DEC. 12/13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon travelled to India and Sri Lanka to drum up political and economic support. India has redeveloped the Ayni airbase near Dushanbe and there has been on-off talk of the Indian air force taking over running of the base.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)f
DEC. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — >> Why is Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon in India? Is this just another meet and greet trip or something more significant?
>> It’s a five day trip starting on Dec. 14, so the length gives away some of the importance. He’s timed it nicely if he wanted to watch the final cricket test match between India and England down in Chennai, but I don’t think that’s why he’s there. Instead Rakhmon and Indian PM Narendra Modi will hold talks aimed at boosting bilateral relations. For India, Tajikistan has been groomed to be something of a springboard into Central Asia. For Tajikistan, India is a potential major investor.
>> I can understand why Tajikistan wants India as an investor, it must need a counterbalance to China’s growing influence and also to Russia, but why does India need to be in Central Asia?
>> India has been late getting in on the act in Central Asia. Whereas China, its great Asian rival, has developed now fairly substantial political and business ties, India has appeared flat-footed. Central Asia is an energy and mineral rich region virtually on its door- step but India simply hasn’t been able to develop any major footholds. Take the energy sector. India needs more energy supplies, so this is important to Delhi. When ConocoPhillips wanted to sell its 8.4% stake in the Kashagan oil project in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea in 2012, it negotiated a deal with India’s state-owned ONGC. This was to be ONGC’s chance to buy into one of the most highly prized pieces of energy real estate in the world. It didn’t work out, though, as Kazakhstan exercised an option that it had on the field and pushed the stake towards China. China’s CNPC ended up buying it for $5b in 2013. India was left looking impotent.
>> That’s certainly a major snub, especially if India has already agreed the deal. What has India done since then to get back into the Central Asian region?
>> It’s been busy. Modi toured all five Central Asian states in 2015. It was a whirlwind tour to each of the region’s capitals and was generally considered a diplomatic success. And India has develop some major projects since losing out on the Kashagan stake. The biggest of these is the TAPI gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. It’s an ambitious multi-billion-dollar project that will change the dynamic of the region. Suddenly a major infrastructure project is flowing north-south rather than west-east.
>> So where does Tajikistan fit into all this?
>> India’s interest in Tajikistan is more strategic than obviously economic. In 2003, India upgraded the Ayni airbase outside Dushanbe. The theory was, back then, than it was going to station its air force at the airbase but this never came about. When Modi was in Tajikistan last year he visited the base but no deals were agreed, at least publicly. Earlier this year, the members of the influential China and Russia led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation voted in India and Pakistan as members. Tajikistan has been an important ally for India in helping it secure this.
>> Right. What else is likely to come out of Rakhmon’s visit to India this week?
>> It’s difficult to say for sure. This is Rakhmon’s sixth trip to India but his first since 2012. Indian media have speculated that there will be an upgrade of Indian-Tajik relations and that there could be some movement over the Ayni airbase but a pre-visit statement from the Indian ministry for external affairs was tight-lipped.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)
DEC. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik media quoted an unnamed source in the state’s statistics committee as saying that foreign direct investment had risen sharply in the third quarter of the year, mainly due to heavy infrastructure investments by China. The source said that China made up around two thirds of the investments, highlighting just how influential it has become over Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)
DEC. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — News that Tojiksodirotbank had resumed banking activities might have been a relief for its many customers, but it’s still keeping the Central Bank’s officials on the edge of their seats.
Injecting around $500m, as it did to save Tojiksodirotbank from going bankrupt, into the banking system was not a joke for the Tajik government. It is struggling to keep its somoni currency afloat against a strengthening US dollar and has faced a severe downturn in remittances from migrant workers, an important part of Tajikistan’s economy.
Tajikistan is one of the world’s most remittance-dependent countries. Transfers from workers abroad accounted for around half of the country’s GDP a few years ago.
Now, the picture might be different. The Central Bank has blamed the liquidity crisis in the banking sector on the shrinking remittances, projected to decrease again this year. In two years, between 2014-2015, remittances had fallen by 47% from $3.9b.
The combination of these events put increasingly pressure on the banking sector, which risked default earlier this year. The government intervention seems to have plugged the main hole, but the crisis is far from over.
With the bailout, the government inherited the banks’ shaky credit portfolio. For regular people, the pressure on the economy has made it increasingly difficult to pay back their debt. In addition, several state-owned companies that had borrowed heavily in previous years have started to show signs of insolvency.
The government knows well enough that it is simply not in a position to bail out its entire economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)f
DEC. 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Moscow said that they had arrested citizens of Moldova and Tajikistan who had been planning a series of attacks. Security services said that the men were linked to the radical IS group and had been acting under the orders of a commander based in Turkey. Intelligence agencies worry that Central Asia has become a key recruiting ground for IS.
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(News report from Issue No. 309, published on Dec. 16 2016)
NOV. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Shots have been fired by Tajik and Kyrgyz border guards on their shared border, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. The border is one of the most tense in Central Asia. RFE/RL said that nobody had been injured in the fighting and that it wasn’t clear if the shots had been fired into the air as warnings or had been aimed at security personnel.
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(News report from Issue No. 307, published on Dec. 2 2016)
NOV. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Commercial aeroplanes will fly between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan from January 2017, for the first time in 25 years, media reported quoting civil aviation officials from both countries. Relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have been poor for years as the countries have rowed, mainly about water supplies. Under acting- president Shavkat Mirziyoyev, though, Uzbekistan has worked to improve relations with its neighbours.
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(News report from Issue No. 307, published on Dec. 2 2016)
NOV. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said that the Tajik authorities had stripped six of its reporters of their accreditation after the news agency published a story criticising the promotion of President Emomali Rakhmon’s daughter to a senior foreign ministry position.
Mr Rakhmon has a reputation for promoting his friends and family to high positions in the Tajik government and some analysts have said that he is setting up his son, Rustam Emomali, to take over the presidency from him. Mr Rakhmon has changed the constitution to scrap minimum age limits for presidential candidates.
Earlier this year Rukhshona Rahmonova, his daughter, was made an MP and now she has been appointed the deputy head of a department within the foreign ministry.
RFE/RL said that the stripping of its journalists’ accreditation was an attack on the whole agency.
“We are outraged by this action by the Tajik government, which is a blatant attack on our ability to do our jobs as journalists,” it said in a statement on its website.
The media scene for journalists in Tajikistan has been worsening over the past few years. The government has jailed both dissenting journalists and opposition activists.
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(News report from Issue No. 307, published on Dec. 2 2016)
NOV. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Seven migrant workers from Tajikistan died in a fire in the metal container they were using as their living quarters on a construction site in Siberia, media reported.
Investigators said that the cause was likely to be a short-circuit in the electric heater which was warming the container. The container had been lined with wood and felt to keep out the severe cold.
This is the third major accident involving migrant workers this year. In January a roof collapsed onto a sewing workshop in Moscow, killing at least 12 migrant workers and in September a fire in a printing workshop killed at least 16 women workers from Kyrgyzstan.
Remittances from Russia is a vital source of income for countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, especially for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)
NOV. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkish security services arrested three dozen men from Central Asia and the South Caucasus who, they said, were working for the extremist IS group and had been planning a series of suicide attacks in Turkey’s biggest city. They said that the ringleaders were an Uzbek man and a Tajik man. Governments from Central Asia and the South Caucasus are increasingly concerned about their citizens heading to Syria to fight for IS.
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(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)