Field Reports

On June 9, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Tajikistan, becoming the only head of state attending a high-level international conference on water in Dushanbe. President Ahmadinejad’s personal appearance at the conference is the latest in a series of developments that indicate rapidly improving ties between Tehran and Dushanbe.

The Armenian economy, which was hit strongly by the global economic crisis last year, has started to recover at a more rapid pace than expected. After a drastic drop of the GDP by 14.4 percent in 2009, which was one of the worst downturns in the world, the economy grew by 7.2 percent in January-April 2010, in comparison with the same period the previous year. This development is markedly more positive than the government’s budgetary forecasts, which predicted a growth of 1-2 percent. In the same four-month period, the foreign trade turnover grew by more than 30 percent, including a 64.3 percent jump in exports. In fact, the recovery was not only more rapid than expected; it also showed that after the crisis in 2009, Armenia’s economy underwent beneficial structural changes.

The Georgian Public Broadcaster, with financial support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) hosted the first pre-electoral two-day live TV debates of the Tbilisi mayoral candidates three weeks ahead of the May 30 local elections.

The Kyrgyz Interim Government has appointed Roza Otunbaeva as a transitional President for a 1.5-year term to ensure stability in the country and provide free and fair parliamentary elections in October this year. However, the appointment has to be approved in an upcoming referendum. If approved, the country will have a legitimate state institution; otherwise, it will face an even more serious political crisis.

On the night of May 7, a terrible natural disaster occurred in the Kulyab region of Khatlon province in the south of Tajikistan. A flash flood took tens of lives and left thousands homeless. The Government reports that at least forty people were killed in the disaster. The mudflow and flooding continued in other districts of Tajikistan. In total the disaster destroyed houses and belongings of 4,500 people in the town of Kulyab.

On May 17, inhabitants of the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border areas reported increasing protection of the border from the Uzbek side. In turn, the head of Kyrgyzstan’s border service reported that Uzbekistan strengthened the protection of its border in response to recent events in the south of Kyrgyzstan, patrolling certain areas in military vehicles. It should be recalled that Uzbekistan closed its checkpoints with Kyrgyzstan in the beginning of April in the immediate aftermath of the revolutionary events in the country and the following riots. On May 13-14, an armed conflict between supporters of the current interim government and proponents of former president Kurmanbek Bakiev occurred in the immediate vicinity of the Uzbek border, in the cities of Jalal-Abad and Osh. While closing and strengthening the protection of the border is a matter of national security for Uzbekistan, prolonged border closure poses a serious threat of economic crisis to Kyrgyzstan.

Supporters of the ousted President Bakiyev in southern Kyrgyzstan demand dividing the country into two autonomous states. The Interim Government condemned the initiative pointing at the absurdity of the idea, while law enforcement bodies promise to take “harsh measures within the law” against the instigators. Despite the fact that such a scenario is highly unlikely, it might gain wider support from the public in light of the new government’s failure to stabilize the situation in the southern region, experts say.

Tajikistan’s first toll road was opened on the route of the Dushanbe-Chanak highway on April 1, 2010. The road connects the capital city Dushanbe with Soghd province in the northern part of Tajikistan and ends at the border between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The tolling mechanism will be implemented by the company “Innovative Road Solution LTD”, from which all tolling equipment for the Dushanbe-Chanak road is rented by the Government of Tajikistan.

On May 1-4, 2010, the 43rd annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) board of governors took place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. More than three thousand participants attended the meeting, including heads of government, chairmen of central banks, ministers of finance, representatives of business and science, and journalists. Tashkent was satisfied with the outcomes of the meeting in general, as they signed four credit contracts of over US$ 1.15 billion. In addition to a substantial financial package and in spite of certain controversies with the human rights situation in the country, the ADB authorities showed that they are interested in the stability of Uzbekistan, assuming that this is an essential condition for stability in the whole region.

The ruling coalition parties in Armenia’s parliament have started decriminalization of libel and insult provisions in an attempt to regulate relations between media and public officials. The amendments to the Criminal and Civil Codes, passed in the first reading on March 18, abolish criminal liability for defamatory statements and set pecuniary compensation for victims of libel and insult. If passed, Armenia will join only a small number of countries in wider Europe that had decriminalized defamation – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and the UK. The amendments place the burden of proof on the defendant, stipulating its transfer to the plaintiff if unreasonable efforts are required to prove the truth by the defendant. The highest fine that can be imposed by courts on media outlets for disseminating defamatory information is 2000 times the minimum salary - around US$ 5,000.