SEPT. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to Ashgabat, the head of the Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev met with Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, media reported. The visit was rare for a senior Azerbaijani official and, perhaps, indicates the improved relations between the two Caspian Sea states.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Attending a meeting of the heads of the five Caspian Sea littoral stares, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev called on the military balance around the sea to be balanced, media reported. The Caspian Sea has been the focus of heated arguments over ownership.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajik president Emomalii Rakhmon will visit the city of Khorog in the east of the country for the first time since fighting between local forces and government soldiers in 2012, officials said.
The visit is, officially, part of countrywide tour by Mr Rakhmon but his trip to Khorog will also be seen as a show of strength in the troublesome area. Few would have been surprised if Mr Rakhmon had chalked the city off his tour. It remains a bastion of anti-government opposition where armed groups opposed to the regime in Dushanbe enjoy support from the local population, mostly ethnic Pamiris that have felt shortchanged ever since Mr Rakhmon’s political faction claimed victory in a five year civil war.
For much of the country’s first two decades of independence, Khorog was relatively stable. But a military operation launched by the government against local powerbrokers in July 2012 shattered the calm in the city. Both government and opposition forces suffered heavy losses.
In May this year, another smaller scale operation saw government agents kill three Khorog residents suspected of drug-smuggling, triggering two days of rioting.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Despite a World Bank report tentatively giving backing to Tajikistan’s Rogun Dam, Uzbekistan foreign minister Abdulaziz Kamilov used a speech at the UN to underline his country’s continued opposition to the project. Increased tension between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan over the dam is an important issue to monitor.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Shares in Kazkommertzbank have nose-dived since it bought a stake in BTA Bank from the Kazakh government.
By the end of September, shares in KazKom, as the bank is commonly known, traded at $1.65 on the Kazakh Stock Exchange, down by 37.5% since July when it completed buying nearly half of BTA.
Analysts said the drop highlighted the toxic nature of BTA’s bad debt portfolio and a drop in profit. KazKom said profit for the first half of 2014 was down by 6%.
A source from the banking industry said: “Most bad loans are with BTA which is unable to recover them from its debtors. This entails a huge cost.”
Mountains of bad debt still holds back Kazakhstan’s financial sector, a legacy of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/9 when the government had to buy up a handful of banks. One of these was BTA Bank.
At the end of last year, the Kazakh government said it wanted to sell its shares in government-owned banks.
Kenes Rakishev, a young Kazakh businessman with strong links to the elite and KazKom, controlled by the London- based businessman Nurzhan Subkhanberdin agreed in February to buy the bank. At the time, sources with knowledge of the Kazakh finance centre said buying BTA Bank made no business sense for KazKom. Instead, they said, it was a political move by Mr Subkhanberdin to win favour.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, OCT. 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan is enjoying something of a renaissance in film-making but it’s not easy, as one young script-writer explained over tea.
Erlan Suluhan, 25, is one of many Kazakh students who received a scholarship from the US government to pursue their studies in the United States. Last year he returned from studying at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. One of his projects was a short movie depicting the adventures of an older woman who gets lost inside her own building.
“I was trying to find the turning point between the formation of one’s identity and the crisis that inevitably emerges,” he said in an interview in a cafe in Almaty.
He poured himself another cup of tea from a porcelain pot.
“Looking at Kazakhstan through the prism of the development of single identities could spark questions that are silenced nowadays within the society,” Suluhan said.
His film, 18’21, was acclaimed at the Cannes Festival this year. In Kazakhstan it was shunned.
KazakhFilm, the state-owned agency refused to support him, because he carried out his project independently. The message the film carried, about individualism, may have rankled too.
Still, KazakhFilm has been enjoying some success over the past couple of years. Last year another film by a Kazakh writer won the second prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
Looking ahead to his next film, Suluhan was sanguine about the complexities of writing films about personal choice in a Kazakhstan where the government places more emphasis on conformity.
“I don’t want to get explicitly political, because I don’t want to tell the audience what to think,” he said. “Instead, I’m interested in poking, rousing, inducing people to reflect on themselves by showing the significance of minor everyday chores and their impact on the creation of the self.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian mobile operator MTS said it wants to invest $40m over the next year in setting up 3G mobile services in Turkmenistan. MTS is one of the biggest mobile operators in Central Asia and, as reported, has also recently patched up its differences with Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Despite statements earlier this year to the contrary, Iran will increase gas exports from Turkmenistan to make up for a shortfall in its own production.
Reuters quoted the Shana Iranian news agency as quoting Hamid-Reza Araqi, Iran’s oil minister, as saying, that imports would rise in accordance to a long term contract between the two countries.
“Iran has a long-term contract with Turkmenistan, based on which the volume of gas exports increases,” he said.
Western sanctions aims at hampering Iran’s alleged development of its nuclear weapons programme have also slowed its gas production, mainly based in the south of the country. And so it has looked to neighbouring Turkmenistan to make up the shortfall. Over the past few years, Turkmenistan has supplied 90% of Iran’s gas imports.
News that Turkmenistan will further increase its gas exports to Iran will again cement its position as one of the region’s leading gas suppliers.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev hinted at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he may not be as enamoured with green energy as he has suggested.
This is important because Kazakhstan’s government has spent time and money promoting itself as a standard bearer for Green Energy, including devoting much of the sales pitch of its centrepiece event EXPO-2017 in Astana to it.
“I personally do not believe in alternative energy, such as wind, and solar,” media quoted Mr Nazarbayev as saying after meeting Mr Putin in Atyrau on the Caspian Sea coast.
“I think the shale euphoria also does not make much sense. Oil and gas are our main horses and we do not need to be afraid that they are fossil fuels.”
This view may not be that surprising, afterall the economies of both Kazakhstan and Russia are based on oil and gas exports.
Even so, Kazakhstan has given the impression it wants to move on from its reliance on oil and gas for its wealth.
Throughout Kazakhstan’s cities advertise EXPO-2017 with posters carrying the slogan ‘The Energy of the Future’ against a background of a green valley filled with wind turbines and solar panels.
Kazakhstan’s future energy policy is further complicated because it has agreed a deal with Russia to build a new nuclear power station.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan lawmakers want to arm villagers living in disputed areas along its borders with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
A majority of Parliamentarians debating the plan say they want to help people defend themselves but the military has said the strategy will only worsen already tense cross- border relations.
The initiator of the legislation, Bakyt Torobayev of the Progress parliamentary splinter faction claims the initiative will save budget money. Paying a civilian that already lives on the border will cost less than housing, feeding and paying a soldier, he has argued.
Kyrgyzstan’s Defence Council issued a statement as parliament discussed the legislation. “(Arming) ordinary citizens without higher or military education and preparation for border service, can have consequences, including their potential participation in illegal migration, narcotics trafficking and contraband,” it said.
Medet Tiulegenov, a political science professor at the American University of Central Asia was also against the plan.
“This issue has been raised in the context of insufficient formal security on the border,” Mr Tiulegenov told The Conway Bulletin. He also said that security issues are beyond the parliament’s formal mandate.
“But when government itself lacks a clear vision on border issues and security in the country, MPs exploit that lack of clarity and try to make a name for themselves,” he said.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
