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Category: Qishloq Ovozi

  • Neighbors Stake Out Positions After Deadly Kyrgyz-Tajik Border Conflict

    When hostilities broke out along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border at the end of April, many countries and organizations were quick to call for an end to the fighting and a peaceful resolution to the long-running border conflict.

    No one wanted to openly side with either Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan, let alone comment on the violence that left more than 50 people dead.

    But in the days following an agreement between Kyrgyz and Tajik officials that halted the fighting, there have been hints of the positions of some leaders through their statements and actions.

    Tajik President Emomali Rahmon was fortunate to have accepted an invitation months ago to make an official visit to Moscow for the May 9 Victory Day celebrations. Rahmon was the only head of state to attend the Moscow ceremonies but the trip allowed him an opportunity to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 8 and again the next day during the parade on Red Square.

    Reports on the meetings of the two presidents did not mention any discussion of the April 28-30 fighting on the border, though Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said days earlier it would be on the agenda, and Putin had offered on April 30 to act as a mediator in the conflict.

    Where Moscow Stands

    Putin’s comments were interesting, as they seemed to indirectly address the problem between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

    The topic of Russia’s bases in Tajikistan, where Russia’s 201st Division has been stationed since shortly after the end of World War II, is a perennial whenever Putin and Rahmon meet and with U.S. and other foreign forces withdrawing from Afghanistan. Putin said Russia would “work on strengthening [the bases] and on strengthening the armed forces of Tajikistan.”

    The part about strengthening Tajikistan’s military was certainly noticed in Kyrgyzstan, even if Putin said the strengthening was needed because of increased fighting in Afghanistan. Though both sides in the border fighting took substantial losses, the casualty figures show that Kyrgyz took a worse beating in the fighting with the Tajiks.

    The Kremlin has made many statements about the need for stability in Kyrgyzstan, where Russia also has a military base and where there have been three revolutions since 2005.

    In July 2019, then-Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev met with Putin in Moscow. Atambaev was in the midst of a feud with his successor, President Sooronbai Jeenbekov, but despite technically being under house arrest, Atambaev left Kyrgyzstan on a plane that departed from the Russian military base in Kant.

    At the end of the meeting with Atambaev, Putin referred to the 2005 and 2010 revolutions in Kyrgyzstan: “Kyrgyzstan has endured several serious internal political shocks…at least two,” adding, “the country needs political stability.”

    Putin also said that as part of achieving stability, the people in Kyrgyzstan should “unite around the current president and help him in developing the state.”

    The feud between Atambaev and Jeenbekov did not end and barely two weeks later, elite troops of Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry raided Atambaev’s compound outside Bishkek. After a deadly standoff, Atambaev surrendered and was eventually put in prison.

    Then in October 2020, protests over the results of rigged parliamentary elections ousted Jeenbekov. But Moscow’s relations with the new government of President Sadyr Japarov have been icy.

    Rahmon, on the other hand, has been in power in Tajikistan for nearly 29 years and, for the Kremlin, he represents stability in a country that borders Afghanistan. Russia has put a lot of effort and money into making Tajikistan a country that could hold the line against spillover from Afghanistan.

    However, in his meeting with Rahmon on May 8, Putin also spoke about Tajik migrant laborers in Russia. “I know this is a sensitive issue for Tajikistan,” he said. “A significant volume of support for the families [of migrant laborers] is sent from Russia back home [to Tajikistan].”

    That is true also for Kyrgyzstan. Hundreds of thousands of citizens of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan work in Russia and send money back to their families. Without these funds the economies of both countries would collapse, and the resulting economic decline would fuel social unrest.

    By promising to lend further help to Tajikistan’s military, Putin might be sending a message to Kyrgyz authorities to forget about any thoughts of renewing aggression along the border with Tajikistan, and by mentioning the billions of dollars migrant laborers send back, he sends a message to both countries about the potential leverage Russia can employ against Tajikistan — or Kyrgyzstan — if either side takes measures along their common border that destabilize the situation.

    Offering Condolences, Aid

    While the Kremlin needs to maintain some sort of balancing act, other countries do not. Again, no country or international organization has come out on the side of either Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan. But some have sent messages of sympathy over losses from the fighting.

    Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev phoned President Japarov on May 1 to express his condolences to the victims of the fighting in the southern Batken Province, and to say Kazakhstan was ready to render humanitarian aid to Kyrgyzstan.

    Toqaev also spoke with Rahmon, who reportedly “informed [Toqaev] in detail” about the history of the border conflict and the current situation. Toqaev also offered to help mediate between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and is scheduled to visit Dushanbe on May 19-20.

    On May 4, Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov phoned Kyrgyz counterpart Ruslan Kazakbaev to offer Turkmenistan’s condolences “to family and friends of the deceased citizens of Kyrgyzstan.”

    That same day, Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazyan phoned Kazakbekov with the same message. Ayvazyan also spoke with Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin on May 4, but reports did not mention if Ayvazyan expressed any condolences for Tajik losses.

    Japarov spoke with Putin on May 10 and the two reportedly discussed the recent fighting.

    Putin promised to provide humanitarian aid for Kyrgyzstan, but a phone call is not the same as two days of meetings in Moscow, even though many of the details of the Putin-Rahmon talks — particularly their discussion of the fighting along the border — remain unknown.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: Making Sense Of The Clashes At The Kyrgyz-Tajik Border

    The fighting along the Kyrgyz-Tajik border on April 28-30 was a shock, despite the clear signs that tensions were building along that border for years.

    It was the first time since the five Central Asian states became independent in late 1991 that militaries of two countries had engaged in combat against each other.

    While the skirmishes were over relatively quickly, the fighting was on a scale never seen before in the area and the vast majority of casualties were civilians.

    There have been attempts at reconciliation despite the mutual accusations over who is at fault — and the question of marking the last sections of the Kyrgyz-Tajik frontier has gained new urgency.

    On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on what led to the fighting, what happened during those three days, and how the fighting has changed the situation along the border and in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

    This week’s guests are: from the United Kingdom, Madeleine Reeves, a senior lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Manchester and also the author of Border Work: Spatial Lives Of The State In Rural Central Asia that draws on Reeves’ extensive research in the exact area where the conflict occurred; from Geneva, Switzerland, Cholpon Orozbekova, a director of the Bulan Institute for Peace Innovations; from Germany, Hafiz Boboyorov, a guest researcher at Bonn University and previously with the Academy of Sciences in Tajikistan; and Bruce Pannier, the author of RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Deadly Border Conflict Promises To Change How Kyrgyz, Tajiks See One Another And Their Leaders

    The latest deadly clashes on the long-restive Kyrgyz-Tajik border drastically alter the situation there and change how the two countries see themselves and each other — with consequences for the leaders in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

    Previous violence along the border stretching back some 15 years was always localized, involving several villages on opposite sides of the poorly marked or unmarked sections of the frontier. The hostilities usually centered around work near water sources or the construction or alteration of roads, fences, and walls.

    The latest conflict on April 28 began much like previous conflicts did.

    A group of Tajiks were installing a camera at a water-intake station on Kyrgyz territory that distributed water to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.


    The events followed a familiar script: Harsh words were exchanged, people gathered from villages on both sides of the border, stones were thrown, border guards arrived, and gunfire broke out.

    Gunfire has become increasingly common in these disputes in recent years, but usually local officials from the two countries quickly arrive, calm the feuding villagers, and the groups go back to their sides of the border.

    But what began on April 28 went in a different direction.

    There was an exchange of gunfire early on April 29 in the area of the intake station. Each side blames the other for starting the shooting.

    Tajik forces then launched a coordinated attack along several sections of the border, many kilometers apart, and entered Kyrgyzstan.

    More than a dozen villages in Kyrgyzstan came under fire from a mix of machine guns, mortars, and even rockets.

    Tajik military helicopters were in the air near some of these villages, with Tajik authorities saying they were used to evacuate Tajik citizens from areas cut off from Tajikistan by the fighting. But photos from the Kyrgyz village of Ortoboz show rockets on the ground that could only come from attack helicopters.

    Kyrgyz forces counterattacked and some villages in Tajikistan came under heavy fire as well, with reports of some Kyrgyz troops also temporarily operating on Tajik territory.

    With the exception of isolated gunshots along the border, the fighting finally ended on April 30.

    But the casualties and the damage from the violence were unprecedented, with at least 36 Kyrgyz and 18 Tajik citizens killed, along with more than 200 injured. Additionally, dozens of homes, shops, and other structures were destroyed or damaged and tens of thousands of people were displaced.

    And accusations were flying from both sides about the wanton destruction carried out by the other country’s forces.

    Reports from the area indicate that the majority of the material losses were on the Kyrgyz side of the border.


    Homes, Schools Destroyed After Worst Violence In Decades On Kyrgyz-Tajik Border

    Homes, Schools Destroyed After Worst Violence In Decades On Kyrgyz-Tajik Border



    Photo Gallery:

    Homes, Schools Destroyed After Worst Violence In Decades On Kyrgyz-Tajik Border

    People inspected the charred remains of their homes, schools, and other buildings in villages on both sides of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border after deadly armed clashes along the frontier on April 28-29. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan completed the withdrawal of their military units from the border on May 3 as a cease-fire appeared to be holding.

    Both countries are preparing legal cases against the other over the violence, but little is likely to result from that.

    Despite their known problems, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are similar in some ways.

    Both are poor, mountainous countries that have roughly the same territory with comparable populations. There are about 6.5 million people in Kyrgyzstan and some 9.5 million in Tajikistan.

    Tajikistan also borders Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and China, while Kyrgyzstan also shares borders with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and China — all countries that are much larger, more populous, and far better armed than the small militaries in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

    These similarities give the countries reasons to work together and have good relations.

    But after this latest round of fighting, any kinship that existed has been lost as there are feelings among the Kyrgyz that Tajikistan has attacked Kyrgyzstan, inflicted losses, and that Kyrgyzstan did little to stop it.

    And that has angered many Kyrgyz citizens.

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reportedly warned Tajikistan not to repeat any aggression against Kyrgyzstan, but otherwise no foreign allies have publicly sided with Bishkek or Dushanbe in this dispute.

    Most messages of condolence from other countries have been directed toward Kyrgyzstan, though Bishkek cannot count on more than that, as questions are being raised about how the situation turned out so badly and who among government officials is to blame.

    Kamchybek Tashiev, the head of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security, on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border on May 2


    Kamchybek Tashiev, the head of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security, on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border on May 2

    On May 1, the head of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (UKMK), Kamchybek Tashiev, and his Tajik counterpart, Saymumin Yatimov, met in Kyrgyzstan’s border province of Batken and signed a deal cementing a cease-fire and withdrawing all forces back to their home bases.

    Tashiev is a longtime friend of new Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov; his appointment as head of the UKMK owes much to this relationship.

    Tashiev said on May 2 that Kyrgyzstan would not make any claims for compensation from Tajikistan for damage done to property in Kyrgyzstan. He added that an agreement on demarcating another 112 kilometers of the border would be ready by May 9.

    That would be welcome news, as the root of these violent conflicts are almost always related to a dispute over the shared border, with some 450 kilometers of the 970-kilometer Kyrgyz-Tajik frontier still not demarcated.

    But Tashiev has a recent history of prematurely declaring progress on border issues.

    After a visit to Uzbekistan in late March, he said the border issue with Uzbekistan was resolved “100 percent.” But that quickly fell apart when villagers on the Kyrgyz side of the border refused to accept proposed land swaps included in the agreement.

    Tashiev has also said there was information prior to the April 28-30 fighting that the border situation was worsening, suggesting he knew what could happen but did nothing to prevent it.

    Tashiev also failed to explain exactly why he left Kyrgyzstan on April 28. The trip was reportedly to seek medical treatment abroad, though some social-media comments suggested that he traveled to Spain, where his son celebrated a birthday.

    There could also be disappointment among Kyrgyz in the country’s new president.

    Japarov came to power with populist messages about a Kyrgyzstan that was going to be stronger, something that appealed to his many nationalist supporters.

    He has already appeared on state television appealing for calm and a return to good ties with Tajikistan, an indication that Kyrgyzstan is going to just have to accept what happened along the border and move on.

    Tajik President Emomali Rahmon visited the Vorukh exclave near the Kyrgyz border in early April.


    Tajik President Emomali Rahmon visited the Vorukh exclave near the Kyrgyz border in early April.

    It will not help that another rumor going around Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is that Tajik President Emomali Rahmon initially refused to take Japarov’s phone calls after the fighting started.

    Japarov and other officials have also pledged to fund reconstruction in the region and to restore communities devastated by the violence. Already deeply in debt, it will be tricky for Japarov to keep this promise and still attend to the country’s arrears.

    It is difficult to see where Kyrgyz authorities will find funding to completely rebuild homes, gas stations, stores, schools, and other structures damaged or destroyed in the fighting. They also must compensate people for the loss of their livestock, something that has not yet been discussed.

    All of this comes as a host of other problems besets Kyrgyzstan, from growing unemployment and rising inflation to a drought and economic issues related to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Meanwhile, in Tajikistan, the unpopular autocratic president seems ready to gain from the latest outcome of the border battles in which his military appeared to act strongly.

    Rahmon has worked for years to crush independent media and opposition groups. In the process, his family has amassed a fortune in a country where the average monthly salary is less than $100.

    Furthermore, the nearly 70-year-old Rahmon has been grooming his oldest son, Rustam, to take over the presidency, hoping the succession will be accepted by Tajiks.

    The recent events along the border provided an unexpected moment of approval that could both ease and accelerate his move toward creating a dynasty in Tajikistan.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: From Gas Riches To Food Lines In Turkmenistan

    Turkmenistan has the fourth-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and many years ago was touted by its first president as being destined to become a second Kuwait.

    Turkmenistan has now become a country where people stand in long lines for rations of bread, dig through garbage for scraps and things they might possibly be able to sell, while the government celebrates horses and dogs.

    Turkmenistan’s economy has been in dire shape for more than half a decade now and the standard of living for the country’s people continues to drop.

    And recently, current President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has been guiding his son Serdar up the hierarchy of the government leading to speculation the presidency will be passed from father to son and the mismanagement that characterizes the Turkmen government will continue for another generation.

    On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion that looks at the deterioration of Turkmenistan.

    This week’s guests are: from the Netherlands, Ruslan Myatiev, the head of the Turkmen.news website; from Prague, Farruh Yusupov, the director of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk; and Bruce Pannier, the author of RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: From Gas Riches To Food Lines In Turkmenistan

    Turkmenistan has the fourth-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and many years ago was touted by its first president as being destined to become a second Kuwait.

    Turkmenistan has now become a country where people stand in long lines for rations of bread, dig through garbage for scraps and things they might possibly be able to sell, while the government celebrates horses and dogs.

    Turkmenistan’s economy has been in dire shape for more than half a decade now and the standard of living for the country’s people continues to drop.

    And recently, current President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has been guiding his son Serdar up the hierarchy of the government leading to speculation the presidency will be passed from father to son and the mismanagement that characterizes the Turkmen government will continue for another generation.

    On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion that looks at the deterioration of Turkmenistan.

    This week’s guests are: from the Netherlands, Ruslan Myatiev, the head of the Turkmen.news website; from Prague, Farruh Yusupov, the director of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk; and Bruce Pannier, the author of RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Uzbek, Tajik, And Kyrgyz Governors Hold Landmark Forum In Ferghana Valley

    A meeting occurred in Central Asia on April 23 that hasn’t ever happened before.

    The governor of Uzbekistan’s eastern Ferghana Province met with the Tajik and Kyrgyz governors of the adjoining provinces for talks on economic cooperation.

    Hosted in the city of Ferghana by Hayrullo Bozorov, the meeting was attended by the governor of Tajikistan’s Sughd Province, Rajabboi Ahmadzoda, and the governor of Kyrgyzstan’s Batken Province, Omurbek Suvanaliev.

    Nearly 30 years after the three countries became independent, the meeting marked the first time the heads of the three neighboring provinces had ever gathered for such a meeting.

    The three provinces are all in the populous Ferghana Valley, an agriculturally rich area that has also become a major smuggling route and, since independence, has seen more deadly violence along its borders than any other area in Central Asia.

    And one of the interesting aspects of the business forum, officially called Integration Of Borders – The Key To Development, is that it was purely about trade and cultural relations, not border demarcation.

    Batken Province Governor Omurbek Suvanaliev (file photo)


    Batken Province Governor Omurbek Suvanaliev (file photo)

    Suvanaliev told RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, known locally as Azattyk, that although “the matter of defining the borders is being decided, it is necessary for us also to strengthen economic ties.”

    And he made clear that the vital demarcation of the three countries’ borders “is the work of intergovernmental delegations.”

    All three governors were accompanied by delegations from local industrial and agricultural businesses and there was also an exhibit of their products.

    The only document reportedly signed was a memorandum of cooperation between the Ferghana and Sughd provinces.

    It was ironic that the venue for the landmark business forum was the Islam Karimov Theater.

    Late Uzbek President Islam Karimov


    Late Uzbek President Islam Karimov

    While Karimov was Uzbekistan’s first president, his country set up long barbed-wire fences and dug ditches along extensive stretches of its borders with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. During incursions by Islamic militants in the summer of 2000, Uzbekistan even put land mines at places along its borders with its two eastern neighbors.

    When Karimov died late in the summer of 2016, Uzbek troops were occupying some areas of Kyrgyzstan.

    His successor, Shavkat Mirziyoev, removed those troops as one of his first moves after becoming Uzbekistan’s leader.

    Mirziyoev also reversed Karimov’s policies toward Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and visits by Uzbek officials and business delegations to the neighboring countries are a common occurrence now.

    Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev visiting Ferghana Valley last year.


    Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev visiting Ferghana Valley last year.

    Those meetings have gone a long way towards improving Uzbekistan’s relations with its two neighbors.

    The business forum in Ferghana took this new spirit of cooperation a step further by bringing together the representatives of the three countries that share the fertile Ferghana Valley region.

    Though the forum did not result in the signing of large amounts of contracts, the big achievement was the meeting itself.

    Though there has been some progress in demarcating and marking the borders in the region despite difficult negotiations, the process is likely to continue to be problematic in the years to come as territory is exchanged and people’s property affected.

    While border negotiations continue, there is no reason why three of the areas involved in these talks should not move forward by improving economic ties.

    The Ferghana business forum was the first step.

    And a better economic situation locally should make all three parties more amenable to compromises in their future border negotiations.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: The Threat To Religious Freedom In Central Asia

    The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) just released its annual report that named Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as “countries of particular concern” and recommended Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan be placed on the U.S. State Department’s Special Watch List, a list Uzbekistan was removed from in December 2020.

    Governments in Central Asia have worked since independence to increase control over religion in their countries and many groups and members of different faiths have been persecuted and denied registration. Some believers have been imprisoned, particularly Muslims, whom the governments of these countries seem to fear the most.

    On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion about religious freedom and the lack thereof in Central Asia.

    This week’s guests are: from Washington, Nury Turkel, commissioner at the USCIRF and also a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; from Oslo, Norway, Felix Corley, the editor of the Forum 18 News Service, an agency monitoring religious freedom in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe; from Warsaw, Poland, Muhamadjon Kabirov, the president of the Foundation for Intercultural Integration, the chief editor at Azda TV, and formerly the personal assistant of the chairman of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikstan; and Bruce Pannier, the author of RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: The Threat To Religious Freedom In Central Asia

    The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) just released its annual report that named Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as “countries of particular concern” and recommended Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan be placed on the U.S. State Department’s Special Watch List, a list Uzbekistan was removed from in December 2020.

    Governments in Central Asia have worked since independence to increase control over religion in their countries and many groups and members of different faiths have been persecuted and denied registration. Some believers have been imprisoned, particularly Muslims, whom the governments of these countries seem to fear the most.

    On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion about religious freedom and the lack thereof in Central Asia.

    This week’s guests are: from Washington, Nury Turkel, commissioner at the USCIRF and also a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; from Oslo, Norway, Felix Corley, the editor of the Forum 18 News Service, an agency monitoring religious freedom in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe; from Warsaw, Poland, Muhamadjon Kabirov, the president of the Foundation for Intercultural Integration, the chief editor at Azda TV, and formerly the personal assistant of the chairman of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikstan; and Bruce Pannier, the author of RFE/RL’s Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: Why Can’t Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan Effectively Combat Gender Violence?

    On April 5, a 27-year-old Kyrgyz woman named Aizada Kanatbekova was kidnapped in broad daylight by three men in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek.

    The kidnapping was caught on CCTV. Kanatbekova’s family quickly phoned police. And yet almost nothing was done to find her. Two days later, Kanatbekova and her abductor were found dead: she from strangulation and he from suicide, in a car outside of Bishkek.

    Days later, a group of women in Bishkek demonstrated against gender violence, only to have their rally broken up by a group of violent men.

    A few days earlier, on April 1, the body of 19-year-old Muhlisa Adambaeva was found in Uzbekistan’s western Khorezm Province. She had hanged herself after being beaten by her husband and mistreated by her husband’s family.

    Kanatbekova’s attacker had a history of violence that was known to police. And many people knew what Adambaeva had been going through, but local traditions prevented anyone, including her’s immediate family, from intervening.

    On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion about gender violence in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and why officials in those two countries seem unable to effectively combat it.

    This week’s guests are: from Kyrgyzstan, Kamila Eshaliyeva, a Bishkek-based journalist and author of a recent report about violence against women in Kyrgyzstan; from Uzbekistan, Samrin Mamedova of the NeMolchi.uz organization, which works to end violence against women in Uzbekistan; and Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Kyrgyzstan’s Hydropower Problems Causing Concern In Neighboring Nations

    Any farmer can explain the problems that come with being dependent on generous rain clouds to water the crops.

    It seems there is often either too little or too much.

    Many people in Kyrgyzstan are about to face the consequences of too little water. In a country where 90 percent of the electricity is generated by hydropower facilities, the problems caused by a long drought do not end in the farmers’ fields but could extend to neighboring countries.

    Kyrgyzstan’s Toktogul hydropower plant (HPP) was opened in 1975, during the Soviet era. It took some 15 years to prepare the massive reservoir and fill it before the four 300 megawatt (MW) units could start producing energy.

    It was one of the earliest attempts to tap into Kyrgyzstan’s hydropower potential, which even today is only being used at 10 percent of its capability.

    The plant has suffered several problems in recent years associated with its aging equipment.

    In December 2015, one of the turbines shut down and, in less than a week, three of the four units had stopped functioning, forcing authorities to ration electricity during the coldest part of winter. The HPP is currently undergoing renovation work that aims to replace or rehabilitate the old equipment and bring the total output up to 1440 MW.

    While the Toktogul reservoir is a source of domestic power for Kyrgyzstan, its water is needed in two other countries.


    While the Toktogul reservoir is a source of domestic power for Kyrgyzstan, its water is needed in two other countries.

    The Toktogul reservoir is in the western Kementub Valley, along the Naryn River that eventually flows into Uzbekistan and merges into one of the two great rivers of Central Asia, the Syr Darya (the other is the Amu Darya), before snaking into Kazakhstan.

    The Toktogul HPP provides some 40 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s electricity, but the water level at the reservoir has been falling in recent years, which will soon result in the reduction and maybe the suspension of operations.

    In August 2017, the reservoir was filled to the maximum, with 19.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of water. But on March 30, 2021, Kyrgyz Energy Minister Kubanychbek Turdubaev said the level had dropped to 8.7 bcm.

    The new leadership in Kyrgyzstan has been promising to decrease the country’s debt and any additional financial burden is especially unwelcome at the moment.

    Turdubaev called 8.5 bcm the “critical level” where the operation of the Toktagul HPP would be affected. The water level might reach this critical level very soon, judging by the rate it is falling.

    On March 22, Kyrgyzstan’s main electricity provider, Elektricheskiye Stantsii, said the water level at Toktogul was 8.83 bcm.

    Turdubaev noted that the amount of water spilling out of the reservoir has exceeded the amount coming into it for several years and “every year the volume of water is decreasing by 1.5-1.8 bcm.”

    The simplest way to correct the problem would be to close the spillways out of the reservoir for brief periods and allow water to accumulate. But while Toktogul is a source of domestic power for Kyrgyzstan, its water is needed in two other countries.

    Some 80 percent of the water that leaves the Toktogul reservoir goes into Uzbekistan, where it joins the Syr Darya.

    This water is desperately needed for agriculture in both of the downstream countries. Kazakhstan has promised to send up to 1 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity exports, with Uzbekistan offering 750 million kWh to help Kyrgyzstan with its power problem.

    The idea is that this will allow Kyrgyzstan to cut back on the water used for the Toktogul HPP. All three parties seem to be counting on melting snow and spring rain to raise the water level at Toktogul, though there is no guarantee this will happen.

    Toktogul

    Toktogul

    In the meantime, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan also want to ensure sufficient water from the reservoir for this year’s crops.

    As for electricity imports, there was reportedly a deal with Uzbekistan for a swap, whereby Uzbekistan will export electricity to Kyrgyzstan from March to October and again in March and April next year.

    In return, Kyrgyzstan has pledged to send electricity to Uzbekistan during the June-August period for 2021-2023. But Turdubaev indicated Kyrgyzstan will have to pay both countries for electricity imports and said his cash-strapped country cannot immediately make those payments.

    “We explained the situation to them and asked for [electricity supplies] on credit,” Turdubaev said.

    Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have pledged to charge low rates for the electricity, but the new leadership in Kyrgyzstan has been promising to decrease the country’s debt and any additional financial burden is especially unwelcome at the moment.

    Besides that, electricity imports from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will not be enough to cover the shortfall from the low water level at the Toktogul HPP.

    Turdubaev said other power plants that normally reduce their output during the warm months when HPPs operate will have to keep operating at or near winter capacity, and he specifically named the Bishkek thermal power plant (TPP).

    The coal-burning Bishkek TPP is thought to be a major contributor to air pollution in the Kyrgyz capital, which at times during this winter had some of the worst air pollution of any major city in the world.

    This year, the summer skies above Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, might be even browner than usual.


    This year, the summer skies above Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, might be even browner than usual.

    The clean electricity produced by Toktogul helps ease pollution problems in Bishkek and other areas of Kyrgyzstan during the warmer months of the year, but this year the summer skies above Kyrgyzstan’s capital might be even browner than usual.

    Longer term, the current drought is something Kyrgyzstan needs to consider in its grand plans to become an electricity exporter. Kyrgyzstan has exported electricity to its immediate neighbors during years when there was sufficient water for all of the country’s HPPs.

    But the country has much bigger plans.

    President Sadyr Japarov attended a ceremony in Kyrgyzstan’s southern village of Kara-Bulak on April 3 to launch construction of the first high-voltage power transmission line for the Central Asia-South Asia project, better known as CASA-1000.

    CASA-1000 aims to bring some 1,300 MW of surplus electricity generated during the summer months from HPPs in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Afghanistan (300 MW) and Pakistan (1000 MW). The project is tentatively due to launch in 2023.

    But the current situation at the Toktogul reservoir is a reminder that the water needed to operate HPPs is not guaranteed to be constant. Some in Kyrgyzstan have also noted domestic demand for power is growing in the country and that that should be satisfied before any electricity is exported.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Does The New Kyrgyz Constitution Set The Country Up For Future Unrest?

    The controversial new constitution that returns Kyrgyzstan to a presidential form of government has been approved in a nationwide referendum, but almost everything surrounding the document suggests it may live a short life in a country that has had three revolutions in 16 years.

    Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairwoman Nurzhan Shayldabekova said on April 12 that 79.3 percent of those who cast ballots in the referendum — some 1.03 million people — voted in favor of the new constitution, with just 13.65 percent voting against it.

    Kyrgyzstan has some 6.5 million citizens, so it is possible to question whether the approval of this new constitution represents the will of the people when less than 1-in-6 citizens voted for it.

    Only 30 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s eligible voters needed to participate for the April 11 referendum to be declared legitimate. Preliminary results show some 37.1 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the poll, as local elections and the referendum were held simultaneously.

    That is slightly less than the approximately 39 percent who turned out for the January 10 election in which voters chose a new president and decided to hold the constitutional referendum.

    Some 1.35 million people cast ballots in January, with 81.44 percent — about 1.1 million people — voting in favor of holding the referendum.

    But controversy surrounded the new constitution from the very beginning.

    Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov and his wife, Aigul Asanbaeva, cast their ballots at a polling station in Bishkek.


    Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov and his wife, Aigul Asanbaeva, cast their ballots at a polling station in Bishkek.

    Shortly after being freed from jail by a mob during the unrest that followed the fraudulent October 4 parliamentary elections, Sadyr Japarov — who was subsequently elected president in January — suggested changing the semi-parliamentary form of government that Kyrgyzstan has had since 2010 to a presidential one under a new constitution.

    The newly approved constitution is very similar to what Kyrgyzstan had under former Presidents Askar Akaev and Kurmanbek Bakiev, both of whom were chased from power partly due to amendments to the constitution that gave them more power.

    Japarov and others argued that the 2010 constitution, which was also adopted in a referendum, created a parliament filled with deputies who bought their seats and mainly bickered, accomplishing very little.

    The October 4 polls were eventually annulled after large demonstrations. With their mandates expiring and no replacement elections scheduled, the parliamentary deputies who were elected in 2015 voted to extend their mandates, which were to expire on October 28.

    Many legal experts say that action puts into question every decision this parliament has made since its term was extended.

    The same parliament then passed the draft of the new constitution on all three readings in December over the course of a few days, which violated the constitution that was still in effect.

    Several changes were also made to the draft constitution after it had been approved by parliament, which many of its detractors note.

    Furthermore, the decision in late November to form a Constitutional Chamber and the subsequent selection of its 89 members has also been called into question.

    Many also wonder how much, if any, of the public’s opinion played a role in drafting the new constitution, which was also supposed to be put up for public discussion before it was approved by parliament. But that was not done.

    That is in great contrast to the 2010 constitution, which civil society and other public groups contributed to during the drafting stage.

    WATCH: October’s Upheaval In Kyrgyzstan Followed Two Revolutions This Century

    Polls conducted in the days leading up to the April 11 referendum indicated most people did not know very much about the changes contained in the new constitution.

    Fresh parliamentary elections that were originally scheduled to be held just days after the October 4 elections were later postponed.

    It now seems new parliamentary elections will take place no sooner than this summer, which is strange since it was the popular resistance to the October 4 parliamentary elections that started Kyrgyzstan down its current path that led to the new constitution being approved.

    Parliament loses many of its powers under the constitution approved on April 11, which also reduces the number of seats in the body from 120 to 90.

    It is not difficult to see that there is ample ground for people to question the legitimacy of this new constitution, something Kyrgyz citizens could do if the become dissatisfied with the new president and his government.

    Opponents of the new constitution will say that the constitution was pushed through by a leader who was in prison until October 4; drafted by a group that the public had no role in appointing; approved by a parliament whose mandate had expired; altered after that approval; and endorsed by less than 16 percent of the country’s population in a referendum.

    In 2005, 2010, and 2020, such dissatisfaction led to the ousting of the country’s leaders.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: Uzbekistan In The Spotlight For The Wrong Reasons

    Since 2016, when Uzbekistan’s first president, Islam Karimov, died, the authorities have been working to change the image the country inherited from Karimov as a chronic rights abuser.

    There have been some signs of progress but starting in late February, things began to fall apart.

    A group trying to register as an opposition party was harassed and some of its members attacked; activists trying to form the country’s first independent labor union came under pressure; calls for changing laws against the LGBT community were flatly rejected and met with violence; and a new law was introduced making it a crime for bloggers and others to insult the honor of President Shavkat Mirziyoev on the Internet, less than half a year before he is due to run for reelection.

    On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on the regression in Uzbekistan’s declared domestic reforms.

    This week’s guests are: from Uzbekistan, Dilfuza Kurolova, human rights lawyer and founding curator of Global Shapers’ Tashkent Hub; also from Uzbekistan, Dilmira Matyakubowa, co-director of Uzinvestigations and a fellow at the London-based Foreign Policy Center; veteran Central Asia watcher Steve Swerdlow, who is a rights lawyer and currently associate professor of the practice of human rights at the University of Southern California; and Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Currency Collapse Mirrors Turkmenistan’s Extreme Economic Woes

    When the exchange rate of Turkmenistan’s national currency, the manat, fell to 40 to the dollar on the black market on April 3, it was more than 11 times the long-standing official rate of 3.5 manats per dollar.

    It was also an all-time low for the troubled Central Asian country’s beleaguered currency.

    The manat’s weak rate on the black market — reported by RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service (known locally as Azatlyk) — parallels the dire economic situation in Turkmenistan — a situation that has severely deteriorated compared to January 2015, when the government originally devalued the manat from 2.85 to 3.5 to the dollar, but also gotten noticeably worse this year.

    The exchange rate on March 26 was between 33 to 33.5 manats, so in roughly one week it had lost more than 20 percent of its value on the black market, an exchange rate that is generally seen as a far more accurate reflection of the manat’s real value.

    It is illegal to trade money on the black market in Turkmenistan and during the last few years government restrictions have made it increasingly more difficult to acquire hard currency.

    Despite The Resources…

    Turkmenistan is rich in natural gas, with the fourth-largest reserves in the world, and has a relatively small population generously estimated to amount to 6 million people.

    But Turkmen authorities put too much faith in the sale of gas as a reliable source of revenue for the country and discovered too late that simply having the gas does not guarantee a bright financial future: it still has to be effectively exploited and sold.

    Officially, the government says the average monthly salary in the country is 1,200 to 1,400 manats ($350-$400 at the official rate), which would make it one of the highest in all of Central Asia, behind only Kazakhstan. But that’s at the artificial official exchange rate that hasn’t changed in more than six years. Instead, Turkmen are among the poorest people in the region.

    The government offers many basic goods at subsidized prices in state stores, which should make it easier for people to buy enough food.

    Explosion In Food Prices

    But on February 25 the cost of sugar in state stores suddenly increased from seven to nine manats per kilogram. Cooking oil went from 13 to 19 manats and chicken legs from 10 to 16 manats per kilogram.

    Those lower, subsidized prices were in place for several years, going back to when the black-market rate was about 4 manats to the dollar. The sudden, sharp inflation in prices was a shock to many who have seen other unexplained price increases in recent years.

    Such food staples are also usually available in private stores where sugar, for example, reportedly sells for about 23 manats per kilogram, which is difficult for many Turkmen to afford. And the high inflation in recent weeks has hit virtually all food staples in the country.

    People line up outside a grocery in the Lebap region.


    People line up outside a grocery in the Lebap region.

    The Turkmen.news website reported on March 23 that the price of 1 kilogram of beef at private stores in Mary Province was 75 manats, in Turkmenabad — the provincial capital of the eastern Lebap Province — the price was 70 manats. In the western Balkan Province, beef cost 65 manats, and in the northern Dashoguz Province a kilogram cost between 55 and 60 manats.

    Turkmen.news reported on February 1 that two bazaars in the capital, Ashgabat, appeared to be out of potatoes, which usually sell for a state-regulated price of between 15 to 17 manats per kilogram.

    Such outages are no longer unusual in Turkmenistan, as people have learned to go without certain foods for periods of time. But Turkmen.news added that merchants kept potatoes behind the counter that they were willing to sell in unlimited quantities for 25 manats per kilo.

    Since January 12, state stores in Mary Province have required customers to show documents that prove the number of family members before selling them bread. In order to obtain such documents, people had to go to their local administrations, where officials demanded that all utility bills were paid before issuing the necessary documents.

    Residents of the eastern city of Turkmenabat wait to buy flour from state shops.


    Residents of the eastern city of Turkmenabat wait to buy flour from state shops.

    In Lebap Province in late January, state stores were reportedly limiting customers to two loaves of bread per family, per visit.

    Azatlyk reported in early April that state stores in Ashgabat were out of flour and often had no bread, with some state stores in Mary Province having no bread for sale for three weeks at a time.

    Long, Long Lines

    Lines have formed outside many state stores in recent years, especially those selling bread, which begin hours before the shops open, as people who cannot afford to buy at private stores try to purchase subsidized goods before they run out.

    Even before the long lines for food, there were queues snaking out from automated bank machines, the only place people can get cash using their bank cards. Unfortunately, just as with the goods at state stores, there is a very limited supply of money that usually runs out quickly, with strict limits placed on the amount one person is allowed to withdraw.

    The authorities tried years ago to transform Turkmenistan into a cashless society, but many stores and nearly all bazaars still don’t have the equipment needed to conduct transactions using bank cards.

    People wait for an ATM to start working in Baharden in August 2020.


    People wait for an ATM to start working in Baharden in August 2020.

    None of the shortages and associated lines for scarce goods existed in Turkmenistan before 2015 and they appear to concern the authorities. Police routinely disperse people forming lines and generally discourage citizens from waiting in them.

    Officials never provide unemployment figures, but several analysts believe it was at least 50 percent of the workforce before the economic problems started six year ago and, after dismissals and layoffs in recent years due to the ailing economy, the unemployment rate is thought to be much higher.

    Garbage Picking To Survive

    Some people are now so poor that they have resorted to rummaging through garbage in the hopes of finding food scraps or something that might be sold for small change, like paper or plastic that can be recycled.

    Such activity would have been unthinkable just two or three years ago.

    Azatlyk reported in January that in the city of Mary, women and children are increasingly seen digging through the trash or, in some cases, intercepting people about to dump their garbage and asking if they can have it with the promise they will properly dispose of everything they do not take.

    A woman picks through garbage cans in Ashgabat.


    A woman picks through garbage cans in Ashgabat.

    By March, police in Mary seemed to have accepted that they could not hold back the tide and, according to Azatlyk, lectured people digging through the trash, photographed them, and took down their personal details. Some even advised people searching through garbage to buy vests like city workers wear to be less conspicuous.

    Azatlyk also reported an increase in the number of children with water buckets and towels waiting along roadsides to wash stopped cars in the hope of receiving small change in return.

    An Azatlyk correspondent noted that there were children of kindergarten age who, when asked why they were not in school, replied that they had never gone to kindergarten. Some older siblings explained that their families did not have the money needed to send them to school.

    One 12-year-old girl said she and others “go every day to the Green Bazaar and beg for money. Last week police chased us away and yelled at our mom.”

    “They told [our mother] that if they ever saw us again they would put us in a jail for minors…and [she] told them to put us in jail and her too, because at least we would be fed in jail,” the girl continued.

    No Virus Here

    The global spread of the coronavirus has only made the economic situation in Turkmenistan worse, compounded by the government’s laughable insistence that the virus has not infected a single person in the country.

    Though a national vaccination program has recently started, officials have taken few real measures to protect the population from COVID-19.

    Nonetheless, medical workers have quietly and without any special recognition continued to carry out their duties that included the increasing hospitalization of patients.

    Some health-care workers expected they might receive some compensation for their difficult, longer work, and for staying quiet about those with coronavirus-like symptoms in their care. Instead, their salaries were reportedly cut by almost 20 percent at the start of 2021.

    Despite the grim first months of this year, authoritarian President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov and his government have continued to do what they have been doing since economic problems started to bite in 2015: claim that the country’s economy is forging ahead and drawing their attention somewhere else, often something insipid.

    For example, Berdymukhammedov in recent weeks has been checking up on preparations for upcoming beauty contests — for horses and the Turkmen alabai dog. Both competitions are scheduled for late April, with state employees being forced to volunteer their time and donate money from their salaries for the events.

    Diminishing Value

    Tracking the value of the “gift” the president gives women every year to mark International Women’s Day on March 8 is a monitor of how bad the manat is doing on the black market.

    In 2015, Berdymukhammedov presented each woman in the country with 40 manats, about $11.50 at the official rate and, in 2015, it would have still been worth more than $10 on the black market.

    In 2016, the same 40 manats would have traded for about $8 on the black market.

    In 2017, 40 manats was worth about $6. A year later it would get you about $3.

    The president decided in 2019 to increase the International Women’s Day gift to 60 manats, about $17 at the official rate, but only $3.5 on the black market then.

    Last year, 60 manats on Women’s Day was worth about $3 on the black market and this year it was not quite $2 and, by month’s end, was closer to $1.5.

    In October 2020, the government increased the minimum monthly wage to 957 manats, which at the black-market rate as of April 3 this year is some $24.

    For those making the official monthly 1,400-manat average salary, it is worth about $35, which would make Turkmen the poorest people in Central Asia.

    Radio Azatlyk contributed to this report

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Respected Activist Who Helped Migrants In Russia Is Forcibly Deported To Tajikistan

    Forty-eight-year-old Izzat Amon has spent half his life helping Tajik migrant laborers in Russia.

    On March 25, Russian authorities detained Amon and forcibly returned him to Tajikistan, where he faces charges of fraud in connection to his work in Moscow.

    In a hastily convened hearing before his deportation, a Russian court also deprived him of his Russian citizenship

    Amon is not the first Tajik to be apprehended in Russia and sent back to Tajikistan. But his case differs from others.

    Amon is not a member of a Tajik opposition party, although he did recently criticize Tajikistan’s government.

    Amon’s case illustrates that under authoritarian Tajik President Emomali Rahmon’s rule, any civic or legal activism independent of his government’s control is viewed as an existential threat.”

    In Moscow, Amon offered the sorts of services to Tajik migrant laborers that even Tajik officials say are needed. Also known as Izzat Kholov, Amon has lived in Russia since 1996, when he obtained his Russian citizenship.

    In 2000, he moved to Moscow and helped establish the Center for Tajiks of Moscow — an organization that has helped Tajik citizens properly register with Russian authorities, as well as to find places to live and work. Amon’s organization has also helped Tajiks facing legal issues in Russia.

    Amon has publicly chided Tajik authorities for failing to sufficiently press Russia on the issue of rights abuses against Tajik migrant laborers.

    Steve Swerdlow, an attorney and associate professor of human rights at the University of Southern California, has closely followed crackdowns against the rights of Central Asians in Russia. He says Tajik migrant laborers “are among the most vulnerable people in Russia.”

    Judging by the number of reports of Tajik nationals who’ve been beaten and even killed in Russia, it is difficult to dispute his conclusion.

    Swerdlow says the targeting of Amon by Tajik and Russian authorities violates several binding international human rights commitments made by each country. That includes a prohibition on returning a person to a country where they are likely to face torture, as well as arbitrarily depriving an individual of their citizenship.

    But Amon’s case also reflects the extent to which Tajikistan’s rights crisis has worsened during the past several years.

    “Known in Moscow’s human rights community primarily as an advocate for Tajik migrants’ rights, Amon is far from the typical opposition figure Dushanbe has been accustomed to targeting,” Swerdlow says. “His case illustrates that under authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon’s rule, any civic or legal activism independent of his government’s control is viewed as an existential threat.”

    Amon has worked for more than two decades with Russian authorities to help Tajiks migrants, who number in the hundreds of thousands. He has a reputation as a person who solves problems.

    His understanding of Russia’s system for migrant laborers cannot be easily replicated. Amon’s forced return to Tajikistan will leave a vacuum for many Tajiks trying to navigate Russian laws and regulations.

    In fact, it may have been Amon’s popularity among migrants that worried authorities back in Tajikistan.

    In 2019, Amon briefly contemplated forming a new political party called Changes, Reforms, And Progress. He’d planned to court voters among migrant laborers with an eye on being elected to parliament and representing their interests there.

    Amon released a video in which he said Tajik migrants “have been outside the government…and have had no influence. We wanted to participate in the further political reconciliation of our country by establishing a party.”

    Amon also said: “We who have provided 70 percent of the country’s budget for 30 years [through remittances] must unite and bring about radical changes in the country.”

    But Amon abandoned the idea of forming a political party due to a requirement in Tajikistan’s election laws that says candidates must reside in the country for at least 10 years prior to elections.

    Tajik authorities were displeased with Amon in 2006 when he resisted an effort by then-Tajik Ambassador to Russia Abdulmajid Dostiev to bring all Tajik migrant and diaspora organizations in Russia under one umbrella. Amon and another leader of a Tajik migrant group, Karomat Sharifov, refused to join. Sharifov was the head of the Tajik Labor Migrants organization in Russia.

    Tajik authorities became concerned about Sharifov’s activities in Russia after he publicly criticized Moscow’s policies on migrant laborers.

    Sharifov also had a Russian passport. But in December 2017, a Russian court ruled he’d violated a law on “foreigners” illegally entering Russia or remaining in the country after their entry visas expire. The court ordered Sharifov’s deportation to Tajikistan.

    Sharifov was not arrested in Tajikistan, but he died there at the age of 57 under suspicious circumstances in May 2020.

    The circumstances of Amon’s forcible return to Tajikistan are equally troubling, as they have become all too familiar.

    Amon confided to friends months ago that he knew Tajik authorities wanted him sent back to Tajikistan. He’d told friends that he expected charges of being involved in terrorist activities to eventually be filed against him.

    RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, known locally as Ozodi, reports that Amon was accused on March 4 in Moscow’s Tverskoi court of illegal employment in Russia. It was then that he was threatened with deportation, which the court ordered on March 16.

    His wife, Sayora Taghoeva, who remains in Russia, said the family hired a lawyer in order to appeal the deportation order.

    One of Amon’s colleagues told Ozodi that Russian police detained Amon on March 25 and took him to an unknown location. His family was never informed by Russian authorities of his detention.

    Amon was back in Tajikistan by March 27.

    Asia-Plus reported on March 27 that Tajikistan’s Interior Ministry denied that Tajik law enforcement agencies had any connection to Amon’s detention in Russia. But later, the Interior Ministry announced several charges of fraud against Amon in Tajikistan.

    Recurring Pattern

    Human rights campaigners note that those fraud allegations are similar to charges brought against Tajik rights lawyer Buzurgmehr Yorov, who has been serving a 28-year prison sentence in Tajikistan since 2015.

    Russia has never been a safe haven for Tajiks who are wanted by authorities back in Tajikistan. But it is one of the easiest destinations for Tajik citizens to reach. For some Tajik migrants, Russia is the end of the line as they do not have the possibility of legally traveling to other countries.

    Buzurgmehr Yorov


    Buzurgmehr Yorov

    Swerdlow says forced returns and sometimes outright kidnappings of Central Asian dissidents on Russian soil have turned the country into a “graveyard for Tajik dissent.”

    Edward Lemon, an assistant professor at the Washington-based Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, has written extensively on transnational repression by Central Asian governments.

    “This kidnapping is certainly not an isolated incident,” Lemon says. “Despite being a small and impoverished state, the Tajik government has developed a relatively extensive network to control the opposition abroad, subjecting them to intimidation, harassment, attacks, detention, and rendition.”

    Lemon says that during his research on transnational repression, he has recorded 63 cases of Tajik citizens who’ve been targeted abroad since 1991. He says most have come “since 2015, when the government cracked down on the opposition, forcing many opposition members, journalists, and academics to flee the country.”

    All of those cases involved Tajiks who were in Russia or Turkey.

    Swerdlow says there have been similar cases in Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, as well as further afield in Greece.

    Both Lemon and Swerdlow say Amon’s case resembles that of Maksud Ibragimov, a Tajik businessman living in Russia who established an organization called Youth for the Revival of Tajikistan. Ibragimov was detained in Russia in November 2014, based on a warrant issued by Tajikistan.

    As a Russian passport holder, he was released without being deported. Soon after his release, he was stabbed by an unknown assailant near his Moscow home.

    Ibragimov was arrested again in January 2015 and brought to the local prosecutor’s office before he was released again without being charged.

    Lemon recounts that “when he left the building, he was detained by unidentified men who took him to the airport and put him in the baggage hold of a plane.”

    “The Tajik government did not acknowledge that Ibragimov was back in Tajikistan until June 2015, when he was sentenced to 17 years in prison on a host of charges, including extremism,” Lemon said.

    Russian authorities have cooperated with Dushanbe more recently on the return of other Tajik dissidents. They include the opposition figures Shobuddin Badalov (2020, detained in Nizhny Novgorod); Sharofiddin Gadoev (2019, kidnapped from Moscow); and Naimjon Samiev (2018, detained in Grozny).

    Among all of those cases, only Gadoev made it out of Tajikistan. His release has been attributed to intervention by the Netherlands, where he’d received refugee status.

    Dismal Prospects

    The current situation does not bode well for Amon, as the fraud charges against him may only be the beginning. Tajik authorities are notorious for piling on charges against perceived opponents of the government in order to portray them as acting illegally and immorally.

    But for now, the most urgent concern for Amon’s family and colleagues is that he has not been seen or heard from since arriving in Dushanbe. That has raised fears that he may be being subjected to torture.

    Swerdlow and Lemon say it is going to take a lot more than wishful thinking to change this awful trajectory. At a minimum, they hope the Dushanbe embassies of the United States and European Union states will raise concerns about the cases of Amon and other political prisoners.

    They say Western embassies also should monitor Amon’s trial and explore options for reuniting him with his family abroad.

    RFE/RL’s Tajik Service contributed to this report.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: New Rules In Kazakhstan, Death Threats In Kyrgyzstan — The Problems Facing Central Asian Journalists

    The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released separate reports on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on March 23.

    Relative to Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have the most media-friendly environments but the CPJ reports highlight various problems. In Kazakhstan, for example, the government has been limiting the ability of journalists to do their job. Meanwhile, troll factories have been operating in Kyrgyzstan to discredit the work of some reporters, and at least one journalist says death threats are being posted on his social network accounts.

    The situation is still grim for independent media in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan remain grim, although some outlets in Uzbekistan have been testing the limits of what can and cannot be reported.

    On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on the problems media outlets and journalists face in Central Asia.

    This week’s guests are: from Kazakhstan, Diana Okremova, the director of the Legal Media Center in Nur-Sultan; from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Timur Toktonaliev, the Central Asia editor for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting; from New York, Gulnoza Said, the Central Asia coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists; and Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: New Rules In Kazakhstan, Death Threats In Kyrgyzstan — The Problems Facing Central Asian Journalists

    The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released separate reports on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on March 23.

    Relative to Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have the most media-friendly environments but the CPJ reports highlight various problems. In Kazakhstan, for example, the government has been limiting the ability of journalists to do their job. Meanwhile, troll factories have been operating in Kyrgyzstan to discredit the work of some reporters, and at least one journalist says death threats are being posted on his social network accounts.

    The situation is still grim for independent media in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan remain grim, although some outlets in Uzbekistan have been testing the limits of what can and cannot be reported.

    On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on the problems media outlets and journalists face in Central Asia.

    This week’s guests are: from Kazakhstan, Diana Okremova, the director of the Legal Media Center in Nur-Sultan; from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Timur Toktonaliev, the Central Asia editor for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting; from New York, Gulnoza Said, the Central Asia coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists; and Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Celebrations Over Uzbekistan’s First Independent Trade Union Cut Short By Threats, Harassment

    What looked like a victory this month for Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev, his government, and their reform pledges instead risks becoming just another example of empty promises in Central Asia’s most populous country.

    On March 19, around 280 workers from the Indorama Agro cotton farm gathered for the founding meeting of Uzbekistan’s first independent trade union, Halq Birligi (People’s Unity).

    The Berlin-based Uzbek Forum for Human Rights called it a “historic day,” but the victory did not last long.

    By March 24, Uzbek Forum was reporting that local officials were harassing members of the new union.

    “Leaders of Xalq Birligi…reported receiving calls from officials at the local administration who did not identify themselves, warning them that their involvement in union activities would cause them problems,” Uzbek Forum wrote.

    The report said police were also phoning union activists “demanding that they stop their organizing activities and leave the union.”

    The new union aims to protect the rights of Indorama Agro’s workers in Syrdarya Province.

    Singapore-based Indorama Agro has been active in Uzbekistan since 2010, mainly in the cotton industry.

    According to Uzbek Forum, the Uzbek government made some 40,000 hectares of irrigated land available to Indorama Agro in four districts — the Kasbi and Nishan districts of Kashkadarya Province and the Akaltyn and Sardoba districts of Syrdarya Province — in August 2018 to “organize modern cotton-textile production.”

    Indorama Agro established cluster farms, a controversial scheme that allows companies to invest money and reorganize land and local labor to boost efficiency in production.

    Critics argue that this system has simply allowed the wealthy — some with alleged connections to senior Uzbek officials — to privatize agriculturally based businesses in the areas, depriving local farmers of their land and stripping local workers of many of their rights.

    And some Uzbek farmers have alleged that they are being forced to work on cluster farms.

    RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, known locally as Ozodlik, reported in January that more than 100 textile workers from an Indorama Agro cluster farm in Kashkadarya Province’s Kasbi district demonstrated after they were laid off without being paid accrued wages.

    One of the allegations was that Indorama Agro had dispensed with many full-time contract workers and switched to three-month contracts without sick pay, pensions, or compensation for overtime.

    Some workers at Indorama Agro clusters complain of low wages, and Uzbek Forum quoted one farm worker as saying he had worked for two years without a vacation or holiday leave.

    Halq Birligi is vowing to change that and otherwise work to rein in alleged abuses on cluster farms in Syrdarya Province, as well as to improve working conditions for agricultural laborers.

    But the independent union appears to be running into some of the same obstacles that other local rights activists and opposition political parties have experienced.

    Uzbek Forum reported that on March 19, when Halq Birligi unionists intended to hold their meeting, “workers had rented a meeting room to hold their election but when they arrived, the building administrator refused them entry, telling them the room was unavailable due to ‘urgent repairs.’”

    Uzbek Forum said workers then moved to a nearly teahouse, “but the electricity was cut off soon after they began. They continued their meeting outside, with workers holding up their cell-phone flashlights to provide light.”

    Roza Agaydarova was elected head of the union.

    According to Uzbek Forum, Agaydarova said on March 23 that “she received a call from a regional representative of the Federation of Trade Unions of Uzbekistan, the national union federation, which is not considered independent from the government, and was told that according to the laws of Uzbekistan, they had to join the federation, otherwise their union is invalid.”

    Uzbek Forum cited a guarantee in Uzbekistan’s new law on trade unions ensuring workers the right to join the organization of their choice and the right to avoid being forced into joining an organization.

    Ozodlik contacted the head of the Syrdarya provincial branch of the Federation of Trade Unions of Uzbekistan, Rustambek Tursunmuradov, who confirmed he had phoned Agaydarova and told her that forming an independent trade union was a bad idea.

    Asked why his organization had not defended the rights of farmers working for Indorama Agro, Tursunmuradov said that when those individuals started working for Indorama Agro they lost their membership in the Federation of Trade Unions of Uzbekistan.

    After the death of Uzbekistan’s first president, Islam Karimov, in 2016, Mirziyoev came to power promising better working conditions, including the eradication of forced labor in the cotton fields.

    Most observers agree that there has been significant progress toward ending forced labor in Uzbekistan. But the cluster-farm idea is not only unpopular; it could be counterproductive if the goal truly is to improve working conditions for agricultural workers.

    The executive director of the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights, Umida Niyazova, credited Mirziyoev’s government for showing “the political will to combat forced labor and open its economy.”

    But, she added, “The way it treats the first independent trade union is a test of the seriousness of its reforms, and the world is watching.”

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: What Is Turkey Seeking In Central Asia?

    Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu visited three Central Asian countries from March 6 to 9.

    Boosting trade was a big part of Cavusoglu’s mission during his visit to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, but there were unique reasons for the Turkish minister’s visit to each country.

    On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on Turkish-Central Asian ties and what Cavusoglu was doing in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

    This week’s guests are: from the United Kingdom, Gul Berna Ozcan, reader in international business and entrepreneurship at the Royal Holloway University of London; from Bishkek, Medet Tiulegenov, assistant professor at the American University of Central Asia; and Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: Working To Eradicate Gender Bias In Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan

    As Central Asian countries mark International Women’s Day on March 8 this year, it also marks roughly one year since the coronavirus became a global pandemic.

    The spread of the virus prompted a series of measures in countries throughout the world, including lockdowns that saw millions of people confined to their homes for periods of time.

    Incidents of domestic violence jumped in many places.

    Public events were prohibited in many countries, including rallies in Central Asia to raise awareness of gender violence and promote equal rights were restricted, so many advocacy groups for women’s rights shifted their message to social networks and other media to continue fighting for women’s rights in the patriarchal societies of Central Asia.

    On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on what has changed in the last year, the challenges that remain, and what is being done to bring gender equality to the region and end violence against women.

    This week’s guests are: from Bishkek, Natalia Nikitenko, a deputy in Kyrgyzstan’s parliament; from Tashkent, Irina Matvienko, journalist, rights defender, and founder of NeMolchi.uz, an organization fighting to end violence against women; from Washington, Jasmine Cameron, a senior staff attorney at the Human Rights Center of the American Bar Association, which published a recent report about violence against women in Kyrgyzstan, and Bruce Pannier, author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: Who Lives In Uzbekistan’s Shovvozsoy Mansion?

    RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service recently released a detailed report about a new resort that was secretly built about 100 kilometers southeast of the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

    Allegedly it is the luxurious hideaway of President Shavkat Mirziyoev, which would seem to undercut Mirziyoev’s promises for a more responsible and transparent government than the one he inherited in September 2016 when his predecessor, Islam Karimov, died.

    On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on the new complex, who it belongs to, and what is now being said about it inside Uzbekistan.

    This week’s guests are: from Tashkent, Mira Matyakubowa, co-founder of the anti-corruption organization UzInvestigations and a fellow at the U.K.-based Foreign Policy Center; from Prague, Carl Schreck, RFE/RL enterprise editor; and Bruce Pannier, author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: Despite Promises, Are Rights Abuses In Kazakhstan Getting Worse?

    When Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, officially stepped down from office in March 2019 and Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev became president, Toqaev promised changes to a system that had not changed very much in nearly 28 years.

    There were many fair words about reforms, but nearly two years later Kazakhstan’s political system looks to be much the same as it has been.

    On February 10, the European Parliament released a joint motion for a resolution that detailed the many areas where Kazakhstan continues to fall well short of its commitments to respect basic rights.

    Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev (file photo)

    Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev (file photo)

    Kazakh authorities responded with the now-common defense that the criticisms were superficial and failed to take into account all of the changes that are happening in Kazakhstan.

    On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on Kazakhstan in which some say the situation is actually becoming worse, not better, despite Toqaev’s promises.

    This week’s guests are: from Almaty: Yevgeny Zhovtis, veteran rights defender and director of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, and Marius Fossum, the Central Asia representative of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee; and from Prague: Aigerim Toleukhanova, a journalist in RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, and Bruce Pannier, author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Kyrgyz Villagers Losing Patience With State’s Failure To Resolve Border Problems With Tajikistan, Uzbekistan

    Fresh from medical treatment in Germany, Kyrgyz national security head Kamchybek Tashiev urgently flew from Bishkek to the southern Batken region on February 18 to deal with people’s growing anger over the failure by officials to resolve pressing border issues.

    Tashiev, chief of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (UKMK), hoped to reduce tensions along Kyrgyzstan’s long southern borders with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Since the border guard service was put under UKMK control in November, the problems are Tashiev’s responsibility.

    Grumbling by residents along the border resulted in people from Batken and districts in Jalal-Abad Province demonstrating earlier this month in the capital for a resolution to the long-standing problem of demarcation.

    Villagers living along the borders claim neighboring states are encroaching on Kyrgyz territory and want it stopped.

    New Kyrgyz Prime Minister Ulukbek Maripov spoke about the disputed Torkul reservoir and canal in the Kyrgyz-Tajik border area on February 8.

    “Unfortunately, it seems we (Kyrgyzstan) have ceded the upper reaches of the Tokgul reservoir channel,” Maripov explained.

    Maripov’s comment is precisely what residents of Kyrgyzstan’s border areas do not want to hear from government officials.

    In Bishkek on February 15, Gulzhigit Isakov, the leader of a group from Batken that calls itself Chek Ara (Border), criticized new populist President Sadyr Japarov.

    “It is upsetting that while someone is taking over our border, Sadyr [Japarov] has not raised the issue once in any of his interviews,” Isakov said.

    The Kyrgyz-Tajik Border

    Isakov was referring to the situation in the area around the Kyrgyz villages of Ak-Sai and Kok-Tash that over the last decade have seen many clashes between residents from both sides of the border.

    And while once those clashes were limited to the two parties throwing sticks and stones at each other, they have increasingly involved gunfire and deaths.

    On February 11, a group of Tajik villagers planted trees in a field by the Kyrgyz village of Chek-Dobo, which is near Kok-Tash.

    The field was in an area that has not yet been demarcated.

    The next day, all the trees had been dug up and were left lying on the ground. So the Tajik villagers returned to try and replant them.

    But Kyrgyz border guards arrived and ordered them to stop, with harsh words exchanged. Then Tajik border guards arrived and the “border guards of the two countries took up positions.”

    The villagers of Ak-Sai are fed up by the failure of officials to resolve pressing border issues.

    The villagers of Ak-Sai are fed up by the failure of officials to resolve pressing border issues.

    In Bishkek, Isakov claimed “the Tajik side brought soldiers and equipment to the Ak-Sai area…because our border guards removed their post [there].”

    Officials from both countries eventually arrived and negotiations cooled tempers — for a while at least — with each side pledging not to do any work of any kind on disputed land.

    But the incident points out how sensitive the situation is and how high emotions there are, that a simple act such as planting trees nearly set off violent clashes.

    The Kyrgyz-Uzbek Border

    On February 14, workers from Uzbekistan’s electricity company started setting up electricity poles near the Kyrgyz villages of Suu-Bash and Boz-Adyr in Batken Province.

    The village is near Uzbekistan’s Soh exclave, one of the most interesting places in the Ferghana Valley. It belongs to Uzbekistan, is surrounded by Kyrgyzstan, and is inhabited overwhelmingly by ethnic Tajiks.

    Ethnic Kyrgyz residents alerted border guards to the action and, after a meeting with their Uzbek counterparts, the poles were removed.

    But more problems are almost surely coming as Uzbekistan has already started building an airport at Soh — scheduled to be completed in May — to better connect the exclave with Uzbekistan proper.

    No Kyrgyz territory is endangered by the airport, but symbolically it certainly reinforces Uzbekistan’s claim to the exclave and is a reminder to local Kyrgyz that its larger neighbor is paying attention to an area many in Kyrgyzstan believe is neglected by their government.

    On the same day Tajik villagers attempted to plant trees near Chek-Dobo, Uzbek border guards accompanied by others in plainclothes began setting up border markers near the Kyrgyz village of Kosh-Bolot, in the Ala-Buka district of Jalal-Abad Province.

    Kosh-Bolot residents say the Uzbeks were on Kyrgyz territory.

    “The Uzbek military came close to the house of one of our residents and put their pillars there, thereby marking it as their territory. Our border guards arrived at the scene but did not say anything,” one local resident said.

    The Kyrgyz website Kaktus.media reported that “sources in the government” said that the area where the Uzbek border guards were setting up markers belongs to Uzbekistan under the terms of a September 2017 agreement, “but local residents, not understanding the situation, expressed their dissatisfaction.”

    The Ala-Buka district has been the scene of high tension between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan before.

    A reservoir is located there that is claimed by both countries: by Uzbekistan because they say they paid for its construction during the Soviet era, and by Kyrgyzstan because it is located well inside Kyrgyzstan.

    Water from the reservoir has always been mainly used for fields in Uzbekistan.

    Uzbek troops crossed into the area twice in 2016 and, in August of that year, occupied a nearby mountain called Ungar-Too, holding captive several Kyrgyz employees there who were operating a telecommunications relay station.

    No Easy Solutions

    The Kyrgyz-Tajik border is some 976 kilometers long, of which about 520 kilometers has been demarcated.

    The Kyrgyz-Uzbek border is some 1,378 kilometers long, with about 1,100 kilometers of it demarcated.

    Nazirbek Borubaev is Kyrgyzstan's special representative for border issues.

    Nazirbek Borubaev is Kyrgyzstan’s special representative for border issues.

    Kyrgyz Special Representative for Border Issues Nazirbek Borubaev said at a February 15 press conference that “many of our citizens are making statements that ‘our land is being given to the neighbors,’ based on unconfirmed information.”

    But some people in Kyrgyzstan doubts this.

    Tashiev said border talks with Tajik officials would take place in the first half of March and with Uzbek officials in the second part of that month.

    Tashiev also said the budget for border security would be increased, and he repeated to residents of border villages in Batken Province a promise he has made several times over the years, long before he was UKMK chief, that “not one square centimeter” of Kyrgyz territory would be given to the country’s neighbors.

    That undoubtedly suits people in Kyrgyzstan, but it is a hard bargaining point for neighbors who are also seeking concessions.

    Borubaev said that “if necessary, we can find something in the archives in Moscow.” Generally, maps drawn after Russian colonization of Central Asia have been the basis for contemporary border demarcation work for the current Central Asian states that didn’t exist at the time.

    Meetings of officials poring over Russian-Soviet maps to determine the borders of their countries is possibly the only way to make progress in reaching final agreements on the remaining frontiers of the five Central Asian states.

    But for the people living in these areas, the issue of where the borders should be depends on where arable fields and pasturelands are located and where the water sources are.

    And as long as the border talks continue, there are tracts of land in disputed areas that could be used for orchards or grazing but are left unused.

    Meanwhile, many Kyrgyz residents seem to be poorly informed about the deals that have been made by previous governments about what is and what is not Kyrgyz territory.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Dynastic Succession, Renewed Hopes For Pipelines: What’s Going On In Turkmenistan?

    There has been a lot of news coming out of Turkmenistan lately — the president’s heir-apparent son climbed up a few more rungs on the government ladder, a Taliban delegation visited Ashgabat and promised not to hinder the construction of a natural-gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghan territory, and a long dispute with Azerbaijan over ownership of a gas and oil field in the Caspian Sea was resolved.

    On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on what has been happening in Turkmenistan recently and if any of these events signal a change in the country’s future.

    This week’s guests are: from Glasgow, Luca Anceschi, professor of Central Asian Studies at Glasgow University and author of the book Turkmenistan’s Foreign Policy: Positive Neutrality And The Consolidation Of The Turkmen Regime; from Moscow, Stanislav Pritchin, an expert on the Caucasus region and Central Asia who is currently a senior research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Center for Post-Soviet Studies IMEMO (Institute of World Economy and International Studies); from Prague, Farruh Yusupov, the director of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk; and from Prague, Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Analysis: What Happened When The Taliban Visited Turkmenistan?

    Neither Taliban nor Turkmen officials are giving any details about their talks after a delegation from the Muslim extremist group arrived in Turkmenistan on February 6.

    With only scant information available about the meetings in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, here is what is known.

    The delegation to Ashgabat was led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and, according to an unusually prompt statement the same day from the Turkmen Foreign Ministry, the Taliban came to talk about construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural-gas pipeline, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) power line, and further connecting Afghanistan to Turkmenistan by railway.

    Baradar also led the Taliban delegation to Iran on January 26 and to Pakistan on December 16, 2o20.

    Those visits were to discuss the stalled Afghan peace talks that began last year in the Qatari capital, Doha.

    The Turkmen Foreign Ministry statement included a brief statement from Taliban delegation member Mohammad Suhail Shahin, who said, “Without a doubt, the early start on the construction of projects such as TAPI, TAP, and a railroad from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan will contribute to the achievement of peace and economic development in Afghanistan.”

    Shahin said the Taliban would ensure the “protection of all national projects implemented in our country” that are done to benefit the Afghan people.

    He added that “we declare our full support for the realization and security of the TAPI project and other infrastructure projects in our country.”

    The Value Of A Taliban Promise

    The Taliban have made such promises before, including in November 2016 when spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that the Taliban “not only support all national projects that are in the interest of the people and result in the development and prosperity of the nation, but are committed to protecting them.”

    In January and February of that same year, the Taliban cut power lines in northern Afghanistan that carried electricity from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

    The destruction left areas in northern Afghanistan without power and greatly reduced electricity supplies to Kabul.

    After the Taliban pledge in 2016, Deputy presidential spokesman Shah Hussain Murtazawi said that in the months before making that promise, the Taliban had destroyed 302 schools, 41 health clinics, 50 mosque minarets, 5,305 houses, 1,818 shops, a government building, six bridges, 293 overpasses, and 123 kilometers of roads in 11 provinces.

    In May 2020, Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said the Taliban had destroyed 110 public projects in 14 provinces during the previous six months, including “three pylons for electricity imported from Tajikistan in the Baghlan-e Markazi district [and] two pylons for electricity coming from Uzbekistan in the Dand-e Shahabuddin and Khwaja Alwan neighborhoods of Pul-e Khumri, Baghlan Province.”

    Insecurity Scaring Investment

    As for TAPI, it has been Turkmenistan’s desire to build the pipeline for more than 25 years, but security problems in Afghanistan have always made its realization impossible.

    Journalist Ahmed Rashid is the author of the bestselling book Taliban and is one of the leading authorities on Afghanistan.

    He told RFE/RL’s Gandhara website that “In 1990s when Ashgabat pushed for building the TAPI pipeline it became impossible because the Taliban began executing women in the football stadiums.”

    Rashid added that now “It is very unlikely that there ever will be any foreign investment in Afghanistan if the Taliban are in control of the government and they do not compromise with the Kabul regime and they do not work out their modus operandi.”

    Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks during a ceremony marking the start of work on the TAPI pipeline in Herat, Afghanistan, on February 23, 2018.

    Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks during a ceremony marking the start of work on the TAPI pipeline in Herat, Afghanistan, on February 23, 2018.

    There is not only a question of foreign investment, but also of who exactly would be tasked with construction.

    It is presumed that foreign workers with experience building pipelines along with the necessary machinery would be brought to construction sites.

    But which companies would send their employees and equipment to areas where fighting rages or areas under Taliban control, knowing these workers could be caught up in the fighting or used as human shields?

    The Pipeline

    Turkmenistan’s need for TAPI has never been greater. The country is mired in economic problems that stem mainly from its inability to find markets for natural gas, its main export.

    Currently, the only significant exports of Turkmen gas go to China and last year Beijing significantly reduced the amount of Turkmen gas it imports via the three pipelines that connect the two countries.

    The TAPI project proposes to carry 33 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas more than 1,000 kilometers through western Afghanistan, then across the south through Kandahar to Pakistan, and on to Fazilka in India.

    Afghanistan would receive 5 bcm of that gas, Pakistan and India would both receive 14 bcm with Afghanistan and Pakistan also collecting transit fees.

    Turkmenistan is desperate for revenue and late last fall started making a new push to get the TAPI project moving again after Ashgabat finally agreed to cut the price it planned to charge Pakistan and India for that gas.

    Both India and Pakistan had been demanding that Turkmenistan slash its price for natural gas, with Pakistan saying it would not start construction of its section of TAPI until that dispute was resolved.

    While Turkmenistan did agree to reduce the price, talks on the exact reduction continue and, as recently as September 2020, Pakistan was saying “it would like to do the TAPI groundbreaking in Pakistan at the earliest after the finalization of the issues under discussion,” one of those issues being the price of the gas, which Pakistan insists must be significantly lower than the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

    But even if all parties are convinced of the security guarantees, there are still several obstacles facing the construction of TAPI.

    What Was Discussed In Ashgabat?

    One of the intriguing elements of the Taliban delegation’s visit to Ashgabat was that they were received in the capital.

    Turkmenistan is an isolated country that grants very few foreigners entry and, since the coronavirus pandemic started last year, Turkmen authorities have done their best to seal the country, especially Ashgabat.

    For nearly a year now, foreign flights have been directed through the eastern city of Turkmenabat.

    The Turkmen authorities have denied the presence of coronavirus in the country.

    The Turkmen authorities have denied the presence of coronavirus in the country.

    The only visit to Ashgabat by a foreign delegation since then — excluding German doctors who flew to Turkmenistan twice to check on the president — has been a mission from the World Health Organization in July 2020 that Turkmen authorities hoped would validate their bizarre claim that the country is completely free of the coronavirus.

    So whatever Turkmen officials wanted to discuss with the Taliban, it was important enough to bring them to Ashgabat.

    TAPI is certainly important to Turkmenistan, but as noted, the obstacles in building the pipeline through Afghanistan remain formidable and the current situation makes construction impossible.

    Electricity Instead Of Gas?

    Since April 2018, Turkmenistan has offered at least three times to host Afghan peace talks, though there is no mention of such an offer being made in reports from the February 6 meeting, which is interesting when remembering that Afghan peace talks were at the top of the agenda when the Taliban recently visited Pakistan and Iran.

    The Turkmen Foreign Ministry’s statement mentioned nothing about the peace talks beyond a vague allusion to the “importance of establishing and maintaining peace and stability in Afghanistan.”

    But perhaps one of the main topics of discussion between the Taliban delegation and the Turkmen government was not gas, but electricity.

    Turkmenistan is looking to export electricity through Afghanistan to Pakistan after the construction of a proposed 500 kilovolt TAP, a power-transmission line.

    On January 14, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani watched the inauguration via video link of the first part of TAP — the Karki-Andkhoy-Pul-e Khomri power-transmission project.

    Turkmenistan already exports electricity to areas in northern Afghanistan, some of which are under Taliban control.

    The Taliban have been charging residents in these areas for the electricity, though the fees are low. It is, however, unknown how much — if any — of that money goes to paying cash-strapped Turkmenistan.

    The Afghan government usually is responsible for paying these power bills to Turkmenistan, though it is unclear how much Kabul pays for the electricity exports used in the Taliban-controlled areas of northern Afghanistan.

    But it is clear that the Taliban uses the Turkmen electricity to further their cause in northern Afghanistan.

    In late July 2018, Turkmenistan launched its third power line to Afghanistan, a 110-kilovolt transmission line that runs to Qala-e Nau, the capital of Badghis Province.

    In April 2019, the Taliban cut that power by blowing up pylons in Badghis and preventing crews from reaching the sites to make repairs.

    Then-Badghis Governor Abdul Ghafur Malikzai said, “[The] Taliban want electricity for 21 villages [under Taliban control in Badghis’s Moqo district] and their demand has been accepted. But it is not possible in one day.”

    After the February 6 Turkmen-Taliban meeting, current Badghis Governor Hesamuddin Shams told RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan, known locally as Azadi, that he welcomes the Taliban promise not to destroy infrastructure and said they now “need to act and deliver on it.”

    But Shams said insurgent behavior in his province has not changed and power lines bringing electricity from Turkmenistan continue to be targeted by extremists.

    Shams also noted that the Taliban are not the only militant group operating in Badghis Province.

    “The Bala Murghab [district] is a major center of the armed opposition,” Shams said. “In addition to the Afghan fighters it is home to militants from Uzbekistan affiliated with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. There are Pakistanis too.”

    Also interesting is the Turkmen authorities’ reluctance to divulge almost any information about the meeting.

    RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, reports that state media said an “Afghan delegation” visited and was careful not to name any Turkmen officials who met with them, though there is at least one photo that clearly shows Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov sitting at the negotiation table.

    The Afghan government did not comment specifically on the visit, but did tell Azadi that all groups in Afghanistan should protect the country’s infrastructure to avoid any further suffering by the Afghan people, while also calling on the Taliban to agree to an immediate cease-fire.

    So whatever the Taliban’s business was in Ashgabat, some or most of it seems to be something that is only between them and the Turkmen government.

    Turkmenistan has UN-recognized status as a neutral country and that has been especially useful when dealing with Afghanistan. Turkmenistan tries not to take anyone’s side in the long-running conflict in that war-ravaged country.

    But for that reason it is unlikely anyone involved in the Afghan conflict views Turkmenistan as a reliable ally when it comes to achieving stability.

    Written by Bruce Pannier based on reporting from Azadi and Ikram Karam of Radio Free Afghanistan, the Turkmen Service, and Gandhara Managing Editor Abubakar Siddique.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: The Japarov Era Opens In Kyrgyzstan

    In January, Sadyr Japarov completed his amazing rise from a prison cell in early October to being elected Kyrgyz president.

    In between, Japarov promised changes and a new way of governing the country, and changes have been coming fast, to be sure.

    On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on what has been changing in Kyrgyzstan now that Japarov is president.

    This week’s guests are: from Bishkek, Saniia Toktagazieva, an expert in constitutional law; from Columbia University in New York City, where she is a PhD candidate, Colleen Wood, who lived in Kyrgyzstan and is a noted author of many articles on the country’s politics; and from Prague, Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: Lawyers In Central Asia — Defending Clients And Themselves

    January 24 was the Day of the Endangered Lawyer and an opportunity to remember the many problems some Central Asian attorneys have to face.

    In Central Asia, defendants have a right to an attorney, but state-appointed defenders have a reputation for half-hearted work or, in some cases, even supporting the prosecution in convicting their clients.

    Being an independent lawyer willing to defend people who for some reason or another are looked upon as a nuisance or threat by the governments of the region is a hazardous occupation.

    Some of these attorneys are intimidated or threatened, some are attacked, and some are imprisoned.

    On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on the plight of lawyers in Central Asia.

    This week’s guests are: Madina Akhmetova, the director of the Dignity public association based in the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan; Jasmine Cameron, who is originally from Kyrgyzstan but is now a senior staff attorney at the Human Rights Center of the American Bar Association; from California, Steve Swerdlow, a longtime Central Asia watcher, recently returned from Uzbekistan, and human rights lawyer who is currently an associate professor of human rights at the University of Southern California; and from Prague, Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: Lawyers In Central Asia — Defending Clients And Themselves

    January 24 was the Day of the Endangered Lawyer and an opportunity to remember the many problems some Central Asian attorneys have to face.

    In Central Asia, defendants have a right to an attorney, but state-appointed defenders have a reputation for half-hearted work or, in some cases, even supporting the prosecution in convicting their clients.

    Being an independent lawyer willing to defend people who for some reason or another are looked upon as a nuisance or threat by the governments of the region is a hazardous occupation.

    Some of these attorneys are intimidated or threatened, some are attacked, and some are imprisoned.

    On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on the plight of lawyers in Central Asia.

    This week’s guests are: Madina Akhmetova, the director of the Dignity public association based in the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan; Jasmine Cameron, who is originally from Kyrgyzstan but is now a senior staff attorney at the Human Rights Center of the American Bar Association; from California, Steve Swerdlow, a longtime Central Asia watcher, recently returned from Uzbekistan, and human rights lawyer who is currently an associate professor of human rights at the University of Southern California; and from Prague, Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: Biden And Central Asia — Three Former Ambassadors Weigh In

    On January 20, Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. How might the new U.S. leadership change policy toward Central Asia? What might the Central Asian states be looking for from the Biden administration? And what aspects of U.S.-Central Asian relations are likely to remain the same?

    On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on those questions and more.

    This week’s guests are: from Bishkek, the former Kyrgyz ambassador to the United States, Kadyr Toktogulov; from Washington, the former U.S ambassador to Kyrgyzstan and later Uzbekistan, Pamela Spratlen; also from Washington, the former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and later Georgia, William Courtney; and from Prague, Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Majlis Podcast: Biden And Central Asia — Three Former Ambassadors Weigh In

    On January 20, Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. How might the new U.S. leadership change policy toward Central Asia? What might the Central Asian states be looking for from the Biden administration? And what aspects of U.S.-Central Asian relations are likely to remain the same?

    On this week’s Majlis podcast, RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on those questions and more.

    This week’s guests are: from Bishkek, the former Kyrgyz ambassador to the United States, Kadyr Toktogulov; from Washington, the former U.S ambassador to Kyrgyzstan and later Uzbekistan, Pamela Spratlen; also from Washington, the former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and later Georgia, William Courtney; and from Prague, Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

    Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Activist Defending Ethnic Kazakhs In China Explains Why He Had To Flee Kazakhstan

    Tens of thousands of ethnic Kazakhs in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have been sent to “reeducation camps” along with hundreds of thousands of others from that western province after being rounded up by China because they are Muslims.

    Serikzhan Bilash is one of the people who helped bring this great injustice to light by exposing the suffering of ethnic Kazakhs at the camps in Xinjiang.

    An ethnic Kazakh from Xinjiang who moved to neighboring Kazakhstan in 2000, Bilash received Kazakh citizenship in 2011 under the “oralman” program, which was designed in 1991 to entice ethnic Kazakhs abroad to resettle in sparsely inhabited Kazakhstan.

    In 2017, Bilash founded the Atajurt Eriktileri (Volunteers of the Fatherland) organization to keep track of ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uyghurs in Xinjiang as Beijing began implementing its latest and by far harshest campaign against perceived separatists, who were overwhelmingly Chinese Muslims.

    But China is a major investor in and trade partner of Kazakhstan.

    That brought the 46-year-old Bilash and his work into conflict with Kazakh authorities, and he was arrested and charged with inciting ethnic hatred in March 2019.

    But amid an international outcry and quite a lot of rumbling from inside Kazakhstan — where many people wondered why the government would try to silence someone defending ethnic Kazakhs against Chinese repression — Bilash was convicted in August 2019 but given a fine and released from custody in exchange for promising to cease his activism for seven years.

    But the pressure on Bilash, his family, and associates was massive and did not stop.

    So, in late summer 2020, Bilash and his family began their journey to Turkey, where they have been since September 10.

    He recently spoke with RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, known locally as Azattyq, to explain why he chose to leave.

    “In April 2020, two charges were filed against me [in Kazakhstan] — desecration of the state flag and inciting hatred,” he said.

    Bilash attempted to register Atajurt Eriktileri in Kazakhstan, but after his court case in 2019, Kazakh authorities registered another group called Atajurt Eriktileri, which was a phony splinter group made up of members who took a soft stance against China.

    Bilash then founded a group called Naghyz (the Real) Atajurt.

    Bilash told Azattyq that the desecration of the state flag charge stems from comments he made about a court case involving Saltanat Kusmankyzy, a Kazakh woman working for a Chinese company in Kazakhstan who was convicted of embezzlement in January 2020 and sentenced to eight years in prison.

    Lawyer Ayman Umarova (left) with Serikzhan Bilash (file photo)

    Lawyer Ayman Umarova (left) with Serikzhan Bilash (file photo)

    Kusmankyzy’s lawyer Ayman Umarova, who is also one of Bilash’s lawyers, said the court refused to accept her client’s evidence, which would have cleared her of the charge.

    Bilash said his comments about Kusmankyzy’s case were taken out of context and bizarrely presented as disrespecting the Kazakh flag.

    Bilash said police conducted a linguistic analysis of the comments that showed nothing Bilash said amounted to denigrating the flag.

    ‘A Heavy Blow’

    Bilash said one of the people behind the inciting hatred charge was Erbol Dauletbek, the leader of the Atajurt Eriktileri group registered instead of Bilash’s group. Bilash said Dauletbek is trying to gain the rights to Bilash’s Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights channel on YouTube.

    RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, known locally as Azattyq, asked Dauletbek about the claim but he denied filing any legal complaints against Bilash.

    Keeping the YouTube channel is part of the reason Bilash went to Turkey. Bilash officially registered the popular channel in 2013.

    “There were not any mass arrests in China then…and there was not even an organization called Atajurt,” Bilash said.

    He added that Kazakh police started coming to the apartment of Galym Rakizhan, the editor of the video for the Atajurt YouTube channel, and threatened the owner, who finally told Rakizhan he must leave despite having lived there for many years.

    Bilash then signed over the YouTube channel to Turkish citizen Babisalem Okitan, who is also a member of Naghyz Atajurt and now in charge of programming for the channel.

    Bilash said he has no plans to seek asylum in Turkey and intends to return to Kazakhstan. But he noted that cannot happen until he is cleared of charges there and the pressure against him, his family, and his organization ceases.

    “On August 18, 2020, a court ruled that I was involved with the activities of an unregistered illegal organization and was fined…[the equivalent of $333]. Several members of Naghyz Atajurt Eriktileri were also fined,” he said. “That was a heavy blow for us.”

    “Any time I drove, [the police] stopped me without fail,” Bilash said. “Day and night there are people and vehicles outside my house. My relatives and my wife’s relatives have all been questioned.”

    ‘Branded A Terrorist’

    Bilash said he was also put on a blacklist in Kazakhstan.

    Bilash said Kazakh authorities have branded him a terrorist and, when his mother died and he went to the notary to sign over her property to his father, he was told it was not possible.

    “It turns out that on their network I was shown to be a terrorist, I have a screenshot of it… from the computer at the notary public,” Bilash explained.

    He added that his bank accounts in Kazakhstan have been frozen and his car was impounded.

    Bilash also recounted seven meetings he had in 2019 while he was under house arrest in Nur-Sultan and Almaty with a person named Maksat Iskakov, a representative that Bilash said was sent by President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev.

    According to Bilash, at one of those meetings, Iskakov told him, “In September [2019], Mr. Toqaev is going to China and your sentence [and conviction] will be a present to the Chinese president.”

    Iskakov advised him to cooperate with Kazakh officials and agree to the deal whereby he would be fined and cease his activism for seven years.

    “My goals were not to challenge Kazakh authorities, I wanted to defend the rights of Kazakhs and other Turkic-speaking peoples who were abused in China,” Bilash said in explaining why he agreed to the deal.

    Bilash also assured: “I am not a dangerous person to the authorities of Kazakhstan, I am not an opposition figure, not an opponent.”

    Bilash said he hoped Turkish authorities will register Naghyz Atajurt. If that happens, Bilash said the group will then seek recognition as a human rights defender from international organizations.

    In the meantime, Bilash has been trying to help five other Kazakhs who recently illegally crossed from Xinjiang into Kazakhstan to obtain Turkish citizenship.

    Azattyq sent a copy of Bilash’s interview to the Kazakh Foreign Ministry and the presidential administration seeking comment but there had been no response as of the time this report was issued.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.