Central Asia's week that was #19
Prison bloodshed in Russia, alliance treaties galore, and Uzbekistan to keep Afghan aircraft. Also, Uzbek election trundles on, AI-powered journalism, and Kazakhstan's war on online gambling.
So this happened…
Inmates at a prison in Russia’s Volgograd region took a dozen members of staff hostage and killed at least four of them. The suspected hostage-takers have been identified as citizens of Tajikistan and are understood to have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group. The attackers, who were killed during the storming of the prison by special forces, are said to have carried out the act in reprisal for the abuse meted out to the detained perpetrators of the Crocus City Hall atrocity earlier this year. In a phone call to his Russian counterpart, Tajikistan’s Interior Minister Ramazon Rahimzoda said he would assist in urgent efforts to “identify and detain other members of the terrorist organisation that committed this crime.” In an unrelated development, a military court in Moscow sentenced a Tajik woman to eight years in prison on charges of involvement in funding terrorism. Investigators say the woman transferred around $160 to a suspected Islamic State operative living in a prisoner camp in Syria.
Uzbekistan’s primer minister, Abdulla Aripov, travelled to Afghanistan, the first such trip by an Uzbek head of government since the Taliban seized power in Kabul. The visit produced 25 trade and investment agreements worth a total of $2.5 billion. Aripov reportedly expressed his support for the implementation of a $4.8 billion project to build a railway line from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tashkent has all but formally acknowledged the Taliban regime. Mughfurulloh Shahob, the son of a minister in the Taliban government, began his stint as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Uzbekistan in February.
The U.S. ambassador in Tashkent, Jonathan Henick, told reporters that a deal has been reached for Uzbekistan to keep the aircraft flown out of Afghanistan by pilots loyal to the government deposed in August 2021. Uzbek officials said at the time that 22 military aircraft and 24 helicopters had entered their country’s airspace from Afghanistan. The Defence Ministry of the self-styled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan said on Twitter that the United States had “no right to donate or confiscate the property of the Afghan people” and urged the Uzbek government to refrain from holding onto the aircraft. Henick said in remarks to Kun.uz, a news website, that the materiel in question was never owned by Afghanistan and that it belonged solely to the United States.
A visit to Azerbaijan by Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev culminated in the signing of a Treaty of Allied Relations. A business forum held on the sidelines of Mirziyoyev’s visit generated $2 billion in commercial agreements and contracts. This is all of a piece with the intensifying cooperation between Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, particularly around transportation and energy. Economy and energy officials from the three countries met in Baku in November and discussed, among other things, the idea of one day exporting environmentally clean electricity to Europe.
Yet another Treaty of Allied Relations was signed by Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the leader of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon. Tokayev said during a visit to Dushanbe that Kazakhstan plans to increase the volume of annual trade with Tajikistan to $2 billion “in the future.” A significant portion of Kazakh exports to Tajikistan comprise staple foodstuffs, such as wheat and cooking oil. Tokayev said bilateral trade in agricultural goods increased by 12 percent year-on-year, to almost $300 million, in the first six months of 2024. Following Tokayev’s trip, Kazakhstan announced that it has reached a provisional agreement to eventually import electricity produced by Tajikistan’s Roghun hydropower dam, which is currently under construction.
A joint Kazakh-Russian border demarcation commission held its 141st session in Almaty as part of long-standing efforts to definitively trace the frontier between the two countries. Another round of discussions will take place late next month. The era of uncertain borders across Central Asia may slowly be coming to a close. Kazakhstan ratified its border demarcation treaty with Uzbekistan in March 2023. In remarks made to reporters late last month, the head of Tajikistan’s Sughd region, said that agreement has been reached on 94 percent of the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
And there’s this too…
Uzbekistan's election commission approved all five registered political parties to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections on October 27. The approved parties include the ruling Uzbekistan Liberal Democratic Party (UzLiDeP), the People’s Democratic Party, Milliy Tiklanish, Adolat, and the Ecological Party. All parties met the requirement of collecting at least 40,000 voter signatures. This election will be the first to use a mixed majoritarian-proportional system, with 75 of the 150 seats in the parliament being filled through party lists and the other 75 through single-member districts. All the parties toe a generally pro-government line and little confrontational campaigning is expected.
A journalist created by means of artificial intelligence has begun working at Uzbekistan’s state news agency, UzA. The AI-powered reporter has been named Sobira Holdarova in tribute to the eponymous woman described as Central Asia’s first female journalist. UzA said the AI reporter is still in testing phase but that the goal is for it to eventually read news bulletins on YouTube in nine different languages. The real Holdarova was imprisoned in the late 1930s on trumped-up charges of engaging in anti-Soviet subversion. Things are not much better for Uzbekistan’s modern, real-life journalists. Uzbekistan dropped 11 spots to 148th out of the 180 countries ranked in the latest annual press freedom index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group.
Financial police in Kazakhstan issued an international arrest warrant for a group of people behind the 1WIN online casino. The quartet, who come from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine, face charges that include assault, kidnapping and running an illegal gambling operation. Investigators say 1WIN generated almost $8 million in illicit income. The Kazakh government is in the throes of a major rearguard battle against online gambling. Last year, the authorities blocked access to more than 4,000 illegal casino and bookmaker sites, but officials admit this has had limited effect. By one estimate, some 350,000 people in Kazakhstan are believed to have an unhealthy relationship with gambling. At the same time, only nine people have been medically diagnosed as suffering from an addiction to gambling.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said it is will shutter the Russian-language operation of its Kazakhstan service in an effort to streamline operations across the region. RFE/RL said it intends to create a single regional unit that will cover all of Central Asia. The reorganisation appears certain to result in region-wide layoffs. RFE/RL's Kazakh service, Radio Azattyk, has had a torrid year. Earlier this year, the Foreign Ministry in Astana declined to issue accreditation to 36 of its journalists. The situation was resolved after negotiations. The terms of the mediation were not made public.
A logistics-focused subsidiary of state-run Uzbekistan Railways said it has begun operating a multimodal container corridor to transport goods to India. Goods delivered along the route will ultimately land in the Indian seaports of Mundra, Nhava Sheva, and Chennai. A test freight train comprising 20 containers was sent across Turkmenistan and Iran across more than 2,600 kilometres before reaching the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, the company said in a statement. The containers were then loaded onto a cargo ship. That trip took 20 days to complete. Uzbekistan Railways said it hopes to cut the time down to 15 days.
Uzbekistan Railways is poised to restart the Tashkent-Moscow route for the first time since its suspension during the COVID—19 pandemic. The first train will depart from Tashkent on September 24. The trip last a little over three days. Tickets for an assigned seat cost around $200, although steep discounts are being made available to people buying their tickets more than 40 days before travelling.