DEC. 7 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Underlining his unilateral principles, Uzbek president Islam Karimov used a TV speech to warn against integration in the former Soviet Union. Commentators interpreted the speech as a snub to Russian PM Vladimir Putin’s proposal of a Eurasian Union. Kazakhstan backs the idea of a Eurasian Union.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 69, published on Dec. 14 2011)
DEC. 11 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia will raise taxes to 25% from 20% for people earning over $5,250 per month in a 2012 budget which aims to reduce the national deficit and increase spending, local media reported. Detractors say tax increases will hit small and medium-sized businesses. Armenia holds elections in 2012.
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(News report from Issue No. 69, published on Dec. 14 2011)
DEC. 2 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – An underground metro opened in Almaty, 23 years after construction work started. Almaty hit a population of 1m people in the mid-1980s triggering the Soviet authorities to start building a metro system. This stopped in 1991 when the USSR collapsed but Kazakhstan has since spent $1.1b completing the metro.
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(News report from Issue No. 68, published on Dec. 8 2011)
DEC. 6 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s relatively small and illiquid stock exchange (KASE) is looking for a tie-up with either the London Stock Exchange (LSE) or the two Russian stock exchanges, the head of KASE, Kadyrzhan Damitov, told the FT. Kazakhstan plans to sell stock in state-owned businesses in 2012.
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(News report from Issue No. 68, published on Dec. 8 2011)
NOV. 29 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Petrol prices in Tajikistan, a key price to watch for inflation and social tension, have risen sharply in the last few days, the state anti-monopoly agency told local media. The official said the suspension of a railway line in Uzbekistan because of a suspected bomb attack had hit supplies.
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(News report from Issue No. 67, published on Dec. 1 2011)
NOV. 30 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will follow Russia in to the WTO and join at the end of 2012, Madina Abylkassymova, deputy minister for trade and economic development, said at a conference in Almaty. In November, Russia agreed a deal to enter the WTO next year.
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(News report from Issue No. 67, published on Dec. 1 2011)
NOV. 23 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Citing “operational considerations”, the US Peace Corps hastily began to withdraw its 117 volunteers and staff from Kazakhstan on Nov. 18, dealing a significant blow to the country’s reputation as one of the most stable states in the former Soviet Union.
Although Peace Corps, which sends thousands of young Americans abroad every year mainly to teach English and spread US ideals, was vague on why it was pulling out of Kazakhstan after 18 years, its volunteers were not. They said worsening security had triggered the evacuation.
Earlier in November a Peace Corps volunteer in central Kazakhstan, was allegedly raped and less than a week before the pull out was announced a gunman linked to militant Islam killed seven people in the south of the country. This was just the latest attack linked to Islamic militants in Kazakhstan this year.
Since the news more evidence of threats and violence directed specifically at Peace Corps volunteers in Kazakhstan has seeped out.
This is all bad enough for Kazakhstan’s image but perhaps more remarkable was its reaction.
Peace Corps was suddenly withdrawing from Kazakhstan, the Kazakh education ministry wrote, because the country had developed so rapidly over the last 20 years it was no longer needed.
In other words, this was a triumph for Kazakhstan and recognition of its great progress. The “operational considerations”, the alleged rape, the threats and the rising Islamic militant linked violence were all ignored.
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(News report from Issue No. 66, published on Nov. 23 2011)
NOV. 18 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A joint venture headed by US carmaker General Motors (GM) opened an engine assembly plant in Tashkent, local media reported. The opening comes a few weeks after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Uzbekistan. The joint venture also owns a car assembly factory in Andijan, east Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 66, published on Nov. 23 2011)
NOV. 16 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A row over Tajikistan’s imprisonment of two ethnic Russian pilots for smuggling has escalated and threatens to do long-term damage to Tajik-Russian relations.
As reported in the Conway Bulletin issue of Nov. 8, Russia reacted with indignant fury at the 8-1/2 year prison sentences handed out by a provincial Tajik court on Nov. 8 2011 to Vladimir Sadovnichy, a Russian citizen, and Alexei Rudenko, an Estonian citizen.
The Russian foreign ministry said the sentences would damage Tajikistan. Since then immigration officers in Russia have rounded up hundreds of Tajik workers.
Around 300 have already been expelled for not having the correct paperwork, according to Russian media. If many more are sent back home it will begin to hurt Tajikistan as almost half its national income derives from remittances.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says the immigration officials’ actions are a coincidence and not revenge for the prison sentences.
Most commentators, though, don’t see it that way.
Central to the row is what Sadvonichy and Rudenko were doing when they landed their two cargo planes in Tajikistan without permission on a routine Kabul-Moscow flight. They say they desperately needed fuel. Tajik officials say they were trying to smuggle in a jet engine.
Already strained by negotiations earlier this year over Russia’s lease of a military base in Tajikistan, Tajik-Russian relations are now taking another battering.
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(News report from Issue No. 65, published on Nov. 16 2011)
NOV. 7 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a meeting in St Petersburg, PMs from the six countries in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) said they wanted to set up a development bank. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are members of the SCO which is lead by Russia and China. Many analysts see the SCO as a bulwark against western interests in the region.
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(News report from Issue No. 64, published on Nov. 8 2011)
