Following a trip to Ashgabat by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asia, Robert O. Blake, Jr. and other U.S. officials and business people, there was little to show despite expectations that certain progress might be made on the Obama Administration’s goals for Turkmenistan and the region. These involve enlisting further cooperation from Ashgabat on the Northern Distribution Network to provide non-lethal supplies to troops in Afghanistan, as well as obtaining access to Turkmenistan’s considerable gas reserves and helping Central Asia diversify its energy corridors away from Russian dependency.
U.S. oil and gas companies hope to eventually enter into agreements with the Turkmen government to help supply any trans-Caspian pipelines to Europe via the Caucasus. While Blake welcomed what he characterized as “Turkmenistan’s decision to provide gas to the Nabucco project,” Turkmen leaders said nothing further about Nabucco and the Turkmen state media coverage of the meetings with Blake only mentioned his praise for Ashgabat’s initiative in the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline.
On the eve of Blake's trip, Human Rights Watch issued an appeal on behalf of Pastor Ilmurad Nurliev, a Protestant preacher in the provincial city of Mary. Nurliev was sentenced to four years of prison in October 2010 on charges of allegedly swindling money from four parishioners. All four people testified they had been forced to make a contribution to the congregation, but the defense attorney pointed out that at least one of these informants had been in prison and may have cooperated with the state to set up the pastor. Human Rights Watch says the pastor was not given a fair trial, and a dozen parishioners who testified on his behalf were ignored. There was hope this kind of individual case might be solved on humanitarian grounds in bilateral talks; no action has been taken to date.
For four years, the U.S. has not had any ambassador appointed to Ashgabat. The current chargé d'affaires has the title of ambassador but was not appointed by the Senate. Evan A. Feigenbaum, a director at the Eurasia Group and former State Department official who travelled a number of times to Turkmenistan has recently made a sharp critique of the Administration in an article titled “Strengthening Fragile Partnerships: An Agenda for the Future of US-Central Asia Relations,” a report by the Central Asia Study Group, chaired by former Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage at the Project 2049 Institute. During his tenure at State, Feigenbaum attempted unsuccessfully to push through a plan whereby Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan would not wait to resolve their differences over border demarcation but would both cooperate in a Western plan for a pipeline across the Caspian Sea bed. Now, he is scathing in his indictment of U.S policy: “To date, and in nearly every respect, the United States has failed to achieve its initial, ambitious, strategic objectives in Central Asia.” Some observers have theorized that the confirmation process has stalled for so long because the State Deparment does not want to see increased Congressional scrutiny about U.S. involvement in this part of the world near the Iranian and Afghan borders. Feigenbaum noted that the U.S. could not pursue interests without a diplomat on the ground, concluding, “This is without precedent in any country with which the US has not had an underlying policy dispute.”
The Turkmen government was shaken up by a reported rape and murder of one student and assault of another at the prestigious Turkmen Polytechnical Institute, the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights (TIHR) reports. According to unnamed sources, early in February, three male students at the institute invited three female students to a party at a rented apartment, and tragically the night ended with one woman raped and strangled to death, and another nearly suffocated and hospitalized in critical condition. A third woman managed to escape to tell the police.
Rather than treating the incident as a criminal case and a human rights issue, Turkmen officials converted it into an example of how youth were being poorly indoctrinated by the state. No mention of the women's death and injury was made at all; at a cabinet meeting, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said merely that a "negative incident” had occurred. As has happened before during crises, the president behaved as if the crime occurred due to a failure of the entire system to adequately control subordinates, rather than as a matter of personal accountability. He dismissed the deputy minister for higher and secondary vocational schools, the rector of the institute; and the provost for academic affairs, and also reprimanded the vice premiere. Students are already under strict control from university authorities, but the tragedy led to further lock-downs and searches of their dormitories.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported that teachers and university instructors are also finding themselves further disciplined. Secondary school teachers have been ordered to report for work at 8:00 a.m. and remain in the school building until 4:00 pm regardless of class schedules. There has been some speculation that the harsher control over the universities could be related to fears of revolutions such as have been occuring in the Middle East.
Two pop singers, Maksat Kakabaev and Murat Ovezov were arrested after their Western-style video was played on the Turkish music TV channel TBM. They were first summoned by the Culture and Broadcasting Ministry and warned not to appear again in foreign media. Later they were detained by national security officials, and while at first it seemed they might only be held for 14 days, now there is concern they will face more serious charges.
Talks in February on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline were inconclusive, the Pakistani online business publication brecorder.news reported. Neither India nor Pakistan approved Turkmen proposals. According to sources at the meeting, Turkmengas, the state gas company, first proposed linking the price of gas to oil, then changed it to naptha. Then Turkmenistan switched to seeking a price equivalent to the delivered price of liquefied natural gas that India currently gets from Qatar under a long-term contract, and plans to ship to Australia in the future, The Hindu news agency reported. India rejected this offer as well, saying if it wanted to pay those rates, it wouldn't be investing in the multi-billion dollar TAPI project, and would have simply increased its imports from existing sources. Turkmenistan is trying to sweeten the deal for Pakistan by indicating that it will also help with electricity. Now, conveniently, the Turkmen Geology state corporation has discovered a new natural gas deposit in the area where TAPI is to originate.
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick compiles the Turkmenistan weekly roundup for EurasiaNet. She is also editor of EurasiaNet's Sifting the Karakum blog. To subscribe to the weekly email with a digest of international and regional press, write [email protected]
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