MAY 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Boston arrested two 19-year-old students from Kazakhstan and charged them with conspiring to obstruct justice by tampering with a computer and a backpack containing fireworks that had belonged to one of the alleged marathon bombers.
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(News report from Issue No. 134, published on May 6 2013)
MAY 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) – After months of veiled negotiations, Italy’s UniCredit bank sold ATF Bank, its Kazakh subsidiary, for $500m. The buyer is the relatively unknown Galimzhan Yesenov, son-in-law of the mayor of Almaty.
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(News report from Issue No. 134, published on May 6 2013)
APRIL 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Bulat Utemuratov, one of Kazakhstan’s richest men and an associate of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is apparently weighing up buying into Italian soccer club Inter Milan, Italy’s media reported. Some of the richest men in the former Soviet states have invested in European soccer clubs over the past decade.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — British fraud investigators opened an investigation into Kazakh miner ENRC after several senior executives resigned following allegations of corruption, media reported. ENRC is listed on the London stock exchange but its three main Kazakh shareholders have said they are looking into taking the business private.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh industry minister Asset Issekeshev said on a visit to Dubai that the Dubai-based port operator DP World has pledged to invest $1b into Aktau port and the Khorog-Eastern Gates free zone area, media reported. Aktau is Kazakhstan’s main Caspian Sea port. The Khorog-Eastern Gates free zone lies on the border with China.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Being pelted with eggs at a press conference was just the latest public humiliation for Serik Abdenov, Kazakhstan’s fresh-faced labour minister.
Mr Abdenov is in charge of explaining why the government intends to raise the retirement age for women to 63 from 58. This is in line with the age that men in Kazakhstan retire and is an entirely plausible concept.
The problem is that Mr Abdenov appears ill-equipped to explain this to a sceptical public.
Earlier this month, at a meeting in Temirtau, an industrial town in central Kazakhstan, Mr Abdenov took to the stage to explain why the reform was necessary. He faced an audience of unimpressed women factory workers.
Sitting at a desk adorned with a portrait of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, Mr Adbenov offered this enlightened thinking on why women needed to work longer.
“You have to work, to work,” he said triggering howls of laughter from the audience.
Mr Abdenov tried again. “Because, my dear countrymen, because, because,” he said, before tailing off into an unconvincing description of what it means to be a pensioner.
Less than a week later, Andrei Tsukanov, a protester, hurled two eggs at Mr Abdenov during a press conference to discuss the pension reforms.
One egg hit Mr Abdenov, one missed. Again, though, it was all caught on video, heaping further public humiliation on the apparently hapless minister for labour.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Sturgeon, fish native to the Caspian Sea that produce roe which is better known as caviar, are under threat.
According to Kazakhstan’s deputy Prosecutor-General, Andrei Kravchenko, there will be no sturgeon in the Caspian Sea with four years.
In the last three years, the number of sturgeon in the Caspian Sea has fallen from 3 million to 1.3 million, the Tengrinews website quoted him as saying.
“At a similar rate,” he said. “Sturgeon will be on the brink of extinction in four to five years.”
He blamed energy companies, poachers and official corruption for the drop in numbers.
Caviar is valuable for the Caspian region. Prices in Europe for the delicacy hit thousands of euro for a kilogram.
A few days before Mr Kravchenko’s statement, deputy foreign ministers of the Caspian Sea littoral countries met in Tehran for one of their regular meetings on protecting fish stocks. It’s a talking-shop. The next meeting is scheduled for Baku in September.
Perhaps Mr Kravchenko’s comments were aimed at the deputy foreign ministers.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Poaching will kill off sturgeon in the Caspian Sea within four years, media quoted the Kazakh deputy Prosecutor-General, Andrei Kravchenko, as saying. Sturgeon roe is more commonly known as caviar and is a lucrative commodity.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, APRIL 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Tsarnaev brothers, blamed for bombing the Boston marathon earlier this month, were ethnic Chechens, brought up in Kyrgyzstan who apparently learnt about radical Islam in Dagestan.
This link, between radical Islamic ideas in Russia’s North Caucasus and Central Asia, can’t be ignored. Domestic security in Central Asia and NATO’s main route for withdrawing its equipment from Afghanistan are potentially vulnerable.
But, although bomb attacks blamed on radical Islamists, increased in 2010 and 2011 in Kazakhstan, several Almaty-based analysts said the impact of radical Islamic ideology from the North Caucasus on Central Asia should not be overstated.
“Today there is no direct connection reported between the insurgency in North Caucasus and terrorist acts taking place in Kazakhstan,” Zhulduz Baizakov, a Kazakhstan-based analyst, said.
“The ideology, methods and purposes are different.”
Instead, analysts said that the radicalising influence from the Arabian peninsula and Afghanistan was more important than from the North Caucasus.
But the North Caucasus’ brand of radical Islam is accessible. It’s also worrying the Kazakh security forces. They are concerned with both the trickle of young Kazakh men fighting with rebels in Dagestan and the emergence of Islamic literature from the North Caucasus in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
APRIL 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkey signed up to become a so-called dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a group led by China and Russia that includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Belarus and Sri Lanka already hold the same status with the SCO but Turkey is a NATO member and that makes its partnership more important. Analysts have often described the SCO as a potential Chinese and Russian-led military rival to NATO.
This analysis of the SCO, though, is too simplistic. The SCO is more than just a security group. It is also a financing organisation and a forum for inter-governmental conversation and debate.
Turkey, too, has deep economic, historical, cultural and linguistic ties with Central Asia, the focus of the SCO’s activities. Turkish senior governments ministers often visit the Central Asia capitals and it is only natural that Turkey should look to become a member in the region’s main security grouping.
Turkey’s interest in the SCO and its promotion as a dialogue partner should be welcomed by all, including NATO.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 133, published on April 29 2013)
