 2017 (The Bulletin) — One of Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon’s daughters, 23-year-old Zarina Rakhmona, was appointed deputy head of Orienbank, a commercial bank, in January, media reported. News of the appointment has only just emerged as it was not announced at the time. The head of the bank is the President Rakhmon’s brother-in- law, Hasan Asadullozoda. Mr Rakhmon has steadily appointed his close family members into increasingly important positions. His son is the mayor of Dushanbe and his eldest daughter is his chief- of-staff.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Fire burns market in Tajikistan

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JULY 3 2017 (The Bulletin) — A fire burnt down most of the biggest bazaar in Dushanbe, destroying hundreds of people’s livelihoods. Police have not yet determined how the fire at the Korvon bazaar started but arson has not been ruled out. The state news agency reported that President Emomali Rakhmon ordered his officials to exempt traders from rent and other taxes.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Comment: Turkey’s coup and its impact

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ISTANBUL, JULY 16 2017 (The Bulletin) — Finally we’ve made it to this finest of cities. It’s taken us a week since leaving Edinburgh to get here – via Yorkshire, Hampshire, Lord’s cricket ground, Warsaw, Prague (the airport only) and lovely, louche Odessa.

But at turns brooding and majestic; playful and frustrating, Istanbul is a place that commands love and loyalty. My wife and I are heading east on book research duty, hers not mine, and there was no reason to linger. Still, I insisted. It’s good for the temper, if not the waistline, to spend days here eating, drinking and strolling.

Coincidentally we are in Istanbul for the first anniversary of a failed coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Erdogan. A rebel army unit captured the bridge over the Bosphorus and tried to arrest Erdogan. They failed and the ramifications have been great.

Erdogan blamed the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen for organising the coup and police have arrested at least 50,000 people for being ‘Gulenists’. This purge hasn’t been confined to Turkey. Pressure has been applied to Turkey’s allies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus too. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have been happy to comply, others less so, although Georgia has started to acquiesce.

With a resurgent Russia and a powerful China, Turkey’s influence in the region has waned since the 1990s but the coup anniversary is a reminder that events in Istanbul reverberate across the Anatolian plateau, over the Caspian Sea and on to the Tien Shan mountains.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

CASA-1000 is on schedule, leaders say in Tajik capital

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DUSHANBE, JULY 6 2017 (The Bulletin) — The CASA-1000 electricity generation and supply project, considered an essential Western-based link between Central Asia and South Asia, will be finished this year, as scheduled, leaders of the four nations working on its construction said at a meeting in the Tajik capital.

This is important because CASA- 1000, which will generate electricity through hydropower stations in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and distribute it to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the main transnational Central Asia project backed by the West and its financial institutions. The US government has even described it as an important part of a new north-south Silk Road.

The West has lost influence in Central Asia over the last few years to Russia’s military expansionist strategy and China’s trade-orientated ‘Belt and Road’ policy.

Looking to allay fears that timings had slipped, Pakistan’s PM Nawaz Sharif, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Kyrgyz PM Sooronbay Jeenbekov and host Tajik President Emommali Rakhmon lined up to talk up progress.

Pakistani news agencies quoted Mr Sharif as saying: “We must make efforts to ensure that the project is completed well in time.”

There are still major security and operational concerns over CASA-1000, though, which need to be solved.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Tajikistan confirms death of former police relatives

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JULY 5 2017 (The Bulletin) — The authorities in Tajikistan said that police had fought and killed four relatives of former Tajik police commander Gulmurod Halimov who joined IS in Syria in 2015. They said that the four relatives, two of Halimov’s brothers and two cousins, were involved in a gunfight with police on July 4 in the Vosa district, 25km from Dushanbe. Reports do not clarify what triggered the gunfire.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

AllurGroup to send cars to Tajikistan

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JUNE 24 2017 (The Bulletin) — Kazakh company AllurGroup has started shipping cars to Dushanbe to form a fleet of taxis for the Tajik capital. The $600,000 deal for 55 Chinese-designed JAC S3s is important as it will keep jobs at the Kostanai-based SaryarkaAvtoProm. The Kazakh car making sector has been under pressure in the current economic downturn.

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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)