JULY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Makhmadamin Makhmadaminov, Tajikistan’s Permanent Representatives to the United Nations, signed an agreement with his Ecuadorian counterpart to establish relations between the two countries. Establishing diplomatic relations with distant countries is a window- dressing exercise for Central Asian and South Caucasus leaders.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
JULY 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — >>Right. Let’s get started. The Rogun Dam. What is it and what is it all about?
>>For Tajikistan and President Rakhmon, the Rogun dam project is vitally important. If it is ever built, and the plans have been knocking around since the Soviet era, the Rogun dam will be the tallest dam in the world at up to 335 m. It will also double Tajikistan’s power generation capacity. The problem is that the dam has proved highly controversial, domestically and internationally, and is also expensive to build.
>>Hang on. Slow down. This is a lot take on. So, Rogun is massive but why is it controversial?
>>It’s controversial because human rights group have accused the government of forcibly moving thousands of people away from the Vakhsh River valley, the area that will be dammed and flooded. The government has also imposed a Rogun dam tax on people to pay for the project. This has gone down badly with human rights groups. Externally, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan’s neighbour, hates the idea of the Rogun dam. It worries that the dam will divert water from irrigating its cotton fields.
>>How serious are Uzbekistan’s concerns?
>>Central Asia is a fragile region. If Uzbekistan is making threatening noises
towards Tajikistan, people need to take notice. Analysts and diplomats have spoken of water wars in Central Asia. I’m not saying that the Rogun dam is going to trigger a war but it is another pressure point that people need to watch.
>>Got it. So with all these obstacles and problems why is Tajikistan pushing for problems?
>>It’s become Rakhmon’s pet project. He probably has another five or ten years left in office and it really feels like he wants and needs the Rogun dam to be his legacy. It’s also become vitally important for Tajikistan’s electricity generation sector. Electricity is becoming an important export commodity for Tajikistan as it has signed up to be the main power generator for the so-called CASA-1000 project.
>>CASA-1000? What is that?
>>It’s the World Bank-backed project to build a power transmission network from Tajikistan to Pakistan. It will cost around $1.2b, cross Afghanistan and be operational, if it all goes to plan, by 2019. The challenge is both security and power generation.CurrentlyTajikistan, and to a lesser extent Kyrgyzstan, doesn’t have the capacity to generate enough power to meet its CASA- 1000 commitments. That’s where Rogun comes in.
>>And the financing? This seems to be an expensive project just when the region is trying to deal with a financial crisis. Where is the finance coming from?
>>Good question. We’re not entirely clear. We’ve only been told that it is a mix of government funds and private investment. Who the private investors are and what their motives are is unknown.
>>I see. So what next?
>>Well, the Tajik government awarded a $3.9b contract to Italian builder Salini Impregilo to start construction work on the dam. We’re still waiting for work to begin but Salini Impregilo has said it will kick off soon. This has been a stop-start project so actually seeing the diggers go in and the workers start to build the dam is important. If this does happen, it’ll dominate news headlines for years to come.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
ALMATY, JULY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to cut costs Norway closed its embassy in Astana, a blow to Kazakhstan’s self-image as an important international diplomatic player.
Norway’s embassy in Astana had been its only diplomatic mission in Central Asia since it opened in 2009. Now, a single Norwegian diplomat in Oslo will be responsible for Central Asian affairs.
Last December, Astana was listed among four other embassies for closure. These were Sofia (Bulgaria), Lusaka (Zambia) and Harare (Zimbabwe).
Norway’s foreign ministry said cutting the four embassies would reduce its diplomatic presence in the world to 83 countries.
“The ministry must adapt to the changes that are taking place in the world, taking into account the resources available to run missions abroad,” the ministry said in a note.
Norway’s income is reliant on revenue from oil and gas sales. Energy prices have halved in the last two years.
A Kazakh foreign ministry spokesman declined to comment.
With Norway’s departure there will now be 64 embassies in Astana. Norway’s exit is also a blow to Kazakhstan’s international image in the run-up to EXPO-2017 in Astana.
Just weeks ago, Kazakhstan secured a much-coveted non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council for 2017-18 and it proudly hosted a summit of the OSCE in 2010. Indra Over- land, research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs told The Conway Bulletin that a mix of international crises and lack of interest has driven Norway away from Kazakhstan.
“The general Norwegian engagement in Central Asia has gone down, because of factors such as the European refugee crisis and the Ukraine crisis,” Mr Overland said.
“The lack of interesting projects available for the Norwegian oil company Statoil in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan also contributed [to the waning engagement].”
In 2013, Norway’s Statoil aban- doned the Abai offshore oil project after a lengthy negotiation with Kazakhstan’s state-owned Kazmunaigas.
Now the only city with a Norwegian embassy in the Central Asia/South Caucasus region is Baku. Statoil, the part-state owned Norwegian energy company, still operates projects in Azerbaijan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
JULY 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iran’s government said it had abolished a visa regime with Armenia, giving a potential boost to relations and trade between the two neighbours.
Armenia and Iran had said they wanted to scrap visa requirements in June, when their foreign ministers met in Tehran. At a cabinet meeting headed by President Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian government finally adopted the new visa-free regime.
Now, Iranians and Armenians will be able to travel visa-free between the two countries for stays of up to 90 days. This is particularly important for Armenia which is short of friends in the region. It has virtually no diplomatic and limited trade relations with two of its four neighbours — Azerbaijan and Turkey.
And Iran has said there is more room for cooperation with Armenia. After the lifting of international sanctions in January 2016, Iran said it wanted more integration with countries in the South Caucasus.
This week, Gazprom Armenia said that gas supplies via a pipeline across Georgia will stop for one month for scheduled repairs, a decision that will put Armenia’s power generation sector under stress.
Iranian officials immediately responded saying they were ready to pump more gas to Armenia to make up for the drop.
Iran sends gas to Armenia via a 140km pipeline completed in 2007.
For years, Iran and Armenia have said they want to increase the volumes of electricity and gas they exchange at the border and last month Armenian state-owned power distributor Electro Power Systems Operator said it will export around 1b kWh of electricity to Iran in 2016 from the Hradzan and Yerevan thermal power plants.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
JULY 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko flew to Baku to meet his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev and sign several cooperation agreements. This is Mr Poroshenko’s first visit to Azerbaijan since taking office in 2014. In the few past months, Ukraine and Azerbaijan have proposed to boost oil trade across the Black Sea.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
JULY 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Basking in the reflected glory of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first ever trip to Central Asia, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev seems to have seized his moment to boast of his country’s commitment — and his own personal efforts — in combating Islamic extremism.
During a 30-minute joint press conference with Ms Merkel, Mr Atambayev said he had ordered his office to pay for posters campaigning against Islamic extremism across Bishkek.
With the rise of the extremist group IS, Central Asian leaders have emphasised the role of external pressure on the radicalisation of their citizens and how their security forces respond to it.
These strategies have served the governments’ objectives of cracking down on opposition forces, shifting blame and establishing a constant ‘emergency mode’.
Some governments, like Turkmenistan, and to a lesser extent Uzbekistan, outright deny any radical Islamic presence within their borders. Even those countries that do, tend to blame foreign zealots for wiping up extremist sentiment.
Now, it seems, Mr Atambayev has changed the tone.
His decision to allocate public funds to posters that showed a correlation between the contamination of Kyrgyz traditional folklore and Islamic extremism is a bold one. The posters, plastered across motorways around the capital, showed a group of smiling girls in traditional white Kyrgyz dresses transitioning to a picture of a subjugated group of women wearing black hijabs that are alien to Central Asian cultures.
At the press conference, Mr Atambayev said that he supported the posters and wished there would be more across the city.
“[This] is where it all starts. We start with the adoption of foreign clothing, foreign words, and we end up with people who cut heads off,” Mr Atambayev said.
This is one of the first admissions from a Central Asian leader that radicalisation could be homegrown, albeit fuelled by adopting foreign custom.
It is still unclear whether Mr Atambayev was consciously trying to blaze a new trail in the fight against radical Islam or he was just trying to promote Kyrgyz people as traditionally peaceful.
Regardless, standing next to Ms Merkel he broke new ground in the radical Islam conversation in Central Asia.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
BISHKEK, JULY 13/14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Angela Merkel became the first German leader to visit Kyrgyzstan when she landed in Bishkek on her way to a conference in Mongolia, handing Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev a major PR coup and making him the envy of his neighbours.
Standing next to Mr Atambayev inside the Presidential Residence, Ms Merkel, who had never before visited Central Asia in her 11 years as Germany’s Chancellor, praised Kyrgyzstan’s democratic progress.
“I am very pleased that we’ve now met in Kyrgyzstan, you have twice visited Germany,” she said.
“We have great respect for the path chosen by Kyrgyzstan since 2010. Kyrgyzstan has chosen the path of parliamentary democracy, and needs, of course, to be supported.”
Kyrgyzstan shifted power to parliament from the president in 2010 after a revolution and has since held three national elections — two parliamentary and one presidential — that Western election observers praised as reasonably free and fair. No other country in Central Asia has ever held an election praised by Western observers and commentators suggested Ms Merkel’s stop-over in Kyrgyzstan was a reward of sorts.
But as well as praising Kyrgyzstan for its relative democracy, Ms Merkel also warned Kyrgyz officials to respect the rule of law and human rights.
The day before her arrival, Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court ordered a retrial of Azimzhan Askarov, a prominent human rights activist jailed in 2010.
Mr Atambayev said that the two leaders had discussed a variety of subjects, including international terrorism and improving relations between Kyrgyzstan and the EU.
Posters welcoming Ms Merkel adorned Bishkek and most residents were excited about her visit.
Tamara, 59, a Bishkek resident said: “It is such an honour for Kyrgyzstan to host Angela Merkel because she is a great woman-politician, who promoted the idea of hosting Muslim refugees in Europe.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
JULY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — With the exception of Turkmenistan, foreign ministers of the Caspian Sea littoral states met in Astana to continue drafting a resolution which should resolve ongoing disputes over the legal status of the Caspian. Kazakh PM Karim Massimov also attended. The ministers said the convention will be signed at a heads of state meeting next year in Astana.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
JULY 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iranian officials said that a trilateral meeting between Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan will take place in Baku next month. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev will host talks with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on August 8. The countries have said they want to build a new format of regional cooperation, along a north-south corridor.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)
JULY 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan and Georgia signed a deal to establish a direct flight between Tbilisi and Ashgabat from September. If the deal is realised, this will be the first direct flight route between the two countries. Last year, state-owned Turkmenistan Airlines said it aimed to open a direct route to Tbilisi.
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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)
