JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Uzbekistan ordered the release of the critically ill prisoner Abdurasul Khudoynazarov, media quoted Human Rights Watch as saying. Khudoynazarov had served 8-1/2 years of a 9 year prison sentence for allegedly stirring anti-government protests around the city of Andijan, east Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – South Korean president Park Geun-hye will visit Uzbekistan next week as part of a tour of Central Asia that also includes Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, media reported quoting an Uzbek government source. There are large Koran ethnic minorities living in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Perhaps playing into Uzbekistan’s hands, the shortage of gas in Osh has triggered anger towards the central authorities in Kyrgyzstan.
Under a Soviet engineered system, Uzbekistan supplies Osh and other cities in south Kyrgyzstan with gas. It cut supplies on April 14 because it said that Kyrgyzstan was not keeping to its side of a bilateral arrangement.
Uzbek officials have also declined to negotiate with their Kyrgyz counterparts, leaving people living in the south without supplies.
And anger is brewing.
Osh has seen a few demonstrations but protests have now broken out in Bishkek. People protesting against the lack of gas in Osh merged with others demonstrating against Russia’s Gazprom’s takeover of KyrgyzGaz in April and the government’s drive towards the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. Police were forced to break the protest up but any ground-swell of anti-government feelings in Kyrgyzstan can have serious implications for the government.
It is not surprising that Uzbekistan is being a difficult neighbour. Uzbekistan has been highly critical of Kambar-Ata-2, the Kyrgyz hydroelectric project the Kremlin agreed to finance. In 2012, Uzbek President Islam Karimov said upstream dams such as Kambar-Ata-2 could trigger wars between upstream and downstream countries.
Gazprom’s acquisition of KyrgyzGaz is also a threat to Uzbekistan as it gives the Kyrgyz energy network more firepower. Gazprom has talked also of a north-south gas pipeline in Kyrgyzstan that would cut Uzbekistan out of its supply chain. This, though, is some way off and it will not end Osh’s gas crisis in the short run.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
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) – Uzbek president Islam Karimov has criticised the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union as a thinly disguised effort to create a broader political group.
Mr Karimov is, perhaps, the first leader from Central Asia to offer such brazen criticism of the Eurasian Economic Union, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pet projects.
Kyrgyz news agency 24.kg reported Mr Karimov saying that joining the Eurasian Economic Union would mean losing national independence.
“They say that they will only create an economic market and it won’t relinquish sovereignty and independence. Tell me, can political independence exist without economic independence?” Mr Karimov said according to 24.kg.
Of course, Uzbekistan is the most unilateral of the Central Asian countries and criticism from Tashkent of the Eurasian Economic Union is not unexpected but Mr Karimov’s comments are particularly barbed and the timing poignant.
Alongside Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus are also members of the Eurasian Economic Union which was signed into existence last month at a ceremony in Astana. But Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are all eager to join.
Many Western analysts have said that despite assurances from Mr Putin, the Eurasian Economic Union is little more than a thinly veiled effort by the Kremlin to extend its political power. Clearly Mr Karimov shares these views.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The third branch of a gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan, through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to China opened on May 31, media reported. Line C, as it is known, will double the pipeline’s capacity to 55b cubic metres of gas per year by 2015. Gas exports to China are vital to Central Asia’s economies.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
JUNE 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan has granted amnesty to nearly 70,000 people as part of a celebration of its constitution, media reported. While staggering for its size, only 3,200 of the people pardoned will be released from prison. Most of the others had been awaiting trials. Uzbekistan regularly issues amnesties.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
TASHKENT/Uzbekistan, JUNE 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — An army of labourers clad in turquoise overalls swarmed over the Uzbek capital, intent on sprucing up the centre of this leafy city. The Latvian president was coming to town, and every blade of grass had to be in its right place.
Shielding their faces from a fierce sun, workers crouched on the grass, studiously weeding it by hand. More labourers were busy with the apparently fruitless task of hosing down the walls of the Ankhor Canal, which winds languidly through the capital behind the shiny civic buildings on Independence Square.
Heaven forbid that the visitor, Andris Berzins, should peer out of his motorcade and spot a flower out of place or a lingering spot of dust. It seemed that his host, Islam Karimov, could never live it down.
The grandiose Palace of Forums, the white marble monster that was due to be the venue for their summit, gleamed in the sunlight. There were no people strolling past the statue of the national hero, Tamurlane, in the park in front of the palace as the whole area had been closed off. Independence Square was also off limits. Hordes of green-uniformed police officers manned the perimeter, whistling officiously and shooing away any unsuspecting member of the public who dared approach.
In Uzbekistan, image is everything and when a European leader visits, its authoritarian ruler pulls out the stops to impress. It is a rare event. Few international leaders drop by since a photo call with Mr Karimov, vilified in the West as a dictator and serial human rights abuser, is tantamount to political suicide.
So the Latvian president’s arrival in Tashkent is important and yet dissenters mutter that all this Potemkin-style preening will do nothing to improve Uzbekistan’s pariah status.
MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -Risking the ire of human rights activists, Latvian President Andris Berzins travelled to Tashkent to meet with Uzbekistan’s leader Islam Karimov.
The human rights lobby reviles Mr Karimov for allegedly imprisoning and torturing his enemies, charges he denies. It also blames Uzbek soldiers for opening fire on civilians in the town of Andijan in 2005, killing hundreds.
Mr Berzins’ visit to Tashkent was made more controversial because a trip to Uzbekistan by a European leader is so rare.
Photos of Mr Karimov and Mr Berzins walking together and inspecting a guard of honour are a propaganda coup for Uzbekistan. Mr Karimov rarely gets to hob-knob with Western leaders. He normally has to make do with yet another glad-handing photo-shoot with a senior Chinese official or perhaps with a Central Asian colleague.
So this adds extra layers of significance to Mr Berzins’ Tashkent sojourn.
Latvia is also taking over the rotating presidency of the EU in 2015 and has promised to focus on improving relations with Central Asia.
Relations between the EU and Ubekistan have been improving. NATO’s extraction from neighbouring Afghanistan through Uzbekistan has mainly driven this reconciliation but, even so, Mr Karimov is kept at arm’s length. Earlier this year, Uzbek officials cancelled a trip by Mr Karimov to the Czech Republic because government ministers had indicated that they didn’t want to meet him.
Latvia, though, has taken a different approach. There’s little doubt that Latvian-Uzbek business will increase because of it, as will Mr Karimov’s domestic standing.
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(News report from Issue No. 187, published on JUNE 4 2014)
MAY 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – MTS, the Russian mobile operator, is planning a return to Uzbekistan, two years after it quit the country after a major row with the authorities.
Vladimir Evtushenkov, the Russian billionaire whose company Sistema owns the majority state in MTS, told reporters at the St Petersburg Economic Forum that the company may re-enter Uzbekistan as early as this year.
Given MTS’s acrimonious exit from Uzbekistan, after a row over unpaid tax, Mr Evtushenkov’s statement took people by surprise.
Through its local subsidiary, MTS had been the biggest mobile provider in Uzbekistan. Its abrupt exit in 2012 had cost it 9m subscribers and losses of $1b.
But it’s a positive surprise that MTS is seriously considering a return to Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan is the single biggest market in Central Asia, with a population of 30m, and should be a natural country of operations for a Russian mobile company.
Of course, though, as with everything in Uzbekistan, MTS’s re-entry is possibly layered with extra meaning. It may not be a coincidence that it is considering a return to Uzbekistan just as Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, appears to have suffered a serious setback to her power and influence.
When MTS did clash with the Uzbek authorities in 2012, the rumour mill was full of stories that the company had fallen out with Ms Karimova. That problem may now have been solved, allowing MTS to patch up its differences with the Uzbek authorities.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
