Gunboats from Azerbaijan's coast guard threatened international oil company ships working on behalf of Turkmenistan on at least two occasions in 2008, U.S. diplomatic cables from Wikileaks show. The incidents, which don't seem to have been previously reported, caused Turkmenistan's president, Gurbanguly Berdimukhammedov, to accuse his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev of "personally insulting" him and "running like a little boy."
One incident was in April 2008, and involved a vessel from the Malaysian company Petronas in a part of the Caspian that both sides agree is Turkmenistan's:
[U]pon closing in on the Petronas ships/rig, the Azeri gunboats instructed the Petronas captain to move away. He reportedly refused to move, stating that he was nowhere close to Azerbaijan's claimed border. The standoff reportedly lasted for more than a day. In the end, the Petronas captain agreed to move slightly to the east (although not as far as the Azeri border guards at first had demanded), which apparently satisfied the Azeris.
The second was in May 2008 and involved a ship from Canadian company Buried Hill and was in a spot that was (and remains) in dispute between the two countries, around the Serdar/Kyapaz and Omar-Osman/Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields:
In the second episode, the Azeri gunboats again intercepted a vessel that Buried Hill had hired to do some research in block III related to its plans to begin drilling in the first quarter of 2009. Buried Hill told him this time calls were made from Ashgabat to Baku, and that the Azeri vessels subsequently backed off. According to
Buried Hill, there were also Iranian vessels in the area at the time of the interception.
Stricken almost a year ago by a massive arms explosion that reportedly killed scores, residents of Abadan are now preparing to move, en masse, under a new government plan. But why, when Turkmenistan’s authorities still will not admit the town suffered more than a little cosmetic damage?
Little is known of the new plans, except that the location will be a few kilometers closer to Ashgabat, in the Ruhabat District. The company that eventually wins the construction tender will be responsible for everything from sewer pipes to apartment blocks, roads and electricity infrastructure. Authorities are accepting proposals until June 6.
Initially, when the explosion occurred on July 7, 2011, authorities denied both that there had been an explosion and that anyone had died. But with residents’ videos airing on Russian-language newscasts and reappearing on international news sites, after three days authorities admitted that a fireworks factory had caught fire in the summer heat and that 15 people had died. A month later, authorities declared “life was back to normal in Abadan.”
After almost a generation of endless speculation, Ashgabat has finally signed an agreement to ship natural gas to South Asia, Reuters reports.
Turkmengaz, Turkmenistan's state gas monopoly, signed the agreement to supply Afghanistan, Pakistan and India via the long-stalled TAPI pipeline during an annual gas congress in the Caspian Sea resort town of Avaza (TAPI is an acronym for the four countries the pipeline traverses).
Long a sticking point, Ashgabat has demanded all its gas be sold at its border, ensuring payment before the gas moves out of its control.
Turkmenistan – which has one of the world's largest gas reserves including the second largest field, Galkynysh (“Revivial”) – is seeking to diversify exports to break its dependence on sales to Russia and a network of pipelines largely controlled by Moscow. In 2009, Turkmenistan began exporting some gas to China.
TAPI would stretch 1,735 kilometers and alone carry 33 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas a year, more than doubling Turkmenistan’s current exports of roughly 20 bcm per year. The country aims to export 180 bcm by 2030.
But endless war in Afghanistan may still prove a major impediment.
A new report by the United Nations drug agency sheds light on the nuts and bolts of narcotics transit from Afghanistan through Central Asia, highlighting the former Soviet republics’ lackluster efforts at interdiction.
The 106-page report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), released this month, describes how smugglers traffic heroin and opium from Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer, to Russia, the world’s largest consumer. Ninety tons of highly pure heroin, roughly a quarter of the substance exiting Afghanistan, passes through Central Asia annually. Yet in 2010 authorities in the region seized less than 3 percent of it. And despite international efforts to help, that number keeps falling.
Central Asia’s entrenched corruption makes the region a perfect smuggling route, says the report. Senior officials are complicit in the trade, or at least take bribes to look the other way, especially in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. A lack of cooperation among neighbors also offers a boon to traffickers.
The stakes are huge.
“UNODC estimates that in 2010 drug traffickers in Central Asia made a net profit of $1.4 billion from heroin sales. Much of this profit was likely incurred by Tajik traffickers, given that Tajikistan is estimated to handle most of the flow,” said the report. They profit by marking up the heroin by as much as 600 percent once it gets to Russia. Between 70 and 75 percent of the drugs travel by road, leaving a trail of new addicts across Central Asia.
Perhaps this one was a little too close to home in Dushanbe.
Movie theaters in Tajikistan -- a country ranked “not free” by Freedom House, where men are forced to shave their beards and the government spends millions on vanity projects while half the population lives on less than $2 a day -- will not be showing Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest film, “The Dictator.”
The spoof -- which follows an eccentric and brutal Gaddafi-style autocrat, Admiral-General Omar Aladeen (played by Cohen), on his misadventure-filled visit to New York -- conflicts with the “mentality” of the people, a film distributor in Dushanbe told Kloop.kg.
According to the news site, the film was to premiere on May 17 in the rest of Central Asia, save for Turkmenistan – whose parody-worthy late dictator, Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenbashi), could have easily provided some inspiration for Cohen.
Daler Davlatov, a sales manager from the company Tantan, identified by Kloop as the sole distributor of new foreign films in Tajikistan, told the news site that Tajikistan shouldn’t be compared with “Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other countries […] because our mentality, as you know yourself, is different. That’s the only reason we didn’t include ‘The Dictator’ in the list of premieres.”
Other than Davlatov, movie industry insiders contacted by Kloop declined to comment on “The Dictator.”
A woman in Turkmenistan has sent an open letter to President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov protesting his officials’ “barbaric” killing of stray dogs and cats.
Human rights activist Natalia Shabunts writes that state sanitation workers travel around Ashgabat, the capital, feeding the furry feral creatures sausages poisoned with insecticide or stuffed with sharp objects. As a result of the cheap, weak poison, many animals take a long time to die, often writhing in pain on the streets in front of children.
This gruesome approach is not a surprise from Berdymukhamedov’s regime. The all-powerful president is no lover of cats and dogs.
As a WikiLeaked US State Department cable explained, the president was so spooked when a cat crossed his motorcade’s path in 2009 that he fired the officer in charge of safeguarding that stretch of road. Apparently Berdymukhamedov feared the dashing cat portended an assassination attempt.
In 2011, an Ashgabat man was taken into police custody for walking his dog as the president’s motorcade drove past. The man was told he could chose between having his dog shot and serving 15 days in jail. In the end, he served seven days of the 15-day sentence.
In general, Turkmenistan’s policy towards animals is schizophrenic. Though Berdymukhamedov clearly lacks empathy for street dogs, his regime has proclaimed the alabai, a canine long used by Turkmen shepherds to guard their flocks, a national treasure. Exporting them is prohibited.
The Economist has questioned the plausibility of a study conducted by leading UK charity Save the Children, which lauded a trio of Central Asian states for winning the war on child malnutrition.
The annual State of the World’s Mothers report is backed by “spurious statistics,” The Economist says.
The study finds that Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan have made huge strides in reducing child malnutrition. It singles out Uzbekistan (alongside Angola) as one of “two priority countries that have made the fastest progress in reducing child malnutrition – both cut stunting rates in half in about 10 years.”
Uzbekistan topped the list of states that have made the greatest strides. Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan came fifth and sixth respectively.
As The Economist pointed out, half of the top six success stories identified by Save the Children are in Central Asia (while number six is North Korea). “This finding is – how can one put it politely? – counter-intuitive,” The Economist commented.
“Number one on the list is Uzbekistan, a vicious dictatorship which imprisons political opponents and has been the site of mass killings,” it continued, while Turkmenistan “had for many years one of the world’s stranger dictators [Saparmurat Niyazov] who renamed the days of the week after himself and his family.” (Turkmenistan is still run by a dictator who is fostering his own personality cult.)
The pages of Turkmenistan's newspapers have been filled in the past with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's exploits in the saddle, his nimble handling of a speedboat on the Caspian Sea, his driving skills in zippy karts and rally trucks, and lengthy rides by bicycle.
Marking another precedent, Berdymukhamedov last week became the first person to go fishing on the seven-kilometer artificial river at the Avaza tourist resort boondoggle.
The river, which was built a couple of years ago by Turkish companies Polimeks and Ickale, is in truth more a canal than anything. It measures 70 meters wide and five meters deep, and is used for gentle cruising by small- and medium-sized boats.
And now, Berdymukhamedov, who never misses an opportunity to show off his devotion to clean living, is reported by state media to be fond of angling at the site. The presenter of a weekly news summary on May 6 provided more details:
In the second half of the day, the president took a stroll on the banks of the River Avaza, which has become a top attraction at the world-class international resort taking shape on the shores of the Caspian Sea. President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was enchanted by the beauty of this extraordinary natural spot, which excels itself for its health-giving properties, and captures the breeze blowing in from the sea and river as well as the air suffused with the fragrance of the Karakum Desert's flora. During his walk, the leader of the nation cast his bait into the River Avaza, and after some time he reeled in a fish.
Television footage showed the president standing up, rod in hand, and then sitting on a stool and reeling in a fish some 30-40 centimeters long. The report then cut away to a bucket appearing to show a handful of fish he had caught earlier.
But in some respects, Berdymukhamedov proves to have a humane streak toward those detained in an uncomfortable space against their will. And so the fish were released.
In the absence of reliable information about the most isolated of the Central Asian states, Turkmenistan observers are often forced to sift through unsubstantiated rumors. A recent report by the opposition website Gundogar.org provides plenty of these, alleging preferential treatment by authorities to prop up the business interests of the president’s family.
The author gives no indication of his sources. This may be necessary to protect them. On the other hand, it makes it impossible to distinguish truthful information from exaggeration and hearsay.
Nepotism is no shocker in a Central Asian dictatorship. In this case, the most brazen examples given by Gundogar involve Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s son Serder. The website alleges the younger Berdymukhamedov, supposedly something of a party animal, is trying to seize businesses belonging to the son of the late President Saparmurat Niyazov (The “Turkmenbashi”), Murad.
Relatives of the Protector [President Berdymukhamedov’s chosen moniker] are trying (with some success) to get their hands on Murad’s business. After his monopoly on trade in tobacco and alcohol products was dismantled late last year, in February, Berdymukhamedov’s son Serdar, eager to expand its hotel business, demanded Murad give him the Nisa Hotel, located opposite the presidential palace, for almost nothing. However, the son of the ex-president refused, saying the hotel is the legacy of his late father.
After this, irritated by the gall "of this upstart," President Berdymukhamedov issued a decree amending the architectural plan of the street where the Nisa Hotel is situated. As a result, in late February, under the pretext of ensuring the head of state’s security, the hotel was classified as subject to demolition.
The Protector says, "Head for the Racetrack." (From an official 2011 calendar.)
It’s April in Turkmenistan, so horse fever is in the air.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s beloved Horse Day is being celebrated on the last Sunday of the month, and so officials of all stripes are being strongly encouraged to head down to the races this weekend.
As the Chronicles of Turkmenistan reports, students from high and middle school are also being forced to turn up at the hippodrome. Lest anybody think nobody is checking, people in Ashgabat say that failure to comply by those instructions last Sunday prompted concerned queries.
In case the races weren’t enough, state newspaper Neutralny Turkmenistan has over the past few days been printing impassioned verse celebrating the virtues of the equine beast and the country’s pre-eminent jockey: Berdymukhamedov, aka Arkadag (The Protector).
Here are a couple of stanzas from “Akhan,” by People’s Writer Gozel Shagulyeva:
How gracefully you pranced, Akhan!
By your stature you charm me!
You have become a symbol of the era of Arkadag.
What playfulness my Akhan.
By Arkadag you were adopted,
And a symbol of his greatness you have become.
You, beauty of beauties, have soaked up of the fragrance of spring,
Your movements, a pleasure to the eye,
The admiring gaze cannot love you enough.
For the uninitiated, Akhan is a star horse at the presidential stables and is held up as an exemplary descendant of the original specimen of Turkmenistan’s prized Akhal-Teke breed. The poem, published on April 24, is illustrated with a picture of the white steed himself gracefully galloping through hills specked with poppies.
