JUNE 4 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s defence ministry once again warned it would one day send soldiers back into the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh to wrestle control from Armenia. It said Armenia has obstructed talks to resolve the dispute. Armenia refutes this. Armenia and Azerbaijan are due to meet in a few weeks to discuss the issue.
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(News report from Issue No. 43, published on June 6 2011)
MAY 25/26 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – In the worst street violence in Georgia since a state of emergency in November 2007, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at anti- government protesters blocking the main street in Tbilisi. The government said protesters had started the violence, the protesters said it was unprovoked. A car speeding away from the protest hit and killed two people.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)
MAY 30 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov unveiled his country’s first military deployment to Afghanistan on May 27, nine days after the lower house of parliament agreed the mission. Kazakhstan will send four officers to Kabul in a non-combat capacity, he told a parliamentary committee.
The Kazakh mission to Afghanistan will probably not decisively tip the 10 year war NATO’s way but it is steeped in symbolism. The deployment will mean that soldiers from Central Asia, which is predominantly Muslim, will for the first time be serving alongside NATO forces fighting the Taliban.
In reality, the Central Asian states have been heavily involved in NATO’s war in Afghanistan for years, allowing NATO to use their airports, military bases, roads and railways to re-supply forces fighting the Taliban.
The Central Asian states have earned millions of US dollars from this supply chain deal but actually sending soldiers to Afghanistan is a far bigger step, as the Taliban recognised when it reacted to the announcement with a thinly veiled warning to Kazakhstan.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is adept at playing off different superpowers and Kazakhstan maintains good relations with Russia and China as well as with the United States.
He has also fostered increasingly close relations with NATO. Sending soldiers to support the war in Afghanistan now makes Kazakhstan a member of the US-led coalition fighting the Taliban and that’s important, no matter how big the contingent.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)
MAY 25 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Insurgents from Afghanistan and a disenfranchised local Muslim population threaten to push Tajikistan towards internal conflict, Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report. ICG reports are well respected and the warning is one of the starkest yet.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)
MAY 27 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted to ban from the country Kimmo Kiljunen, a Finnish former parliamentarian, who wrote a report on ethnic violence last year that killed more than 400 people. Mr Kiljunen’s report implicated Kyrgyz security forces. Parliament said Mr Kiljunen was a threat to national security.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)
MAY 21 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Parliament agreed to send soldiers to Afghanistan to back up NATO forces fighting the Taliban. The Kazakh group will be the first soldiers from Central Asia to fight in the US-led war. In response, the Taliban issued a warning to the Kazakh government.
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(News report from Issue No. 41, published on May 24 2011)
MAY 18 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – On a trip to New Delhi, Uzbek President Islam Karimov signed 34 deals with Indian PM Manmohan Singh on trade, communications, security and energy, media reported. India has heavily increased its presence in Central Asia this year, securing energy deals with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 41, published on May 24 2011)
MAY 18 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian websites reported that soldiers in South Ossetia had shot and injured two Georgians. South Ossetia said the Georgians had entered its territory illegally and its forces had returned fire after they were shot at. The incident is one of the most serious since a Georgia-Russia war in 2008.
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(News report from Issue No. 41, published on May 24 2011)
MAY 24 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – An explosion in a car near a security forces’ office in Astana killed two men, local media reported. The blast came a week after a suicide bomb attack in Aktobe, northwest Kazakhstan, and worried people about a campaign by militant Islamists. The authorities though said this second blast was an accident.
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(News report from Issue No. 41, published on May 24 2011)
MAY 17 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A suicide bomber blew himself up in the office of the security services in Aktobe, a city near a major gas field in northwest Kazakhstan. The bomb injured at least two other people. Islamic militant groups are the main suspects.
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(News report from Issue No. 40, published on May 17 2011)
