MARCH 12 2015 (The Bulletin) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has opened up an office in the town of Khujand in north Tajikistan to help support small business, media reported. The EBRD has been extending its Tajik projects.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 16 2015 (The Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon appointed his 27-year-old son Rustam to head up the Agency for State Financial Control, a government entity in charge of fighting corruption.
This is not the first public post Mr Rakhmon’s eldest son has held. Aside from local administration and nation-wide assignments he heads the country’s Football Federation and for a year was chairman of the Customs Service, a powerful government agency.
Mr Rakhmon is all-powerful having won a parliamentary election earlier this month which eliminated any pretence of a functioning opposition in the country.
Opposition groups have accused him of corruption and blatant nepotism. Other high-ranking officials have been accused of smuggling and drug running.
International observers have become increasingly exasperated with Tajikistan and Mr Rakhmon’s style of rule.
Mr Rakhmon barely acknowledges these accusations but promoting his son to head a senior government agency will hardly improve Tajikistan’s standing in the eyes of foreign investors and governments.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 18 2015 (The Bulletin) – The black flag of the extremist group IS has been seen flying in north Afghanistan close to the border with Central Asia, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. This is important because Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have both said they are worried about the Taliban moving north.
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(News report from Issue No. 223, published on March 18 2015)
MARCH 9 2015 (The Bulletin) – In an interview to the Asia-Plus website, the head of the IMF mission in Dushanbe, Aidyn Bibolov, said remittances would drop by 30% in 2015. Such a large drop would be a big hit for Tajikistan’s economy. Remittances make up 50% of Tajikistan’s GDP.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
MARCH 10 2015 (The Bulletin) – China is preparing to begin work on building the first oil refinery in Tajikistan, media reported. China says that work is about to begin and that it should be operational by the end of the year. The refinery is important because it will reduce Tajikistan’s reliance on Russian oil products.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
MARCH 5 2015 (The Bulletin) – Umarali Kuvatov, leader of the banned Tajik opposition Group 24, was shot dead in Istanbul after leaving a dinner which his family later said had also been poisoned.
Opposition groups immediately accused Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon and his associates of being linked in the murder. He has not commented.
Turkish police later detained three Tajik nationals in connection with the murder.
A successful businessman, Kuvatov had once been an ally of President Rakhmon. He fled Tajikistan in 2012. Last year, the authorities in Tajikistan banned Group 24 from holding an anti-government rally and also accused it of trying to stage a coup. Its activists in Tajikistan have been arrested and jailed.
Facts around Kuvatov’s murder are murky but he is thought to have died from a single gunshot to the head after leaving a dinner at the home of another Tajik. His family said they had also been poisoned at the dinner.
Kuvatov’s murder comes only a few days after the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in Moscow. Unlike Nemtsov, though, Kuvatov was considered far more of a fringe player in Tajik opposition circles.
Even so, for Tajikistan’s opposition, the murder rids it of a characteristic and wealthy figure to challenge President Rakhmon and his iron-like grip on power.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
GHARMEN/Tajikistan, March 11 2015 (The Bulletin) – Mubinjon Asimov and his two sons are among the few remaining survivors of the Yaghnobi people in Tajikistan.
“We lost not only our homes, our fields and our mountains. Our whole culture was annihilated,” said Asimov, an elderly herder still living in Gharmen, a small settlement of just over a dozen inhabitants in the Yaghnobi valley in southern Tajikistan.
He was talking about repression by the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
“We couldn’t use our native language in public and by the time we were allowed to come back to this valley only a few of us were still able to speak Yaghnobi,” he said.
The Yaghnobis are believed to be the heirs of Sogdia, a civilisation that stood against Alexander the Great during one of his last campaigns in the 4th century BC.
To the eyes of the casual visitor life here appears to follow the same old rhythms of a timeless past. Behind this romantic façade of mountainous bucolic isolation hides, however, a dramatic history of ethnic cleansing, persecutions and forced emigration.
The first wave of repressions came during Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s and led to many Yaghnobis being exiled, but it was only in the late 1950s that a systematic mass displacement of the whole Yaghnobi population was forcibly carried out.
Under the pretext of danger from landslides, the Soviet authorities evacuated the population from the valley to the hot plains of northern Tajikistan.
Sociologists have warned the Yagnobi people, culture and languages may die out.
Asimov agreed but now he said that the state wasn’t doing enough. “Now the state is all but nonexistent and not a single kopek has been invested in this valley,” he said. “Our recent past has been a dark one, but our future looks even bleaker.”
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
MARCH 5 2015 (The Bulletin) – Russia’s defence minister, Anatoly Anatonov, said IS groups in Afghanistan posed a threat to Tajikistan. Russia has been a consistent siren on Tajikistan, warning of the threat to its stability once NATO withdraws from Afghanistan. Russia maintains a garrison in Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
MARCH 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A parliamentary election in Tajikistan has wiped out all opposition representation, delivering a chamber that 100% supports President Emomali Rakhmon.
Western observers said that the election had neither been free nor fair.
“Some contestants provided political alternatives, yet the March 1 parliamentary elections in Tajikistan took place in a restricted political space and failed to provide a level playing field for candidates,” the OSCE, Europe’s main democracy watchdog, said in a statement.
Some media quoted observers saying they had witnessed blatant ballot stuffing too.
Importantly, this is the first time that the opposition Islamic Revival Party has failed to win any seats in parliament. It failed to pass the 5% threshold needed to hold a seat in the 63-person chamber.
According to local media, Mr Rakhmon’s ruling People’s Democratic Party won 57 seats in the election with the Agrarian Party, the Party of Economic Reforms and the Socialist Party splitting the other six seats. All three of the minor parties are linked to Mr Rakhmon.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
MARCH 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Underscoring China’s influence over Tajikistan’s economy, a Chinese company has agreed to build a $200m lead producing plant, media reported quoting a senior Tajik government official. China has increased its influence over Tajikistan over the past few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
