JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Talks between Kyrgyz and Tajik officials over their border dispute will resume on June 16, media reported quoting a senior Kyrgyz official. This is important as altercations between villagers have intensified this year around the Tajik-Kyrgyz border. In May a mass brawl injured several people.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan is not known as a trading powerhouse, its main export is migrant labour to Russia, but a recent low-level diplomatic meeting in Dushanbe once again highlights the importance of its aluminium smelter.
Tajikistan’s deputy transport minister, Sherali Gandjalov and Georgia’s ambassador in the country, Konstantin Zhgenti met to discuss securing trade routes for aluminium exports from TALCO through the South Caucasus trade corridor, Asia-Plus reported.
Mr Gandjalov and Mr Zhgenti specifically discussed the Georgian port of Poti on the Black Sea coast. Poti is a major transit point for raw materials needed for Tajik aluminium production as well as an export route for finished aluminium products heading to European markets.
But all is not well at TALCO, the state aluminium- smelter. It is saddled with debts and last year laid off 20% of its staff as global aluminium prices bottomed out.
These former TALCO staff will most likely be adding to Tajikistan’s most economically successful export — migrant workers to Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek president Islam Karimov has criticised the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union as a thinly disguised effort to create a broader political group.
Mr Karimov is, perhaps, the first leader from Central Asia to offer such brazen criticism of the Eurasian Economic Union, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pet projects.
Kyrgyz news agency 24.kg reported Mr Karimov saying that joining the Eurasian Economic Union would mean losing national independence.
“They say that they will only create an economic market and it won’t relinquish sovereignty and independence. Tell me, can political independence exist without economic independence?” Mr Karimov said according to 24.kg.
Of course, Uzbekistan is the most unilateral of the Central Asian countries and criticism from Tashkent of the Eurasian Economic Union is not unexpected but Mr Karimov’s comments are particularly barbed and the timing poignant.
Alongside Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus are also members of the Eurasian Economic Union which was signed into existence last month at a ceremony in Astana. But Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are all eager to join.
Many Western analysts have said that despite assurances from Mr Putin, the Eurasian Economic Union is little more than a thinly veiled effort by the Kremlin to extend its political power. Clearly Mr Karimov shares these views.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
MAY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -Tension has eased in south-east Tajikistan after officials agreed to launch an investigation into the causes of violence that killed several people a week earlier, media reported. The government’s authority is limited in the region of Gorno-Badakhshan. In 2012, security forces fought pitch battles to control the area after they tried to arrest a local warlord.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
JUNE 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Human Rights Watch said a court ruling of defamation against the independent news outlet Asia-Plus had damaged media freedom in Tajikistan. Last year, Asia-Plus wrote a story about a poet returning to Tajikistan. It expressed scepticism over the poet’s apparent praise of Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
JUNE 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -In Tajikistan, where military service is compulsory, a debate is brewing about violence in the armed forces. The outcome of a high-profile trial may impact how President Emomali Rakhmon will react.
The trial revolves around 20-year-old border guard Shakhbol Mirzoyev who was seriously injured after, allegedly, being beaten up by fellow soldiers on March 6.
Tajikistan’s Asia-Plus news service reported that Mr Mirzoyev’s had his leg and neck broken.
The republic’s main opposition party the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan has since called for changes to the law on forced military conscription and the elimination of the practice of oblava which sees unwilling conscripts effectively kidnapped into armed service.
A period of hazing — physical and psychological intimidation that is part of most armies across the former Soviet Union — often follows such kidnappings.
Many young Tajiks flee abroad to dodge conscription.
Malik, a 23-year old Tajik national who graduated from university in Bishkek says he isn’t going home this summer.
“My [Tajik] friends in Kyrgyzstan here have all paid the army off, so they are safe,” he said. “But I am here on a scholarship and my family don’t have money. If they find me, I will have to serve.”
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s restive southeast is threatening to boil over again after a special forces operation near Khorog, capital of Gorno-Badakhshan region, led to four deaths and a week of protests.
The deaths and the subsequent protests underline the difficulty that Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon has in imposing central government will on this restive part of the country.
The target of the operation was given as drug traffickers. That, though, may have been a euphemism for a local anti-government warlord.
The special forces operation killed two people in broad daylight and injured several others, angering locals who then protested and tried to storm the security forces headquarters. Reports said that two protesters were killed and more injured when security forces fired on the crowd.
The whole operation is reminiscent of a security operation in the same area two years ago. Back then, the army had to virtually close off the area and engage in street to street fighting with rebels. Dushanbe may have committed another blunder in a part of the country where its authority has been limited ever since a civil war in the 1990s.
Gorno-Badakhshan, whose population backed the ill-fated United Tajik Opposition in that conflict, is a hub of anti-government resentment.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia views Central Asia as an imminent conflict zone and has bolstered operations at its military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said at the third Moscow Conference on International Security.
The Kant air base outside Bishkek, he said, in particular had seen a significant increase in manpower and airpower in the past couple of years.
This coincides with the US drawdown from its own airbase outside Bishkek as operations to Afghanistan have slowed.
But neither Moscow’s airbase at Kant nor its military installation outside Dushanbe, Tajikistan, both operating under the auspices of the Russia-led regional security group the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), have played any major role in ensuring Central Asian stability. During revolution and ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, as well as clashes between pro and anti-government forces in Tajikistan’s east in 2012, the Russians were nowhere to be seen.
Mr Shoigu’s comments could be interpreted as a sign that Moscow is readying to become a regional security guarantor now that Washington is exiting the region.
That said, the comments may also just be another round of posturing by Russia in its so-called near abroad.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon flew to Bahrain for the start of an official thee day visit. It is his first trip to Bahrain and comes shortly after he signed a deal with Kuwait to improve relations. Mr Rakhmon is likely to sign a similar deal in Bahrain.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
May 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan and Afghanistan are discussing setting up economic free zones, media reported after a meeting between their economy ministers in Dushanbe. Although no agreements were signed, this is a sign that Central Asian states want to incorporate Afghanistan into their economic area.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)