Field Reports

Built in 1985, the Gabala radar station was an element of the Soviet anti-missile defence system. Located in a mountainous area in northern Azerbaijan, it is designed for ballistic missile early warning, including tracking, coordinate measuring and computation of trajectory parameters. Its range capability on targets is 6,000 kilometers, which allows monitoring of Iranian, Turkish, Indian, Iraqi, Pakistani, and partly Chinese airspace, along with several Asian and African countries.

After more than a year after the interethnic clashes between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in the southern regions of Kyrgyzstan, the situation is far from resolved. Local observers report that the situation on the state border and in the Sokh enclave of Uzbekistan is deteriorating. Moreover, the Committee on protection of the state border of Uzbekistan reports that “certain representatives” of the Batken region authorities in Kyrgyzstan seek “to aggravate the situation artificially.”

Ahead of Tajikistan’s 20th independence anniversary on 9 September, President Emomali Rahmon sent a draft law to the country’s parliament on July 27, which would grant full amnesty or reduced terms for nearly 15,000 individuals serving prison sentences and awaiting legal proceedings in pre-trial detention. Over 8,500 may be released from jail under the proposed amnesty, which will extend to all female inmates, minors, convicts over the age of 55, disabled inmates, foreign nationals, veterans of the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, military deserters, and those suffering from cancer, tuberculosis or other serious illnesses. Prisoners eligible for release will also include those sentenced for crimes of negligence, other offences punishable by jail terms not exceeding five years, and economic crimes if the convicts have fully repaid the financial losses they caused.

The latest statement by President Nazarbayev’s political advisor Ermukhamet Ertysbayev has literally turned the community of political commentators upside down. In his July 25 interview for the reputable Russian newspaper Kommersant, Ertysbayev said that if Kazakhstan’s President was to prematurely relinquish his responsibilities, his son-in-law Timur Kulibayev would be most likely to succeed him. This statement follows a recent publication in the German tabloid Bild, which reported about Nazarbayev’s hospitalization in one of Hamburg’s most prominent clinics. According to the German press, Nazarbayev might have been diagnosed with cancer and has visited the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf to receive expensive treatment. This information, though strongly denied by the Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Kazakhstan’s Embassy in Berlin, is now subject to lively discussions about the future of the current president and his political heritage.

U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed Russian ties to the explosion near the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi last year, the Washington Times reported on July 27th. Russia termed the publication an attempt to stir a new “propaganda hype”.

On July 25, the newly-formed Council for the Selection of Judges started interviewing the candidates to the vacant positions of judges of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Chamber. Almost 130 applicants are competing for 35 vacant posts in the Supreme Court and 11 in the Constitutional Chamber. The names of the selected candidates will be finalized by August 5 and sent to the President, who will in her turn submit the list of candidates to the parliament for approval.

Competition between the West and Russia for the transport of Caspian gas to the European market is increasing. As the time approaches for Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to decide to whom their natural gas will be sold and which routes will be used to bring gas to Europe, the struggle for gas reserves intensifies.

On June 27, Georgia’s ruling National Movement party and several opposition parties signed an agreement on electoral system reform. The deal determining provisions for amendments to the Electoral Code was hailed by the authorities but rejected by six opposition parties claiming that it offers only “façade changes” and does not address fundamental electoral shortfalls. Three local election watchdog groups also criticized the deal and expressed concerns over inbuilt legal controversies. 

On June 28, Kazakhstan took over the chairmanship of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) from Tajikistan at a meeting of OIC foreign ministers in Astana. This 57-member state organization assembled representatives from 11 observer countries, the UN, the OSCE, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Collective Security Treaty Organization as well as high-level delegations from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, China and others. One of the first steps taken by the new chairman was to propose renaming the Organization, which has become the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The failure of the Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Kazan on June 24 to reach a compromise on the principles of settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh showed that the influence of great powers in the South Caucasus region is weakening. The three countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, the U.S. and France, have previously acted as neutral brokers assisting the parties to the conflict in finding a peaceful solution. While their interests in the South Caucasus differ, they have shared a concern to inhibit a destabilization of the region which could lead to resumed hostilities.