Article Archive for Year 2010
Editor’s note: Two new cables from WikiLeaks reveal scathing American accounts of the interaction between business and Turkmenistan’s leadership, and most of all, of President Berdimuhammedov’s personal character. neweurasia’s Magtymguly quotes the cables and comments.
neweurasia’s Schwartz has assigned me duty of monitoring all WikiLeaks Cablegate data for Central Asia. Monday he reported on four posts from Embassy Ashgabat. Yesterday two more published. They are about huge wealth and terrible personality of President Berdimuhammedow. WikiLeaks wants us to criticize American diplomats but we should thank the Americans for their honesty instead.
As managing editor of the English site, I would like to personally assure our Turkmen readers that Annasoltan’s interview with Muhammed Mamedov of the company Turkmenweb.com shall be published later this month. It’s a very big interview and there’s only one of me to edit it, so please have patience with me! :-)
MTS users in Turkmenistan reported today that their mobile phones are inoperative. Calls made to MTS centers have been unsuccessful. In general MTS cannot be reached for comment, nor has it posted any explanation on its website.
Translation of Avicenna’s post (RUS)
Neweurasia has been trying to verify rumors regarding how difficult it is for Uzbeks to obtain a visa to travel to Turkmenistan, and the month-long ordeal I went through in my unsuccessful attempt to attend a close friend’s wedding is the proof.
From the middle of October to the middle of November, I personally had to deal with many of the alleged problems faced by aspiring visitors to sunny Turkmenistan. Read the full story »
The Pyramid of Peace in Astana, site of the OSCE summit. Photograph by Flickr user kersy83 (CC-usage).
The huge OSCE summit kicks off today in Astana, and neweurasia‘s there to cover it. We’ve got bloggers inside the Pyramid with forthcoming posts. Meanwhile, my colleague, Yelena Jetpysayeva, the managing editor for our Russian site, is Tweeting like a madwoman @ http://twitter.com/#!/mursya. You can also watch the event live via YourVision @ http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fyvision.kz%2Fcommunity%2F%25D0%2590%25D1%2581%25D1%2582%25D0%25B0%25D0%25BD%25D0%25B0%2F91373.html.
Harvard’s Berkman Center has produced this “map” of the Russian blogosphere (supplemented with a simplifying exegesis by RussianSphinx). It looks alot like a Petri dish under a micrscope, with the core of the infection around public affairs and “instrumental” (i.e., bloggers getting paid for their craft).
Translation of Askhat’s post (KAZ, RUS)
The dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands has not passed Kazakhstan by. US magazine The Nation has published an article about Japanese firms’ plans to import rare earths, one of China’s precious exports, from Kazakhstan. Several joint ventures are currently being considered. Read the full story »
Photograph by neweurasia's Mary Pole (CC-usage).
Editor’s note: Yesterday’s in southern Kyrgyzstan and today’s bombing in Bishkek have once again raised the spectre of Islamism over Central Asia’s “island of democracy”. But is there any substance behind the “Islamism” label? neweurasia’s Mary Pole sees something much more sinister at work. “The context of oppression and intimidation of the ethnic Uzbek minority in Kyrgyzstan,” she writes, “and the frequent use of the word ‘Islamist’ and ‘terrorist’ in justifying arrests and detention in many of these cases [are] indicative of a concerning trend.”
(This post was filed before today’s bombing in Bishkek, but we think it applies to that incident, as well.)
Despite widespread panic, Monday’s gun battle in Osh was localised and is reported to be due to a state security raid to arrest Islamic Militants. The State National Security Services are eager to state that they have the situation under control and that they ‘will not allow any massacres and clashes.’ It’s a shame they didn’t feel the same way in June.
While they may not be allowing any violence on the same scale as the mass killing and destruction earlier this year, yesterday’s events are part of a concerning pattern of intimidation and detention of ethnic Uzbeks in which combating ‘terrorism’ and ‘radical Islam’ is being used as a guise for the abuse of human rights.
Study Subject: Accounting,Agriculture, Anthropology,Biology, Business, Chemistry,Computer Science,Criminal Justice Etc.
Employer: U.S. Embassy, Kazakhstan
Level: Undergraduate
Scholarship Description: The U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan is pleased to announce that recruitment has begun for the 2010-2011 Global Undergraduate Exchange Program.
The Global Undergraduate Exchange Program in Eurasia and Central Asia (Global UGRAD), a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State, provides opportunities for undergraduate students from Kazakhstan for one year of full-time, non-degree study in the United States.
Remember all that hubub in 2009 about the possible closure of the Manas Airbase? Well, WikiLeaks reveals, so to speak, the Chinese view on the matter, albeit via American eyes.
Arguably, it appears the Kyrgyz officials were trying to slyly induce China into giving them additional cash — or, conversely, that there was some talk of a deal, which the Americans sniffed out and confronted the Chinese about. The Chinese Ambassador seems rather frank in this account, talking about unemployment and discontent in his country, as well as the resentment China felt over the fate of Guantanamo Bay’s Uighur prisoners (“imply[ing] that the Guantanamo situation had made China look for ways to hit back at the U.S.”)
Here’s the digital diplomatic cable in full text, with a link back to the WikiLeaks site:
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