JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) claimed responsibility for an attack on Karachi airport in Pakistan on June 9 that killed at least 39 people including the 10 attackers. The IMU formed in Uzbekistan in the 1990s. More recently it has been fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Talks between Kyrgyz and Tajik officials over their border dispute will resume on June 16, media reported quoting a senior Kyrgyz official. This is important as altercations between villagers have intensified this year around the Tajik-Kyrgyz border. In May a mass brawl injured several people.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
MAY 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Rashid Meredov, Turkmenistan’s foreign minister, travelled to Kabul to meet with Afghan officials and discuss the second deadly attack on a Turkmen border post from Afghanistan this year. Mr Meredov’s visit was triggered by an attack that killed three Turkmen soldiers in May.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -Tension has eased in south-east Tajikistan after officials agreed to launch an investigation into the causes of violence that killed several people a week earlier, media reported. The government’s authority is limited in the region of Gorno-Badakhshan. In 2012, security forces fought pitch battles to control the area after they tried to arrest a local warlord.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Controversy has always stalked the US air base outside Bishkek and even as it wrapped up its mission in Kyrgyzstan on June 3 scandal hovered.
The military facility’s closing ceremony came only a few days after a local court sentenced one of its contractors to four years in jail on hooliganism charges.
Brandon Cornelius, a service manager at the so-called Manas Transit Center, was arrested in the early hours of March 9 after a drunken pursuit of a 22-year old girl. Although the girl did not push through sexual harassment charges, Cornelius allegedly attacked the arresting police officers.
The court verdict was a typically inglorious footnote to the Transit Center, which began life in 2001 as a major logistical hub for the US-led war in Afghanistan but has grown increasingly unpopular with locals.
In 2006, US soldier Zachary Hatfield shot a Kyrgyz man. Hatfield said he was threatened with a knife. He was transferred back to the United States, escaping punishment.
Although estimates of the Transit Center’s annual contribution to the local economy exceed $200 million, many Kyrgyz will be happy to see the back of US soldiers and hard-drinking defence contractors. A February 2014 poll backed by Gallup found 59% of Kyrgyz respondents viewed the Transit Center negatively, compared to 18% positively.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
May 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -Kazakhstan is considering buying Predator drones from US company General Atomics, media reported. A final deal has not yet been signed but the news is another sign that Kazakhstan is investing heavily in its military. A senior official at the ministry of defence told IHS that Kazakhstan planned to sign 30 arms deals worth $1.2b.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s restive southeast is threatening to boil over again after a special forces operation near Khorog, capital of Gorno-Badakhshan region, led to four deaths and a week of protests.
The deaths and the subsequent protests underline the difficulty that Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon has in imposing central government will on this restive part of the country.
The target of the operation was given as drug traffickers. That, though, may have been a euphemism for a local anti-government warlord.
The special forces operation killed two people in broad daylight and injured several others, angering locals who then protested and tried to storm the security forces headquarters. Reports said that two protesters were killed and more injured when security forces fired on the crowd.
The whole operation is reminiscent of a security operation in the same area two years ago. Back then, the army had to virtually close off the area and engage in street to street fighting with rebels. Dushanbe may have committed another blunder in a part of the country where its authority has been limited ever since a civil war in the 1990s.
Gorno-Badakhshan, whose population backed the ill-fated United Tajik Opposition in that conflict, is a hub of anti-government resentment.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A senior Turkmen official accused Afghan insurgents of killing three border guards, the second alleged shootings this year.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) quoted Asal Khan, the acting governor of Ghormach district in northern Afghanistan, as saying that insurgents attacked a Turkmen border post on May 24.
Turkmen officials haven’t confirmed the attack, RFE/RL said.
If the attack is confirmed it will be important to ascertain quickly who the apparent insurgents are. Are they smugglers — Turkmenistan is, afterall, on the heroin route from Afghanistan to Europe — or are they Taliban?
If the answer is Taliban, then Central Asian governments will fret. They have said that they are worried about the spread north of the Taliban after the withdrawal of most NATO forces from Afghanistan by the end of this year.
In March, three Turkmen border guards also died after an apparent attack by insurgents. Is this the beginning of a more worrying development along Central Asia’s borders?
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh lawmakers have drafted a new bill which will impose a prison sentence of up to six years on anybody who fails to report information on attacks linked to terrorism, media reported. Critics of the bill say a new law could be abused by the security services.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
PAVLODAR/Kazakhstan, MAY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Vitaly couldn’t get his words out fast enough. His jowly cheeks seemed to wobble with enthusiasm.
“Yes, if Putin did say that he wanted northern Kazakhstan we would support it,” he said. Putin was a reference, of course, to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
His friend shot him a quick look and interjected.
“But we’re happy to be part of Kazakhstan too. This is our home,” he said, shoving his hands into his tracksuit trousers. “Pavlodar is a comfortable place to live.”
The men, who were in their mid-20s, were standing on a scruffy street near the centre of this city of 330,000 people in northern Kazakhstan. It was built by the Russian empire on the banks of the serene Irtysh River which flows more than 4,000km from western Kazakhstan, into Russia’s Siberia and the Ob river system that eventually disgorges into the Arctic Sea.
From Pavlodar, the Russian border is barely 100km away.
Since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March, attention in Kazakhstan has focused on its northern regions. Here ethnic Russians outnumber Kazakhs and Russian, not Kazakh, is the main language spoken. Firebrand Russian politicians have urged Putin to turn it into Russia.
Pavlodar feels harmonious but there is an underlying tension that is not hard to find. And it worries people.
Anara, an ethnic Kazakh lawyer, was walking home from work along one of Pavlodar’s wide, tree-lined streets.
“People have always lived well together but after Crimea people are talking about it. What happens if Putin decides he wants to take northern Kazakhstan?” she said. “In Pavlodar and Petropavlovsk the main language is Russian. He could do it.”
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
