MARCH 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan has provided the highest number of suicide bombers for the extremist group IS, Radio Free Europe/Radio/Liberty reported quoting a report by The Hague- based International Center for Counter-Terrorism. It said that 27 Tajiks had killed themselves in Syria and Iraq, more than any other group of foreigners.
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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)
MARCH 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Tajikistan are investigating the former mayor of Dushanbe, Mahmadsaid Ubaidulloev, for corruption linked to the construction of a shopping centre, media reported. Mr Ubaidulloev had served as the mayor of Dushanbe for 20 years before, surprisingly, resigning in January. He was replaced by Rustam Emomali, the son of Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon. Analysts have said that before he quit as mayor of Dushanbe, Mr Ubaidulloev was considered the ultimate elite insider and that the corruption allegations are part of a power struggle.
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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)
MARCH 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Telecoms companies in Tajikistan have, according to local media, stopped taking payments via terminals because of a dispute over the commission that the terminal operators were charging. The row has meant that long queues of people waiting to top up their mobiles are snaking out of telecoms shops in Dushanbe and other cities.
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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)
MARCH 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Since 2013, as many as 4,000 Central Asians have travelled to fight in Syria and Iraq. Some of these militants play a crucial role in the organisation.
In September 2016, news agencies in Iraq reported that the former head of Tajikistan’s paramilitary police, Gulmurod Halimov, had been appointed ISIS’s supreme military commander. A recent report from the International Centre for Counter-terrorism revealed that Tajiks topped the list of foreign fighters used in suicide attacks.
For some observers, this development indicates that Central Asia is becoming a hotbed of radical Islam.
Long-suppressed during the Soviet Union, interest in religion has revived in Central Asia in the 25 years since independence and this revival has created concerns that the region’s population will embrace militant Islam.
Governments in the region, and some outside observers, argue that a cocktail of poverty, lack of education and rising religious piety drive radicalisation.
But the available evidence indicates a different story.
Almost half of the fighters from Tajikistan, for example, are well- educated graduates with degrees from secular universities and numerous fighters are from relatively wealthy families.
Only a handful of recruits have received any formal religious education. Far from being young and naïve as the government claims, the average age of fighters from Tajikistan is 28 years old, with over half of the fighters between the ages of 24 and 29. Numerous fighters experienced some form of trauma or personal crisis before joining Islamic State.
In other words, non-religious factors seem to be more important than religious ones in driving radicalisation in Central Asia.
Misdiagnosing radicalisation leads to counterproductive policies. Simply explaining recruitment through naivety and ignorance underestimates the conscious decision made by many to join an extremist group. Harsh measures that restrict the religious freedoms fail to address the underlying issues as well.
Instead, more needs to be done to counter ISIS’s propaganda, addressing social injustices and creating jobs and other opportunities so there is less incentive in the recruitment of extremist groups.
By Edward Lemon, a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia University. His research examines extremism in Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)
ALMATY, MARCH 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — India and Pakistan could become members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) by June, its Secretary-General Rashid Alimov said in a message that will raise concern in the West about the growing influence of the Russia and China-led security and economic alliance.
If, or perhaps when, India and Pakistan, join the SCO it will give the organisation leverage over roughly 40% of the world’s population and extend its geographical focus away from Central Asia towards South Asia.
Mr Alimov, Tajikistan’s former ambassador to Beijing who has been heading the SCO’s secretariat since 2016, put out the statement on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.
There has been no official confirmation of Mr Alimov’s message but last year both Pakistan and India did sign an agreement pledging to join the six member group by the end of 2017. On June 8/9, the SCO plans to hold its annual summit in Astana.
Some analysts in the West have previously likened the SCO to an Asian version of NATO, set up to act as an alternative global rallying point to the West. Other observers have said that the comparison is off the mark and that the SCO is a long way off being as developed a military alliance as NATO.
Alongside Russia and China, the SCO members are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Iran, Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia also have ‘observer’ status in the SCO, which is headquartered in Beijing and was set up in 2001.
The SCO holds war exercises, hosts diplomatic and governmental get-togethers and shares intelligence between members. It also promotes economic cooperation, allowing China to invest in Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)
FEB. 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swedish telecoms company Telia has asked the Tajik government for a face-to-face meeting to explain a tax investigation against its local subsidiary, Tcell, which has slowed its previously agreed sale to the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development. Telia wants to sell its Central Asian subsidiaries after a corruption scandal in Uzbekistan damaged its reputation.
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(News report from Issue No. 319, published on March 3 2017)
DUSHANBE, FEB. 22 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajiks working in Russia sent $1.9b back to Tajikistan in 2016, representing around a third of the national GDP, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said quoting Central Bank statistics.
The data underlines the fall in the value of the remittances being sent back from Russia, where a drop in oil prices and Western sanctions imposed after Russian interference in eastern Ukraine, has hit the economy and pushed it into a recession.
“Over 870,000 Tajikistan citizens are working in Russia. The amount of their money transfers to the motherland was $1.9 bln in 2016, corresponding to one third of the republican GDP,” Tass news agency quoted Mr Ushakov as saying.
Remittances of $1.9b is around 15% lower than in 2015, which was itself nearly 50% lower than in 2014. The proportion of Tajikistan’s national economy that remittances makes up is also down sharply. Previously, remittances sent to Tajikistan from Russia accounted for around half of its GDP.
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are often described as being the most remittance-dependent countries in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)
FEB. 21 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon fired the country’s deputy finance minister Umed Latifov in a move that observers have said probably hints at in-fighting among Tajikistan’s elite over a murky deal between Russia’s Rusal aluminium producer and Talco, Tajikistan’s aluminium smelter and its most important economic asset. No official reason was given for sacking Mr Latifov who had been in the job since July last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)
DUSHANBE, FEB. 20 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — After months of build- up and a successful dry-run, the start of a regular commercial flight between Dushanbe and Tashkent was cancelled at the last minute.
Both sides blamed the other for cancelling what would have been the first regular service between the Tajik and Uzbek capitals for 25 year and a tangible sign that relations between the two countries had started to improve after years of feuding.
Somon Air, Tajikistan’s main airline, was due to make the flight, a repeat of a one-off flight it made earlier this month. It said that Tashkent airport had contacted it and said that permission to make the flight had been withdrawn for security reasons. Tashkent airport denied this and said that the flight had been cancelled because Somon Air had failed to submit the correct paper- work in time.
Having tried to pin the blame on Tashkent airport for the flight failing to fly, Somon Air then admitted it had been at fault and promised to make the flight over the “next few days”.
Media later report that Somon Air had fired Alisher Rustamov, director of commercial operations, for failing to ensure that the flight took off.
Relations between Uzbekistan and its neighbours have improved markedly since Shavkat Mirziyoyev became president at the end of last year. His predecessor, Islam Karimov, was known to be cantankerous and relations with his neighbours had soured during his presidency. He died in September 2016 and his daughter, Gulnara, who had harboured ambitions to succeed him, was sidelined.
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(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)
DUSHANBE, FEB. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s Central Bank withdrew operational licences for Fononbank and Tajprombank, two months after it unveiled a $490m plan to save its banking sector from collapsing under the weight of bad debt.
It two terse statements, the Tajik Central Bank avoided giving details on just why it had withdrawn the banks’ licences but it did say that it was studying the banks’ various issues.
Tajik media later reported that customers of Fononbank and Tajprombank were unable to withdraw their savings.
A depreciation in the value of the Tajik somoni and a general economic downturn linked to a recession in Russia, which generates much- needed jobs and remittances, has pressured Tajikistan’s banking sector.
The government has already pumped millions of dollars into the country’s two biggest banks, Agroinvestbank and Tojiksodirot. It also promised in December to support Fononbank and Tajprombank. The government has also been talking to the IMF about receiving funds and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Neither the IMF nor the EBRD has committed any funds yet, although the EBRD pledged last year to buy an undisclosed stake in Tojiksodirot for $100m.
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(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)