JULY 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Union will give Uzbekistan $168m to boost infrastructure in rural areas, the European Commission envoy Yuri Sturk said.Mr Sturk specifically said that the EU grant was earmarked to improve irrigation and to boost renewable energies.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JUNE 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek officials signed a protocol with their Chinese counterparts to extend their economic cooperation, media reported. The deal was signed by Chinese and Uzbek government officials in the Chinese city of Rizhao where the two governments had been holding a third intergovernmental meeting.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek defence ministry has ordered four C295W military transport planes manufactured by Airbus at its plant in Seville, Spain, Tashkent-based news agency uzdaily.com reported.
There has been no official confirmation from the Uzbek government but for
Uzbek media to report on a deal like this is a nod to its veracity. Plane spotters in Seville have also posted photographs online of a C295W plane carrying an Uzbek flag on its wing tail.
Airbus, which is headquar- tered in Paris and is part owned by Germany, France and Spain, has also dodged commenting on the deal although one of its representatives was quoted by Uzbek media in June at an airshow in France.
“For Airbus is a great honour to participate in the modernisation of Uzbekistan Airways,” the director for Airbus sales in Central Asia and eastern Europe, Stefan Konkoly, told the website jahonnews.uz.
Mr Konkoly, apparently, didn’t mention a deal with the Uzbek military.
Europe has only recently patched up its relationship with Uzbekistan. A few years ago, it considered Uzbekistan a pariah state. Human rights groups had accused the Uzbek government of shooting dead hundreds of protesters in 2005 in the town of Andijan in the east of the country.
More recently, though, Europe and NATO needed Uzbek support to pull its military out of Afghanistan.
Part of the deal was to sell or leave behind so-called non-lethal military equipment to fight Islamic extremism and drug trafficking.
Each Airbus C295W military transport plane can carry 70 soldiers and 10 tonnes of kit.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran has agreed to boost the amount of cotton and fertiliser from Uzbekistan that it transports along its railway, media reported. Transit routes through Iran, Central Asian states gain access to ports on the Persian Gulf.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Apparently aimed at showing off their determination to crack- down on the drugs trade from Afghanistan, Uzbek security officials burnt 1.4 tonnes of drugs — including opium and heroin — at a factory outside Tashkent in front of foreign diplomats.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s security forces opened a money laundering investigation into UzGazOil, a private company that runs a network of petrol stations, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. UzGazOil was owned by Zeromax which was linked to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Pres. Islam Karimov.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Trade between Russia and Uzbekistan has dropped slightly last year because of the worsening economic conditions, Vladimir Tyurdenev, the Russian ambassador in Tashkent, told media. Mr Tyurdenev’s comments are a rare admission by an official that the downturn in Russia’s economy has hit Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In Tashkent, UN chief Ban Ki-Moon said the Uzbek authorities should stop using forced labour to pick cotton and also improve prisoners’ rights. Clothing companies have boycotted Uzbek cotton.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek legislation rubber- stamped the government’s report on fulfilling the 2014 and 2015 budget which reported GDP growth of 8.1% despite a general downturn in economic conditions across the region.
The glowing numbers appear at odds with other economic indicators leaking out of the country.
According to analysts interviewed by the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Uzbek service, brewing financial trouble, triggered by the government’s failure to pay salaries, pensions and stipends over the last several months could spark turmoil.
The Uzbek economy has been shrinking over the last couple years caused by falling global oil prices, a boycott of Uzbek cotton and diminishing remittances from Uzbek labour migrants in Russia as predicted by the World Bank. The World Bank has said that Uzbekistan’s economy will shrink further in 2015-16.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan has extended its military draft, websites reported, perhaps to bolster units along the increasingly tense border with Afghanistan.
“According to incoming reports, the majority of young men, who have been recently drafted in Lebap and Balkan velayats, will be sent to the military units based in Kushka, i.e. near the Turkmen-Afghan border,” the website reported.
Senior military officials have previously said that they need to boost the number of soldiers in the army to counter perceived threat from the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Last year reports from the border said that Turkmen army units clashed with Taliban units in a number of skirmishes. This year, though, reports from the border of military activity have been much reduced.
Even so, the Chronicles of Turkmenistan website reported that the Turkmen military has extended the draft for con- scripts to July 25 from the end of June.
“According to incoming reports, the majority of young men, who have been recently drafted in Lebap and Balkan velayats, will be sent to the military units based in Kushka, i.e. near the Turkmen-Afghan border,” the website reported.
The countries that border Afghanistan — Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan — have been warning that the Taliban is preparing to move to Central Asia.
Russia has supported this assessment and sent various military advisers to the region as well as offering to boost its military presence along the border.
But many Western analysts have scorned this viewpoint and said instead that the narrative has been designed to bolster strict military and authoritarian rule in the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)