The energy crisis remains to be one of the main topics of discussion in Tajikistan. Alexander reports on the electricity outage in Tajikistan.

The blackouts have been caused by the construction of Sangtuda-1 hydropower plant. The river Vakhsh in southern Tajikistan was closed off today to enable construction of a dam for the plant to go ahead. Construction works at Sangtuda have caused power supply disruptions from the Nurek hydropower plant that produces about 75 percent of Tajikistan’s electricity.

Roxana Saberi from BBC is talking about the children on the streets of Dushanbe. There is a ‘Centre of Information and Orientation of Youth, a UN-backed committee of young people dedicated to taking kids off the streets of Dushanbe.’ Maruf Jumaev is one of the activists of this center. He and other members of the ‘youth committee reach out to these children by telling them they do not have to work and live on the streets, and that going back to school is the key to a better future.’ Thanks to this center many street children have left their jobs washing cars or peddling goods in the bazaar and have gone back to school.

Dina Newman, also from BBC in her turn talks about the girls’ education in the countryside of Tajikistan. She reports that girls drop school to marry. Girls are brought up to be good Muslims and obedient wives, but many are unable to fend for themselves if family links break down. That’s because of the education that they do not get, because their parents do not let them go to school.

Jagannaath reports on the work-schedule of shops, markets and other public places in Dushanbe. She says she did not have spare time to visit bazaars and places of interest: the main department store called Tsum in the city closes its business at 16:00 and the bazaars which open at 5:00 close at around 14:00 or 15:00. She also reports that she could not find any time to visit museum where she could see the lying Buddha (replica of which was exhibited at Aichi Expo in 2005). I think she was the first person to report on that problem in Dushanbe.

Avgustin posted a very interesting article about Vakhan. He is describing the life of the local people who made him feel at home. He was amazed with the hospitality of the local people. He was living in the house of Alisher who worked in MSDP, one of the institutions of Aga Khan Development Network.

Alisher’s parents’ house was a modernized version of traditional Pamiri house, with the main characteristic of the five pillars. This traditional house dated back far before the arrival of Islam, but then each symbol was linked to Islam. The hall was very big, much bigger than those I used to see in Pakistan and Afghanistan sides. It was a very bright room with very big skulight hole, where the sunlight came to illuminate all of the corners of the room. It had also huge glass window, something that was less commonly used in Paksitan and Afghanistan. The wall was covered by traditional designed textile, and as later I found in all Ismaili houses in this valley, this room also had a photo of the Highness Aga Khan.

The whole day I have been thinking about our tradition called “Ala Kachuu” (Bride Kidnapping). The reason is that in the morning I was told about two cases of kidnapping the bride. First case happened with eldest sister of my close friend, while she was in Bishkek with her mother. Second case – with my acquaintance while she was standing at a bus stop (I have last seen her couple of days ago and she was single, but now she is married. Isn’t it insane?). Even though both cases are pure acts of Ala Kachuu, they totally differ from each other by the content and purpose.

First case: My friend’s family is big and there are four girls. It happened with her eldest sister. She is 28 and was not married. In Kyrgyz culture, if a woman gets older than 22 she is considered to be over the hill. So she was way, way over the hill. She went to Bishkek (she lives in Osh) with her mother to visit relatives. After their being in Bishkek for couple of days, her mother suggested her to meet with one young man, very intelligent and clever, according to mother’s words. She refused saying that she didn’t trust people of Bishkek. Mother suggested that she would escort her. Shortly after, they met at a café. When mother was gone to restroom, intelligent young man kidnapped her daughter. Last week they married.

Second case: The end of the work day. She just finished her work and was standing at a bus stop waiting for “marshrutka” (mini bus). Usually, it takes up to 5 minutes to the marshrutka to come, but on that unfortunate day it was late. Suddenly, a car drove near the place where she was standing. The front passenger side window rolled down and a young man introduced himself as a friend of her brother and suggested to drive her home as it was getting dark. She was familiar with all friends of her brother. He didn’t look like one of them and she politely refused. What followed was a real nightmare for her. Two men from back seats and one from front came out of the car and forced her inside the car. Even though she resisted fighting back using everything she could, she was helpless against three men. In half an hour, she was at “groom’s” house resisting his female relatives who were desperately trying to put veil on her head (which means woman “agrees” to marry her kidnapper). Two hours later, she was sitting on the corner of the room with a white veil on her head. They married recently.

In the first case, she liked the guy, and was conscious of her being “over the hill”. Therefore, she agreed to be kidnapped. The second case represents Ala Kachuu by illegal means, as she was against it.
Ala Kachuu is considered to be an old tradition of Kyrgyz and some other ethnic groups in Central Asia.

People say it is is really old, but no one can tell how old it is, although, in the Kyrgyz epic “Manas”, millennial of which was celebrated in 1995, the act of Ala Kachuu is not mentioned. Read the full story »

Editor’s Note: What follows is part of a cross-blog survey that explores what Central Eurasia might look like fifteen years from now.

Aida Mansurova, 44, Almaty, December 2021
For neweurasia Kazakhstan

I was asked to write about myself for neweurasia Kazakhstan blog. It made me smile: blogs used to me very popular when I was young; now my 15-year old daughter spends all day in video chats, pressing her face against the flat screen of our mini-Mac. Madina has better English than me, as anyone of her age; she promised to proofread my story. Well, at least it’s some use for the huge amount of money I pay for her private British teacher that I ordered to Almaty. Read the full story »

Editor’s Note: This guest post is cross-posted at KZ Blog. What follows is part of a cross-blog survey that explores what Central Eurasia might look like fifteen years from now.

The akim of Semey woke up on Independence Day in 2021 in his newly finished residence. The bedroom was gilt in gold, with rich wallpaper based on a 17th century bedroom he’d seen recreated in the British Museum when we studied at LSE. Through the transparent curtains he could see Abay tower, the second tallest tower in Kazakhstan with an observatory on top, and offices of the local Social-Business Corporation, the akimat, and the new Narodnii Bank offices—everything in Italian marble, wireless internet throughout the building, in short the latest technology and comfort!

It had taken a lot of doing to get it down in time for the 16th of December—but as they said no two beams in town were put together by his mat, and he had plenty to go around. He remembered back fifteen years ago when the central government held the budget strings so tightly and being akim was basically carrying out the orders of the President. Then, Astana was the only prestigious city in the country. Now thanks to unintended consequences of some projects and development plans, the government had begun to see the necessity of decentralizing control. Now it was almost impossible to imagine giving up more than 50% of the money he collected to the central government. Opening up regional companies to invest in capital markets had made the fines and taxes he could collect a lot larger. That meant prestige projects like the tower and his new residentsia! Ak Orda was already 15 years old but his ‘left bank’ was new and even more up to date. That kind of one-upping the President would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. And since they had moved to a new experimental system where the people voted for akims out of nominees of the President and the Parliament, it was almost as important to keep the people happy as it was to obey the President.

He rose, washed his face in a washbasin in the room. It was something that the President’s nephew had had in his room at Oxford and now every one had a water closet in their bedrooms. Since the British oil companies started investing in Kazakhstan, and architects started showing interest and the Irish Celtic tiger example was endorsed by the Prime Minister, Britain was the hot new thing! He came down to the dining room for breakfast; where he had invited the deputats of Parliament to join him as well as some of the heads of local companies, so that they could organize the day’s events.
The President of the local Social Business Corporation turned to him and said, “Well, I don’t think the opening of the new Left Bank attracted this much attention.’

The akim smiled and answered, “Well the Left Bank opened bit by bit, we’ve spent five years constructing and now everything will open at once. We also didn’t make the same mistakes. Remember 12 years ago? Everything was done in Astana. The Khan’s tent had opened with its beaches and its tropical forests. The Northern Lights, the giant towers. Impressive, but they’d used up all their plans and driven it all to be completed so fast. There was nothing left to build. Sure they’re still cleaning up Cheubara of all those ugly little houses and putting up nice apartment buildings, but they raised the bar too high too. After the Pyramid, for example, or Highville, a nice normal clean apartment complex looked stupid. We put up a few prestige projects and most of it is just decent housing or shopping. Plus we planned out this part but the surronding lands will be developed entirely privately.”

The city representative in the Mazhilis said, “Well so was Astana! It was all private!’

The akim laughed, “No this time we mean actually private companies. Can you believe we’ve intiated a transparent bidding and tender system? No, I’m serious. There’s a lot of competent companies out there we’ve never heard of.”

“Which one does your brother own?”

“My brother is Director of Department of Corporate Development at KazMunaiGas, he doesn’t have time to build!”

The representative of Otan stood up and asked to lead a toast.

“Dear Friends and Colleagues, partners in the economic development of our country, it has been 30 years of independence and we have seen that the path of the First President was justified by history. With a strong center we have built a strong economy and a unified governnment. Once we had so many political parties—Asar, AIST, the Civil Party, Kazakhs for Kazakhstan, Atamken, Bilim, the Communist Party. Now we all sit at one table and rationally and objectively run the country and divide the resources of the nation, without playing politics or worrying about blocking each other for personal gain. We are all on one page, on one team, and the nation’s gain is our personal gain. The development of these new regional capitals, like Semey, is proof that a strong central government means wealth for all. As long as our politics are all one, we can let the regions have money to make the country beautiful and to increase our prestige abroad. So ‘bottoms up’ as they say.”

One of the deputaty stood after everyone had clinked piali and asked to answer his collegues’ toast, “I am sure the local head of Otan meant no offence when he forgot that East Kazakhstan oblast has two deputats from the Farm Union Party, which has seen no reason to join the Otan block. While we are also proud of the country’s development and look to a prosperous future, I have never fully understood how it is possible to maintain a strong center and strong regions and it seems to me, you still play politics of the early days of independence. Already the changes have begun and this 30th year of Independence is proof of it. Before, Astana might have squashed the renovation of Semey for fear it would outshine the capital. Now thanks to new budget codes I don’t think the government could stop our host even if they wanted to. The prosperity has trickled out to the oblasts and regions and I think you will find it is no longer the case that the rich, the politically powerful and the famous are all in bed together.

Today a young man, back from studying on the Bolashak Scholarship at MIT is founding a company with the help of the akim’s Small Business office and the Innovation Fund and in five years he will be rich and respected even though his family is poor and doesn’t know anyone in the capital. At one point, such people only managed to fall through loopholes of the system. No one imagined a poor badly connected kid would ever be able to compete for a grant from the Innovation Fund or get into MIT! Now it’s become the norm. So many new “teams” have sprung up that it doesn’t even make sense to talk about teams. We have become a democratic society while the older generation still sits and drinks vodka at their dastarkhany. That is our country’s development and its future. To that we should all drink.”

Editor’s Note: Comments are disabled on this post in order to limit discussion to one venue. Please go to KZ Blog to post and view comments.

Note: This index post will be updated throughout the day as the various components of this survey go up on their respective sites

Neweurasia’s last regional survey marked the 15th anniversary of the 1991 Moscow coup, and participants reflected on how Central Asia and the Caucasus have changed since then. For this survey, we decided to predict what the region might look like fifteen years in the future.

These posts are slightly differently from those in the past, however. This time authors were invited to write analytical pieces in a creative manner if they so chose. Also, we decided to extend the survey to other blogs about Eurasia to gain a more complete perspective on the issue.

It goes without saying that no one can divine the future. Nevertheless, we thought it would be interesting as the New Year approaches to speculate on futures that might be.

Contents

neweurasia

Assorted Reflections — Ben, neweurasia founder and editor-in-chief, cautiously predicts a better future for Central Asia, but warns of the dangers of climate change and falling oil prices. He promises free beer to the best prognosticator.

Central Asia in Crisis — The US Secretary of Defense sees no easy way out of an international crisis brewing in Central Asia, at least in James’ fictional account.

Earned Sovereignty in the Caucasus — With its cornucopia of ethnicities all reaching for self-rule, Katy sees managed devolution of authority as the only viable path forward in the future of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

Doing Business in Kazakhstan — Leila expresses the hopes and frustrations of a future “modern” Kazakh business woman.

Longing for Kazakhstan’s Past — Ozgecan sees an industrialized future bereft of tradition. Her poem expresses a sense of loss for that which is gone forever.

Kyrgyzstan Still Struggling — According to Yulia, in fifteen years Kyrgyzstan will still be without an inspiring leader, and will suffer from decrepit infastructure.

Tajikistan Prospers — Vadim dreams that Tajikistan’s future will bring prosperity: newly paved roads, political stability, better education, and fewer prisoners.

Tajikistan Doesn’t Prosper — Alexander disagrees with Vadim, arguing that widespread corruption will constrain development in the country.

If you speak Russian, there are four posts up about this topic on ru.Kazakhstan.neweurasia.net by Marat, Vitaliy, Slavoyara, Ksenia and Adam. The English summary of them is here.

Guest Posts

Afghanistan in Shambles — Joshua Foust of Registan and The Conjecturer writes about Afghanistan’s bleak future from the perspective of Dilawar, a hotel owner living in Herat. (Cross-posted at Registan).

Xinjiang and the New War on Terror — Michael Manning over at the Opposite End of China predicts a future where China is the new principle target of terrorist rage, and is forced to wage its own war on Uighur separatists as well as foreign Islamist groups. (Cross-posted at the Opposite End of China).

Kazakhstan’s Duality — KZ Blog offers a window on a gathering of regional leaders to show that decentralization and consolidation are a dichotomy that may well shape Kazakhstan’s future. (Cross-posted on KZ Blog).

Editor’s Note: What follows is part of a cross-blog survey that explores what Central Eurasia might look like fifteen years from now.

0400 hours, December 20, 2021. The Pentagon

US Secretary of Defense Zalmay Khalilzad strode through the winding halls of the Pentagon rubbing sleep from his eyes. He had been summoned to the Situation Room yet again, which was no real surprise; ever since the Third Gulf War two years ago, it had been one crisis after the next.

“Report,” he barked.

“Sir, the Islamic Republic of Turkestan has invaded Turkmenistan.”

“And Kazakhstan’s response?” Khalilzad immediately replied.

“Just as we feared,” responded a suit-and-tie. “They are readying their troops along the border, and President Nazarbaeva has already declared that they will invade unless Turkestan withdraws immediately.”

“Terrific…” muttered Khalilzad.
Read the full story »

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Jessica Pickett of the Center for Global Development, and is cross-posted on the organization’s Global Health Policy blog.

In the latest in a series of articles on diseases on the brink of eradication, the New York Times recently examined Kazakhstan’s success in reducing mental retardation and childhood stunting through salt iodization programs and social marketing activities. This case resembles China’s similar success battling iodine deficiency, as detailed in Millions Saved: both efforts relied on the critical combination of appropriate technology with political will and industry compliance.

Iodine deficiency affects 13% of the world’s population and is a leading culprit in mental impairment, stunted growth (e.g. low height-for-age), thyroid disorders and stillbirths. And yet salt iodization is one of the simplest and most cost-effective health interventions available, costing just a few cents per kilogram. Unfortunately, though, the ensuing public relations battle isn’t nearly so cheap:

In some nations, iodization becomes tarred as a government plot to poison an essential of life – salt experts compare it to the furious opposition by 1950s conservatives to fluoridation of American water. In others, civil libertarians demand a right to choose plain salt, with the result that the iodized kind rarely reaches the poor. Small salt makers who fear extra expense often lobby against it. So do makers of iodine pills who fear losing their market. Rumors inevitably swirl: iodine has been blamed for AIDS, diabetes, seizures, impotence and peevishness. Iodized salt, according to different national rumor mills, will make pickled vegetables explode, ruin caviar or soften hard cheese. Breaking down that resistance takes both money and leadership.

So despite the support of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Kazakh Parliament initially faced strong opposition to a bill mandating iodization. To counteract these lobbies, the government launched an extensive social marketing campaign (funded by UNICEF and USAID), including a product certification process, classroom exercises, public announcements and widespread distribution of comics featuring the superhero Iodine Man rescuing slow-witted students from enraged teachers.

As the result of the government’s efforts, fully 94% of Kazakh households now use iodized salt, up from just 29% in 1999. This runaway success is indicative of how much a government can accomplish when it really tries (and is a good example of why stunting is such a strong measure of a government’s commitment to health). But it also raises the somewhat discomfiting question of the tradeoffs between public health and political and economic freedom:

In neighboring Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov – a despot who requires all clocks to bear his likeness and renamed the days of the week after his family – solved the problem by simply declaring plain salt illegal in 1996 and ordering shops to give each citizen 11 pounds of iodized salt a year at state expense.

As distasteful as it may be, Turkmenistan’s authoritarian governance and state-run economy rendered the political process much more straightforward than in Kazakhstan – not exactly a beacon of democracy or capitalism itself. Even in Kazakhstan and China, the iodine campaigns ultimately depended on legislative mandates banning non-iodized salt and took place within highly concentrated and regulated markets, with a single company supplying more than 80% of Kazakhstan’s edible salt.

It’s harder in more diverse, distributed markets, such as Pakistan’s, with 600 small producers:

“If a country has a reasonably well-organized salt system and only a couple of big producers who get on the bandwagon, iodization works,” said Venkatesh Mannar, a former salt producer in India who now heads the Micronutrient Initiative in Ottawa, which seeks to fortify the foods of the world’s poor with iodine, iron and other minerals. “If there are a lot of small producers, it doesn’t.”

An example of the tension between public health and private markets?

Editor’s Note: Comments are disabled on this post in order to limit discussion to one venue. Please go to the Global Health Policy blog to post and view comments.

Editor’s Note: What follows is part of a cross-blog survey that explores what Central Eurasia might look like fifteen years from now.

May I please go back in time?
I don’t want this industrial world anymore.

Where
Everything
Is measured
In minutes
And Dollars.

Please let me go back in time
Where my ancestors were warriors;
Bareback on wild horses.
Where horses were spirits;
Spirits of Bravery and Freedom.

Where
No car could
Wake me
From my
Disturbèd
Sleep.

Instead I want to hear
The wolf crying to the pale moon.
Where the moon can be seen
In the dark and deafening sky.

Allow me to go back in time-
To see my brothers build
The yurt.
And my mother preparing
The warm fire in the middle.
And I, a child, dancing
Around her legs.

Where
No one
Can take me
Away-
Not even
Your babysitter.

I beg you: Let me go back in time
To see the green blanket
Of nature spread itself
In front of me
Like an eternal sea
Where waves never touch a coast.
And you cry: “All this space! All this space!”

And if you were to appreciate this space
And if you knew the meaning of happiness
And if you were a bit more like me
Would you let me go back in time?

Editor’s Note: This guest post is by Michael Manning, and is cross-posted at the Opposite End of China. What follows is part of a cross-blog survey that explores what Central Eurasia might look like fifteen years from now.

At the behest of neweurasia, I’m diving today into the unfamiliar waters of wild speculation. What will Xinjiang be like fifteen years from now, in the year 2021? Of course, no one really knows. If my predictions turn out to be correct, chalk it up to luck rather than extraordinary foresight. Still, I hope you’ll enjoy this exercise in imagination: a blog entry from December 20, 2021 sent by my future self to my present self via QQQ — the bloated successor to QQ — which evidently has a time-travel email feature. Read the full story »

Editor’s Note: This guest post is by Joshua Foust, and is cross-posted at the Registan. What follows is part of a cross-blog survey that explores what Central Eurasia might look like fifteen years from now.

As part of a collaboration with NewEurasia.net, I’ve been asked to write about what Afghanistan will be like in 15 years. Since this is clearly a difficult task — fifteen years ago the country had just thrown off the Soviets and no one outside of Kandahar had heard of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda — I’m naturally going to take some big short-cuts. The most obvious is avoiding the larger geopolitical picture; at their request I am writing a non-descriptive piece, so I’m pretending to write a letter from a normal Afghani citizen, living in the relatively calm Herat province in the west, to his cousin in Montreal (this is loosely based on the framework of the movie “Kandahar”). Other shortcuts will include not focusing on the tiny details of daily life — this isn’t a book, and I’m not Asne Seierstad, though her work’s influence will clearly shine through. As a last caveat, I’m not terribly skilled with fiction, so I’d appreciate everyone humoring me on style and flow.

Read the full story »