Tajikistan has seen the massive amount of military aid that Russia has promised Kyrgyzstan, and has decided that it wants in on the windfall. And it's willing to delay the ratification of the Russia-Tajikistan military base agreement signed back in October in order to get it, according to a report in Russian newspaper Kommersant.
Recall that last year, Russia promised a big military aid package to both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, with the former country getting $1.3 billion and the latter $200 million. Tajikistan's aid was part of the deal for a 30-year extension of Russia's lease on the 201st military base. It's not clear why it took so long, but Tajikistan's president, Emomali Rahmon, has now apparently decided that he got a raw deal. From Kommersant:
In the words of Kommersant's source close to the bilateral government commission [working out the base agreement] Dushanbe has raised two additional conditions [to the base deal]. The Tajik side has demanded a formal bilateral agreement based on the verbal agreements reached in October -- on Russia's provision of the means of modernizing Tajikistan's armed forces, and money for the development of its hydroenergy. Moreover, in Dushanbe they have expressed the wish for Moscow to allocate more than the promised $200 million for the rearming of the Tajik army, noting that Russia promised Kyrgyzstan around $1 billion for the analogous purpose.
This comes on top of another delay, imposed by the Tajik side in January. And the Kommersant piece ends with a dark warning:
With its territory torn apart by separatism and with Russian troops hanging around within a stone/missile-throw away from its capital, you might think Georgia already has too much on its plate as far as security threats go. But Tbilisi, as always, likes to think several moves ahead.
During her visit to Georgia last November, the EU foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton invited Georgia to chip in some manpower for the bloc’s security projects, the Georgian Ministry of Defense has announced.
“We have received a proposal from [the] EU to consider Georgia’s cooperation with European security and defense institutions and contribution to its missions,” a March 18 ministry statement reads. Georgia said yes and is now working out the kinks, according to the ministry.
The details about the scope and nature of Georgia’s participation in the EU’s 500-men-strong Mali mission are not yet known. The mission will be training Mali's armed forces to deal with Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic militants who took over part of the West African country earlier this year before being repulsed mostly by French and Chadian forces, with help from Canada and the US.
The likely reasons for Georgia's decision to get involved are straightforward: Tbilisi owes a security favor to the EU for negotiating and monitoring the peace between Georgia and Russia, but, more importantly, the Mali job will help Georgia earn some points for its ultimate goal of joining the EU.
Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s strongman President Islam Karimov, has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons lately. But in the pages of one magazine – her own glossy published in Uzbekistan – she’s a superstar.
A recent copy of Bella Terra, a Karimova project that publishes articles and interviews on style and fashion (and which also has a website), is packed to the gills with material promoting the president’s daughter and her fashion label, Guli.
The December 2012/January 2013 issue of the Russian-language magazine is devoted to the Style.uz event, which Karimova (dubbed “the princess of Uzbekistan” in a promotional interview that recently came to light) organizes in Tashkent every year. Style.uz is a jamboree of fashion shows and cultural events that attracts the Tashkent glitterati and a handful of foreign B-list celebrities.
From the magazine we learn some fascinating facts about Style.uz: This year foreign visitors lauded Uzbekistan’s famed hospitality a full 1,467 times; 76 bottles of hairspray were used in the hairdressing competition; and 10 parachutes could have been made from the 1,050 meters of silk and adras (a silk and cotton mix) used in one fashion event.
But for the most part the magazine gets down to the serious business of promoting Karimova (who is also known as Googoosha, her stage name when she is in her pop star persona).
Russian President Vladimir Putin is a judo black belt who likes to shoot a dagger-eyed stare at underlings who vex him. But it seems that the Kremlin’s resident tough guy is in the process of getting drilled by a certain dentist from Turkmenistan.
On March 11, Putin huddled on the phone with Turkmenistan’s leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov to examine the general state of bilateral relations. According to the Russian presidential website, Putin paid “special attention … to the situation concerning people with dual-citizenship [in Turkmenistan].”
As Turkmenophiles well know, tens of thousands of Turkmen citizens also hold Russian passports thanks to a 1993 dual-citizenship agreement. So it’s no surprise that Putin is interested in the issue. Turkmenistan over the years has made life difficult for its Russian “dual” citizens, and Turkmen officials have periodically made attempts to terminate the practice, including a major push a decade ago.
Late in 2012, Turkmen leaders again sent signals that they are thinking about doing away with dual citizenship. Specifically, a question that was part of the country’s census asked respondents to state a preferred citizenship. There’s little doubt that Putin, in raising the issue with Berdymukhamedov on March 11, flexed his muscles and tried to use all powers of persuasion to get Ashgabat to ease up on Russian passport holders.
Screenshots from Press TV report on Iran's March 17 launching of Jamaran-2 destroyer in Caspian Sea
Iran has launched a new destroyer in to the Caspian Sea, its largest ship yet in its Caspian fleet. The ship, the Jamaran 2, was launched at a March 17 ceremony in the port city of Bandar-e Anzali attended by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and top military officials. According to Press TV, Ahmadinejad said at the event:
"Without a doubt all neighboring countries are happy with Iranian Navy’s achievements because they consider these advancements as a step towards their own security in the region."
And Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi added:
"We have a great relationship with all countries bordering the Caspian. It was decided to have a unified force protecting the Caspian, we all agreed. The destroyer Jamaran-2 is to defend against terrorists and smuggling of weapons and drugs in that area."
That's definitely not the case. Azerbaijan, especially, has been worried about Iran's military superiority in the Caspian, and so Baku is likely not happy with this achievement. Russia and Kazakhstan also have shown some suspicion of Iran's intentions.
The Jamaran-2 is an updated of the Jamaran-1 that Iran launched three years ago in the Persian Gulf. By international standards it is more the size of a frigate, though Iran calls it a destroyer. It can carry surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, as well as torpedoes, and has a helipad.
Vanuatu, a diplomatically schizophrenic island in the South Pacific, just had another of its many mood swings vis-à-vis the South Caucasus' territorial disputes. The island nation, which has been twitching between recognizing and not recognizing breakaway Abkhazia’s independence from Georgia, now says it is picking Tbilisi over Sokhumi, Radio New Zealand International reports.
The 12,000-square-kilometer archipelago with the self-conscious national motto of “Yumi, yumi, yumi” ("We, we, we") has asked Georgia to forget about the misunderstandings of the past and come into its diplomatic embrace.
Vanuatu threw itself into the middle of the international controversy over Abkhazia’s status in 2011 after the breakaway region's de-facto government reported that the country had become the sixth to recognize Abkhazia's Russia-backed independence from Georgia. Journalists and diplomats went chasing Vanuatu officials for confirmation, but they just could not get a definitive response.
Foreign Minister Alfred Carlot was first to confirm that his nation had recognized Abkhazia's recognition, then Vanuatu’s UN envoy Donald Kalpokas said it had not. Carlot responded by saying it had. Abkhazia's de-facto foreign ministry, for its part, waving a signed document establishing diplomatic relations "on the level of ambassadors," said it had the proof.
In recent months, Washington and its NATO allies have been discussing what matériel to bequeath Uzbekistan as a thank you for its help getting them out of Afghanistan. Tashkent has made it clear it has a long wish list. And there’s no time like the present: Tashkent says it is already battling Afghans on the border.
About 10 Afghan citizens attacked Uzbek border guards on March 14 “and attempted to seize weapons,” the State Border Protection Committee told the private 12news.uz website and others. The skirmish occurred after some 30 Afghans “ignored the Uzbek border service’s lawful demands” to leave the Aral-Paygambar Island on the Amu Darya river that separates Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
"With the aim of ensuring its own security, the border duty, after repeated warning shots into the air, was forced to use weapons against the assailers. As a result of the armed encounter, four Afghan citizens received gunshot wounds, three of whom died afterwards. The other violators of the border escaped into their territory. The wounded citizen of the neighboring country has been provided with urgent medical assistance," the border service, which operates under the National Security Service (SNB, former KGB), said.
Violations of Uzbekistan's border by Afghans have been on the rise in recent months, the border service told 12news.uz: "There have been 22 cases of border violations and a total of 106 Afghan citizens have been detained since the beginning of 2013." The two countries share a 137-kilometer border.
Azerbaijan is considering changing the mandate of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Baku and has threatened to expel the US-run National Democratic Institute.
It was not immediately clear which aspect of the work by the OSCE, Europe's key peace and democracy-promoting body, had caused Baku's disgruntlement, but an organization representative, speaking from the OSCE's headquarters in Vienna, confirmed to EurasiaNet.org that the organization's mandate in Azerbaijan was under discussion.
In Baku on March 15, OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier declared in a released statement that ". . .I am confident that the OSCE will continue its co-operation with Azerbaijan.” He denied reports of government inspections of the OSCE office or other worries.
The OSCE representative in Vienna said that Azerbaijani officials in the past have complained about the OSCE’s record in a range of areas, but that any change in the mandate will not affect the peace negotiations over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which are handled by the Minsk Group.
Activities touching on this October's presidential election, in which President Ilham Aliyev will seek a third term, might come to mind as one of the most likely bones of contention. The OSCE in the past has criticized Azerbaijan for poor handling of the electoral process and crackdowns on political dissent. All OSCE-monitored elections in Azerbaijan have fallen short of the organization’s standards.
By now, it's become fairly commonplace to hear Turkey's once-vaunted "zero problems with neighbors" foreign policy spoken about in the past tense. The last two years have certainly not been kind to this policy, which had tried to break past some historical dynamics that had characterized Turkey's relations with certain neighboring countries for decades, if not centuries. While some of the "zero problems" policy's failure can be chalked up to mistakes -- both conceptual and practical -- made Turkish policymakers and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the changes brought about by the Arab uprising and the forces they unleashed, also helped undermine many of the assumptions that Ankara was -- rightly or wrongly -- working under.
In a new analysis, Ian Lesser, an astute observer of Turkish affairs with the German Marshal Fund, takes a look at some of these changes, suggesting that Ankara may be entering a period where it has to now fight several new "cold wars." From Lesser's article:
Over the past decade, Turkey’s foreign policy has been directed toward breaking this pattern of crisis-prone relations, with some real success in the Balkans, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East. The end of largescale competition in Eurasia, alongside Turkey’s economic dynamism and expanding regional commerce, created the conditions for a “zero-problems” approach to the neighborhood. This was a posture admirably suited to its times. But these favorable conditions are disappearing rapidly, and Ankara faces some troubling cold wars, new and old, that will shape the strategic environment and the nature of Turkey’s security partnerships.
State television in Uzbekistan has launched an attack on regional print and broadcast journalists in the Ferghana Valley for allegedly blackmailing entrepreneurs.
This week, O’zbekiston TV’s Oramizdagi Olgirlar (“Scroungers Among Us”) described cases of alleged extortion involving journalists from Namangan and Andijan regions. The report – posted on the station’s website on March 14 – featured interviews with alleged victims and other journalists condemning the "scroungers.”
"Such sleazy people should not be working in this profession," veteran journalist Gulomjon Akbarov said.
The 35-minute program pointed the finger at a magazine called Vatan Kozgusi (“Mirror of the Motherland”), alleging its journalists used fake press cards bearing the logos of international organizations such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It then cheered a court’s decision to jail the magazine’s chief editor, Ravshon Jumayev, for 10 ½ years for allegedly distributing his publication without registration. (The report did not mention him in connection with the blackmail allegations.)
EurasiaNet.org can find no reference to Jumayev elsewhere in the Uzbek press. Still, some Uzbek journalists may feel a bit threatened by the tale. Critical journalists have a tendency to disappear behind bars in Uzbekistan, a country that placed 164 out of 179 in Reporters Without Borders’ 2013 Press Freedom Index.
