EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Turkmen Dissident Accuses Niyazov of Crimes

EURASIA INSIGHT

TURKMEN DISSIDENT ACCUSES NIYAZOV OF CRIMES

Alec Appelbaum 4/26/02

A prominent Turkmen dissident, Boris Shikhmuradov, says he and his fellow opposition members are ready to directly challenge Saparmyrat Niyazov, the country’s repressive leader and Shikhmuradov’s former boss. In a 45-minute interview with EurasiaNet, Shikhmuradov - a former foreign minister who defected from Niyazov’s inner circle with a blistering memo in November 2001 - promised that he is not seeking political office and that his movement would not try to stage a coup. Shikhmuradov said he sought "evolution, not revolution" in Turkmenistan’s governance and called for an international court to try dictators.

The notion of trying Niyazov, which Shikhmuradov put at the heart of his plans to unseat his former boss, is hard to square with Turkmenistan’s structure. Niyazov has stretched his autocracy more tautly than any other Central Asian president, declaring himself Turkmenbashi the Great, which makes him a divine "father of all Turkmen." By organizing his state this way, Niyazov has eliminated most free press and suppressed the development of legal codes.

"There is no Bar association" or legal system, Shikhmuradov says. So Shikhmuradov, with an "executive committee" of 21, is trying to stoke an international inquisition, largely from exile. (He lives in Turkey.) The group aims, he says, to charge the president with a range of crimes, including money laundering, drug trafficking, "exploitation of national reserves" and murder.

It will take a supervening international authority to bring these charges, as nobody in Turkmenistan seems prepared to do so. Shikhmuradov said he would not let fears for his own life prevent him from returning to Turkmenistan, but he set no timetable for that return. "We have jettisoned our fears," he said. "We will come back when external factors [allow], when most countries actively support us." He said he and his associates were trying to prove that Niyazov’s repression was so extreme that it bore no relationship to Central Asia’s other repressive states. As such, he said his group had not sought or opened formal contacts with governments in Moscow or Washington.

Informal contacts are, perhaps, another matter. Shikhmuradov, switching easily from Russian to English and back, bore the stamp of a practiced politician. Touching a reporter’s arm and joking about American public figures, he seemed more youthful than any Central Asian head of state. Yet he swore "on the life of his children" that he does not want to run Turkmenistan himself. "There will be nobody who will replace Niyazov," he said in English. "It’s impossible. We would like the government to continue [for 18 months before elections] so there will be no problem for our legitimacy. If you have questions to bring him, [we will see] if he is in a position to answer."

In recent months, Niyazov has purged his security service, the KNB; in the interview, Shikhmuradov repeated detailed allegations that the president has personally overseen hashish convoys from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan and Russia and laundered money from drug sales. [For more detail, see the Eurasia Insight archive.] Shikhmuradov says his group has conveyed these claims to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and to "specialists" at the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Prevention, but it is hard to predict how these bodies can use them.

Other observers say Niyazov has been stockpiling source materials for heroin and selling those materials for personal profit. The United States has twice arrested heads of state on drug charges in its own hemisphere, but seems unlikely to do so with an Asian dictator. However, says an international expert, the Turkmen government creates extremely high risks for the entire region. So, the expert says, the United States might "smile" if Russian agents were to charge Niyazov.

Pressed for details on a strategy, Shikhmuradov said his group had no "threshold" date in mind for a formal effort. He suggested the turning point in the country’s history would follow a "subconscious" shift in decision-makers’ minds. "We are 99 percent certain of the future, and that gives us the excuse to talk about not only politics but economics and a plan for the day after," he said. Most of Turkmenistan’s employed workers are poor farmers; the country has tried to develop a gas and oil industry with limited success and has begun discussing the creation of a gas pipeline that would originate in Afghanistan and dump out into Pakistan.

Pipelines are vulnerable to corruption and mismanagement, especially in fragile democracies. And Niyazov may control critical amounts of the nation’s wealth himself. A move to arrest him, which nobody has acknowledged preparing, might expose broad corruption. It also might prompt questions about how much Shikhmuradov knew during his tenure as foreign minister. The dissident, whom Niyazov fired on charges that he abused his position, rebuked the idea of complicity. He said Niyazov had tricked him and other progressives and that he admitted to mistakes. At the same time, he insisted that he had "never given cause to believe [he had been] a conduit for Niyazov’s strategy." He also disavowed the idea of seeking "revenge" against the president. "We don’t believe in coups," he said. "I only want to stop this monster and�save my country."

Indeed, Shikhmuradov promises he will not run for elective office. He says he wants to be an analyst or researcher, articulating conclusions he’s drawn in 30 years as a diplomat. After talking about his certainty that Niyazov would not commit suicide even if convicted of drug trafficking, Shikhmuradov began outlining the case for a new international dictators’ court. Such a court, unlike the tribunals that the UN organized to try war criminals from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, would always be prepared to hear cases. As such, Shikhmuradov said, it would pose a "constant threat" to dictators who otherwise elude justice because they don’t commit traditional war crimes. Shikhmuradov mused that such a court might be a prerequisite for a "healthy globalization."

Unlike Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, which are becoming United States allies in the war on terrorism, Turkmenistan is strenuously neutral in foreign affairs. And unlike Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan, it has not developed strong relationships with multinational companies. Shikhmuradov says he and his colleagues are only awaiting a "correct understanding" that "the situation in Turkmenistan is intolerable." Once that understanding takes root, he says his group already has the resources it needs.

Editor�s Note: Alec Appelbaum is a contributing editor to EurasiaNet.

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

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