Tag Archives: Tajikistan

Russia jails Tajik IS recruiters

MAY 23 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in St Petersburg sentenced two ethnic Tajiks to prison for recruiting people for the extremist IS group. One of the men was given a 6-1/2 year sentence; the other a sentence of 6 years. Russia and countries in Central Asia have said that much of the alleged radicalisation of young Central Asians occurs in Russia where they work as labourers, removed from their family unit.

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(News report from Issue No. 330, published on May 28 2017)

WHO and Tajikistan start measles programme

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MAY 23 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The World Heath Organisation (WHO) and the Tajik authorities started a mass measles vaccination drive that will cover 2m children to combat a epidemic that they say has already infected 400 people. The measles outbreak has spread from the countryside to Dushanbe, forcing the authorities to launch the drive.

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(News report from Issue No. 330, published on May 28 2017)

Afghanistan pushes back Talibans from Tajik border

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MAY 15 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Reports from Afghanistan said that government forces had pushed back Taliban soldiers who had moved up to the border with Tajikistan. Worried about a possible incursion across into Tajikistan, the Tajik military earlier this month deployed extra forces along its border. Analysts are worried that any push into Tajikistan by the Taliban may destabilise the Central Asia region.

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(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)

Measles outbreak spreads in Tajikistan

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MAY 16 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Aid agencies warned that a measles outbreak in Tajikistan had spread from the countryside into Dushanbe, the capital, and threatened to escalate. Several hundred, mainly children, have already been taken ill with measles. There have been no reports of any deaths.

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(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)

Tajik army mobilises to defend against the Taliban

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DUSHANBE, MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan started reinforcing its army along the border with Afghanistan against a potential surge north by the Taliban, official sources told The Conway Bulletin.

At the end of last month, the Taliban captured the town of Zebak, 35km from the border with Tajikistan, its furthest advance north in years of fighting.

“Although the Talibs always claim not to cross the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, we have still decided to announce an intensified military situation in Tajikistan’s Ishkashim region,” a senior official in one of the regional emergencies ministries told a Bulletin correspondent.

Ishkashim region is part of Tajikistan’s Badakhshan province, which borders Afghanistan.

In Dushanbe, witnesses saw military transport planes take off from the airport and head in the direction of Badakhshan and, for the first time under a military pact agreed in 2012 between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, media reported that Tajik hospitals have been caring for injured Afghan government soldiers.

Analysts and some government officials have been warning for years that any Taliban move north towards Tajikistan threatens stability in Central Asia.

The risk is that a destabilised southern Tajikistan would drag the government into the fight against the Taliban. Russia, too, has a base in Tajikistan and could get pulled into the conflict.

People living in Ishkashim near the border with Afghanistan have started to flee their homes, witnesses said.

Parvina, a 47-year-old, teacher at the university in Khorog, the nearest Tajik town, said that although people in the region had lived with the threat of fighting in Afghanistan spilling over into Tajikistan, the situation was currently more serious than usual.

“Afghanistan has had this war for decades and of course I am afraid of it,” she told a Bulletin correspondent by telephone. “The only thing that is separating us from Afghanistan is the Amu Darya River and I do not think that it will be hard for the Talibs simply to cross it whenever they decide to.”

Over the past few years, Central Asian states have boosted trade and diplomatic ties with Afghanistan, making plans to build pipelines and electricity routes across the country, as well as trading gas and establishing air links.

But the threat from the Taliban has never been far away. In 2015, the Taliban briefly captured the city of Kundiz near the Tajik border. Turkmenistan has also been bolstering its border forces over the past few years after it said that Taliban forces attacked its border posts.

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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)

EBRD says may still lend to Azerbaijan despite EITI row

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MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) may still lend Azerbaijan $500m for a gas pipeline linking the Caspian Sea to Europe despite Baku quitting the EITI, a global transparency watchdog.

The comments by EBRD chairman Suma Chakrabarti go against an EBRD statement last year which said Azerbaijan would have to pass the EITI’s transparency criteria to receiving funding. The EITI suspended Azerbaijan’s membership in March for failing to improve NGO laws, triggering Azerbaijani officials to walk out of the organisation.

Now, in an interview with Bloomberg, Mr Chakrabarti appeared to suggest that mission creep may be blurring the Oslo-based EITI’s remit.

“What’s happened on the EITI is very, very unfortunate,” Bloomberg quoted Mr Chakrabarti as saying. He then said that people were “worried about some of the criteria that are now being used in EITI”.

Azerbaijani officials complained that the EITI, an acronym for Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, had drifted from its remit of improving accountability in mining and oil and gas sectors and was now acting as a watchdog on more general democracy issues.

In his Bloomberg interview, Mr Chakrabarti said that the EBRD is “progressing” its finance plans for the Southern Gas Corridor and will give a final decision by the end of 2017.

“The question really is whether the Azeris are adopting the principles, not just by saying they are but by showing transparency in what they do,” he said.

“That’s a judgment we’ll make.”

The $40b Southern Gas Corridor is a network of pipelines that should pump Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, reducing its reliance on Russia. It has political backing from the EU and business backing from BP and other multinational but corruption and human rights activists are critical of Azerbaijan and have said that Western companies and governments should not be dealing with it.

At the EITI, the head of its secretariat, Jonas Moberg, told The Conway Bulletin that Mr Chakrabarti’s interview hadn’t undermined its core mission of increasing accountability within the extractive sectors.

“Civil society needs to be able to hold their governments to account if the EITI is going to have a meaningful impact on how the oil sector is governed in a country,” he said.

Kazakhstan, Armenian, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are also members of the EITI. The EITI criticised Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan this year for making inadequate progress against its criteria.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Tajik police arrests anti-corruption officials

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APRIL 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Tajikistan have arrested 17 officials at the state anti-corruption unit for abuse of power and document forgery, local media reported. The unit used to be headed by Rustam Emomali, son of Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon. He became the mayor of Dushanbe earlier this year. One of the officials arrested was deputy director Davlatbek Khairzoda.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Saudi to give $200m for new parliament building in Tajikistan

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MAY 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Saudi Arabia will spend $200m building a new parliament building in Dushanbe, the Asia-Plus news agency reported quoting a government official. News leaked last year that Saudi Arabia was prepared to fund the construction of a new parliament, although it had been unclear how much it would cost.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Taliban move north to Tajikistan

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MAY 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Taliban militants have captured the Zebak district in Afghanistan, close to the border with Tajikistan, reports said. Security analysts have said that a surge north by the Taliban is a major threat to Tajikistan. Now, reports have said that Afghan government forces have been regrouping at a town on the border with Tajikistan after being defeated in a couple of battles.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Telia finally sells Tajikistan’s Tcell to the Aga Khan

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DUSHANBE, APRIL 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Telia, the Swedish telecoms company, sold its 60% stake in Tajik mobile operator Tcell to the Aga Khan for $27.7m, the first in a series of sales which it plans to extract itself from Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

The final sale price was lower than the $39 agreed in September but for Telia it will be a relief to be rid of a company that it had come to see as a burden.

Last month it accused the Tajik government of effectively blocking the deal after it failed to meet a deadline to give its approval and in January, too, Telia said Tajikistan’s tax authorities had slapped a bogus tax claim against Tcell.

But the main relief for Telia will be in agreeing its first deal to sell out of one of the five companies it part- owns in the region after declaring in February 2016 that the reputational and corruption risk of business in Central Asia and the South Caucasus was too high.

Telia CEO Johan Dennelind underlined this point in a statement. “By divesting Tcell we have now taken a second step in our strategy to leave region Eurasia and we maintain the ambition to complete our exit in 2017,” he said.

Tcell is the biggest mobile network in Tajikistan. The Aga Khan, a major investor in Tajikistan, already owned 40% of Tcell.

Telia is the subject of one of the biggest bribery cases in Western corporate history after admitting that its executives paid hundreds of millions of dollars in 2007 to the daughter of then-president Islam Karimov for access to Uzbekistan’s mobile market.

Swedish media uncovered the bribe, and others paid by Russia’s Vimpelcom, in a series of investigations from 2012, causing major reputational damage to Telia’s brand.

The US and Dutch authorities prosecuting Telia had agreed a $1.45b fine for corruption but Jonas Bengtsson, the company’s General Counsel, also said on April 26 that this was likely to be cut to $1b.

“We have made progress and as a result of our discussions and in light of recent developments to date, we have adjusted our estimate of the most likely outcome and we are therefore changing our provision to reflect the best estimate,” he said.

“The new provision amounts to $1b.”

Telia’s other companies in the region are Ucell in Uzbekistan, Kcell in Kazakhstan, Azercell in Azerbaijan and Geocell in Georgia. It owns these stakes with Turkey’s Turkcell through the Netherlands-registered holding company Fintur.

Telia is in talks to sell its 58.5% stake in Fintur to Turkcell.

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(News report from Issue No. 326, published on April 28 2017)