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. 9 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan and the foreign energy companies in the Karachaganak gas project (BG Group, Eni, Chevron and Lukoil) are close to resolving their long-running dispute, sources told Reuters. The sources said Kazakhstan would pay $1b for a 10% stake in exchange for dropping outstanding tax claims.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 69, published on Dec. 14 2011)
DEC. 3 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Elite Kazakh police battled suspected Islamic militants in a village outside Almaty. In the gun battle two police and five militants died. The battle was the latest violence linked to Islamic militants this year in Kazakhstan and in Almaty police have started to detain and interrogate men with links to Islam.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 68, published on Dec. 8 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.
ENDS
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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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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 68, published on Dec. 8 2011)
DEC. 5 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A disputed parliamentary election in Russia on Dec. 4 triggered unprecedented anti-government street demonstrations in Russian cities, protests which will have worried leaders in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
The people of Central Asia and the South Caucasus have strong historical, business, family and political ties with Russia and what happens there matters.
Politics in Kazakhstan is similarly aligned to Russia and the country is confronting growing pains. President Nursultan Nazarbayev also has to deal with a parliamentary election on Jan. 15.
Although Mr Nazarbayev’s position is far more secure than his Russian counterparts’ he faces lingering issues over his succession policy and commitment to genuine democracy. The compliant Kazakh media has steered away from covering the Russia protests in detail but Mr Nazarbayev certainly wouldn’t want them to linger.
In Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan the media is even more tightly controlled and the impact of the anti-government protests in Moscow will be softer but, again, if they are prolonged they will start to worry their leaders.
In the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan is most prone to an impact from street demonstrations in Russia. Its police force stamped out anti-government protests during the first half of the year and demonstrations in Russia could embolden protesters again.
It is premature to talk of a Slavic Spring in Russia but there is an air of change and this attitude could start to drip into other former Soviet states.
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(News report from Issue No. 68, published on Dec. 8 2011)
NOV. 30 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Rafiq Tagi, a 61-year-old widely respected Azerbaijani journalist, died of stab wounds in a Baku hospital on Nov. 23, four days after an unknown assailant attacked him.
He wrote articles critical of both the state and hard line Islam. Muslim extremists, though, are suspected of organising Tagi’s murder.
Whether or not the authorities or Muslim extremists are the main threat, for local journalists the former Soviet South Caucasus and Central Asia states are often both difficult and dangerous to report on.
In Turkmenistan police this year tracked down and imprisoned journalists who reported on an explosion at an arms depot. In Uzbekistan most local correspondents from international news agencies have been chased out and in Tajikistan the BBC’s reporter was jailed.
Southern Kyrgyzstan remains dangerous for ethnic Uzbek journalists and in Kazakhstan in October attackers armed with baseball bats and a gun beat a camera crew covering protests in the west of the country against the state oil company.
A 2010 press freedom index compiled by the US-based NGO Reporters Without Borders scored the countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia poorly. Armenia, Georgia and Tajikistan ranked slightly better but Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were in the bottom quarter of the index.
The report card for 2011 may well be even worse.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 67, published on Dec. 1 2011)
NOV. 25 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The eldest daughter of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will return to politics after he nominated her for a seat in parliament at an election in January Dariga Nazarbayeva, 48, had previously been talked about as a potential successor but she quit politics in 2006 after a dispute with her father.
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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. 30 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Kazakhstan said they had arrested six accomplices of a gunman who killed seven people in the southern city of Taraz in November, local media reported. The attack was the latest in a worsening series of violence linked to Muslim extremists.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 67, published on Dec. 1 2011)
