JULY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Landslides in eastern Tajikistan have killed at least seven people and destroyed 50 homes, media reported quoting local officials.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)
JUNE 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in west Kazakhstan handed the Karachaganak oil and gas project a fine of 7.3b tenge (roughly $40m) for excessive flaring, media reported quoting a court statement. Karachaganak’s shareholders are BG Group, Eni, Chevron, Lukoil and Kazmunaigas.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officials in Kazakhstan said 127,000 saiga antelopes out of a herd of 300,000 had now died from an outbreak of a respiratory disease. Kazakhstan has the largest herd of the endangered saiga antelopes.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)
MARCH 10 2015 (The Bulletin) – Police in Kazakhstan detained Saken Baikenov, who campaigned against Russian Proton rocket launches from the Baikonur station, for hate crimes. Proton rockets, which are used for commercial missions, have exploded and polluted the countryside. Rights groups have questioned Kazakhstan’s commitment to free speech.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
MARCH 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to Berlin, Uzbek officials agreed business deals worth $2.8b, Uzbekistan’s trade ministry said. The statement said most of the deals were related to various infrastructure projects. Relations between Germany and Uzbekistan are relatively close. Germany maintains a military base in south Uzbekistan.
-ENDS-
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
>>Is Kazakhstan shifting away from pro-Uzbekistan stance?>>
FEB. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Astana has been a reliable supporter for Tashkent on some major regional issues over the past 20 years, backing Uzbek President Islam Karimov’s opposition to prospective Tajik and Kyrgyz hydropower dams and also deporting Uzbek asylum seekers.
But the Kazakh authorities may have recently started sending signals that suggest they want changes in Uzbekistan. For instance, Rapil Joshybayev, the Kazakh first deputy foreign minister told a group of Tajik officials in Dushanbe that Kazakhstan may have had a change of heart over the hydropower issue (Feb. 4).
“Kazakhstan is ready to consider the Tajik party’s proposals on fulfilling contracts as part of the hydropower stations construction projects,” he said.
This statement may signify a change of approach by Kazakhstan over a major piece of regional politics — the expansion of hydropower.
In short the upstream countries, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, want to build hydropower dams. The downstream countries, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, want to stop this.
These are tricky times for Uzbekistan. Next month, Uzbekistan will also have to deal with a presidential election.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 218, published on Feb. 11 2015)
MO’YNOQ/Uzbekistan, FEB. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Sagynbai Murzayev is a strong and gentle Soviet-made man in his 70s. He used to be a fisherman in windswept Mo’ynoq, a town in Karakalpakstan which lies on the remote western fringe of Uzbekistan. Now he works several jobs and witnesses the Chinese influx.
Mo’ynoq once lay on the shores of the Aral Sea. This sea, though, shrunk rapidly because a Soviet irrigation system siphoned off its tributaries’ waters to feed giant cotton fields.
Left behind is a lunar desert of white dunes that locals call Aralkum (Aral’s Sands).
Murzayev works at the local museum of natural history and has witnessed the retreat from the beginning. His father was also a fisherman, his mother worked in a fishery. He now gathers most of his earnings by driving foreign guests to the sea shores. Most of the visitors are Chinese.
Since 2006 an energy consortium led by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has been exploring oil and gas deposits below the former seabed.
Although national Uzbek publications boast about Karakalpakstan’s growth as an energy-rich region, operations in the Ustyurt Plateau seem, to Murzayev at least, to proceed at a slow pace. The few Chinese workers camping on the shoreline are mainly after a rather different and rather unusual resource for Central Asia — shrimps.
Unexcited, Murzayev looked at a Chinese trawler coming ashore.
“The indiscriminate pillage of natural resources has already been proved to be detrimental for us,” he said. “We need to bring the sea back to life and not to scavenge its dead body.”
In the distance, the town’s crumbling homes are a symbol of the small economic advantages that this uncertain oil and gas bonanza can bring to the region. And all the while the fading memories of the local fisherman who used to work on the lake grow thinner and thinner.
>>By Gianluca Pardelli
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015)
NOV. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan, which has virtually zero history of polar exploration, signed up to the Antarctic Treaty, an international agreement to defend the neutrality of the region.
Kazakhstan had shown some interest in the Antarctic region in the past, with private expeditions. In 2011 a Kazakh expedition drove to the South Pole where it planted the national flag on the 20th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union.
Since then the government has unveiled plans to establish a Kazakh Antarctic station for research and possibly business purposes.
It’s likely that Kazakhstan wants to increase its international profile by signing up to the Antarctic Treaty.
Luca Anceschi, professor of Central Asian Security at the University of Glasgow, said: “This decision is in line with the government’s policy to increase and improve Kazakhstan’s visibility in the international arena.”
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Speaking via a video link to a conference in Tashkent, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said human interference had drained the Aral Sea with implications for millions of people. The Aral Sea, shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, has shrunk dramatically over the past 30 years, mainly due to Soviet era irrigation projects.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
AUG. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In two separate demonstrations, hundreds of protesters in Kyrgyzstan blocked roads to try and stop production at an iron ore mine and an oil refinery, media reported. In both cases, the protesters claimed the sites were damaging the environment, a well-used tactic by protesters wanting to stop industrial production.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 198, published on Sept. 3 2014)
