Tag Archives: Tajikistan

Turkmenistan extends military draft

JUNE 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan has extended its military draft, websites reported, perhaps to bolster units along the increasingly tense border with Afghanistan.

“According to incoming reports, the majority of young men, who have been recently drafted in Lebap and Balkan velayats, will be sent to the military units based in Kushka, i.e. near the Turkmen-Afghan border,” the website reported.

Senior military officials have previously said that they need to boost the number of soldiers in the army to counter perceived threat from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Last year reports from the border said that Turkmen army units clashed with Taliban units in a number of skirmishes. This year, though, reports from the border of military activity have been much reduced.

Even so, the Chronicles of Turkmenistan website reported that the Turkmen military has extended the draft for con- scripts to July 25 from the end of June.

The countries that border Afghanistan — Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan — have been warning that the Taliban is preparing to move to Central Asia.

Russia has supported this assessment and sent various military advisers to the region as well as offering to boost its military presence along the border.

But many Western analysts have scorned this viewpoint and said instead that the narrative has been designed to bolster strict military and authoritarian rule in the region.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Tajikistan will receive EU funding

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At the fourth EU-Tajikistan Cooperation Committee in Brussels, the European delegation confirmed it had earmarked 251m euro for Tajikistan over the next five years to improve rural areas. The EU said the aid was more necessary now because of the drop in remittances.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

CSTO force to be sent to Tajikistan

JUNE 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia would be prepared to send a rapid reaction force to defend Tajikistan’s southern border from Taliban incursions, Russian media quoted General Nikolai Bordyuzha as saying. General Bordyuzha is head of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), an FSU intergovernmental military group.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Tajikistan lifts Facebook ban

JUNE 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Tajikistan lifted a ban on Facebook and YouTube imposed after a police chief defected to the radical group IS in Syria last month, the AFP news agency reported.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)

Pakistani PM talks CASA in Tajikistan

JUNE 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif flew to Dushanbe for talks with Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon, his first visit to Tajikistan since the neighbours agreed an electricity supply deal earlier this year.

At this meeting the two leaders agreed to speed up building the infrastructure needed for Tajikistan to send electricity generated from its hydropower stations to Pakistan under the CASA-1000 deal.

Importantly they agreed to improve communication and links.

This is important. International organisations as well as Western states have supported the CASA-1000 deal. They want electricity sent to Pakistan improved as well as cash flowing into Tajikistan’s economy.

They also want to encourage deeper relations between countries, including between Tajikistan and Pakistan.

US criticises Tajikistan

JUNE 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US embassy in Dushanbe issued a statement criticising the Tajik government for block- ing access to various websites. It said that Tajikistan should lift restrictions on the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Facebook websites. These have been inaccessible since May 28.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)

Prosecutor issues arrest warrant for Tajik police chief

JUNE 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s prosecutor-general issued an arrest warrant for Gulmurod Khalimov, the paramilitary police chief who defected to IS in Syria.

Mr Khalimov was also formally stripped of his military title. He had been a colonel.

He appeared at the end of May in a video from Syria in which he cradled a sniper rifle and pledged to ferment revolution in Tajikistan.

Mr Khalimov had left his home in April, telling his wife that he was going away on a business trip for a few days.

Instead he became IS’ most high-profile recruit from Central Asia.

Central Asian countries are increasingly worried about the ability of IS to recruit disenfranchised and poor young men from the region. With his glamour and seniority, Mr Khalimov’s recruitment has added extra weight to the IS propaganda programme.

Mr Khalimov had led Tajikistan’s paramilitary OMON unit and had been trained by special forces in the United States and in Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)

CSTO members meet in Tajikistan

JUNE 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Defence minister from CSTO member states flew into Dushanbe for their annual meeting, set to begin on June 4. The Collective Security Treaty Organisation includes Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)

Parliament approves Tajik-China extradition pact

MAY 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s parliament unanimously approved a Tajik-China extradition law. China is increasing its influence across Central Asia, a region it considers to be its backyard.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)

Tajikistan’s remittances to drop 40%

MAY 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a new report, the World Bank said remittances from Tajik migrant workers to their relatives might drop by 40% this year.

Remittances in 2014 from Tajiks working in Russia made up over 42% of Tajikistan’s GDP keeping the country at the top of the world’s most remittance- dependent ranking.

The World Bank’s forecast, therefore, makes for grim reading.

According to the World Bank the Tajik economy will experience a much slower growth than in the past few years. The country’s GDP in 2015 will grow at 3.2%, less than half its 2014 figure of 6.7%.

The World Bank forecasts the growth to return above 5% only in 2017. It also said that inflation would rise steadily over the next two years to around 10%.

The data presented by the World Bank paints a dark picture for Tajikistan’s short term future.

The World Bank has given similar pessimistic forecasts for Kyrgyzstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 233, published on May 28 2015)