Field Reports

During a meeting of Tajikistan’s Security Council on February 10, 2011, President Emomali Rahmon expressed concern about “the growth of religious-extremist feelings in the society”. According to the President, these “feelings” threaten national security and stability in Tajikistan.

The social upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries of the Middle East have caused a risk of social and political instability also in post-Soviet countries, which are ruled by authoritarian regimes. In Muslim countries of the post-Soviet space, in particular in Azerbaijan, the unrest in the Maghreb region has encouraged Islamic groups supported by Iran to call for protests against the government, voicing complaints about corruption and strategic ties with the U.S. and Israel.

In January 2011, Tehran’s embassy in Dushanbe announced that an Iranian company will invest about US$ 300 million in building two cement plants in Tajikistan. When completed, the new coal-driven plants are expected to produce two million metric tons of cement a year. According to the embassy, Iran is now choosing from four sites with large limestone reserves, which have been proposed by the Tajik government, to decide where to build the plants.

The recent World Economic Forum in Davos, attended by more than 2,500 high-level decision-makers from all over the world, was the place where Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Karim Massimov promised that his country would double its daily oil output by 2020, thus reaching the level of 3 million barrels per day. A few months earlier, the Kazakh Minister of oil and gas, who had been traditionally invited to deliver a keynote speech at the Kazakhstan International Oil and Gas Exhibition (KIOGE) in Almaty, told the journalists that over 100 million tons of oil would be exported every year in ten years’ time. He also hinted at a possibility that such a trend might be sustained for at least four decades.

On January 11, the national commission investigating the causes of the inter-ethnic clashes between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in southern Kyrgyzstan presented its report to the Kyrgyz parliament. The long-awaited official results of the commission caused heated discussions for two full days in parliament.

The Georgian government and some European officials view the recently signed Mistral deal between Russia and France as a potential threat to Georgia and to regional security.

The special military operation that commenced in eastern Tajikistan on September 22 after an armed attack on a military convoy, which killed 28 servicemen, continued in early January. On January 4, representatives of Tajikistan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that eight members of Alovuddin Davlatov’s armed gang, including the leader himself, were killed. The special operation was considered a success, but at the same time raised questions about the way the bodies of the eliminated militants are treated.

Azerbaijan has ambitious plans as a producer of defense and security equipment. While this will bring new income to the state budget, it also implies risks related to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh involving Azerbaijan and neighboring Armenia.

A few weeks after the OSCE Summit in Astana had reiterated the commitment of Kazakhstan and other member states to democracy and the rule of law, a group of Kazakh citizens put forward an audacious proposal to extend President Nazarbayev’s current mandate until December 6, 2020 without holding presidential elections in 2012. The popular assembly organized in the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk in eastern Kazakhstan consisted of 850 representatives from 14 regions as well as the cities of Astana and Almaty who unanimously voted for the commencement of an endorsement campaign. According to Kazakhstan’s constitution, a referendum may be organized upon the condition that at least 200,000 signatures are collected and submitted to the Central Election Commission for verification and approval.

The National Statistical Service of Armenia released the report “Armenia: Social Snapshot and Poverty”, which summarizes the data of a survey conducted on almost 8,000 households countrywide in 2009. All urban and rural communities were included in the sample. The report also contains data and information available from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Health Care, and the Ministry of Education and Science. It presents the poverty levels in Armenia in 2008 and 2009, and contains an updated methodology for determining the poverty level (a new assessment of the consumer basket value, different from the one applied earlier for the years 2004-2008).