APRIL 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s somoni currency fell against the dollar, media reported, continuing its general depreciation. Like other currencies across the region, the somoni has been under pressure because of a decline in the value of the Russian rouble. Kazakhstan devalued its tenge by 20% in February.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Security forces in Tajikistan said they had prevented a terrorist attack on TALCO, the aluminium smelter that forms the backbone of Tajikistan’s economy, media reported. According to a Tajik government spokesman, criminals had planned to detonate bombs at the plant.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan is watching the ongoing presidential election in Afghanistan with interest.
If ethnic Tajik former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah defeats his main Pashtun rival, the former finance minister Ashraf Ghani, genuinely closer relations between the two neighbours may flourish.
Alexander Sodiqov an analyst and author of the Tajikistan Monitor blog said aside from being an ethnic Tajik there are other reasons why Dushanbe thinks a victory for Mr Abdullah would boost Tajik-Afghan relations.
“Abdullah had been very close to Ahmad Shah Massoud at the time when Tajikistan provided military and material support for the Northern Alliance. Dushanbe expects that Abdullah has not forgotten that support,” he said referring to the main anti-Taliban commander who was assassinated in 2001.
There is another important security question at stake.
“Abdullah’s main constituency base is in northern Afghanistan, and he fought against Taliban for a long time,” said Mr Sodiqov. “Dushanbe sees Abdullah’s possible presidency as an additional guarantee that Taliban militants would not threaten its porous southern border.”
The Tajik government has complained for a while that the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2014 will leave a security vacuum in Afghanistan. Trade has been growing between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, now worth over $100 million, but the West is hoping that relations grow closer still.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A mud slide hit a village 220km south of Dushanbe on April 12 killing at least six children, media reported. The deaths highlight the perilous state of many villages in Tajikistan. Poverty and poor infrastructure still mark much of the Tajik countryside.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan jailed three Tajik women for spying, potentially straining relations with neighbouring Tajikistan. The women were found guilty of photographing military hardware and passing on the information to Tajik agents. Relations between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are generally strained.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
APRIL 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Archaeologists in Tajikistan have found several water jugs which they estimate are 2,000 years old and of Zoroastrian heritage, media reported. Tajikistan was one of the homes of Zoroastrianism, a draw for tourists.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
APRIL 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Tajik court ordered the state to re-nationalise a garment plant owned by Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian businessman held in Vienna on criminal charges, because it had been illegally privatised. Critics of the Tajik government accused it of using Ukraine’s crisis to seize assets.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
APRIL 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Remittances from Russia to Tajikistan rose to $4.15b in 2013, a jump of 14%, media reported quoting the Central Bank. Remittances, especially from Russia, are vital for the Tajik economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
APRIL 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Local mullahs in Tajikistan are worried about the increasing number of young men heading off to Syria to join radical Islamist groups fighting against Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad.
Officials in Tajikistan, both government and religious, fear that the young men will return from Syria radicalised and ferment anti-government feelings.
Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon speaks out regularly against the potential drift north of the Taliban once NATO leaves Afghanistan.
Media quoted one mullah in a regional town besmirching anybody who moved to Syria to fight for the rebels.
“Such behaviour is “the way of lost souls and the way of the devil,” said Haidar Sharifzoda, head of the main mosque in the city of Kulyab.
Kulyab is in Khatlon province, Mr Rakhmon’s home region and power-base. It has also previously been considered a bastion of secular thinking. Last month, a 26-year-old man from Kulyab was reported killed in Syria.
The number of Central Asians currently fighting in Syria has been placed at anywhere between several hundred and several thousand. Many are disillusioned migrants working in Russian cities.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
MARCH 31 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Checkpoints along the disputed Kyrgyz-Tajik border have re-opened for the first time since a shootout between border-guards in January, media reported. The border is disputed between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, one of a number or territorial flashpoints across Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)
