TURKMENISTAN WEEKLY ROUNDUP
Issue 20 (2012)
May 24 – 30, 2012
*For Breaking News See Our Blog Sifting the Karakum*
News Analysis
According to the Asian Development Bank, the signing of a deal for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline (TAPI) last week marked a new chapter in regional relations. On May 23, India’s GAIL Ltd. and Pakistan's Inter State Gas System Ltd. signed gas sales and purchase agreements with Turkmenistan to supply up to 90 million cubic meters of natural gas a day via TAPI . US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland called the initiative a “very positive step forward and sort of a key example of what we’re seeking with our New Silk Road Initiative, which aims at regional integration to lift all boats and create prosperity across the region, and the State Department’s Senior Advisor for Eurasian Energy, Daniel Stein said that the operationalization of this, as well as the Trans-Caspian pipeline, will turn Turkmenistan into an energy giant, and that US companies are interested in participating in these projects. The next step towards the realization of the pipeline is for the four TAPI nations to find commercial partners to build, finance, and operate the pipeline, which in 2008 was estimated to cost at least $7.6 billion.
While the potential for bringing Turkmen gas to South Asia becomes more real, the possibility for Europe to access Turkmenistan’s rich energy resources seems less so. With the significant increase of the cost of the Nabucco pipeline, which was envisioned as alternative route to deliver gas to Europe bypassing Russia, Hungary’s MOL and Germany’s RWE announced their intentions to withdraw from the project; and last week oil major BP said that the “original Nabucco plan is off the table.” Although President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov declares that cooperation with the European Union is a priority of Turkmenistan's energy policy, all such declarations, negotiations, and plans have not yielded any concrete commitments.
While the US State Department expresses its pleasure with the advancement of the TAPI deal, it remains concerned about the human rights situation in the country. According to the State Department’s Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, human rights violations in Turkmenistan continue, with rampant arbitrary arrests, torture, and disregard for civil liberties; citizens’ inability to change their government; denial of due process and fair trial; arbitrary interference with privacy, home, and correspondence; discrimination and violence against women; and restrictions on the free association of workers. Violators of human rights, most often officials in the security services, or in other branches of the state, act with impunity, which seems to ensure that such violations will only persist.
And yet, President Berdymukhamedov administers some discipline among his subordinates, though it is never quite clear why or for what, when he reprimands or fires them. The official Turkmen press, when citing reasons for the dismissals and the accompanying public “dressing down” of officials falling from grace, trots out the standard phrases “serious shortcomings in his work,” “poor performance,” or “lax control over the entrusted sector.” In his dismissal last week of Bayramgeldi Nedirov, Minister of Oil and Gas Industry and Mineral Resources of Turkmenistan, Berdymukhamedov said a bit more than the standard script, when he announced that “Nedirov did not carry out orders, which inflicted damage on the state economy.” The reasoning continues to be opaque, given that the landmark TAPI deal had only been signed two days before the dismissal.
Berdymukhamedov shuffled more of the top brass, promoting Yagshygeldi Kakaev, Director of the State Agency for Management and Use of Hydrocarbon Resources under the President of Turkmenistan, to the position of Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of Turkmenistan; removing a director of a state TV and radio channel and appointing four new heads of media channels; replacing ambassadors to Belarus, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and transferring the former diplomats to unspecified new jobs.
The President also abolished the Polytechnic institute, where students had allegedly raped and murdered a woman last year, and more recently caused a major road accident, which led to the dismissal of the parents of the responsible students from their jobs, as well as the termination of the head of the institute. This also led to new strict rules for students, prohibiting them from going to nightclubs, cafes, and restaurants, or driving cars to school. In a culture marked by impunity as noted in the US State Department’s Human Rights Report, and in which justice is meted out with such opacity and questionable fairness, it is unclear what the true motives are for the rather harsh responses – closing down a whole institution due to the actions of a few students, or punishing parents for the crimes of their children.
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