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.”
It’s never a good time to be a government critic in Tajikistan, but this week has been particularly bad. Two critics have been violently attacked in separate incidents.
A leader of the minority Uzbek community in Khatlon Province, Salim Shamsiddinov, 57, was beaten with a metal pipe in broad daylight on May 5 near his home in Qurghon-Teppa.
Shamsiddinov told Radio Ozodi (Radio Liberty’s Tajik service) that he believes the attack, carried out by three athletic-looking men, was related to a recent interview he gave the newspaper “Millat,” where he criticized Tajik authorities for their “nationalist” position in dealing with rival Uzbekistan. (That statement so upset his allies that the day Shamsiddinov was attacked he was also dismissed from his post as deputy chairman of the Society of Uzbeks in Tajikistan.) He has also regularly criticized Tashkent's approach to relations with Tajikistan. Uzbeks make up roughly 15 percent of Tajikistan’s population.
Separately, on May 7 in Dushanbe, television presenter Daler Sharipov was hospitalized in an attack by unknown assailants. Asia-Plus reports a suspect has been detained, but Sharipov’s friend, who witnessed the attack, says he is not certain the suspect is the assailant.
TeliaSonera's is a familiar logo in Central Asia and the Caucasus
Traveling to the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku this month? You might think twice before picking up an Azercell SIM card for your mobile phone, even though the company is one of the event's main sponsors.
An investigation by the Swedish public broadcaster, Sveriges Television (SVT), last month alleges that TeliaSonera, the Swedish-Finnish telecommunications giant, is helping authoritarian regimes in the former Soviet Union spy on their own citizens, making the company complicit in human rights abuses.
TeliaSonera has given dictatorships like Azerbaijan, Belarus and Uzbekistan – which rank among the world's worst human rights abusers – access to its systems in exchange for lucrative contracts, says the hour-long report, which aired on April 17 and is available online with English-language subtitles.
A former executive from the company said on condition of anonymity that TeliaSonera – which is 37 percent owned by the Swedish government – has granted security services in these countries real-time access to all telephone calls, data and text messages, which has facilitated the arrest of opposition members in Belarus and a savage attack on an Azerbaijani journalist.
In Azerbaijan, the security agency even has an office of its own in the Azercell building, said the report. TeliaSonera operates Azercell in Azerbaijan, Geocell in Georgia, Kcell in Kazakhstan, Tcell in Tajikistan and Ucell in Uzbekistan, among others. It also holds a major stake in Turkey's Turkcell.
“If there was a glitch [with monitoring calls], the security agency called. They’d want us to shut down the network until the problem was solved,” the former TeliaSonera executive said of his experience dealing with the Belarusian KGB.
Police in Vakhdat, Tajikistan, detained Tagoibek Sharifbekov last month, suspecting he’d stolen a cell phone. They were eager for a confession, Amnesty International reports: “Allegedly, electric shocks were applied to his fingers, and his head was submerged into a sink filled with water for two hours, with breaks so he did not suffocate, and he was kicked in the chest.”
Reportedly, in the evening that day Tagoibek Sharifbekov was released, but his two passports were confiscated, and he was told to bring 1,700 somoni (350 USD) to the police station the following day. The victim of the theft allegedly told police that Tagoibek Sharifbekov was not guilty. A medical examination carried out on Tagoibek Sharifbekov on 10 April concluded that his injuries could have been caused by a hard, blunt object and that bruises and abrasions may have been caused by electric shocks.
Sharifbekov’s case is not unique; Tajik police are well known for employing torture to extract confessions. (Last year they claimed one detainee died from beating his own head against his cell wall; another, police claim, jumped to his death from his second-floor holding cell.)
Sharifbekov is unique because he’s spoken out, though authorities appear to have no intention of examining his allegations, instead pressuring him to drop calls for an investigation and telling him he could have hit his head climbing into a minibus. He’s also brave.
Vegetarians in Central Asia must often explain to well-meaning restaurant staff that chicken and lamb (even when it’s ground) are meat. The idea that someone would purposely choose to avoid eating meat can be perplexing in a region where lamb, beef and sometimes horse are considered the heart of any good meal. Vegetarians have been known to swoon with joy over a plate of fried eggs at a truck stop -- after politely pushing aside the greasy hot dogs, of course.
Vegans? Stay at home.
In this desolate landscape, impoverished Tajikistan offers some traditional peasant fare that gives solace to Central Asia’s meat-avoiders, and anyone else looking for an alternative to shashlik.
Not just any eatery will do. In Dushanbe, seek out a café called Hojiyon – “pilgrims” in Tajik – in the city’s 112th “micro-district,” a Soviet-built suburb of faded, five-story cement blocks surrounded by kitchen gardens and rusting playgrounds.
Hojiyon’s specialties are kurtob and shakarob -- similar dishes, both eaten from shared wooden bowls, usually by hand. Kurtob is a jumble of flaky bread called fatir, fresh tomato and onion, oil (your choice of flax seed or vegetable) and kefir, a mildly fermented milk drink. A bit lighter and less soupy is the shakarob – fatir, tomatoes, onion and yoghurt, without the oil. Add salt and slices of hot, green pepper to taste. The result brings to mind a Central Asian take on Tuscan panzanella, a mushy salad of day-old ciabatta, tomatoes, onions and vinaigrette whose name comes from the word for “little swamp.”
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is on a visit to Dushanbe, where he said that Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon has "confirmed" his interest in extending the lease on the base for Russia's 201st Motorized Rifle Division. From the AP:
Lavrov told reporters that no date for the deal’s signing has been set yet, but added that Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon had given the necessary instructions will be issued to “speed up the negotiation process.”
But there's just one snag: the price.
Tajikistan’s ambassador to Russia hinted this week that his government would seek $300 million annually in cash or equivalent in military assistance for the bases. Moscow is expected to seek a much lower fee.
Lavrov also emphasized in his speech that the base's presence wasn't just in Russia's interest, but operates under the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and is ready to counter "external" threats to Tajikistan as well.
Anyway, it's hard to argue that you're close to a deal when the two sides apparently remain far apart on the financial terms. Also telling is that Rahmon himself didn't seem to make any comments. In other words, we're still basically at the same place we were eight months ago, when Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said they had reached a deal. Of course, what we see in public is just a tiny tip of the iceberg of the negotiations that are going on, so perhaps there has been some real progress. But if they are still far apart on price, then that suggests there's a long way to go.
Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon said that the country won't consider the possibility of countries other than Russia setting up military bases there. From a Reuters report:
"Russia is the main strategic partner and our natural ally, and I hope that it will always be like this," Rakhmon said in the Tajik capital Dushanbe.
"On my desk, I have a folder containing offers from other states, promising wonders in return for opening their military bases and other facilities, but we are not even considering them," he said, without naming the countries.
Oh, to see that folder! One can only imagine what "wonders" are being promised.
Anyway, U.S. diplomatic cables from WIkileaks tell a different story, saying that Tajikistan government officials "have indicated they would be happy for the U.S. establish an air base in Tajikistan."
But Rahmon's statement is nonetheless notable at a time when India still appears to be holding out hope to use the Ayni airbase outside Dushanbe, and the rumbling about a possible U.S. base of some sort is getting louder. (And not just in Dushanbe, where such rumors are fairly constant, but even in Washington.) So is Rahmon serious this time?
Tajikistan’s economic growth, hinging on remittances and public spending, is not sustainable without substantial private investment, but Dushanbe is doing too little to stimulate a friendly climate for investors, says a new report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
On paper, Tajikistan’s economy looks in decent shape. GDP grew by 7.4 percent in 2011, up from 6.5 percent in 2010, says the April report, “Outlook 2012: Confronting Rising Inequality in Asia.” The Bank expects 5.5 percent growth in 2012. “Agriculture grew by 7.9 percent, despite difficult climatic conditions. Cotton production shot up by 34 percent, reflecting a 30 percent rise in the area devoted to cotton, as high international prices encouraged additional planting. Other crops, particularly fruits and vegetables, also showed double-digit growth.”
But services -- fueled by rising remittances from labor migrants abroad -- were the main source of growth, expanding by 13.5 percent. Indeed, labor migrants, mostly in Russia, sent home the equivalent of 45 percent of GDP, making Tajikistan the most remittance-dependent country in the world, according to the World Bank.
Uzbekistan appears to be expanding its de facto economic blockade of Tajikistan, pushing the impoverished country further into Central Asia’s most remote corner.
Since a mysterious explosion at a bridge in Uzbekistan last November severed southern Tajikistan from rail traffic, the region’s 3.5 million residents have remained dependent on alternative, more expensive transport routes. Even humanitarian food aid has had trouble reaching the Tajiks.
Tashkent claimed the blast was the work of terrorists. But eyewitnesses discount that explanation, fostering speculation that the Uzbeks damaged the bridge on purpose to punish Tajikistan. The two countries have had a contentious relationship, particularly in terms of water resources.
Now Tajik authorities say that the Uzbeks, rather than repairing the bridge and reopening the line as promised, have found a new excuse for further delays. According to an official at Tajik Railroads, the Uzbeks have begun dismantling parts of the line to move a train station closer to the Tajik border.
On March 30, Vladimir Sobkalov, vice chairman of Tajik Railroads, told Radio Free Europe’s Tajik Service that Dushanbe, which jointly operates the railroad line, has not been informed about Tashkent’s intentions. Uzbek authorities have not commented.
