Tag Archives: Tajikistan

Tajikistan is facing most serious drought ever, says deputy PM

DEC. 22 2020 (The Bulletin) — Davlatali Said, Tajikistan’s deputy PM, said that the country was facing the most serious drought on record. The statement was an unusually candid one by a senior member of the Tajik government on the water shortages in Tajikistan’s reservoirs that have dented power generation at its hydropower stations. Tajikistan is trying to set itself up as a major regional power exporter.

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— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Comment: Human rights in the region are worsening

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JULY 31 (The Bulletin) — If there was doubt about the direction of travel for media and human rights in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the past fortnight has dispelled it.

First Tajikistan and Azerbaijan teamed up to block a second term for two highly thought-of senior officials at the Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Solrun Gisladottir, as head of its vote monitoring unit ODHIR, and Harlem Desir, the OSCE’s media representative. All 57 members of the OSCE have to agree on each of the key appointments and Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, with some support from Turkey, said that Desir and Gisladottir had been biased against them.

In truth, Desir and Gisladottir had just been clear on calling out Tajikistan and Azerbaijan for what they are. Serial abuses of democratic principles, media freedom and civil rights.

And then there is also the death in a Kyrgyz prison of Azimzhan Askarov. He was an ethnic Uzbek whose mistake was to irritate the Kyrgyz authorities in the south of the country in the years before inter-ethnic fighting broke out in 2010. The police in Kyrgyzstan are dominated by ethnic Kyrgyz and Askarov accused them of bias against Uzbeks, torture and abuse.

He was arrested in the aftermath of the fighting in 2010 and accused of murdering a policeman. Human rights groups and Western diplomats said that the charges were fabricated but their protests were ignored and Askarov was imprisoned for life.

Even when it was clear that Askarov was gravely ill, the authorities in Kyrgyzstan refused to grant him any clemency. Human Rights Watch accused the Kyrgyz authorities of wanting Askarov to die in prison.

So, there we have it. Tajikistan and Azerbaijan undermine one of the more effective on-the-ground peace-making organisations and Kyrgyzstan targets an annoying Uzbek human rights activist to die in one of its prisons.

Myopic, narcissistic and nihilist, their true colours have been visible for all to see over the past fortnight.

The region is less stable without an effective OSCE and less equitable without Askarov.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Russia sends coronavirus kits to Tajikistan

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JULY 29 (The Bulletin) — Russia sent 50,000 coronavirus testing kits to Tajikistan to help it track and combat the spread of the virus, Russian media reported. Tajikistan, which declared its first coronavirus case a month after its neighbours, has now recorded 7,495 cases of the coronavirus and 61 deaths.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Water shortage triggers concerns on Tajik power generation

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DUSHANBE/JULY 28 (The Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s national energy company Barqi Tojik said that a shortage of water in its reservoirs had reduced its electricity generation capacity and forced it to cut its power exports.

Water shortages and electricity cuts are a concern for Tajikistan as power is one of its main exports. The headline Rogun dam, the biggest hydroelectric dam in the world, is due for completion by 2028 and has been earmarked to boost Tajikistan’s power exports but, without sufficient water, it could become a white elephant.

In a live TV address, a government official from the ministry of power said that water levels in the Vakhsh and Panj rivers were lower than at any time since records began.

“Today, the Nurek reservoir has 17m less water in it than last year,” he said. “If this situation continues, the reservoir will be severely depleted, and in winter there will be serious problems in providing electricity to the population and the national economy.”

The Nurek reservoir is situated about 40km from Dushanbe, slightly lower down the same river system as Rogun. This means that if there is a shortage of water for Nurek, there will be a shortage of water for Rogun.

The government blamed global warming for the water shortages.

“The process of climate change and global warming is going on rapidly on the planet, and its impact, especially this year on Tajikistan, has intensified,” the spokesman said.

The immediate concern, though, is that Tajikistan doesn’t have enough water in its reservoirs to power its electricity generating capacity. Tajikistan, Central Asia’s poorest country, has already cut electricity transmission levels to Uzbekistan and analysts are worried that it won’t be able to meet its obligations for the World Bank-backed CASA-1000 project.

By 2023, CASA-1000 should be operating a network of electricity transmission masts that will carry power generated in Tajik and Kyrgyz hydro systems, across Afghanistan into Pakistan. The West sees it as a win-win-win. Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan earn much-needed cash, Pakistan buys up much-needed power and the West earn kudos.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Tajikistan acting as route for Turkey to send Uighurs to China -media

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DUSHANBE/JULY 26 (The Bulletin) — Tajikistan is acting as a secret channel for Turkey to deport Uighurs to China where they are interned in so-called re-education camps, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The newspaper quoted lawyers in Turkey and family members of deported Uighurs who said that China was making hundreds of demands on Turkish authorities to deport Uighurs and that they were now using third countries, such as Tajikistan, to deport them.

The Telegraph documented how 59-year-old Uighur widow Aimuzi Kuwanhan, who had fled China for Turkey, had disappeared suddenly.

“A lawyer hired by her family subsequently discovered that she had been extradited to Tajikistan, despite having never lived there or having held Tajik citizenship. Sources who knew Kuwanhan say from there she was sent to China,” the Telegraph reported.

Turkey has denied the reports and Tajikistan has not commented but there has been an increase in the number of media and online reports from Istanbul of Turkish police and authorities detaining known Uighur activists this year.

Turkey, like Tajikistan’s neighbours — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan — has a sizeable ethnic Uighur population and it would have been politically impossible to deport them directly to China. Tajikistan, though, has close connections with China but no ethnic Uighur population. The plight of the Uighurs, and other Muslim minorities, in China’s Xinjiang province is not a major discussion point in Tajikistan.

This means that while Turkey has a policy of not sending Uighurs back to China, under pressure from various bilateral agreements that it has signed with Beijing, it could send them to Tajikistan. The authorities there would be able to send them on to China.

Over the past decade, Tajikistan has developed close relations with China relying on cheap loans from Beijing to upgrade its Soviet-era infrastructure and give its towns and cities facelifts. These loans have come with major political influence too and Tajikistan can now be relied upon by China to act as a loyal ally.

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— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

China wants to speed up BRI projects in Tajikistan post-Covid

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DUSHANBE/JUNE 17 (The Bulletin) — Tajikistan and China should speed up projects linked to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative to counter the impact of an anti-coronavirus lockdown, media reported Chinese President Xi Jinping as saying to his Tajik counterpart, Rustam Emomali, in a telephone conversation.

The reported conversation will concern analysts in the West who say that China already treats Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and, to a lesser extent, the other Central Asian states, as vassal countries which are tied into its expansive Belt and Road Initiative.

It has handed out billions of dollars in soft loans over the past decade in return for influence and business contracts.

In May, Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov asked China for debt relief to help it deal. Instead, Beijing stepped up consignments of protective equipment and aid, a strategy that some analysts described as “photogenic”.

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— This story was first published in issue 451 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin on June 23 2020

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Thousands of Tajik workers return home

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DUSHANBE/April 5 (The Bulletin) — Thousands of Tajik workers have returned early from jobs in Russia because of a lockdown triggered by the spread of the coronavirus, threatening to undermine the Tajik economy which is one of the most remittance-reliant economies in the world.

An estimated 500,000 Tajiks work in Russia – labouring on building sites, selling roses at train stations, cleaning streets and other menial jobs – and they send home the equivalent of around a third of Tajikistan’s annual GDP. The numbers are similar for Kyrgyzstan.

Economists have said that the combined drag of the coronavirus pandemic and a crash in oil prices may tip Russia into a recession.

The last time the Russian economy contracted, in 2015, the knock-on effect to the Tajik economy was significant.

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— This story was first published in issue 441 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Radio Free Europe chiefs says Tajik officials hinder reporting on the coronavirus

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APRIL 5 (The Bulletin) — Tajikistan has not reported any cases of the coronavirus. It has closed its borders but there are no restrictions within the country on people’s movement. The Tajik football season is one of only four in the world — the others being Belarus, Nicaragua and Burundi — that are continuing to play league matches.

The head of the US-backed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty news service, Jamie Fly, said that Tajik officials were deliberately obstructing the efforts of his journalists to report on the coronavirus.

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— This story was first published in issue 441 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Coronavirus undermines region’s projected growth

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ALMATY/April 5 (The Bulletin) — The coronavirus will undermine what had looked like a strong year of economic growth in 2020 and instead knock the Central Asia and South Caucasus region into a recession.

Of the six countries in the region that have declared states-of-emergencies and infections of the coronavirus, only Kazakhstan has officially said that its economy will shrink in 2020 but analysts expect others to follow.

Kazakh economy minister Ruslan Dalenov said on April 2 that the combined impact of the coronavirus and a fall in oil prices mean that Kazakhstan’s economy will shrink by 0.9% in 2020.

Oil is Kazakhstan’s main export and with prices dropping by 40% to around $35/barrel because of a price war and a drop in demand triggered by the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, Mr Dalenov said oil exports would fall.

“A decrease is also expected compared to previously approved growth rates in the manufacturing industry, agriculture, construction and the services sector, including trade,” he said.

Kazakhstan had previously predicted GDP growth of 4.5% for 2020. It last went into a recession in 2016 after a previous oil price collapse.

In Armenia, the Central Bank is still predicting GDP growth this year but only of 0.7%, down from an earlier prediction of 7.6%.

Other countries have held off giving predictions on the economic cost of the spread of the coronavirus although they have all said that their original growth estimates are likely to be heavily reduced.

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— This story was first published in issue 441 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Central Asia and the South Caucasus tighten coronavirus lockdowns

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YEREVAN/April 5 (The Bulletin) — Battling to stop the spread of the coronavirus, governments in Central Asia and the South Caucasus intensified lockdowns that ban people from leaving their homes.

At least 17 people have died across the region with the COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus, although analysts think the real figure could be many more. Health ministries and international donors are now worried that the region’s underfunded and under-resourced hospitals and health systems will buckle if there is a surge in infections.

On March 26, Armenian deputy PM Mher Grigoryan appeared to betray his nervousness about whether Armenia’s health service could cope with rising infections.

“We have an obvious problem, which is outstanding everywhere else in the world and it is important to solve here in Armenia,” he was quoted as saying. “It is the modernisation and re-equipment of the healthcare system. Here, too, we must take measures.”

In the region, only Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have not reported any infections, to the derision of observers who think it is unlikely that either country has escaped the coronavirus that has been ripping across the world since it appeared in central China in December.

Armenia and Kazakhstan have been worst hit by the coronavirus, with 822 and 569 people infected by April 5, but Kyrgyzstan appears to be most vulnerable economically. Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov has already asked for emergency financial support from the IMF.

As for the intensified lockdowns, the Kazakh authorities have told people that they can only leave their homes every other day and in Azerbaijan people have to notify the police via an app or an SMS if they are going out onto the street.

In Armenia, where PM Nikol Pashinyan had only a few weeks ago said that the coronavirus could easily be beaten, the government has ordered all businesses, restaurants and cafes to close until at least April 10.

He has been criticised for holding referendum campaign rallies in March that may have contributed to the spread of the coronavirus.

“Compared to Azerbaijan and Georgia, our corona infection stats are higher. Am I the first to say that the reason for this is the referendum campaign?” said Samvel Grigoryan, a public health analyst.

A referendum on the status of the country’s top judges had been set for April 5. This has now been postponed.

Armenia’s government has said that the rate of infection is slowing, but people told The Bulletin’s correspondent that they are worried.

“We need to obey,” said Margarita Aghayan, 56, who is confined to her two-room apartment in a Yerevan suburb with her husband, her daughter and granddaughter.

“I feel very scared. I feel horror. I am scared of the people who don’t take this seriously.”

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— This story was first published in issue 441 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin