SEPT. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – London-listed China Nonferrous Gold said it is close to reaching its goal of increasing production capacity at its Pakrut gold project in Tajikistan to 2,000 tonnes/day. The company produced its first gold in Tajikistan in January. It has held an exploration licence since 2004. The Pakrut gold mine lies 120km north-east of Dushanbe.
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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)
OCT. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz police released the wife of Sobir Valiev, a Tajik opposition figure, 22 hours after her arrest. Kyrgyzstan’s Security Service said the woman, Zhannat Khamzayeva, was questioned regarding the alleged illegal activities of her husband. Mr Valiyev, a member of the opposition movement Group-24 who currently lives in Poland, is accused of illegal border crossing and forging documents. The Security Service ordered Ms Khamzayeva to remain in the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)
SEPT. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Abdulaziz Kamilov, Uzbekistan’s foreign minister, paid an official visit to Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon in Dushanbe in an effort to boost cooperation. Mr Kamilov and Mr Rakhmon held talks on joint efforts to combat terrorism and on water and energy issues that still divide the two countries. Uzbekistan has maintained strong opposition against Tajikistan’s decision to build a major dam and hydropower plant because it would affect downstream water supply.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Security Services of South Ossetia, the breakaway region of Georgia, arrested a Tajik man, Umarjon Ismonov, for allegedly attempting to recruit Central Asian migrant workers into the ranks of the IS extremist organisation, Russian media reported. In recent years, the Caucasian mountain range has become a fertile recruiting ground for extremist Islamic organisations.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – TALCO, Tajikistan’s aluminium smelter and the country’s biggest industrial asset, should cut output to survive because aluminium prices have fallen below production costs, the company auditors said.
Tajikistan’s government has repeatedly intervened to give TALCO incentives and preferential loans but has not been able to prevent thousands of job losses.
Now production cuts are likely.
“This year, a significant decrease in the level of world prices for aluminium has impacted TALCO’s earnings. The company auditors have suggested that the management orders a cut in production in order to keep financial losses at a minimum,” TALCO said in a statement.
TALCO produced over 73,000 tonnes of aluminium in the first half of 2016, a 13.5% increase compared to the same period last year. It exports to clients in Turkey, Taiwan, Iran, British Virgin Islands, Uzbekistan and Pakistan.
Low commodity prices, though, meant it sold aluminium at a price range of $1,400-$1,600/tonne. Production costs have reached $2,000/tonne. In April, it laid off around 600 workers to cut costs.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – >> Azerbaijan held a referendum this week to tweak its constitution. Didn’t Tajikistan have one in May and hasn’t Kyrgyzstan said it will hold one in December. What’s with all these referendums?
>> The autocrat’s textbook says that every so often you need to call up a referendum to make changes, big or minor, to the constitution, and also to show off just how popular you are. They all have their peculiarities and differences, but leaders from Central Asia and the South Caucasus have all played the referendum card.
In May, 92% of Tajikistan’s voting population turned up to extend presidential powers.
This week, a referendum in Azerbaijan proposed 29 small-scale amendments to the Constitution, which were overwhelmingly adopted, of course.
In the coming months, Kyrgyzstan is likely to have a referendum to grant more powers to the PM.
In previous years, countries across the region have held several referendums. Essentially the aim has been to change the Constitution to allow the incumbent to remain in power by scraping limits on terms, age caps, the length of each term.
>> OK, but are these changes meaningful? Do they have a real impact on politics?
>>These kinds of referendums can be meaningful. From a legal point of view, they change the law. They scrap age requirements to become president — as was the case in Tajikistan and Azerbaijan — and transfer powers from the president to the PM — like Kyrgyzstan’s referendum proposes.
In practice, however, their main aim is for the presidents to retain power or to transfer it to their offspring. There have been notable, and honourable exceptions, of course but not many.
Tajikistan’s referendum this year scrapped limits on presidential terms and lowered the age that a person can run for president to 30 from 35, potentially allowing President Rakhmon’s son, Rustam Emomali, to run for office in 2020.
Azerbaijan had already scrapped limits on presidential term in a referendum in 2009. This time round it lowered the age requirement to 18 from 35 and gave the president the right to dissolve Parliament. President Aliyev’s son Heydar is 19 now. This may be a coincidence, of course.
>> And what about Kyrgyzstan?
>> Kyrgyzstan is a little different. President Almazbek Atambayev will have to leave office next year after his term expires. Some have speculated that, in an effort to avoid losing power he is trying to strengthen the office of PM where he would like to return once he steps down next year.
Certainly his reasons for supporting changes to the constitution are not entirely clear.
The key difference, once again, with other countries in Central Asia, is that Kyrgyzstan’s democracy has advanced further.
>> So, essentially, most of the more seriously autocratic leaders in the region, that’s Azerbaijan and Central Asia with the exception of Kyrgyzstan, have all used referendums to improve their chances of holding on to power? By contrast Georgia, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan have held referendums in the last few years to boost the power of Parliament over the presidency? Is that right?
>>More of less, although it is important to understand that the drivers of referendums in Georgia, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan can also lie in self-interest with incumbent presidents hoping to hold on to power by becoming PM.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — China said that it would build a network of 11 guard posts and one border guard training camp on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, a physical statement of its growing power and influence in Central Asia.
This is the biggest investment yet in Central Asia’s security by China. Earlier in the year it said it would build one guard post on the 1,345km border. Tajik soldiers will man the guard posts.
Raffaello Pantucci, an analyst at the RUSI think tank in London said that China was increasingly worried about Central Asia’s porous borders and especially the threat from Afghanistan were Uyghur separatist fighters have become allied to the Taliban.
“This is interesting because this is not a border with China. They are worried about Afghan security and how security affects China, especially the Uyghurs,” he said.
China has increasingly imposed itself on Central Asia, funding major infrastructure projects, building gas pipelines and buying up metals and energy companies but, other than war games through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which China heads with Russia, it has always avoided a direct military link.
Its soldiers will not patrol the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border once the guard posts are built but it still embeds China deeper into the military psyche of Central Asian states.
When NATO withdrew from Afghanistan, the West pulled out of Central Asia. Russia has, in contrast, invested in its bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Mr Pantucci, the RUSI analyst, said China’s move was not meant as a challenge to Russia in Central Asia.
“I don’t think the Chinese would be doing anything in Central Asia without the tacit support of the Russians,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A group of young pro-government demonstrators attacked the house of Rakhmatullo Rajab, a member of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) now in jail. The demonstrators threw rotten eggs onto the house, where Rajab’s relatives live. They also burned portraits of Rajab and other IRPT representatives, jailed last year after being accused of plotting a coup to overthrow the government. Human rights activists said this was just one of many violent attacks on the families of IRPT members.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Rogun dam and power station, under construction in Tajikistan, will use Siemens-branded switch- gears, the German edition of Focus reported. In July, Italy’s Salini Impregilo won a $3.9b contract to build the Rogun dam, which will become the tallest dam in the world, at 355m.
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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)
SEPT. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – US-based Human Rights Watch said that police in Tajikistan had detained around 50 family members of activists who staged a protest at a OSCE meeting this week. Around 20 activists from Tajikistan living in exile in Europe staged a silent protest against the government during an OSCE conference on human rights in Warsaw. Protesters wore T-shirts showing photos of jailed journalists and opposition members.
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(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)
