Adam posts a call for videojournalists and film-makers to join the new Dutch web-based televised news service and contribute local reporting to the global network (ENG, RUS).

Over at The Registan, Josh leaves Central Asian territory in order to discuss Russian-European energy issues. Which are - in the end - also relevant to the focal region of this blog.

Nordstream, Russia’s ambitious subsea gas pipeline, puts the spotlight on Europe’s energy markets and the old continent’s long term supply with Russian gas. Josh says:

[W]hat matters is that this pipeline will be a geopolitical disaster for the EU, as it would essentially lock them into being dependent on Russian energy beneficence for the foreseeable future.

Let’s accompany Josh on his trip to Europe, but let’s take the (geo)politics out of the equation for a while. (more…)

Probably also due to my new job*, I have discovered a strange affection for numbers within me. Add on top of that The Pocket World in Figures 2008 which The Economist was kind enough to send me for a new subscription I took out. Let’s have a look at some of the numbers from the region in international perspective. Of course all taken with a pinch of salt!

• Of the metropoles in the region, Tashkent scores worst - it comes in 18 places from the bottom in the quality of life index. Almaty is closing in, though, on the 31th last spot on that same list (compare Moscow, which is 43th from the bottom).
• Afghans make up the largest refugee population in the world (1.9 million people), Azerbaijan’s is the 9th-largest (0.23 million people).
• Speaking of which, Azerbaijan had the 4th-highest annual average growth rate between 1995 and 2005 in the world (10.2%). Kazakhstan comes on position 21 with 6.3%.
• Uzbekistan currently has the world’s 5th-highest annual inflation rate (21%).
• Kazakhstan’s foreign debt burden (as % of exports of goods and services) is the 20th-highest, after Turkey, and above Brazil. In a list of countries’ foreign debt as a percentage of GDP, Kazakhstan is at number nine (106%). Kazakhstan’s debt service ratio - i.e. debt service as a percentage of the country’s exports - stands at 42%, second only to Brazil (45%).
• Kyrgyzstan is Central Asia’s biggest recipient of foreign aid. In international perspective, the meagre $268mn put the small country at position 60. Tajikistan follows closely on position 64 with $241mn.
• Between 2000 and 2005, Tajikistan beat Kazakhstan in industrial output growth (11.6% vs. 11.3%). Kyrgyzstan is most dependent on agriculture in the region (34.1% of GDP, position 18 in international perspective).
• Uzbekistan is the least energy-efficient country in the world.
• 100% of Turkmenistan’s energy is produced from gas (number one worldwide).
• Kyrgyzstan has the sixth-worst brain drain in the world.
• Kazakhstan’s stock exchange had the second highest growth in market capitalisation between 2001 and 2006 (3,529%). Yet, it only ranks 52nd in terms of actual market capitalisation ($44bn).
• Uzbekistan saw the third-biggest growth rates worldwide in company listings between 2001 and 2006 (1,800%).
• Kyrgyzstan is only 22 spots away from the bottom in terms of car ownership per 1,000 inhabitants (39 cars). However, it ranks 15th in the category “most deaths in road accidents” (18 people killed per 100,000 inhabitants), only topped by Kazakhstan (12th, 21 people killed).
• Each Kazakhstani travels on average 809 km via train each year (rank 12 worldwide).
• Kazakhstan spends only 2.3% of its GDP on education, making it the 17th-worst country in the world in that category.
• Save Iraq and Afghanistan, Turkmenistan is the country outside of Africa with the highest infant mortality in the world (74 deaths per 1,000 live births).
• A tight race for the prime spot in the category “cardiovascular disease” - Turkmenistan comes in first worldwide (844 deaths per 100,000 population), Tajikistan second (753), Kazakhstan third (713), Uzbekistan sixth (663), Kyrgyzstan tenth (602).
• Uzbekistan is the mobile-phone-craziest country in Central Asia, with 68.4 subscribers per 100 people (rank 44 worldwide).
• Every Kazakhstani, from baby to pensioner, smokes 5 cigarettes per day - on average (rank 15).
• Kyrgyzstan has the 9th-highest incidence of murder per 100,000 inhabitants (8.0).
• Uzbekistan is the fourth-largest awarder of death penalties - with 62 executions per year.
• 489 out of 100,000 Turkmen citizens sit in prison (rank 5 worldwide).
• Baku is the city worldwide with the lowest city health and sanitation index value (27.6), Almaty comes in 9th, just behind Baghdad.
• Tajikistan protects 18.3% of its total land area for conservation purposes (rank 12).

*Probably also due to my new job, I couldn’t come up with anything better to post on!

There’s new talk of a New Great Game unfolding in Central Asia. The thing that made me post on this, to me unfamiliar, terrain of geopolitics was a news report in yesterday’s UK Times. The piece quoted the head of the British army Sir Richard Dannattin in the context of British forces facing a “generation of conflict” in Afghanistan:

[He] gave warning of the dangers posed by a “strident Islamist shadow” and suggested that the British Army was “on the edge of a new and deadly Great Game in Afghanistan”.

Discussing the speech on BBC Radio 4’s Today show, Dr. Michael Denison of Leeds University said that Sir Dannatin’s remarks should be read as that British security interests can only be maintained by fighting in “remote and treacherous areas abroad”, and on a tactical level by “local deal-making, attrition and espionage”.

Well, although Sir Dannatin only mentioned Afghanistan in his speech, the return to an oldschool-19th century “Tournament of Shadows” might also be an appealing story for the odd sensationalist journalist predicting a clash between the NATO-West and the SCO-East in Central Asia. (more…)

Kiran over Mongolia is a feature-length documentary about a Kazakh eagle hunter in Mongolia. neweurasia asked the filmmaker, Joseph Spaid, a few questions about the film, which is hitting the screen in Kazakhstan at this year’s Almaty Film Festival.

Question: Joseph, thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. Let’s start with a little bit about yourself.

I am a 41-year-old American male from a not-so-observant Christian family. I grew up in Southern California, studied film at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and have been working in the TV/film industry almost two decades now.

Besides filmmaking, I love to surf (yes, we do that in New York City), am fascinated with art, foreign cultures, hand crafted rugs and tapestries, and travel. At age 33, I took a year-long trip around the world to 20 countries. It was during this trip that I first encountered the Kazakh eagle hunters of Mongolia.

Q: What exactly does Kiran stand for?

“Kiran” is the Kazakh word for golden, and the word used to describe the qualities of an eagle that make it good for hunting, i.e., a bird that is large, fierce, and has deep red eyes is “Kiran”. (more…)

From London to Ulaanbaatar in less than one month in a car with a one-litre engine or less: The Mongol Rally 2007 has just begun a few days ago and 200 teams are on their way now, many of them heading to Mongolia via Central Asia.

They each have to raise at least GBP 1,000 in charitable donations and points are not awarded for speed but for “eccentricity and utter absurdity”. Ah, and as it’s a British idea, the idea is to arrive in the Mongolian capital just in time for a black-tie dinner.

Turkmen border guards, beware! You have ice cream trucks coming your way! Some of the teams’ names are also worth a mention (”Starsky and Clutch” or “Feersum Endjinn”).

You can follow some of the teams’ journeys on their blogs (e.g. here) and on their websites (e.g. here, my personal favourites as I know them from Uni*).

Some may ask: ‘Why?’. The rally’s organiser gives an answer:

“I guess there are more people out there than I thought who find the 21st century a little bit too safe and boring,” Morgan says of the race’s popularity.

(more…)

Since my last post on the topic when the news was just breaking, several experts have written some interesting and informative commentary that readers might be interested in.

First, I would point you in the direction of NonPon’s post on the subject if you haven’t already seen it. They translate part of an interesting article (Rus) in which a Kyrgyz talking head, infected with optimism from the proposed Azerbaijan deal, proposes a Kyrgyzstan-moderated union between the Russian and American bases in the country.

The most recent Central Asia - Caucasus Analyst features several articles on the “Gabala Gambit.” Stephen Blank emphasizes the practical difficulties of military cooperation between the US and Russia: (more…)

Russland Aktuell reports of a new survey undertaken by Russian pollsters VZIOM that again sheds light at (the perception of) happiness in the CIS. According to the findings, there is a majority of happy people in seven out of twelve CIS states.

Leading the league are Kazakhstani citizens: 73% of those asked responded that they are happy with their lives. Coming in second and third are Belarus and Kyrgyzstan (both 65%). The share of Russia’s population being happy with their lives is 51%. The majority of Azeris (52%) and Ukrainians (61%) are unhappy.

Asked for their economic situation, 45% of all Kazakhstanis responded with “positive” and only 2% with “negative”. As money alone doesn’t make you happy, Azeris are (despite their general unhappiness) generally positive about their material situation (41%).

Now here comes the expert opinion on why Kazakhstan tops the league (my translation and emphasis):

According to VZIOM communications director Igor Eidman, Kazakhstan’s top position is not only explained by the booming economy. “The assessment of one’s own happiness depends on two factors: one objective, on which the general economic situation and personal welfare have a strong influence; and one subjective, which is determined by people’s mentality.”

The oriental attitude of those people in Kazakhstan and also Kyrgyzstan makes them more loyal to their leaders: “It isn’t customary there to complain of the state about one’s fortune,” Eichman says.

Although public opinion polling in the region is weak, it’s true that happiness indeces continuously show high general life satisfaction in Central Asia. In one of our posts on the Uzbekistan blog, James presents some better reasons for this Central Asian Happiness. James says that it might have something to do with relatively decent levels of income equality.

Unfortunately, the article didn’t have any data on Uzbekistan, but I’ll look out for updates.

Relations between America and Russia have been rather tense lately - but I won’t recap the gory details here. Suffice to say that recent headlines have featured pointless knuckle rapping by both sides almost daily.

But today, during a private meeting with President Bush, President Putin made an offer of obvious interest and import to the ’stanosphere.’ Basically, he proposed to collaborate with America on a missile defense shield in Azerbaijan to avert the need for one in Europe. (The plan for a European missile shield is a major source of the current mud-slinging between Russia and America.)

For a whole variety of reasons, this proposal is unlikely to actually be implemented. According to the New York Times, “The plan would require the kind of intense cooperation in which only the closest allies could engage.” The fact that this sort of trust does not exist right now between Russia and the United states is cited as a reason that the plan can never work. But what if a Russian-American missile defense shield in Azerbaijan precipitated a new level of strategic cooperation between Russia and the United States? What if Russian and American policy and military leaders became accustomed to sharing information, training together, and coordinating political and tactical strategy?

At this point, the reader may be wondering what exactly this has to do with Central Asia. In short, everything. As Vasili Rukhadze explained so well in a recent post, whether the West likes to admit it or not, Russia is now preeminent in Central Asia. Bogged down in the Middle East, America and Europe’s interest in the region has been limited and temporary. Realistically, Central Asia will have to deal with its geographic neighbors first, meaning primarily Russia (China does not yet seem to be playing a major political role). A military partnership between Russia and the US - especially one located on the doorstep of Central Asia - could change this equation dramatically.

American and Russian objectives in Central Asia are not so dramatically opposed as popularly portrayed, and there is no fundamental reason the two countries could not cooperate in Central Asia. Both countries are committed to opposing militant Islam, both favor stability in the post-Soviet space, and both have a stake in the global economy. It seems that there are too many Cold War bureaucrats left over in the foreign affairs ministries of both sides. The Cold War is over, and there is no Great Game (or if there is, it is a childish one).

I am not making a prediction here; I don’t disagree with the arguments that this is unlikely to actually happen for political reasons. Rather, I am suggesting that today witnessed an opportunity - however fleeting - for a fundamental shift in Central Asian geopolitics. An integration of Russian and American military strategy would close the space for Central Asian leaders to play the two powers against one another, and though such a close relationship with Russia could dilute the message a bit, it would unify the force behind human rights and democratization initiatives and improve chances for regional economic integration.

Perhaps more importantly, such a pivotal shift would have a whole host of less predictable consequences about which I won’t even speculate. While some might dispute whether the Azerbaijan deal would be beneficial for the region, few would debate its importance. It will therefore be interesting to watch how events progress (or more likely, don’t progress), and the consequent impact on Central Asia.

In the last two to three years Russia has been on a geopolitical offensive in the countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. It has been gradually regaining the ground lost in the aftermath of the American invasion of Afghanistan and the Georgian, Ukrainian and Kyrgyz revolutions.

Central Asia

The first major victory for Russia came in Tajikistan in 2004. The country was drifting towards the West following the ouster of the Taliban from neighboring Afghanistan. Moscow worked vigorously to bring the nation back under its sway. The Kremlin repeatedly threatened the Tajik government of Imomali Rakhmonov with the expulsion of one million Tajik workers from Russia, while offering debt relief for the return to Moscow’s orbit. In October of 2004 Russian President Putin and Tajik leader Rakhmonov signed an agreement. Russia agreed to let Tajik laborers remain in Russia and forgave the country $240 million of its $300 million debt. In exchange Moscow established its permanent military presence in Tajikistan, with 5,000 thousand Russian troops deployed in the southern cities of Kulab and Kurgan-Tyube, in close proximity to NATO controlled Afghanistan. The Kremlin also secured a 49-year lease on an anti-Missile warning system at Nurek. In addition, Russian companies have been awarded controlling packages in Tajikistan’s major hydroelectric and gas energy projects, as well as in other sectors of the country’s economy. Surprisingly, at that time, many Western observers and policy makers did not see this as the beginning of Russia’s geopolitical counterattack, nor did they see it posing a major threat to Western interests in Central Asia. (more…)