Turkmenistan: Peace Corps Suffers New Setback, But Still Operating

Turkmenistan has refused to extend the visas of half a dozen Peace Corps volunteers who had been in the country for two years, but has not (yet?) booted the program out of the country, as has happened in other parts of the former Soviet Union. An official at the US Embassy in Ashgabat confirms that 18 volunteers continue to work in all five of the country’s regions.

“Six US Peace Corps Volunteers departed Turkmenistan at the end of March 2012. They departed after 24 months in Turkmenistan, but a few months earlier than originally scheduled because their visas were not extended,” the official wrote on April 3 in reply to emailed questions. “Peace Corps leadership and the US Embassy leadership are in an on-going dialogue with the Turkmen government about the future of the program, including its size and scope.”

The Peace Corps program in Turkmenistan, which has seen 750 volunteers rotate through since September 1993, has had its fair share of visa problems, delays, and other uncertainties in the last few years, so closure of the program would not come as a complete surprise to Central Asia watchers. 

Indeed, it would fit into a larger trend. Kazakhstan last year abruptly closed its Peace Corps program, citing its “great progress” in development as a reason it no longer needed young American volunteers teaching health, business development and English, and providing information about the United States. Volunteers in Kazakhstan also circulated reports, as EurasiaNet.org wrote at the time, of “sexual assaults, the threat of terrorism, and an uncomfortable operating environment, in which allegations of espionage have been aired in the mass media.” 

Russia closed the program in 2002, using logic similar to Kazakhstan’s, and Uzbekistan kicked out its volunteers following the Andijan massacre in 2005. Peace Corps has never operated in Tajikistan. The program remains in Kyrgyzstan, though American officials considered abandoning it during the deadly unrest there in 2010, when volunteers were repeatedly sequestered at the Manas air base. 

So if Peace Corps were kicked out of Turkmenistan, the only surprise would be that they have lasted in the hermitic country for this long.