Georgian President MIkheil Saakashvili visits Martyrs Alley in Baku, honoring victims of the Nagorno Karabakh war.
When Georgian President MIkheil Saakashvili made an official visit to Azerbaijan last week, he took with him a bit of his unique brand of anti-Russia rhetoric, saying that Baku today faces a similar threat from Russia as has Tbilisi. From Civil.ge:
After visiting Baku, President Saakashvili said that Russia was preparing the same "scenario" for Azerbaijan, which was applied against Georgia in last year's parliamentary elections when, as he put it, "oligarchs, Russian funds, blackmailing and provocations" were used.
In particular, Saakashvili mentioned the establishment of a diaspora organization in Russia made up of rich businessmen of Azeri origin, which he said posed the same sort of threat as did Bidzina Ivanishvili, the Georgian-born businessman who made billions in Russia and then became prime minister of Georgia on a platform of improving ties with Russia. Saakashvili also noted that Ivanishvili's government pardoned an ethnic Armenian activist, which he said was done "to please" Russia.
Azerbaijan has traditionally been very careful not to provoke Russia; while it similarly feels a threat to its sovereignty from Moscow, it has followed a somewhat more multi-vectored approach than has Georgia, maintaining good relations with Russia, alongside its ties to Turkey, Europe, the U.S, Israel. and others. And Russia, for its part, has not taken an aggressive position against Baku, seeming more interested in maintaining a regional balance of power between Armenia and Azerbaijan. So it's not surprising, as the opposition news site Contact.az notes, that officials in Baku publicly ignored Saakashvili's comments.
As noted in a recent previous post on this blog, despite their interests converging with regards to several significant issues, Turkey and the United States might not quite be in the "golden age" of relations that some folks -- in Ankara, in particular -- have claimed the two allies to be in.
Newly installed Secretary of State John Kerry's current visit to Turkey offers a good indication of the current delicate state of affairs between Ankara and Washington. The fact that Turkey is one of the first countries Kerry is visiting on his maiden voyage abroad as Secretary of State confirms that Ankara remains a crucial ally to the US. But, as Murat Yetkin points out in a column in today's Hurriyet Daily News, Kerry arrives in Turkey bearing a "heavy agenda," with critical and potentially volatile issues relating to Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey-Israel relations where Ankara and Washington are not on the same page.
In a column that appeared the other day on the website of The Hill, Bulent Aras -- a Turkish academic who now directs the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affair's in-house think tank -- and Emirhan Yorulmazlar, a Washington-based analyst, describe the current state of affairs in Turkey-US relations this way:
Kazakhstan is testing some new unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, aka drones) from Russia, a military official has said. Kazakhstan had tried out UAVs from France and Israel but they didn't do well in the cold weather, said General-Major Almaz Dzhumakeev, commander of Kazakhstan's 36th Air Assault Brigade:
"It's necessary to strengthen the reconnaissance units. There will be a competition, a selection, we will see which is acceptable for us and our climate, taking into account the wind and the cold. There have been UAVs which took off, flew 20 meters and crashed because it was so cold..."
According to the general-major, in 2014 after the selection of the supplier country the UAVs will enter service in the armed reconnaissance units of the armed forces of Kazakhstan. "Most likely, next year they will enter service. Where there is reconnaissance, there will be UAVs," he noted.
Kazakhstan has plans to produce its own drones, and also apparently has plans to buy some small reconnaissance drones from the Russian Irkut Corporation.It's also been looking at Chinese UAVs. It's not clear from the recent news stories, but it seems likely that the Irkuts are what Maj-Gen Dzhumakeev was talking about. From the website Russian Aviation, last October:
The Kazakh Ministry of Defense (MoD) will purchase 10 Irkut-10 unmanned reconnaissance aircraft systems (UAS) from Irkut Corporation, Lenta.ru reports.
As the United States winds down its military presence in Afghanistan, there are growing concerns in Washington about what a limited American role in the country might mean for security and for the viability of Afghanistan's still shaky governmental institutions.
One American agency, though, sees a bright future in Afghanistan -- for energy drink companies. In a report released this month by the Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service, the USDA suggest that boom times may be ahead for foreign energy drink makers interested in entering the Afghan market. From the report:
Historically, Afghanistan has been a lightly caffeinated, tea-drinking country. Few Afghans drink coffee, but in recent years, many have developed a taste for energy drinks. Today, Afghans consume energy drinks everywhere and at all hours of the day: during the morning commute to work, in wedding halls, and at private dinners.
Energy drinks are sold everywhere – from street vendors to grocery stores to the finest restaurants. Exact sales figures and just how big the market is remains unknown. However, it is clear that the market for energy drinks is growing rapidly, and that a large number of new brands are competing for customers.
In a fascinating article from last December, RFE/RL offers more on the subject of how Afghanistan went from a "lightly caffeinated" society to a very heavily caffeinated one, reporting that even Taliban fighters are getting into the habit, imbibing energy drinks in order help them on the battlefield. But, as RFE/RL reports, some are calling for a ban on the drinks, both on religious and food safety grounds:
With all the dramatic flair of a silent movie star, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent his security detail home the other day, later saying he needs no bodyguard other than his Dutch-born wife, Sandra Roelofs. He then sat down in his tiny blue electric car and drove himself and the First Lady to the Tbilisi airport for an official trip to Baku.
But after coming back from Azerbaijan, the president found a convoy of security vehicles waiting for him at the airport, as if they were never dismissed. The big black SUVs, dispatched by the government, followed home the little presidential Nissan Leaf, which resolutely ignored them.
President Saakashvili and Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili have fought over speeches, arrests, constitutional changes and more. So, it should come as no surprise that they are now fighting over whether or not the president will have bodyguards.
Since last year's parliamentary elections, most components of the presidential security service -- like most of Georgia's government agencies -- have been taken over by the prime minister’s office. In turn, the president claims that the prime minister's people have been bringing pressure to bear on his personal bodyguards, so that he was compelled to relinquish the reported 350-person team altogether.
Once-flourishing Uzbek-German trade is nosediving. German businessmen are coming forward with horror stories about doing business in Uzbekistan, a country where powerful, voracious families often seize profitable businesses or simply fail to pay for services rendered. But Berlin – eyeing a retreat from Afghanistan through Uzbekistan – is in no position to protest.
"The German private sector, statistics show, is losing faith in Uzbekistan," Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) reported on February 28. “German companies have filed complaints of stolen shares, missing payments and frozen profits.”
Bilateral trade fell 30 percent between 2010 and 2011, from 759 million euros to 518 million euros, the broadcaster said. Germany's Economics Ministry predicts a further 20 percent decrease in 2012.
More than twenty German construction companies, for example, built the Palace of Forums in the capital, Tashkent, in 2009. They are still owed some 60 million euros. "In total, experts estimate that up to 500 million euros are being withheld from German companies by Uzbek partners," DW concluded.
The Swiss-registered Zeromax conglomerate, widely believed to have been linked to the president's daughter Gulnara Karimova, was behind the Palace of Forums and other major construction projects. The company went bust in 2010, leaving behind huge debts. It’s unclear if Karimova suffered, or divested just in time.
The proposal of either the U.S. or Russia building some sort of military training facility/base in southern Kyrgyzstan has been kicking around for a long time, and while there appear to have been real proposals from both Washington and Moscow, neither of them, for reasons still unclear, have ever borne fruit. Now, with Russian government approval of a deal signed late last year to place all the Russian military facilities in Kyrgyzstan under a single agreement, Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta is reporting that a Russian base in Osh is part of the deal:
The case of a Georgian man serving life for an alleged 2005 assassination attempt against former US President George W. Bush in Tbilisi will not be reconsidered, despite pleas from the convict’s mother.
“My son is a political prisoner [and] an illegal prisoner,” Anzhela Arutinian told a February 28 press conference. “They have to give me back my boy. I am all alone. I have no one in this world.“
In family-centric Georgia, such an appeal can carry a certain weight, but, apparently, not with the Ministry of Justice, which, according to the TV station Maestro, said there were no grounds to reconsider the case.
Thirty-four-year-old Vladimer (Vova) Arutinian was convicted in 2006 for allegedly throwing a hand grenade into a crowd that had gathered in downtown Tbilisi's Freedom Square to see President Bush during his May 2005 visit to Georgia. The visit almost turned into a national celebration, with Bush calling the country a "beacon of democracy" and dancing on stage.
Georgian officials initially believed that Arutinian’s grenade was a dud, but later said that it simply failed to detonate. Wrapped in a piece of cloth, the grenade allegedly hit one person in the crowd before landing some 30 meters away from Bush, Georgian police said. Police later raided Arutinian’s apartment in a poor Tbilisi suburb. In the ensuing shootout, one policeman died and Arutinian was wounded.
Kazakhstan and Russia recently announced an agreement to create a joint air defense network, during a visit of Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu to Astana. From RIA Novosti:
Russia and Kazakhstan signed a deal on Wednesday to create a joint regional air defense system, Kazakhstan's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.
“This document will create a platform to secure the defense of Kazakhstan’s airspace and Russia’s adjacent territory,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement....
Russia has previously had such an air defense agreement only with Belarus, but has planned to sign a similar one with Armenia, although the two countries do not share a border.
If that sounds familiar, the two sides announced the same thing two years ago. From RIA Novosti in December, 2010:
Russia and Kazakhstan have agreed to create a joint regional air defense network, chief of Kazakh air defenses Lt. Gen. Alexander Sorokin said on Wednesday.
"We have agreed to create a joint regional air defense network, which is similar to that of Russia and Belarus," Sorokin said, adding that the Kazakh Air Force would be responsible for defending Russian airspace along the border with Kazakhstan.
Except that, two years ago, the story continued:
"The creation of this network envisions free-of-charge deliveries of Russian S-300 air defense systems to Kazakhstan," the general said.
Since then, however, nothing more has been heard of the S-300s. I surveyed a few Russian military experts and none had heard of the systems being delivered, "which," as one said, "makes me think they were not delivered." So what happened? Given the opacity of both sides' militaries, we shouldn't hold our breaths about finding out much.
Behind closed doors, this week a Tajik court ruled in a controversial libel case. To no one’s surprise the plaintiff – the son of a high-ranking government official – won. That Tajikistan’s rich and powerful use courts to bully the media is nothing new, but, this time, the process has exposed Tajiks’ apparently widespread hatred for their country’s judiciary.
In 2010, Rustam Khukumov was sentenced to almost 10 years in a Russian prison, charged, along with three other Tajik nationals, with possessing nine kilos of heroin.
Khukumov is the son of the powerful head of Tajikistan’s railway boss, Amonullo Khukumov. The senior Khukumov is an ally and relative of the Tajik strongman, President Emomali Rakhmon (Khukumov is father-in-law to Rakhmon’s daughter). Could that have anything to do with why the Khukumov scion was released early, under murky circumstances, only a year into his jail term?
For asking that question, the weekly “Imruz News” now owes Khukumov over $10,500 in “moral damages,” a Dushanbe court ruled on February 25. The paper vows to appeal, which means more embarrassing attention on Khukumov.
