I wish I had uploaded this back in mid-November, but here it is. S. Frederick Starr, Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, presented his advice for American leadership in Central Asia.His presentation is a overview of US strategy and possibilities in a time of constrained resources and authoritarianism. Yet the US still needs to be active in the region. Rather than money or democracy building, Starr focused on the software of long-distance trade across so many borders. The US should assist governments in making sure that the transit routes that do exist have well-functioning border posts with good software that prevents back-ups and creates consistency. This is the sort of practical thinking I like. He comes in at the 4:30 mark.

Osh, Kyrgyzstan — A security guard stands near an overturned Russian-made Tupolev Tu-34 passenger jet at the airfield outside the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh, a day after the plane crash. The packed passenger jet flipped over and caught fire on landing. PHOTOGRAPH BY: JILDIZ BEKBAEVA / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

It was a rough but lucky landing (both “rough and “lucky” are strong understatements here) when a Soviet-built Tupolev (Tu-134) crash landed in dense fog in the city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan. According to The Washington Post 82 passengers and 6 crew members were evacuated, 31 of them were injured and 17 hospitalized. Miraculously everyone on board survived. No doubt, the local emergency services deserve some major kudos for reacting quickly, killing the fire and safely evacuating everybody from the scene.

RT reports there were about a dozen of children among the passengers. One of them, a seven-month-old girl, was diagnosed with a head injury and concussion. The Ministry of Transportation of Kyrgyzstan said that the crashed vehicle was working its last days, with its airworthiness due to expire on 19 January. It was also reported that the aircraft had been manufactured in 1979 and was not equipped with modern navigation systems such as GPS. Reports say one of the likely causes is a mistake made by the pilot operating the aircraft, but the accident is still to be investigated.

Here’s the description of the crash from The Aviation Herald. Note that this report on the number of passengers and crew on board of the aircraft differs from other sources. “An Altyn Air (alias Kyrgyzstan Altyn) Tupolev TU-134A, registration EX-020 performing flight QH-3 from Bishkek to Osh (Kyrgyzstan) with 73 passengers and 6 crew, suffered a hard landing resulting in the right main gear collapse, right main wing separation and the airplane rolling on its back while landing on Osh’s runway 12 in fog and low visibility around 12:15L (06:15Z), official times of landing varying from 12:05L to 12:48L. The aircraft came to a stop on soft ground about 10 meters off the right runway edge. A fire fed by a fuel leak off the left wing erupted which was quickly extinguished by airport emergency services. One passenger received serious injuries, 24 people received minor injuries (concussions, bruises), 16 of which were taken to local hospitals.”

We know that the bird involved in the crash is a Tupolev-134. Here’s a little blurb about the Tu-134s from the Associated Press: The twin-engined Tu-134, along with its larger sibling the Tu-154, has been the workhorse of Soviet and Russian civil aviation since the 1960s, with more than 800 planes built. It also has remained in service with many post-Soviet carriers. In recent years, Russia and other former Soviet nations have had some of the world’s worst air traffic safety records. Experts blame poor maintenance of the aging aircraft, weak government controls, insufficient pilot training and a cost-cutting mentality.

This type of Soviet-built aircraft was infamously involved in several deadly crashes. Here’s more info on Tupolev crashes. More recently, this past June a Tu-134 crashed in northern Russia killing 43 passengers, but it appears that a drunken pilot was at fault. Earlier in 2011 at least 43 were injured when a Tu-154B carrying 124 people, burst into flames before take-off from Surgut, Russia. And of course another painful reminder of Soviet-era aviation was the crash of a Tu-154 plane near Smolensk that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people in April of 2010. Pilot error was clearly at fault here – both captain and first officer ignored numerous instrumentation warnings including verbal commands from the plane’s terrain awareness warning system (TAWS) warning the pilots to “PULL UP.” Procedure requires any pilot who receives that warning from the TAWS to immediate pull up and throttle to maximum to avoid an imminent collision with the ground. Clearly both pilots heavily deviated from standard safety protocols.

Back to our Kygryztan Air crash. Until the final findings of the commission are published it’s too early to draw any conclusions, although bad weather conditions had something to do with it. The Tupolevs are aging and even though in the past they might have been sound and well engineered planes, they have become outdated compared to modern aircraft. Not to mention they are not being properly maintained as they are mostly employed in cash-strapped countries. Modern day aircraft are sophisticated enough to be able to land automatically without human intervention more akin to a tram with a stop-and-go button. No Cold War-era planes can compete with that. In an initiative to keep its skies safe,  the E.U. banned airlines it deems unsafe from operating in European airspace and according to its website this includes the airline that was involved in the Kyrgyz crash.

There’s a lot of chatter and opinions on aviation websites debating the airworthiness of Soviet-built planes and the skill of Soviet/post-Soviet pilots. I found one post on The Aviation Herald board about the Osh accident particularly interesting. “There has been a lot of pressure on the pilot to fly (as the only road linking the northern and southern parts of the country has been often closed recently because of snow and avalanches. Flying is the only way to get to Bishkek in a reasonable time (road 14 to 16 hours now for a flight that takes 40 minutes). A TU 134 with its navigation equipment should not have been clear on that day. That the pilot was able to bring down the plane speaks for his skills and the robustness of the plane. A similar crash with one of the old Boeing 737 they use here had been fatal for sure.”

One of my colleague here at the Foreign Policy Blogs recently wrote a post in a similar vein about the safety of Soviet-made planes.

Here are more photos of the crash.

Riot police officers standing on duty in the western Kazakh city of Aktau following the deadly riots. Tretyakov / Reuters

Recent riots in Zhanaozen and Shetpe in the Mangystau province in western Kazakhstan have resulted in at least 16 deaths and over 100 injured. This information is according to the Kazakh authorities although unverified eye witness accounts and human rights groups put the death toll at more than 50. The number of those wounded in the clashes is most likely much higher than reported.

The violence that took place between the police and protesting oil workers and their sympathizers last week is the most bloodshed the country has seen since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Ironically (or intentionally) these events coincided with the 20th anniversary festivities held across Kazakhstan to mark the occasion that included the unveiling of a replica of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe in the capital of Astana.

The violence started on Friday, December 16. Since last May, disgruntled oil workers were occupying the central square in Zhanaozen, a nondescript industrial city of some 90,000 residents in western Mangystau province, citing disputes over wages and job losses. Some of the thousands of initial strikers were dismissed, prompting many of their colleagues to return to work.

The New York Times writes that the protesters shifted their focus to political demands including the right to form independence parties. “In response, the authorities announced plans to hold a state-sponsored New Year’s holiday party for children on the site, apparently in a ruse aimed at providing an excuse to clear out the workers. In an online video said to be shot at the scene, protesters are shown pushing past police lines to dismantle a stage for the party, then overturning a tree decorated for the holiday. It also showed police officers firing into the air.”

The Moscow Times reports a slight variation on the theme: “fired oil workers and sympathetic citizens stormed a stage erected for an Independence Day party and smashed sound equipment in central Zhanaozen. They later set fire to the city hall, the headquarters of a local oil company, a hotel and dozens of other buildings, including trade centers and houses, burned cars and buses and plundered ATMs.”

Police opened fire and according to the officials 14 protesters were killed in the clashes in Zhanaozen alone. An article from the Telegraph has a short video of the storming of the stage.

The following day the unrest spread to the neighborhood village of Shetpe, 60 miles north of Zhanaozen, where a crowd blocked a train coming from the port of Aktau. According to the authorities, one person was killed and 12 were wounded.

On Sunday morning, December 18, about 500 protesters gathered near the main square in Aktau facing a large force of riot police.

The city is the capital of the Mangystau region and is one of Kazakhstan’s most important oil producing centers. Aktau is a key transportation hub for the Northern Distribution Network, which provides transit of non-lethal supplies for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It has a population of around 180,000 people and is home to hundreds of Western expats.

The government declared a state of emergency in Zhanaozen with a 20 day curfew in effect and a ban on public gatherings until January 5, 2012. President Nursultan Nazarbayev was quick to dismiss the clashes as provocations by the “hooligans.”

After clashes in Zhanaozen, protests erupted in Shetpe. (c) The New York Times

Protests in pictures from the BBC.

From the Economist on the Kazakh clashes.

The Jamestown Foundation Blog has a good overview of the recent violence and events in Kazakhstan.

Amateur video of the clashes making rounds on the internet:

(c) BBC News – In pictures Tajik village life

Another year is coming to a close. It’s time to look back, recap and rewind 2011 in Central Asia. Let’s start with elections: two Central Asian states, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, held elections this year.

Kazakhstan’s presidential election took place on April 3, 2011.

Guess who won? Not surprising to anybody who follows Kazakhstan in the news, it’s Nursultan Nazarbayev who garnered 95.5% of the vote (with a total turn out of 89.5%) outperforming his earlier achievement of 91% in the previous election in 2005. Nazarbayev began his fourth term in office and thanks to the amendments to the constitution that makes an exception for him as “the leader of the nation,” he can run for the highest office in the country an unlimited number of times. Read the OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Final Report here. Kazakhstan is due to hold early parliamentary elections on January 15, 2012. The snap election was expected following the April presidential poll, but was just announced last month.

Kyrgyzstan also held a vote for the country’s president. Prime Minister Almazbek Atambaev won an overwhelming share of votes on October 30, 2011 obviating the need for a run off. There was a gag on foreign press during the campaign, a strange thing by Western standards. According to the Guardian, “International observers had largely praised the runup to the election but some complained of counting irregularities. They said the scale of Atambayev’s apparent win indicated he may have benefited from reliance on state resources.”

Here’s a quick glance at year in review in Central Asia.

Kazakhstan:

U.S. Peace Corps Quits Kazakhstan. The exact reason is not clear, but Kazakhstan is definitely a loser in this situation as the opportunity for the Kazakh people to interact with foreigners and learn English got much smaller. It’s interesting that Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan are now the only countries in the Central Asia region with a Peace Corps presence.

In November, Kazakhstan witnessed one of the worst terrorist attacks the country has ever seen. A suspected militant shot dead four members of the security forces and two civilians before blowing himself up, killing another police officer, in the city of Taraz.

In October, two explosions hit the oil city of Atyrau in western Kazakhstan, killing a suspected suicide bomber.

Kyrgyzstan:

For Kyrgyzstan, the most important evens of the year were the presidential elections and healing the wounds of ethnic violence of 2010.

On May 3, 2011, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry or the Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission (KIC) released its final report on the interethnic violence and clashes between the country’s ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities last year. Read more about the findings here.

Tajikistan:

In January, the Tajik government ratified a 1999 deal handing over 386 square miles (1,000 sq km) of land in the remote Pamir mountain range to China.

The women’s lot in Tajikistan remains abysmal as is the situation with the freedom of speech and press.

The case of Urunboy Usumov’s is probably the most infamous this year. The 60 year old BBC reporter was arrested in June and sentenced to three years in jail over alleged connections to the Hizb ut-Tahrir group, but the judge granted him an amnesty and ordered his release. After his release, he told the BBC’s Uzbek Service he would appeal against his conviction. The BBC has strongly condemned the verdict, insisting Mr Usmonov was carrying out journalistic duties.

Last month a court in Tajikistan released two pilots, one Russian and one Estonian whose sentencing of 8.5 years in prison escalated the Tajik-Russian tension and caused a retaliation by the former.

By and large, the shenanigans between Russia and Tajikistan is not something new as it tried to raise petroleum tariffs for Tajikistan earlier this year.

Turkmenistan:

This year, Turkmenistan’s leadership received ample attention in the press and in the blogosphere along with other Central Asian leaders given the region’s democratic credentials.

Linking articles and news would probably make a long list…Just a few examples: here and here.

In other news, TAPI has been a bumpy road.

Uzbekistan:

In March of this year, for an unspecified reason, the Uzbek government shut down the Human Rights Watch offices in Tashkent. It is the first time in the organization’s 33 year history that it was kicked out from a country where it was operating. This ends HRW’s 15 year presence in Uzbekistan, since its established its offices following the country’s independence from the Soviet Union.

Much was written in the press and on the Internet about Lola Karimova, the youngest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, who in May of this year filed a law suit seeking €30,000 (US$43,000) in damages against a French news website Rue89, claiming that it described her as a “dictator’s daughter” and stated that she paid Monica Bellucci, the Italian actress, €190,000 (US$272,000) to appear at a charity event. On July 1, 2011, the French court ruled that the article was both fair and true, and could not be taken as a personal attack – the judge found that there was not sufficient evidence for the charge of libel under French law. But the issue of alleged payments to Belluci was not resolved. Ironically, the opposite of what Karimov’s daughter was trying to accomplish became obvious. The trial exposed human rights violations and the brutality with which the regime deals with opposition as two well-known exiled human rights defenders from Uzbekistan testified for the defense.

Ah,  Uzbek cotton, always creates a stir in the news every year starting in September when the cotton harvesting season begins in Central Asia. This year was no exception, although some welcoming developments took place. Sixty of the world’s major retailers, including Walmart, Walt Disney, H&M and Adidas agreed to boycott all products known to contain Uzbek cotton. In addition, The European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee unanimously blocked a trade deal that would have lowered the tariffs on EU imports of Uzbek cotton, citing objections to that country’s continued use of forced child labor in its cotton harvests. These are all promising steps.

Don’t forget about U.S. dealings with Uzbekistan. Despite it’s poor human rights record, the West depends on this Central Asian country for supply roots to Afghanistan.

Natural Disasters in the Region:

On January 24 a 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck a remote mountainous region of Tajikistan near the Chinese boarder. There were no reported deaths.

On July 19 a 6.2 magnitude earthquake with an epicenter just inside Kyrgyzstan shook the Fergana Valley affecting Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, killing at least 14 people.

Russia and Central Asia:

In October Russia signed a free trade agreement with seven other former Soviet republics among which are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. There are reports that Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan might join next year.

Kyrgyzstan named a mountain peak after Putin earlier this year – perhaps they had a feeling.

Children in Uzbekistan often pick cotton with bare hands, with sometimes nothing more than slippers or sandals on their feet. © Environmental Justice Foundation

As I’ve written on the subject before, Uzbekistan is one of the worst human rights offenders out there. Recent news of child labor during this fall’s cotton harvesting season once again put the country into the international spotlight drawing sharp criticism by human rights activists. Meanwhile, in the same vein, Bell Pottinger Group’s dealings with the dictatorship was recently revealed and criticized in the news. This firm is a London-based public relations agency and is one of the largest lobbying companies in the U.K.

For the past several years each fall, when the cotton harvesting season in Uzbekistan begins, the news media and human rights groups sound the alarm about children as young as ten years old (reports on this differ) being pulled from school and forced to work the cotton fields. Bear in mind that the Uzbek government bars independent international observers in the country during the harvest season.

This year the story largely remains the same – there was a spike in coverage of this issue starting in September. However, a few positive developments took place this fall:

1) Sixty of the world’s major retailers, including Walmart, Walt Disney, H&M and Adidas agreed to boycott all products known to contain Uzbek cotton. But skepticism remains. According to the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights’ Director Niyazova Umida, “such kind of a boycott will not help immediately because there are a lot of other cotton traders – from China, Bangladesh and Pakistan and other Asian countries.”

2) The European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee unanimously blocked a trade deal that would have lowered the tariffs on EU imports of Uzbek cotton, citing objections to that country’s continued use of forced child labor in its cotton harvests.

The situation surrounding forced child labor in the cotton industry remains appalling. I have no way of knowing that the clothes I’m wearing today are not made out of Uzbek cotton which made its way to Bangladesh or somewhere else where it was processed into yarn or sown and later sold to large retailers in Europe or the U.S. and finally found its way to a consumer like me. I know that H&M is one of the companies that made an effort to eliminate cotton from Uzbekistan from its supply chain and this is explicitly stated on their website.

I love Lucky Brand and I especially like their jeans so I decided to check out their website and see if there is any information about the source of their cotton or their social responsibility policy regarding child labor or other unethical practices. I don’t see anything of this sort on their web page. I do see this:

We were born in Southern California and it’s a big part of what we make. We’re inspired by amazing nature, like the orange groves and mountains of Ojai and the beach towns that dot the pacific Coast Highway. We love great music, art and photography – new and old. And we can’t get enough of the casual lifestyle and amazing weather (Who doesn’t like taking a drive with the top down on a 70-degree winter day?). In addition to giving our jeans their distinctive look and vibe, Southern California also inspires our seasonal Lucky Brand fashion collections – jackets, sweaters, dresses, pants and accessories that work with or without your denim.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with this. I too love all those things as I spent a large chunk of my life growing up in So Cal. But while thinking about the ocean breeze and orange groves I had a haunting image of children forced to pick cotton instead of attending school under the scorching Central Asian sun. It doesn’t sit well with me.

I recently went to lunch with a German friend. Somebody complimented her scarf and she said she got it at Primark. I had never heard of the store before so I asked about it and one of her first comments was that it seems like a sweatshop and she doesn’t like it despite the fact that they sell cheap clothes. This reminded me of the sandblasted/distressed jeans story that was making rounds on my Facebook newsfeed shared and reposted by friends. People were appalled by it. Consumers do care and I hope they can make a difference. But without calling attention to this issue chances are nothing will change.

If you’re in Liverpool, the International Slavery Museum is hosting an exhibition White Gold: the True Cost of Cotton until September 2012. The exhibition highlights the abuse of labor rights in the cotton industry primarily focusing on in Uzbekistan.
Boy picking cotton. Photo: Courtesy National Museums Liverpool.

Watch White Gold – the True Cost of Cotton from Environmental Justice:

Other videos about child labor in Uzbekistan worth checking out: Newsnight Investigates the Uzbek Cotton Industry.

Photo by the author. A man votes in rural Kyrgyzstan in October 2010 Parliamentary Elections

Starting Sunday, September 25, the Kyrgyz government introduced a ban on all foreign news broadcasting for the duration of the presidential campaign – until election day on October 30, 2011. During the five week moratorium, Kyrgyzstan’s television stations and cable operators are barred from rebroadcasting foreign news bulletins, reports EurasiaNet.

The motivation behind the law passed by the Kyrgyz Parliament on the eve of the start of the presidential campaign is to reduce foreign influence on the voter.

Essentially, the legislation called for filtering of the news broadcasts containing pro or con campaigning messages coming from outside sources (read Russia). Obviously, this kind of editing is a hefty task in terms of manpower and logistics and in addition it violates the contracts with foreign channels as was explained by a representative of the cable company Al-TV.

Hence, the channels stopped broadcasting foreign news altogether including Russia’s Channel One, RTR, Rossiya-24 along with the CNN and the BBC. Normal programming is scheduled to be resumed after October 30.

Media and rights advocates have expressed concern, and the law is also proving to be costly for cable operators. The country’s two cable television companies said the suspension in the rebroadcasting of international stations could cost them $100,000 in losses.

Others have already turned to the Constitutional Chamber with a request to recognize the law as unconstitutional on the basis that it violates the public’s right to free access to information.
According to a deputy of the Kyrgyz Parliament who supports the legislation, over 60 TV cannels will be cut during the presidential election campaign.

In the past, during the run up to the October 2010 parliamentary election, Russian NTV channel broadcasted a sex video featuring a man resembling a pro-Western Ata Meken’s party leader Omurbek Tekebayev.

Although the Kyrgyz government has strongly denied any claims that it’s instituting censorship citing the length of the ban for only the duration of the election campaign, accusations have been flying and complaints have been filed. It claims that foreign news reports are still available via internet and satellite channels.

As EurasiaNet has pointed out, in Kyrgyzstan, television is the most popular source of news. And perhaps it is television that has the most power to influence and sway the public through projecting audio-visual images, more so than election slogans, election campaign programs and promises or well-written newspaper articles.

Scientists said the quake struck at 1935 GMT (AFP/File, Frederick Florin)

At least 13 people have been killed and 86 injured in a 6.2-magnitude earthquake in the Fergana Valley region on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake struck at 1:35 am (1935 GMT Tuesday) with the epicenter just inside Kyrgyzstan, but 42 km (25 miles) southwest of Fergana, Uzbekistan. The quake occured at a shallow depth of 9.2 kilometers, rocking Fergana, a city of some 200,000 residents.

The Uzbek government reported that emergency services provided medical assistance to 86 people and 35 people were taken to nearest hospitals. The quake registered 5.0 even in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, some 235 km away from the epicenter, while Tajikistan’s second city of Khujand with a population of 150,000 people, shook with a magnitude of 6.0.

Kyrgyzstan has so far reported no casualties but the full extent of the damage in the remote region may only become apparent later when a special team dispatched by the Kyrgyz authorities finishes its work.
“It’s clear that there will be damage, the earthquake was just too strong,” said the head of the seismological institute at the Kyrgyz academy of sciences, Kanat Abdrakhmatov.

Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov Photo: AFP/GETTY

One way to spot a dictatorship is by its leader’s personality cult. Central Asia is a region of more than 4 million square kilometers and a population of 62 million inhabitants rife with authoritarianism, despotism, and the cult of personality reminiscent of the Soviet times. Not too long ago, I wrote about Central Asian dictators, but I can’t seem to abandon this train of thought. Recently, there have been new developments that point to a “dictatorship” complex in the region.

Here’s a case in point. This month, the president of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, celebrated his 54th birthday by singing a love song that he authored (both lyrics and music) while strumming along on a guitar. “For You, My White Flowers” was aired on national television and also projected onto a giant screen at a concert attended by 3,500 people in the capital Ashgabat, with the audience standing and applauding the head of state during the song. The country’s state television said that the guitar the president used would now be housed in the state museum as a “national asset and great treasure”.

Richard Orange of the Telegraph writes of Berdymukhamedov’s other talents. Last April he impressed his people with a display of accomplished horsemanship, wheeling around the capital’s hippodrome on a prized Akhal-Teke horse. In addition, shortly after taking power in 2006, he performed minor surgery on television, showing off some of the medical skills he learned in his previous career as a dentist. It sounds a lot like the judo-fighting, animal-loving and on stage-performing Putin, doesn’t it?

While not as eccentric as his predecessor- Saparmurat Niyazov renamed the months of the year, banned lip syncing, opera and ballet- the current Turkmen president is clearly a cult personality.

Another symptom of dictatorship is sensitivity to criticism. In May of last year, Lola Karimova, the youngest daughter of the Uzbek president, filed a law suit seeking €30,000 (US$43,000) in damages against a French news website Rue89, claiming that it described her as a “dictator’s daughter” and stated that she paid Monica Bellucci, the Italian actress, €190,000 (US$272,000) to appear at a charity event.

On July 1, 2011, the French court ruled that the article was both fair and true, and could not be taken as a personal attack – the judge found that there was not sufficient evidence for the charge of libel under French law. But the issue of alleged payments to Belluci was not resolved. Ironically, the opposite of what Karimov’s daughter was trying to accomplish became obvious. The trial exposed human rights violations and the brutality with which the regime deals with opposition as two well-known exiled human rights defenders from Uzbekistan testified for the defense.

Authoritarian regimes are never secure and along with the cult of personality other symptoms of a dictatorship are denial, defensiveness, and angry outbursts at critics.

Last week the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional security body with a total population of 1.5 billion people, held a 10th anniversary summit in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana. The original “Shanghai Five” was formed in 1996 comprised of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In 2001 when Uzbekistan joined the pack, it became the SCO, as it is known today. China is the unofficial leader of the group with its sidekick (and a rival of sorts) Russia following closely. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call the four ‘stans’ junior members (minus the non-member Turkmenistan), only because they are overshadowed by such powerful geopolitical players. Today the organization also includes four “observer” status states — India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan — and two “dialogue partners”— Belarus and Sri Lanka.

Central Asia Focus:
The Central Asian states, although energy rich and vast, are the weaker players in a big boys’ game, with both Russia and China vying for influence either economic or geopolitical.  Beijing wants greater market integration within the organization while the other states are weary of opening their economies to Chinese competition. Russia sees its former imperial possessions as a legitimate sphere of influence and a political leveraging tool with respect to the U.S.

Something to note is the SCO’s joint statement opposing a European missile defense, a major point of tension between Moscow and Washington. It is also the first time that China publicly weighted in on the issue as one of the signatories behind the formal declaration condemning any unilateral and unlimited build-up of missile defense by a single or group of states, citing the dangers such actions could pose to strategic stability and international security.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, representing the observer-status nation Iran, joined the Chinese and Russian leaders in Astana. As the Christian Science Monitor correctly noted, there aren’t many places Ahmadinejad can go these days to find a receptive audience. (See the full article on a more in-depth discussion on Iran).

According to the CSM, in one meeting Ahmadinejad is quoted as saying “All opinion polls show that the U.S. is the worst country in the world. People everywhere regard this country as their own enemy.” He called on the SCO to take a more active role in undermining the U.S.-led global system of “slavers and colonizers” and replacing it with a more just order. In his opening address he said: “Which one of or countries [has played a role] in the black era of slavery, or in the destruction of hundreds of millions of human beings?” Much of Ahmadinejad’s speech was devoted to an exhaustive series of thinly veiled accusations against unnamed western countries, which he described as “enslavers, colonialists [and] invaders”.

Hamid Karzai: (from the Guardian) During the summit he “renewed calls for the U.S. to respect his country’s sovereignty. In recent months the president has become increasingly strident in his criticism of NATO air strikes affecting Afghan civilians, describing the western-led alliance as being at risk of becoming an ‘occupying force’”.

Asif Ali Zardari: Pakistan wants to join the SCO. Quoted in China Daily he said, “I believe the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a great association. Pakistan wants to join it and hopes for support from all organization members. I am convinced that the SCO has great prospects.”

The SCO has come a long way since its inception in 2001, but it is no NATO , not even close. It has, however, picked up steam and increased its clout in the past few years and it should be interesting when India’s bid for membership is considered at the Astana summit next year.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Since the Arab Spring the global media seems to have found a new obsession – a preoccupation with the remaining ruling dictators, their powers, legitimacy, impending revolutions, and the viability of totalitarian regimes in general.

By the “global media” here I mean the news media (TV, radio, newspapers) and the Internet which also includes social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit) and the blogosphere etc. I think it’s interesting that there is no word in the English language that encompasses all of these concepts in one. Perhaps it is yet to be invented, but for now I refer to it as something that is “out there” in the form of information supplied and channeled by various agents and voices.

In February of this year as the protests rocked the Tahrir Square, Time Magazine ran a piece called Top 10 Autocrats in Trouble featuring ten rulers that are likely to lose power. Accurately forecasted by the magazine (no surprises or bold predictions here given the timing), Hosni Mubarak of Egypt topped the list at number one. Emomali Rahmon, president of Tajikistan, was ranked number eight in the article and is the only one to have the honor of representing the governments of the five Central Asian states. It is not entirely clear why he was singled out, but perhaps the authors think that since Tajikistan is not awash in petrodollars and is facing some serious economic pressures it is thus arguably more susceptible to revolution.

CBSNews.com ran the WorldWatch series named “The world’s enduring dictators” inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt and focused on men who continue to rule their lands unimpeded by law. The WorldWatch series identifies world leaders who can be classified as dictators, focusing on their length of rule, their most despotic acts and their country’s outlook for change. It attempts to stick closely to the strict definitions of “dictator” (an individual ruler who rules unrestrained by law) and “despot” (a violent, oppressive dictator.) The installments appeared one dictator at a time, in order of length of rule, although the piece cautions that length or rule is not a definite indicator of the despotism of the ruler.

The finalists (a total of 21 dictators) include three Central Asian leaders: Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan), Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan), and Emomali Rahmon (Tajikistan). The runner up group of 11 dictators include the president of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. Thus, four out of five Central Asian leaders made it to the hall of democratic shame, save for Kyrgyzstan which after two revolutions in 2005 and 2010 is finally a parliamentary democracy albeit unstable and weak.

In the grand scheme of things there is no need to refer to dictator rankings. It is clear that Central Asia remains largely authoritarian, ruled by aging technocrats and apparatchiks. A ruler’s time in power is a good indicator of democratic consolidation in and of itself, and none of the four have good credentials.

In addition, the kind of methodology used in ranking dictators is subjective at best and questionable at worst because there are so many factors that go into defining a despot. What if he has been in power for only 5 years but has ruled with an iron fist as opposed to somebody in power for decades marginally suppressing freedom of speech and assembly? Unless these rankings are done by reputable scholars, I would take them with a grain of salt.

Copyright Reuters

I have recently written about TAPI, the 1,680 km (1,000 mile) $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India proposed pipeline scheduled for completion in 2016 with a capacity to transfer 90 million cubic meters of gas per day to energy starved South Asia. According to the TAPI agreement, Turkmenistan will supply 38 mmcmd each going to Pakistan and India, and the rest to Afghanistan. The project is backed by the U.S. as it would stabilize the region and deliver urgently needed energy while at the same time allowing Turkmenistan to earn around $300 million per annum in transit fees, open Central Asian countries to alternate markets in the east and thereby lessen their dependence on Russia and its pipelines.

There have been a few recent developments on the project. Last week, multilateral ministerial-level TAPI meetings took place in New Delhi, mostly concerning issues of security, gas pricing and transit fees. Indian newspaper the Hindu reports that the participants could not reach an agreement on the price of the fuel and the transit fee remained unresolved.

Both India and Pakistan did not agree to the price of gas proposed by Turkmenistan. Indian Natural Gas Minister Jaipal Reddy said that pricing has yet to be discussed, “no deliberation on price was held at this state because it is a bilateral issue.” Turkmenistan has proposed that supplies be benchmarked to LNG (gas in ships or liquefied natural gas) that costs more than natural gas, while India and Pakistan are opposed to this and have suggested a common price. There was also a disagreement on the transit fee that India has to pay to Pakistan and Afghanistan for gas transit.

The Indian Minister also expressed his misgivings over the safety of the pipeline that is proposed to go through volatile regions of Afghanistan (Herat, Helmand and Kandahar) and Pakistan (Baluchistan). “As a buyer and being at the tail end of the project, India has concerns relating to safety of the pipeline and safe transit of gas through Afghanistan and Pakistan. Quite obviously, our goal is not merely the construction of the pipeline but also continuous and uninterrupted flow of Turkmen natural gas over several decades,” Mr. Reddy said. It is important to add that on the other hand, Pakistan has stated that it is confident about the security of TAPI.

The ministers will meet on May 13-14 in Kabul to iron out the issue of transit and other fees after which a price will be discussed in June at Ashgabat, capital of Turkmenistan. The four countries have set a deadline of July 31 for signing the Gas Sales Purchase Agreement (GSPA).

As I have written in my previous post on TAPI, I think it is going to be pretty remarkable for the project to come to fruition because of the many complex issues and moving parts involved. Shebonti Ray Dadwal writing for the Diplomat nicely lays out the challenges facing the pipeline. First, its route crosses some of the most dangerous and volatile regions in the world. Second, serious concerns remain regarding Turkmenistan’s ability to pump out the amount of gas it is promising in addition to its inadequate infrastructure. Finally, the price dispute between India and Turkmenistan remains a serious issue. I like Mr. Dadwal’s TAPI juxtaposition with the BTC (Baku, Tbilisi, Cheyhan pipeline). The project seemed almost impossible, but because of the strong backing from the U.S. it materialized rather quickly. Perhaps the same circumstances are in store for TAPI.

© RIA Novosti. Andrei Stenin

On May 3, 2011, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry or the Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission (KIC) released its final report on the interethnic violence and clashes between the country’s ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities last year. The KIC was formed based on an initiative from the Nordic countries for an independent international inquiry and was accepted by the President of the Kyrgyz Republic. It includes seven prominent members from Finland, Australia, Estonia, France, Russia, Turkey and the United Kingdom with expertise in human rights, conflict analysis, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. The Commission is chaired by Dr. Kimmo Kiljunen, Special Representative for Central Asia of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. The KIC was mandated by the Kyrgyz government to investigate the facts and circumstances relevant to incidents that took place in southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010, qualify the violations and crimes under international law, and determine responsibilities and make recommendations.

The ethnic clashes mainly centered in the southern cities of Osh and Jalal-Abad, on the fringes of the volatile and densely populated Fergana Valley where the Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, and Tajiks intermingle and live in close proximity – also where the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan meet. Interethnic violence followed weeks of turmoil after the ousting of then President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in a mass uprising in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in April 2010. The final report’s findings are based on extensive interviews of some 750 witnesses (45 percent of them Uzbeks, 40 percent Kyrgyz), 700 documents and nearly 5,000 photographs and 1,000 video extracts.

Key Findings of the Commission:

All in all, the KIC blames the interim government and Kyrgyzstan’s weak security apparatus for failing to stop the violence, stating that “fragile state institutions and the weak rule of law” allowed the historic interethnic tensions to escalate into full blown clashes. The KIC reports that the violence of June 2010 “was reasonably foreseeable and that the Provisional Government should have developed a contingency plan that would, in the event that it occurred, have contained it.” Had the military been properly instructed and deployed, it would have been possible to prevent or stop the violence,” the report said. “The failure of the security forces to protect their equipment against seizure raises questions of complicity.” “Further, some members of the military were involved in some of the attacks on the mahallas” or Uzbek neighborhoods.

The investigation said mobs attacked security forces and grabbed their weapons, and also commandeered armored personnel carriers to attack Uzbek areas. The KIC believes that the presence of “expertly driven” armored vehicles was a sign of military involvement in the conflict – “such discipline and order is not commensurate with the normal actions of spontaneously rioting civilian crowds.”

According to the Commission, the Uzbeks made up 74 percent (as opposed to 25 percent Kyrgyz) of the 470 people killed, and a disproportionately high number of Uzbek-owned properties were destroyed. While the Health Ministry data showed that Kyrgyz accounted for the majority of the 1,900 people treated in hospitals. Fifty-nine Uzbeks and 7 Kyrgyz have so far been tried in connection to the violence, the report says. The Commission chairman Kimmo Kiljunen said that “eighty percent of prosecutions…in Kyrgyzstan have been focused on Uzbeks, although 74 percent of those killed were Uzbeks, so there is imbalance.”

More than 410,000 people were displaced by the clashes. According to RFE/RL, the KIC found that “there was also significant property damage, again to a disproportionately high number of ethnic Uzbek owned properties,” adding that Kyrgyz communities also suffered “very significant losses, in terms of life, health and property.”

The report found that although the violence of June 2010 “does not qualify as either war crimes or genocide,” certain attacks on Uzbek neighborhoods of Osh, if proven beyond doubt in a court of law, would amount to “crimes against humanity” adding that “there were many other criminal acts and serious violations of international human rights law.” The use of violence against women was particularly brutal, the KIC found: gang rape was employed because women are “markers of group identity and honor.”

The Reaction of the Kyrgyz Government:

The Kyrgyz authorities have dismissed the KIC conclusions and accused the authors of bias. They rejected the findings that security forces were complicit in the violence and blame the former regime of Bakiyev for the interethnic clashes – “they were a result of a protracted policies implemented by former regimes,” a government statement said.

The government also disagreed that the Uzbeks bore the brunt of the violence. ”Kyrgyzstan considers it completely unacceptable that the documents clearly display an overwhelming tendency that only one ethnic group has committed crimes, ignoring the victims and deaths of this very group,” the government said.

Thoughts?

The fact that the Kyrgyz government allowed an international commission to investigate the interethnic clashes that took place inside of the country is exceptional by the region’s standards. It’s reaction to the findings, however, is disappointing.

First, the violence happened under the Provisional Government’s watch so blaming Bakiyev and his cronies makes Rosa Otunbayeva and her administration look bad, if not criminal. It should accept full responsibility for the violence instead of pointing the finger at somebody else. It’s obvious to everyone when the king has no clothes.

Second, while one could understand that the provisional government wasn’t in full control of the country at the time, the fact that the authorities’ statements disagree that ethnic Uzbeks were largely the victims of the violence questions the credibility of Bishkek in general. They might as well dispute the Moon landing.

Additional Links:

Kyrgyz military complicit in deadly ethnic clashes, commission says.

Kyrgyzstan rejects ‘unacceptable’ unrest probe.

Kyrgyzstan: Officials still targeting Uzbeks with violence – independent inquiry.

Aral Sea Satellite Outline in 2009, Showing the Original Shoreline of 1960. Courtesy of NASA

I came across a series of amazing photographs of the Aral Sea by Radek Skrivanek, a photographer who started visiting and documenting the devastation of the Aral shoreline and the surrounding areas since 2004, and returning to the region many times between 2004 and 2007. You can read more about his fascination with the Aral Sea, travel and work in the region in an online journal Places, where he details his experience pursuing his passion of photographing the dying sea.

The Aral Sea, shared by Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south, is a sad story of one of the most devastating ecological disasters in human history. Once the world’s fourth-largest body of fresh water in terms of surface area, the sea has shrunk by 90 percent since the 1960s. In the last 50 years its water surface has fallen from 65,000 to 9,000 square kilometers and its water level has decreased by more than 25 meters, causing the sea to separate into two water bodies, the Southern and Northern Aral Seas.

The countries of the region are trying to grapple with the double task of economic development and recovering from the disasters of Soviet environmental engineering which included the Khrushchev’s “virgin lands” campaign of the 1950s and 1960s as well as megafarm projects that diverted water from major rivers for the irrigation of cotton monoculture in the arid Central Asian steppe, making Uzbekistan one of the largest cotton producers in the world. This led to the desertification of the downstream areas and the Aral Sea disaster, which continues to shrink today.

According to the National Geographic, the Amu Darya that fed the Aral’s south end receded and now ends at a dam, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) away. Over the years, the river’s flow fell drastically, from 28,000 cubic feet per second (793 cubic meters) to just 5,500 cubic feet (156 cubic meters). The Syr Darya, the river that feeds the Aral’s north end, also suffered from irrigation, but has maintained a tenuous connection to the sea.

The region remains an ecological disaster zone: salinity has increased from 10 to 30 grams per liter, almost as briny as the ocean, all 24 species of native fish vanished and the fishing industry collapsed. Frequent chemical dust storms blow across the barren land filling the air with salt and pesticide particles from the fertilizer run-off. The region’s climate began to change becoming more extreme and this has also negatively affected the local flora and fauna and the biodiversity of the region. In the 1980s, infant mortality rose to 60 in 1,000, then the highest in the Soviet Union. Today local population suffers from high cancer rates, and the life expectancy fell from 64 years to 51.

Over the past 15 or so years, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested into environmental projects aimed at saving the dying sea, both by the Kazakh government and the World Bank. A seven-year project led by the World Bank has helped replenish the Northern Aral by trapping water behind a dike and the sea grew by 20 percent with salinity at 14 grams per liter, not far from 1960 levels. The 13 km (8 mile) Kok-Aral dike is part of a wider, $86 million project that aims to reverse some of the ecological damage. The project also improved irrigation structures upriver from the Aral.

Since the dike was built in 2005, the sea’s turquoise waters have crept as close as 25 kilometers to Aralsk port, from a previous distance of 100 kilometes. Following the project, according to the National Geographic, “soon native plants, stifled for years by the saltwater, began to sprout, and migrating birds like pelicans, flamingos, and ducks again began to visit the Aral. Nowadays, ‘It’s a paradise for birds,’ says Russian Academy of Sciences zoologist Nick Aladin, who has been studying the Aral since the 1970s. ‘It’s a place for pleasure, and it’s an enormous victory.’” While the larger Southern Aral, located in Uzbekistan has largely been left to diminish further as initial recovery efforts focus on the north.

Read previous FPA blogs on the Aral Sea:

Central Asia Climate Change Overview

The Aral Sea Disaster Part 1 (Count the Cost)

The Aral Sea Disaster Part 2 (Soviet Irrigation)

The Aral Sea Disaster Part 3 (Living the Climate Change Prophecy)

The Aral Sea Disaster Part 4 (Since 1991, Some Progress and Plenty of Hot Air)

Recent articles about the Aral Sea:

Water Problems in Aral Sea Basin

The Aral Sea Tragedy

Russia Today’s Video on the North Aral:

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Young women beside a fountain in a park, Tajikistan, July 2009. © Amnesty International

I am a huge fan of the BBC World Service and have been following their Extreme World series of programs – a collection of TV, radio and online coverage that examines the extremes of our planet from education and corruption to attitudes towards God and the stories of human survival in the harshest environment, hot and cold. I came across the Extreme World’s recent video coverage of a Tajik wedding entitled Tajikistan Government’s Strict Wedding Rules (video) and also an article about the video.

Aside from the draconian rules on weddings imposed in 2007 by the Tajik government and enforced by minders in attendance (only 150 guess can be invited, only one dish is allowed and the party cannot last more than three hours), the most striking for me was the fact how this video portrayed Tajik women and their role in society. Not sure if this was the “extreme” part that the BBC was trying to get at, but the fact that the featured marriage was arranged by the 18 year old bride’s parents whose daughter met the groom only once before and was crying saying good-bye to her father and family, left me with an uneasy feeling in my gut. The article quotes one of the women present saying, “Every bride cries. My parents chose my husband for me. Love comes later, after you’ve lived together.”

If this is what women go through and have to deal with when they get married, at least in the rural areas, what does it say about the status of Tajik women in general? The women’s lot in Tajikistan must be appalling. I did some very minimal research, but was able to find a ton of information about women in Tajikistan. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch poorly assessed women’s rights and freedoms in the country. Often Tajik women are economically dependent on their husband’s family and suffer harsh treatment not only from their husbands but also the in-laws.

According to the Amnesty International Report from November 2009, “violence against women, and especially in the family, is widespread in Tajikistan. One-third to one-half of women have regularly been subjected to physical, psychological or sexual violence at the hands of their husbands or their in-laws.” Andrea Strasser-Camagni, Amnesty International’s expert on Tajikistan said that “the traditional Tajik family values, reinforced after the break-up of the Soviet Union, impose further discrimination on women by narrowing their identity to that of wife and mother, or pushing them into the lowest paid sector of the job market.”

A very recent article from EurasiaNet.org entitled Tajikistan: Loophole Leaves Women in the Lurch When it Comes to Divorce tells a story of a 43-year-old Shamsigul Khulova struggling to get a divorce from her abusive husband of 18 years without losing property or her six children because the state would not recognize it. Like many women in post-Soviet Tajikistan Khulova had opted for an Islamic marriage ceremony, or nikaah, conducted by an imam. According to the article many, if not most, marriages in Tajikistan today are not officially registered and are therefore not recognized under Tajik law – couples just don’t know they need to register their religious ceremony. The article states that “under Tajik law, women are entitled to 50 percent of a couple’s property upon divorce. Yet, research by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), shows that around 80 percent of women in divorce cases are denied property rights and child support, usually because they lack registration.”

All of this is sad news for Tajik women and society in general. The whole social fabric of Tajikistan is undermined because marriages are strained by dire economic conditions, women’s traditional secondary role in society and a high percentage of the male population working in Russia distorting gender relations.

Check out this article and an amazing collection of photographs of disfranchised Tajik women from the photography blog of the New York Times.

Watch Amnesty International’s short video Tajikistan’s Women – A bitter “family affair.”
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