By Daya Thussu
LONDON, Jul 22 2015 (IPS)

The formal opening of the BRICS Bank in Shanghai on Jul. 21 following the seventh summit of the world’s five leading emerging economies held recently in the Russian city of Ufa, demonstrates the speed with which an alternative global financial architecture is emerging.

The idea of a development-oriented international bank was first floated by India at the 2012 BRICS summit in New Delhi but it is China’s financial muscle which has turned this idea into a reality.

Daya Thussu

The New Development Bank (NDB), as it is formally called, is to use its 50 billion dollar initial capital to fund infrastructure and developmental projects within the five BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – though it is also likely to support developmental projects in other countries.

According to the 43-page Ufa Declaration, “the NDB shall serve as a powerful instrument for financing infrastructure investment and sustainable development projects in the BRICS and other developing countries and emerging market economies and for enhancing economic cooperation between our countries.”

The NDB is led by Kundapur Vaman Kamath, formerly of Infosys, India’s IT giant, and of ICICI Bank, India’s largest private sector bank. A respected banker, Kamath reportedly said during the launch that “our objective is not to challenge the existing system as it is but to improve and complement the system in our own way.”

The launch of the NDB marks the first tangible institution developed by the BRICS group – set up in 2006 as a major non-Western bloc – whose leaders have been meeting annually since 2009. BRICS countries together constitute 44 percent of the world population, contributing 40 percent to global GDP and 18 percent to world trade.“Our objective is not to challenge the existing system as it is but to improve and complement the system in our own way” – Kundapur Vaman Kamath, head of the New Development Bank (NDB)

In keeping with the summit’s theme of ‘BRICS partnership: A powerful factor for global development’, the setting up of a developmental bank was an important outcome, hailed as a “milestone blueprint for cooperation” by a commentator in The China Daily.

The Chinese imprint on the NDB is unmistakable. The Ufa Declaration is clear about the close connection between the NDB and the newly-created Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), also largely funded by China. It welcomed the proposal for the New Development Bank to “cooperate closely with existing and new financing mechanisms including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.” China is also keen to set up a regional centre of the NDB in South Africa.

If economic cooperation remained the central plank of the Ufa summit, there is also a clear geopolitical agenda.

The Global Times, China’s more nationalistic international voice, pointed out that the establishment of the NDB and the AIIB will “break the monopoly position of the International Money Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) and motivate [them] to function more normatively, democratically, and efficiently, in order to promote reform of the international financial system as well as democratisation of international relations.”

The reality of global finance is such that any alternative financial institution has to function in a system that continues to be shaped by the West and its formidable domination of global financial markets, information networks and intellectual leadership.

However, China, with its nearly four trillion dollars in foreign currency reserves, is well-placed to attempt this, in conjunction with the other BRICS countries. China today is the largest exporting nation in the world, and is constantly looking for new avenues for expanding and consolidating its trade relations across the globe.

China is also central to the establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a Eurasian political, economic and security grouping whose annual meeting coincided with the seventh BRICS summit. Founded in 2001 and comprising China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the SCO has agreed to admit India and Pakistan as full members.

Though the BRICS summit and the SCO meeting went largely unnoticed by the international media – preoccupied as they were with the Iranian nuclear negotiations and the ongoing Greek economic crisis – the economic and geopolitical implications of the two meetings are likely to continue for some time to come.

For host Russia, which also convened the first BRICS summit in 2009, the Ufa meeting was held against the background of Western sanctions, continuing conflict in Ukraine and expulsion from the G8. Partly as a reaction to this, camaraderie between Moscow and Beijing is noticeable – having signed a 30-year oil and gas deal worth 400 billion dollars in 2014.

Beijing and Moscow see economic convergence in trade and financial activities, for example, between China’s Silk Road Economic Belt initiative for Central Asia and Russia’s recent endeavours to strengthen the Eurasian Economic Union. The expansion of the SCO should be seen against this backdrop. Moscow has also proposed setting up SCO TV to broadcast economic and financial information and commentary on activities in some of the world’s fastest growing economies.

Whatever the outcome, it is clear that a new international developmental agenda is being created, backed by powerful nations, and to the virtual exclusion of the West.

China is the driving force behind this. Despite its one-party system which limits political pluralism and thwarts debate, China has been able to transform itself from a largely agricultural self-sufficient society to the world’s largest consumer market, without any major social or economic upheavals.

China’s success story has many admirers, especially in other developing countries, prompting talk of replacing the ‘Washington consensus’ with what has been described as the ‘Beijing consensus’. The BRICS bank, it would seem, is a small step in that direction.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The Kyrgyz parliament, as seen here in November 2014, may vote in December to consider a possible new law that would label foreign-funded organisations “foreign agents.” But some critics of the bill, which closely resembles a similar law already passed in Russia, argue it would add layers of bureaucracy and possibly force some civil society NGOs to close their doors. Credit: David Trilling

By David Trilling
BISHKEK, Dec 1 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Kyrgyzstan must protect itself from Arab Islamists and gay-loving Americans; so say supporters of a sweeping draft law that could shutter many non-governmental organisations and, like a Russian bill adopted in 2012, label foreign-funded activists as “foreign agents.”

Kyrgyzstan currently has the most vibrant civil society in Central Asia. But critics of the bill feel that with Russia expanding its grip on the region, and Kyrgyz lawmakers seemingly eager to please Moscow, the walls are fast closing in on free speech and other civil liberties.

Even if this particular bill does not pass, other legislative changes are chipping away at basic rights, they say. In recent weeks, for example, the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) has prosecuted a local anti-torture campaigner and harassed the American watchdog Freedom House for merely distributing an opinion poll that asks sensitive questions.Questions about Moscow’s influence over the legislature are hotly debated in Bishkek. The city is rife with rumours about the Kremlin buying MPs, local media outlets, and even whole ministries.

Lawmaker Nurkamil Madaliev – a co-sponsor of the bill who promises a vote in parliament as soon as December – says the existing law governing NGO activities, adopted in 1999, was written at a time when Kyrgyzstan was too open to the world.

“Back then, there was a unipolar world order, the Unites States was the dominant country, and now we see that this order was unjust. Not all the funds that finance NGO activities in Kyrgyzstan are aimed at creating a favourable situation,” Madaliev told EurasiaNet.org.

Madaliev says his legislative changes would help protect an embattled nation from two existential threats: Islamic extremism funded by wealthy Gulf Arabs and the efforts by some Western-funded organisations to educate young Kyrgyz about gay rights and reproductive health.

Legal analyst Sheradil Baktygulov contends that an underlying aim of the bill is to weaken checks on governmental authority: officials could use the bill, he says, to settle personal vendettas against a once-thriving watchdog culture. “They can say [to an NGO], ‘If you don’t do this or that you will be closed,’” Baktygulov explains.

Dinara Oshurahunova, the head of the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, sees a Russian hand behind the bill, which she says would bury organisations like hers with bureaucratic reporting requirements.

“Russia would like to have its policy and rule here. Our state cannot protect us or [the openness] we had before. Or they don’t want to,” she says.

Some officials have lobbied against the legislation. During a parliamentary debate on Nov. 24, a Justice Ministry official said the bill is unnecessary and would create expensive layers of bureaucracy the state cannot afford. MPs shouted him down.

Local and international NGO representatives also spoke out against the initiative during the hearing. The session resulted in the adoption of a non-binding recommendation to shelve the measure.

The law is “too vague,” says parliament’s vice speaker, Asiya Sasykbaeva, who was a prominent activist before entering politics. Sasykbaeva also fears the bill will be used to silence government critics. She says the “foreign agent” label deliberately evokes a mood reminiscent of the Stalinist terror in the 1930s, when millions were executed or sent to labour camps for allegedly being enemies of the state.

But NGOs are not without fault. “Sometimes they exaggerate and they do it unprofessionally,” Sasykbaeva says, describing avoidable conflicts between several NGOs. “And because of these three or four NGOs others are suffering.”

Questions about Moscow’s influence over the legislature are hotly debated in Bishkek. The city is rife with rumours about the Kremlin buying MPs, local media outlets, and even whole ministries.

Madaliev concedes his bill is based on Russia’s, but denies Moscow has pressured or bought him or his colleagues. “This particular bill gives us an opportunity to resist the influence of all interested parties, including Russia,” he insists.

Over the next month, parliament is expected to rubberstamp changes to dozens of laws and regulations as Kyrgyzstan prepares to join the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

One opposition-minded politician considering a run in next year’s parliamentary elections says that “fear of Russian influence during the election is a big factor” in why lawmakers are tripping over themselves to back EEU accession. He describes a parliament packed with sycophants afraid of Moscow.

“Our lawmakers think these laws don’t mean anything. They think this is not serious, but it is,” the politician says.

Arguments that Russia is playing dirty are bolstered by negative articles in the local press that use familiar Russian tropes to target American-funded NGOs. And a video currently circulating online is similar in its accusations and insinuations to the specious exposes aired on Russian state-run television.

The video, entitled “Trojan Horses,” accuses Washington of using NGOs to foment revolution around the world and of threatening to destabilise Kyrgyzstan with a Ukraine-style, anti-Russian uprising. Over a montage of violent war footage it names Freedom House, USAID, Human Rights Watch, the local Soros Foundation and others as front organisations that serve the U.S. government’s nefarious purpose of changing regimes and destroying sovereign states.

[Editor’s Note: The Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan is part of the Soros Foundations network. EurasiaNet is a separate entity in the Soros Foundations network.]

“We are getting attacked by Russian-funded groups and our government just keeps silent. It is very naïve to hope they will protect us. But after us, I tell them, ‘It will be you next, and there will be no one here to protect you,’” says Oshurahunova of the Coalition.

The state security police’s harassment of Freedom House “makes us very nervous,” says the expatriate head of another NGO. Several NGO leaders also complain that the American Embassy is having trouble helping American-funded NGOs secure visas for their foreign staff. “We’re left to fend for ourselves,” the expatriate says. The U.S. Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

Oshurahunova believes the “foreign agents” bill will end up not being adopted. She feels that the NGO regulatory measure, along with pending anti-gay legislation that has a much better chance of passage, are distractions to keep civil society watchdogs busy while parliament quietly approves reams of EEU legislation.

“They are changing many laws to come into line with Eurasian Union regulations and doing it without any discussion. They’re changing laws about peaceful meetings, changing laws about free media. They tell us this is only about economics, but they’re taking away our civil rights,” Oshurahunova says.

Editor’s note:  David Trilling is EurasiaNet’s Central Asia editor. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Students play basketball outside a school in Barskoon, eastern Kyrgyzstan, in February 2013. Average teacher wages of less than 100 dollars is driving many teachers to quit the profession and instead take on better paying unskilled work. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By an EurasiaNet correspondent
BISHKEK, Nov 3 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Minovar Ruzieva, 38, was an English teacher in Osh until last summer. The mother of four now sells Chinese clothes at a local bazaar. Like many other teachers in Kyrgyzstan, she could not survive on her “scant salary,” so she took unskilled work to make ends meet.

“I quit working as a teacher because I was paid only 3,800 soms [68 dollars] per month,” Ruzieva told EurasiaNet.org, pointing out that a kilo of beef would cost 10 percent of her salary. “That salary is enough to buy one nice dress. I managed to tolerate such miserable pay thanks to my husband’s earnings, which support our family. But I am sure a single mother with a child or two would not be able to survive on such a salary.”If in the Soviet heyday schools had their pick among highly qualified teachers, “now we are forced to take anyone who comes, anyone available, regardless of their skills.” -- Oksana Kiseleva

Dismal pay, combined with low social status, is driving younger teachers to leave the profession. In addition, some older teachers who were trained during the Soviet era are retiring, and they are not being replaced. As they go, the quality of public education is plunging, especially outside of Bishkek, leaving a generation of Kyrgyz graduates lacking the skills needed to find well-paying jobs.

“We have 20-to-25-year-olds who cannot even correctly write their names!” said Gaisha Ibragimova, president of the Association of Educational Institutions in Kyrgyzstan, a Bishkek-based lobby group.

Lawmaker Kanybek Osmonaliev, chairman of parliament’s Education, Science, Culture and Sports Committee, says there are about 80,000 schoolteachers in the country, a shortage of at least 2,500.

“The main reason for the shortage of teachers is the low salaries,” Osmonaliev, a former physics teacher, told EurasiaNet.org. “Nowadays teachers get on average 5,500 soms [99 dollars] per month. We need to raise their salaries by at least 30 percent.”

That would cost the state budget 3.5 billion soms, approximately 63 million dollars, Osmonaliev calculates, noting that the impoverished government cannot afford the increase.

On Oct. 15, at a parliamentary hearing where lawmakers discussed teachers’ salaries, they failed to take action. After a heated debate, including threats to dismiss the entire Education Ministry staff, Erkin Sakebayev from the president’s governing Social Democratic Party concluded “there is no need to take a decision because the government will not fulfill it due to the lack of funds.”

Oksana Kiseleva, an administrator at the Olympus School, a public school in Osh, said the shortage of teachers is a “very serious problem.” If in the Soviet heyday schools had their pick among highly qualified teachers, “now we are forced to take anyone who comes, anyone available, regardless of their skills.”

Because of the low salaries, schools across the country lack teachers of geography, mathematics, biology and the Russian language, Kiseleva told EurasiaNet.org.

“Today many teachers work at local bazaars, and basically it is only pensioners who work at schools. A very large percentage of retired teachers still teach,” Kiseleva said. “First of all, they work because their pensions are small, but also because school administrators manage to persuade [teachers to postpone retirement] because we do not have enough.”

The teacher shortage is just one of the causes of the collapse of Kyrgyzstan’s education system. Schools are also crowded and poorly maintained. “Most children do not have textbooks,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) wrote in 2011. The curriculum is “outdated and overloaded […] irrelevant and incoherent.”

Corruption is also a problem, and not just with teachers frequently demanding informal payments from parents or requiring high school students to pay for good grades. Under the former president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, a state tender for printing textbooks was handed to a company with ties to his son, Maxim, according to the ICG report. The price of textbooks rose, money disappeared, and when the ruling Bakiyev family was chased from the country in 2010, few of the textbooks had reached classrooms.

Local politicians look to foreign donors to fix the problems and are reluctant to accept responsibility, or even acknowledge shortcomings in the system. In 2005 and 2009, Kyrgyzstan scored last in the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment exam, or PISA; over 80 percent of Kyrgyz 15-year-olds did not meet minimum expectations in literacy, mathematics and science. Rather than strive to make improvements, Kyrgyzstan simply stopped offering the exam.

But for many, the teacher shortage is the most visible problem.

A spokesman at the Ministry of Education and Science, Amantur Akmatov, maintained the ministry is succeeding in filling the teacher shortage, cutting it in half overall the last year, bringing the deficit to 1,200 teachers. But he deferred questions about how the salary gap was funded to the Finance Ministry.

Experts do not trust the Education Ministry’s numbers. Ibragimova, the educational association chief, asserted that Kyrgyzstan lacks 3,000 teachers, especially in science and the Russian language, which is critical since so many Kyrgyzstanis join the migrant exodus to Russia in search of work.

These days people “believe that only the biggest losers, people unable to do anything else with their lives, become teachers, and they think it is a shameful and disgraceful profession,” Ibragimova said.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Pensioner Jyparkul Karaseyitova says she cannot afford meat anymore. At her local bazaar in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, the price for beef has jumped nine percent in the last six weeks. And she is not alone feeling the pain of rising inflation.

Butcher Aigul Shalpykova says her sales have fallen 40 percent in the last month. “If I usually sell 400 kilos of meat every month, in September I sold only 250 kilos,” she complained.On Oct. 20 a “large player” also sold about 600 million dollars, which kept the tenge stable at about 181/dollar. Observers believe the “large player” is a state-run company with ample reserves, but are mystified that the Central Bank refuses to comment and concerned that the interventions appear to be growing.

A sharp decline in the value of Russia’s ruble since early September is rippling across Central Asia, where economies are dependent on transfers from workers in Russia, and on imports too. As local currencies follow the ruble downward, the costs of imported essentials rise, reminding Central Asians just how dependent they are on their former colonial master.

The ruble is down 20 percent against the dollar since the start of the year, in part due to Western sanctions on Moscow for its role in the Ukraine crisis. The fall accelerated in September as the price of oil – Russia’s main export – dropped to four-year lows. The feeble ruble has helped push down currencies around the region, sometimes by double-digit figures.

In Bishkek, food prices have increased by 20 to 25 percent over the past 12 months, says Zaynidin Jumaliev, the chief for Kyrgyzstan’s northern regions at the Economics Ministry, who partially blames the rising cost of Russian-sourced fuel.

In Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, remittances from the millions of workers in Russia have started to fall. In recent years, these cash transfers have contributed the equivalent of about 30 percent to Kyrgyzstan’s economy and about 50 percent to Tajikistan’s. As the ruble depreciates, however, it purchases fewer dollars to send home.

Transfers contracted in value during the first quarter of 2014 for the first time since 2009, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said last month, “primarily due” to the downturn in Russia. The EBRD added that any further drop “may significantly dampen consumer demand.”

“A weaker ruble weighs on [foreign] workers’ salaries […] which brings some pain to these countries,” said Oleg Kouzmin, Russia and CIS economist at Renaissance Capital in Moscow.

This month the International Monetary Fund said it expects consumer prices in Kyrgyzstan to grow eight percent in 2014 and 8.9 percent in 2015, compared with 6.6 percent last year. Kazakhstan and Tajikistan should see similar increases. A Dushanbe resident says he went on vacation for three weeks in July and when he returned food prices were approximately 10 percent higher. In Uzbekistan, the IMF said it expects inflation “will likely remain in the double digits.”

The one country unlikely to feel the pressure is Turkmenistan, which is sheltered from the market’s moods because it sells its chief export – natural gas – to China at a fixed price.

One factor that could sharply and suddenly affect the rest of the region is a policy shift at Russia’s Central Bank, which has already spent over 50 billion dollars this year defending the ruble. Some, like former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, have condemned efforts to prop up the currency, arguing that a weaker ruble is good for exports.

The tumbling ruble and the drop in the price of oil have helped steer Kazakhstan’s economy into a cul-de-sac, slowing growth projections, forcing officials to recalculate the budget, and suggesting the tenge is overvalued. The National Bank already devalued the currency by 19 percent in February.

On Oct. 21, National Bank Chairman Kairat Kelimbetov urged Kazakhs not to worry about another devaluation, but investors grumble that he said the same thing less than a month before February’s devaluation.

Another devaluation would send a distress signal to investors, says one Almaty banker. Astana “lost a fair bit of credibility last time,” the banker said on condition of anonymity, fearing new legislation designed to combat panic selling.

“They need to be much more careful about how they handle expectations going forward. And that is affecting how things are happening this time. People seem to be a lot more dollarised compared to a year ago and more hesitant to hold large tenge balances.”

“My personal position?” the banker added. “I’m not holding tenge.”

Meanwhile, a mystery investor has been propping up the tenge by selling hundreds of millions of dollars a day, according to Halyk Finance in Almaty. On Oct. 21 “a larger player, again offsetting the intraday trend, sold about 650 million dollars,” Halyk said in a note to investors.

On Oct. 20 a “large player” also sold about 600 million dollars, which kept the tenge stable at about 181/dollar. Observers believe the “large player” is a state-run company with ample reserves, but are mystified that the Central Bank refuses to comment and concerned that the interventions appear to be growing.

In Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, central banks have dipped into limited reserves to ease their currencies’ slides. Nevertheless, the Kyrgyz som has fallen by 12 percent against the dollar this year, the Tajik somoni by about 5 percent. The World Bank said this month it expects the somoni to sink further.

Renaissance Capital’s Kouzmin cautions against the bank interventions in Central Asia, which use up reserves and widen trade deficits. “It makes sense for the national banks of these countries to let currencies depreciate to some extent to keep national competitiveness,” he told EurasiaNet.org.

Overall, the slowdown in Russia has long-term effects on Central Asia. “Portfolio investors look at the region as a whole. If you’re a CIS fund, the news on Russia has been bad and has caused the withdrawal of funds” from the region, said Dominic Lewenz of Visor Capital, an investment bank in Almaty. “So the trouble in Russia has hit things here.”

GDP growth projections have fallen markedly across the region, but nowhere near the levels seen during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Everything, it seems, depends on Ukraine. Any worsening scenario there would have “far-reaching implications” for the region, possibly on food security, according to the EBRD.

Back at the bazaar in Bishkek, Orunbay Jolchuev was forced this month to increase by 15 percent what he charges for flour. But at least sales have not been affected. “We all need flour, we all need to eat bread, macaroni, dough,” Jolchuev said. “It’s not something people can cut back even if it becomes too expensive.”

Editor’s note:  David Trilling is EurasiaNet’s Central Asia editor. Timur Toktonaliev is a Bishkek-based reporter. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Young people heat themselves by the eternal flame at a WWII monument in Bishkek last February. Each winter in Kyrgyzstan the energy situation seems to worsen; blackouts last longer, and officials seem less able to do anything to improve conditions. This year is expected to be particularly difficult. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By Anna Lelik
BISHKEK, Oct 16 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Each winter in Kyrgyzstan the energy situation seems to worsen; blackouts last longer, and officials seem less able to do anything to improve conditions. This year is expected to be particularly difficult.

The winter heating season has not even begun and already lots of people are bracing for months of hardship. A video, posted Oct. 12 on YouTube, depicting Kyrgyz doctors having to perform open-heart surgery amid a sudden blackout, is helping to heighten anxiety about the coming winter.Last year, when temperatures dropped to -20C (-4F), the 89-year-old pensioner spent three months living in a vegetable storage shed with a small stove she kept going with a mix of coal dust and dung.

In another alarming signal, Bishkek’s local energy-distribution company, Severelectro, sent out advisories with recent utility bills, describing the situation as “critical” and begging customers to conserve electricity and use alternatives to heat their homes.

Southern Kyrgyzstan has been without gas since April, when Russia’s Gazprom took over the country’s gas network, and neighbouring Uzbekistan said it would not work with the Russians. That has forced residents in the south to use precious and expensive electricity to cook, or resort to burning dung and sometimes even furniture.

On top of that, a drought has hampered operations at Kyrgyzstan’s main hydroelectric plant at the aging Toktogul Dam.

After President Almazbek Atambayev criticised the energy minister on Oct. 9, the minister promptly quit. But a personnel reshuffle will not do much to reassure citizens, such as pensioner Valentina Chebotok, who lives in Maevka, a Bishkek suburb.

When she began to contemplate the hassles associated with winter, Chebotok started to cry. Last year, when temperatures dropped to -20C (-4F), the 89-year-old pensioner spent three months living in a vegetable storage shed with a small stove she kept going with a mix of coal dust and dung. This year, Chebotok managed to secure a gas heater, but on her pension of 87 dollars per month she will have to use it sparingly.

There has been some good news: Kazakhstan agreed on Oct. 14 to supply over a billion kWh of electricity this fall and winter. In September, the Russian energy giant Gazprom announced gas prices for exports to northern Kyrgyzstan – that is, the only areas connected to its network, since Uzbekistan refuses to supply its gas to the southern network – would fall 20 percent.

But in many parts of the country the electrical system is overloaded. Prior to the Gazprom deal, many consumers grew tired of constant gas shortages, and converted their heating systems to run on electricity. That is what Maksim Tsai, a mechanical engineer in Bishkek, did seven years ago.

“I was forced to switch to electric heating. And Kyrgyzstan was [at the time] considered a country with abundant electricity,” he told EurasiaNet.org.

Citing a need to conserve electricity, government officials have made often contradictory statements about the type of three-phase electrical adaptors that Tsai and many others now use. Some officials have said they want to ban three-phase adaptors, which can support higher electricity loads; others express an interest in increasing tariffs for three-phase households. Tsai said he now plans to switch back to gas.

“The government took the right decision to transfer Kyrgyzgaz to Gazprom. Now I have got assurance that we won’t have problems with gas, though it is still expensive,” he said.

The current confusion offers crooked officials an opportunity to line their pockets. A hotel owner in Bishkek complained in September that Severelectro officials came to his business and attempted to seize his three-phase adaptor.

“They came over and made us sign a document saying that we understood why the three-phase adaptor was being confiscated. We asked for a copy of the document, but they said we couldn’t get one because ‘we don’t want the press to get hold of this.’ We were allowed to keep our adaptor after we paid a bribe,” the hotel owner said.

The officials warned the hotel owner to expect blackouts this winter at his central Bishkek location, “‘Maybe five hours a day, maybe more, they said.’”

Another heating alternative is coal. In August, Prime Minister Djoomart Otorbaev called on Kyrgyzstanis to use coal this winter for heating, since it is “a relatively inexpensive fuel.”

Though Kyrgyzstan is endowed with plenty of coal, the industry is plagued by scandals and, reportedly, organised criminal activity – factors that drive up prices and force consumers, including government agencies, to buy imports.

Sultanbek Dzholdoshbaev, a wholesaler at the main coal market outside of Bishkek, said that supplies from the famed and fought-over Kara-Keche deposit have decreased in recent years, pushing up prices.

He explained that local gangs took control of Kara-Keche during the chaos following President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s 2010 overthrow. Moreover, the state-run company that manages Kara-Keche is unable to run such a large-scale operation efficiently, Dzholdoshbaev asserted.

Meanwhile, prices keep rising. According to sellers and buyers at the coal market, the price for a tonne of coal has increased 25 to 35 percent this season. That might be in part due to demand. Delivery-truck drivers say demand has been high since August, when the government started warning about the tough winter ahead.

If those living in freestanding homes have options, such as gas and coal, the tens of thousands of Bishkek residents living in multi-story buildings with central heating provided by Severelectro have only electricity as backup.

Larisa Musuralieva, who lives in an apartment block in a southern district of the capital, said that the old radiators in her flat do not provide sufficient warmth: “These radiators heat so badly […] so we use an electric heater. If blackouts happen this winter, it will be very cold at home.”

Editor’s note:  Anna Lelik is a Bishkek-based reporter. Chris Rickleton contributed reporting. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Chairwoman of the local community fund, Mairam Dukenbaeva, in IssykKul, Kyrgyzstan. Photo: UN Women/MalgorzataWoch

By UN Women
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 3 2014 (IPS)

In the small rural village of Svetlaya Polyana, not far from the city of Karakol in Issyk Kul Province, north-eastern Kyrgyzstan, there is no sewage system and 70 percent of households lack access to hot water.

But still, gardening efforts are underway. In the houses of the women members of the community fund you can see seedlings of cucumbers, tomatoes, pepper and even some flowers being prepared for planting in the soil.

There are currently 29.9 million migrants in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the majority of which are women. -- International Organisation for Migration (IOM)
These women are taking part in one of several agricultural trainings to learn how to plan vegetable gardens, prepare the soil, find good-quality seeds, plant and care for vegetables, as well as gardening tips, recipes and more.

“We all have learned a lot. Now I know what to do to get a good harvest,” said one beneficiary. “Now I have a beautiful and eco-friendly garden, I have healthy vegetables for my family that I know how to plant myself and I do not have to buy anything more at the bazaar.”

Through collective vegetable cultivation, their harvest in 2013 garnered a profit of 48,000 Kyrgyz SOM (about 930 dollars), which was put back into community projects and to buy high-quality seeds.

The small businesses established through the programme are now generating employment in this rural area, increasing independence and boosting household income not only in summer but also during the harsh winter months, when preserved vegetables and fruit jams are sold.

“The […] project is highly important for the development of our community,” says Jylkychy Mamytkanov, head of the municipality of Svetlaya Polyana. “Programme participants have managed to build solidarity and mutual assistance among themselves. … Moreover, the income that we have already received from selling our vegetables will allow our community to make new investments in the future, such as construction of greenhouses.”

Across Central Asia, many families and individuals living in poverty migrate in order to find work. According to the IOM, there are currently 29.9 million migrants in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the majority of which are women. Migration provides a vital source of income, but those left behind often feel dependent and have a hard time making ends meet.

To tackle such challenges, the Central Asia Regional Migration Programme (CARMP) was created in 2010, with the second phase currently underway, until March 2015.

Jointly implemented by UN Women, the World Bank and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), with financial support from the UK Government, the programme focuses on reducing poverty by improving the livelihoods of migrant workers and their families, protecting their rights and enhancing their social and economic benefits.

The regional migration programme focuses on families from the region’s top two migrant-sending countries – Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In 2011-2013 more than 5,324 labour migrants’ families in both countries received training, access to resources and micro-credits and became self-reliant entrepreneurs through the programme.

The RMP programme also promotes policy development, provides technical assistance and fosters regional dialogue on migration and the needs of migrant workers across Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the Russian Federation. In those four countries, more than 520,000 migrant workers and their families have benefitted from a wide range of services, including legal assistance and education.

Dreams and designs in Tajikistan

Born in the remote district of Gonchi, northern Tajikistan, Farangis Azamova had a dream of becoming a designer, but with no means to finance university studies, the young rural woman had to find another means to realize her dreams.

With assistance from the Association of Women and Society, a long-time partner of UN Women and beneficiary of the regional migration programme, Farangis and five like-minded women established a community-based “self-help group” to sew curtains.

They took part in various seminars, learning how to set up, plan and manage a business. They rented a small place and established an atelier.

At first they sold curtains to neighbours, but with time their clientele grew. In June of 2014, her group took part in the annual traditional ‘Silk&Spices’ festival in Bukhara, eastern Uzbekistan, which brings together handicrafts from the entire Ferghana Valley.

It was an exciting opportunity for young women entrepreneurs to exchange experiences, learn to become more competitive in the labour market, take craft-master classes as well as present their handicrafts and find new buyers.

(END)

                                 This article is published under an agreement with UN Women. For more information, visit the Beijing+20 campaign website. 

Tengrists believe that the holy tenants of their faith are found in Kyrgyz traditions, culture, and national games such as horse wrestling and kyz-kuumai (“catch the girl”), where a young man and young women race on horseback while the man tries to steal a kiss. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By Bakyt Ibraimov
OSH, May 16 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Arslanbek Maliyev grew disillusioned with Islam when he realised foreign missionaries who came to Kyrgyzstan following the collapse of the Soviet Union were more concerned with building mosques than they were with education.

“They are not interested in our education system, in progress,” Maliyev, a former member of parliament, said of the missionaries, most of whom hailed from Arabic-speaking countries.Today, the boundaries of faith are still poorly defined in formerly communist Central Asia, where many people still tie ribbons to trees in places they believe are sacred, or burn herbs in their homes to ward off bad spirits.

Maliyev, who today runs an organisation dedicated to promoting Kyrgyz culture, said that after he read the Koran, he came to the conclusion that many tenets of Islam didn’t blend well with the nomadic traditions of the Kyrgyz.

Before the communist era, before the arrival of Islam, many on the Central Asian steppe followed an ancient Turkic set of beliefs: Sometimes described as animism, sometimes as paganism or shamanism, devotees these days call their ethnocentric ideology Tengrism.

Claiming as many as 50,000 followers in Kyrgyzstan today, believers are fighting for state recognition. There is also a growing, albeit small, Tengrist movement in neighbouring Kazakhstan.

Kyrgyz authorities refuse to identify the Tengrist belief system as a religion. Though officials do not say so themselves, adherents believe that authorities worry, as the influence of Islam grows, recognition of another national religion could stoke tension and divide Kyrgyzstan’s predominantly Muslim population.

Of course Islam did not spread in a vacuum in Central Asia. Islam combined with earlier practices to create a syncretic faith that might trouble a religious conservative from outside the region.

Today, the boundaries of faith are still poorly defined in formerly communist Central Asia, where many people still tie ribbons to trees in places they believe are sacred, or burn herbs in their homes to ward off bad spirits. But growing numbers of Kyrgyzstanis – who largely consider themselves Muslims – are trying to purify their faith, especially in the south.

Tengrists, on the other hand, pray to their ancestors, to the spirits of nature, and to Tengri, the eternal blue sky, to cleanse and empower them.

Compared with prominent religions like Islam or Christianity, Tengrism only vaguely addresses the burning questions of human existence, such as the relationship between god and man, and the afterlife, says Nazira Kurbanova, a theologian at Arabaev Kyrgyz State University.

“Tengrists have Tengri, and they believe that this is enough,” she told EurasiaNet.org.

Zamir Rakiyev, Kyrgyzstan’s deputy mufti, described Tengrism as a philosophical movement. Unlike other religions, it does not have a holy book, he noted. “In religion, there is a prophet interceding between God and believers. And Tengrism does not have such. I asked the Tengrists if they have a holy book. They replied that they could write one. Can that be a religion?” Rakiyev told EurasiaNet.org.

Rakiyev and Kurbanova were both members of an expert panel for the State Committee on Religious Affairs, which last August declared it could not recognise Tengrism. The 11 members agreed unanimously.

In response, a group of prominent public figures, including the president of the Academy of Sciences and the head of the Communist Party, wrote to President Almazbek Atambayev requesting his help for the sake of Kyrgyzstan’s national identity.

“The dominant religion of the country is currently Islam, which due to its diversity (74 groups) sometimes leads to a dead end and collides with Kyrgyz customs, traditions, culture [and] language,” the January letter, which was published by AKIpress, said.

The Tengrists are just looking for publicity, says Orozbek Moldaliyev, the director of the State Commission on Religious Affairs. “We explained to them that we rely on the conclusions of theologians. And if they recognise Tengrism as a religion, the State Commission will register them,” he told EurasiaNet.org. The Tengrists “can register as a public association with the Justice Ministry and carry out their activities and do whatever they want to do.”

Anarbek Usupbayev, who runs a foundation in Bishkek to promote Tengrism and “preserve the traditions and culture of the Kyrgyz people,” says representatives of the State Commission told him his group “would split Kyrgyz into Muslims, Tengrists, and enmity may emerge between them.” Moldaliyev denied his office gave any such justification for its decision.

Some of Usupbayev’s beliefs do sound like they could offend. “We Kyrgyz must not wear beards and burkas,” he told EurasiaNet.org. “Tengrism, not Islam, is the ancient religion of our Kyrgyz ancestors.”

“We urge the Kyrgyz to develop their traditions, customs, culture, language, and national games. This is where the basis of our faith is,” Usupbayev said, explaining that the holy tenets of the faith are found in Kyrgyz traditions such as horse wrestling, and kyz-kuumai (“catch the girl”), where a young man and women race on horseback while the man tries to steal a kiss.

Asked to describe the bedrock of his faith, he said, “Each of us knows our genealogy seven generations back, and this is the basis for Tengrism.”

Editor’s note:  Bakyt Ibraimov is an Osh-based journalist. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Victory Day on May 9 was an occasion for Russians to indulge in patriotic flag waving in Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin used the previous day to muster a show of diplomatic support for his efforts to bring formerly Soviet states closer together.

On May 8, Putin met with the presidents of Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan in the Kremlin. Following the success of the Euromaidan movement in Kyiv, Putin has made it a priority to shore up support among other formerly Soviet states for Russia’s geopolitical agenda, in particular the establishment of a regional economic union as a precursor to a wider political union of Eurasian states.“It’s hard to predict anything these days, but it seems to me that the treaty will be signed -- but in a reduced form, with most difficult issues to be resolved after signing,. -- Nargis Kassenova

A treaty on the formation of a Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) is due to be signed in Astana in late May, paving the way for its launch in January 2015. The body would be an outgrowth of the existing Customs Union, a free trade zone comprising Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Armenia and Kyrgyzstan are slated to join the Customs Union before the end of the year.

As Putin warmly welcomed existing and potential union members in Moscow on May 8, ostensibly for security talks unrelated to the economic integration project, the question on the lips of Kremlin watchers was: will they or won’t they put pen to paper on the EEU founding document in less than three weeks’ time?

The Moscow meeting came on the heels of a disastrous Customs Union summit in Minsk on Apr. 29, where expectations of finalising the treaty fizzled as Putin and his counterparts, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, admitted that, at this late stage, they have differences over the pact’s wording.

Nazarbayev’s conspicuous absence from the May 8 talks in Moscow, convened under the auspices of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, set tongues wagging about differences of opinion. Contacted by telephone by EurasiaNet.org, Nazarbayev’s office said it had no comment — but some observers interpreted his no-show as a snub to Putin from one of his closest allies.

As other regional leaders were cozying up to the Kremlin, Nazarbayev was having a tete-a-tete in Astana with a senior official from the United States, Moscow’s arch-rival in the geopolitical struggle over Ukraine. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns used the meeting to assure Nazarbayev of America’s “enduring” commitment to Kazakhstan and Central Asia, the State Department said, as the Ukraine crisis helps “underscore what’s at stake.”

Regional analysts tend to believe that the recent signs are not indicators of insurmountable problems surrounding the EEU’s formation.

“It’s hard to predict anything these days, but it seems to me that the treaty will be signed — but in a reduced form, with most difficult issues to be resolved after signing,” Nargis Kassenova, director of the Central Asian Studies Center at Almaty’s KIMEP University, told EurasiaNet.org.

“If it’s not signed it will be a blow to the reputation of Vladimir Putin, but also to some extent that of Nursultan Nazarbayev,” she added. “Both invested a lot of personal image capital into it.”

Alex Nice, a regional analyst at the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit, also feels that integration plans are more or less on track.

“It’s possible there might be a further delay to the final signing of the document, but I’m confident that the treaty will come into force as planned next January,” he told EurasiaNet.org, pointing out that “negotiations on the EEU treaty are very far advanced.”

“Of course, some of the more controversial provisions will be subject to lengthy transition periods,” Nice added.

The chances of the agreement being signed on time are “quite high,” concurred regional security expert Aida Abzhaparova of the University of the West of England. Nazarbayev is a cheerleader for integration, she pointed out, and signing the treaty in Astana would have huge “symbolism” for him: Nazarbayev first proposed the notion of a Eurasian union long before Putin took it up, and sees himself as “the father of the idea.”

Speculation that the union might be heading off the rails was fueled by reports on May 7 that Kyrgyzstan’s prime minister, Joomart Otorbayev, wished to postpone membership for a year — but his spokeswoman denied the claim. Otorbayev had, on the contrary, said Kyrgyzstan would complete the legislative groundwork to join by the end of the year, Gulnura Toraliyeva told EurasiaNet.org by telephone.

Armenia is expected to join sooner – but is currently bogged down trying to negotiate some 900 exemptions to the union’s single customs tariff.

Analysts believe that incorporating the weaker economies of Armenia and Kyrgyzstan into the union is a sticking point in the treaty negotiations; Kazakhstan and Belarus are believed to be wary of the economic implications amid Russian efforts to expand its geopolitical clout.

Perhaps the biggest threat to the EEU’s success is Russia’s actions in Ukraine, suggests Kassenova.

“The Ukraine crisis undermined Russian policy in the post-Soviet space,” Kassenova said. “Now it’s seen as a bully without any respect for the sovereignty of its neighbors. Plus, the crisis undermined the economy of Russia and made it less capable of serving as the locomotive of integration.”

“On the one hand, the crisis should give more bargaining power to Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan,” she continued. “On the other, the overall destiny of the project is in doubt: will Russia have the will and resources to support and sponsor it further?”

Editor’s note:  Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specialises in Central Asia. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

A man from Kyrgyzstan's Chui Oblast washes windows on a train parked at Moscow's Paveletsky Railway Station. While Russia already hosts hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz labour migrants, a new law will allow fluent Russian-speakers from around the former Soviet Union to apply for fast-track citizenship. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By Asel Kalybekova
BISHKEK, Apr 30 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed legislation recently offering fast-track citizenship to Russian speakers anywhere within the former Soviet Union.

Analysts believe the law is motivated by a desire to enhance Moscow’s influence in Ukraine and elsewhere, but it may have unintended consequences for the Kremlin in Central Asia.“Soon we may come to the point when no Kyrgyz citizens will be left on the territory of Kyrgyzstan; there will be no one to vote." -- Marat Kazakpaev

In Kyrgyzstan, the law has alarmed, confused and excited Bishkek’s chattering classes. Some see Russian citizenship as an opportunity to escape grinding poverty and political instability; others believe it will become easier to milk the Russian budget for social benefits; still others fear the measure could hasten Kyrgyzstan’s brain drain and pose a threat to the country’s sovereignty.

In order to be eligible for citizenship under the new regulations, one has to pass a Russian-language exam proving native-level proficiency. One also must hail from or have relatives from somewhere on the territory of the former Soviet Union.

In addition, applicants must renounce their current citizenship, though details on this point are vague. They must also apply for Russian citizenship in Russia, not at an embassy abroad.

Before the law was ratified in lightening succession and signed by Putin on Apr. 21, it took eligible Kyrgyz citizens about two years to apply, pass the tests, and receive Russian citizenship, a process allowed them then to hold onto their Kyrgyz passports. The new regulations will greatly speed up the process, shortening the timeframe to three months.

All this is “a clear threat” to Kyrgyz sovereignty, said Marat Kazakpaev, a political scientist at Bishkek’s Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University. He went on to envision a future in which a large percentage of those living in Kyrgyzstan are Russian citizens.

“Soon we may come to the point when no Kyrgyz citizens will be left on the territory of Kyrgyzstan; there will be no one to vote,” Kazakpaev told EurasiaNet.org.

Already, Central Asia is greatly dependent on Russia’s economy; about a million labour migrants from Kyrgyzstan (about a fifth of the population) and even more from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan work abroad, mostly in Russia. How the law will affect these migrants remains unclear because many are not fluent in Russian.

According to a second bill that Putin signed the same day, Russia is toughening regulations for migrant laborers by obliging them to pass Russian-language tests and exams on Russia’s history and legal code. So now for Central Asia’s fluent Russian speakers, it will, at least on paper, be easier to get Russian citizenship than a work permit.

(How the regulations will be implemented remains an unanswered question: it’s not clear how the tests will be conducted; if they will be selective to give preference to ethnic Russians over other ethnicities; and how Russia’s pervasive corruption will influence the examination process).

Kazakpaev believes the Kremlin is signaling that “it doesn’t need migrants; it needs new citizens.”

Another vague piece of legislation being considered by the Russian State Duma, the lower house of parliament, would require Russian citizens who carry multiple passports to register. State-run media has quoted Putin as saying that Russia must track dual-citizens.

Nurbek Toktakunov, a prominent human rights lawyer in Bishkek, notes that while it is Russia’s right to know who holds dual citizenship, the proposed regulation could be used as a pretext to meddle in other countries’ affairs. Toktakunov fears the package of legislation could force Russian-passport holders in Kyrgyzstan to choose their allegiance and thus split society into pro- and anti-Russian camps.

“If tomorrow we held a referendum on joining Russia, many would vote in favour,” Toktakunov told EurasiaNet.org, because most Kyrgyz are nostalgic for the stability of the Soviet Union.

An analyst in neighbouring Tajikistan said the same thing this week, estimating a “huge majority” of Tajiks would vote to join Russia given the chance.

Though there is little Kyrgyzstan’s leaders can do about the Russian law, talk of citizenship and allegiance is alarming some. After one informal poll found 51 percent of Kyrgyz would be willing to renounce their country’s sovereignty for the greater good, deputy Tursunbai Bakir uulu demanded parliament respond.

“Our ancestors fought for the independence of our country,” Vechernii Bishkek quoted him as saying on Apr. 24. “Look what’s going on in Ukraine. Do you want to find yourself in a similar situation?”

Fears about national security have been reinforced by multiple, provocative reports in recent weeks that migrants from former Soviet republics are eager to serve in the Russian army, suggesting a blurring of political allegiances.

The bills that are causing such confusion are not targeting Central Asians, says Andrei Grozin, head of the Central Asia Department at the CIS Institute in Moscow. Instead, they are aimed at Ukrainians who wish to move to Russia, he said. By opening the door for Ukrainians, the Duma, willingly or not, has given an opportunity for others to go to Russia.

“Who is mostly interested in the new norms? Not Ukrainians, but people from Central Asia and the Caucasus. The interest is coming from the countries that provide labour migrants,” Grozin told EurasiaNet.org.

Grozin believes that in the long run, the citizenship legislation – if fully implemented – will hurt Russia’s economy because the country is already inundated with migrants.

Yet as long as living standards in Russia are higher than in most parts of Central Asia, Kyrgyz and Tajiks will seek Russian citizenship simply to access a Russian pension or other social benefits, said the deputy director of Bishkek’s Adilet legal clinic, Lyudmila Arapova, who says the practice is already “widespread.”

Arapova, an expert on citizenship law, believes the new rules will encourage more Kyrgyz to seek Russian citizenship not to move to Russia or to work there, but to tap into Russia’s Social Fund.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org

Looking for balanced news in Kyrgyzstan. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By Chris Rickleton
BISHKEK, Apr 24 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Relative to other Central Asian states, Kyrgyzstan has a fairly free and perennially noisy domestic media scene. Even so, Kyrgyz outlets tend to be no match for Russian state-controlled media when it comes to establishing narratives for current events.

A recently released and annually updated poll funded by USAID and carried out by the Gallup-endorsed SIAR consulting company indicates that the Ukraine crisis is enabling Russian media outlets to expand their reach in Kyrgyzstan, a country where 94 percent of respondents claimed to obtain news about politics from television."We are located at the crossroads of a number of interests – internal and external. Political speculation is profitable and objectivity is expensive." -- Ilim Karypbekov

According to the latest poll, Kremlin-funded Russian Public Television (ORT) is the second most-watched channel in Kyrgyzstan.

It also shows that ORT’s popularity is on the rise, with 20 percent of respondents selecting it as their “most frequent” source of political information and 16 percent as the “most trusted” outlet. Those figures are up from 13 percent and 10 percent respectively in the previous year’s poll.

ORT’s rise is coming at the expense of Kyrgyzstan’s national broadcaster, OTRK, which saw its popularity percentage fall to 34 percent this year from 38 percent in 2013. Likewise, OTRK’s perceived reliability slipped to 29 percent from 32 percent.

The polling data has important implications for Kyrgyzstan’s political future, as Russian media now seems better positioned than ever to influence Kyrgyz public opinion. ORT and other Russian-controlled outlets have an established history of trying to shape its coverage to suit the Kremlin’s interests. Most notably, ORT led a media campaign against former Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev in the run-up to his violent ouster four years ago.

In the coming weeks and months, analysts of the local press believe that a Russian “information war” will intensify as Kyrgyz officials dither on the issue of joining what is Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s pet project — the Customs Union.

Beyond the government’s hesitation about joining a Kremlin-led economic group — which currently comprises Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, and which is expected to metamorphose into a Eurasian Economic Union as early as May — public opinion in Kyrgyzstan about the country’s growing fealty to its northern neighbour is growing more skeptical.

Polling data from the latest SIAR survey showed that the number of Kyrgyzstanis “categorically against” Bishkek joining the union has risen from 10 percent in 2013 to 21 percent this year.

Speaking to local media on Apr. 11, Kyrgyz officials involved in accession negotiations said most of the Kyrgyz side’s key demands for concessions had not been met.

The Customs Union — along with the sale of the country’s gas network to Russian state energy giant Gazprom and the mooted sale of a majority stake in the country’s main airport to another Kremlin firm, Rosneft — were all sources of discontent expressed at a recent 1,000-strong protest on Apr. 10 in Bishkek, organized by the nominally anti-Russia National Opposition Movement.

Nargiza Ryskulova, a Bishkek-based journalist who writes for the BBC’s Kyrgyz service, suggests most Russian-speaking Kyrgyz tend to tune in to cash-strapped OTRK for national news and ORT for international news.

“Now people are interested in Ukraine since Russia is interested in Ukraine. But many people lack an alternative to Russian coverage of world events. Internet penetration is only about a fifth of the population,” Ryskulova said.

Other observers are more worried. In a fiery Apr. 8 op-ed for the Kyrgyz news outlet AkiPress, Edil Baisalov, who served as chief of staff to the former interim government, wrote: “I am willing to bet that the average Kyrgyzstani consumes more products of Russian propaganda annually than the average Tatar, Chechen or Yakut.”

The consequence of such viewing habits, he added, can be seen in the national parliament, where lawmakers are considering bills almost identical in substance to those discussed in the Russian state Duma, and among illiberal youth groups that parrot the Kremlin’s homophobic and anti-Western rhetoric at press conferences that receive disproportionate airtime. These trends showed some Kyrgyz have become “tired of independence,” Baisalov asserted.

In print media, traditionally pro-Russian publications have been mirroring ORT’s narrative concerning Ukrainian events (i.e. that Ukrainian fascists are trampling on the rights of Russian speakers) and other topics.

The introduction to an article titled Russophobic Hysteria in the Apr. 9 edition of the Russian language weekly Delo Nomer vented against Washington-funded Radio Free Europe, which earlier had alleged that the Kyrgyz periodical received funding from Moscow.

The remainder of the article featured an interview with “political scientist and ex-diplomat” Bakyt Baketaev, who opined: “let’s speak openly – if there was a referendum on Kyrgyzstan entering the Russian Federation, many Kyrgyz would vote [yes], first and foremost those who remember the Soviet Union.”

Pro-Russian periodicals in Kyrgyzstan offer a heavy dose of anti-Americanism. Another article in same edition of Delo Nomer, for example, raised alarm about the supposed danger posed by “The United States’ Kyrgyz Front.” It linked a recent visit to Bishkek by the U.S. State Department’s Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, Nisha Biswal, to the April 10 National Opposition Movement protest.

U.S. officials have denied financing such activity. Meanwhile, Dengi i Vlast, another newspaper that leans pro-Russian ran a story in its Apr. 4 edition with a headline that read “Who is this bird Jomart Otorbayev?” The story featured a cartoon of Kyrgyzstan’s new prime minister on a tank with an American flag. Otorbayev’s “great mission” is “to block Kyrgyzstan’s entry into the Customs Union,” it alleged.

Funding sources for Kyrgyz media outlets are notoriously difficult to trace, prompting speculation that Russia is funneling money to local periodicals and broadcasters. It is “completely possible” that Kyrgyz media platforms receive money from Russian and other foreign sources, acknowledges Ilim Karypbekov, the chair of the public advisory board at the Kyrgyz broadcaster OTRK.

But, he adds, the republic’s media woes go deeper than that. Kyrgyz media is generally unprofitable, he says, meaning that “any sharp political confrontations” are “a means to earn money in exchange for coverage of a certain kind.”

What results is less an information war and more an “information vacuum” wherein outlets “attack politicians and each other, but don’t really highlight issues,” Karypbekov told Eurasianet.org.

Given its weak, fledgling democracy and strategic geopolitical location, Kyrgyzstan remains vulnerable to media manipulation, adds Karypbekov. “In our current situation we are located at the crossroads of a number of interests – internal and external — political speculation is profitable and objectivity is expensive,” he said.

Editor’s note: Chris Rickleton is a Bishkek-based journalist. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Georgian soldiers congregate at the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan en route to Afghanistan in late September 2013. As U.S. troops, which began using the airport near Bishkek in 2001, close down their operations, Rosneft, Russia's state-controlled oil giant, wants to grab a majority stake. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By Asel Kalybekova
BISHKEK, Apr 1 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Russia’s state-run oil giant Rosneft wants to purchase a majority stake in the state-controlled company that owns all of Kyrgyzstan’s civilian airports.

The negotiations are stoking concern in some circles in Bishkek about the potential risk to Kyrgyzstan’s sovereignty. But with its entrenched corruption, poor governance and remote location, the Central Asian country has few other options.

Rosneft’s takeover target is a company called Manas International Airport, named for the largest of the airfields under its control. In addition to Manas, which is situated outside Bishkek, the company operates 10 smaller (mostly non-functional) airports around the country.

The Manas facility has hosted a U.S. military base for almost 13 years, but the troops are packing up and are due to leave by July. Without the American spending, Kyrgyz officials argue, the company, which is 79 percent state-owned, will go into the red.

In February, Igor Sechin – Rosneft’s chairman, and close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin – and Kyrgyz First Deputy Prime Minister Djoomart Otorbaev (who has since been appointed acting prime minster) signed a non-binding memorandum on Rosneft’s intentions to purchase at least 51 percent of Manas’ shares.

In the memo, Rosneft also promises to spend up to a billion dollars for the shares and to create “a large-scale international logistics hub.”

In a separate document, Rosneft expresses its intentions to purchase 50 percent of fuel-distribution operations at Osh airport, Kyrgyzstan’s second largest, and acquire the Bishkek Oil Company, a private company that runs a network of filling stations in Bishkek.

Manas Vice President Dair Tokobaev admits that Manas’ economic prognosis is grim unless it can find a new revenue stream to offset the closure of the American base. “We have a lot of problems. We need an investor,” Tokobaev told EurasiaNet.org.

Since 2010, when Kyrgyzstan’s government began insisting the Americans would have to leave, officials have floated the idea of turning Manas into a civilian transportation hub serving cargo and passengers transiting Asia.

In the National Strategy for Sustainable Development, President Almazbek Atambayev has made reconstruction and modernization of the country’s airports, and the creation of a global hub, one of his administration’s top priorities.

In a Mar. 27 television interview, Atambayev threw his support behind the Rosneft initiative, reasoning that Kyrgyzstan basically had no other choice. Inexpensive fuel is necessary for the airport to develop and only Rosneft is able to provide it, he said.

“Those screaming that any percent cannot be given to Rosneft, all the more so 51 percent, they, in fact, want to put an end to the future of Manas,” Bishkek’s Kloop.kg news agency quoted the president as saying.

In recent years, Russian state-controlled companies have moved aggressively to gobble up key Kyrgyz assets.

In December, for example, Moscow’s state-run giant Gazprom acquired ailing Kyrgyzgaz, which manages Kyrgyzstan’s gas-distribution network, for the symbolic price of one dollar. (Gazprom promised to invest 600 million dollars into the network and also assumed 38 million in debt.)

During discussions of the sale last summer, Kyrgyzgaz chief Turgunbek Kulmurzayev told local newspaper Vechernii Bishkek that the company was “bankrupt” and “had no other choice” but to sell.

Another Kremlin-controlled company, RusHydro, started construction of a 400-million-dollar hydroelectric cascade last June. Moreover, Russia’s state-run Inter RAO has promised to build an estimated two-billion-dollar hydropower dam, Kambara-Ata-1, further upstream on the Naryn River.

Such deals are viewed warily by some experts in Bishkek. Most readily acknowledge that Moscow is destined to exert considerable influence over Bishkek, given that Kyrgyz labour migrants in Russia generate the equivalent of about one-third of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP, and a large contingent of Russian troops are stationed in the Central Asian state.

But the steady stream of sales of state assets is making it much more difficult for Kyrgyz officials to steer an independent course.

Bishkek-based analyst Marat Kazakpaev argues that while Kyrgyzstan needs foreign investment, it should strive to attract private investors. He believes that Russia, with the recent string of deals, is expanding its geopolitical influence in the region and sees Bishkek as its foothold.

“The fact that Rosneft is a state-owned company gives this memorandum a political context. This is not business, this is politics,” Kazakpaev told EurasiaNet.org.

The challenge for Kyrgyzstan at present is that its reputation for widespread corruption and political volatility is frightening potential Western investors away.

“Let’s admit it frankly, if there will be investment, it will be from Russia. We won’t get any investment from the West,” economist Meimanbek Abdyldaev told Radio Liberty’s Kyrgyz Service. Rosneft’s interest in Manas “can be regarded as a forerunner to [Kyrgyzstan’s] entrance into the [Russia-led] Customs Union.”

Though the Rosneft memorandum is not legally binding – and any final deal to sell state-assets must be ratified by parliament – on Mar. 20, a small group of protestors gathered outside the legislature.

Rights activist Gulshaiyr Abdirasulova told Kloop.kg that Manas is a “strategic object. It’s the people’s welfare and wealth. We’re not against investments that will develop the airport, but [we want investment] without giving away a controlling stake.”

Parliamentarian Dastan Bekeshev supported the demonstrators. “If one wants to attract investors, one does it not through sale, but through opening a joint venture,” he was quoted as saying.

Rosneft did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Neither did Russia’s Transport Ministry, which is helping negotiate the deal.

Tokobaev at Manas agrees that the airport is a strategic object, but for him development is more critical than the funding source. Without investors like Rosneft, “we will be left feasting our eyes on [Manas] like a cultural memorial. Should we let it be gouged and plundered and stay Kyrgyz, or should we save and develop it together with someone?”

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Researchers from Kyrgyzstan's Geology and Mineral Resources Agency hike to Adygene lake and glacier, above Bishkek, to assess its flooding potential. With glaciers retreating, many of Kyrgyzstan's 330-plus glacial lakes, 22 of which are classified as extremely hazardous, pose increased danger of flooding, but geologists only have resources to monitor the top five most dangerous. Credit: Adriane Lochner/EurasiaNet

By Adriane Lochner
BISHKEK, Mar 31 2014 (EurasiaNet)

It is a tough climb to the weather station: The trail leads across snow-covered boulder fields and steep, icy slopes. But for four researchers from Kyrgyzstan’s Geology and Mineral Resources Agency, the six-hour climb to the Adygene Glacier weather station, perched at 3,600 meters above sea level, is routine. From there, they can monitor 18 growing lakes at the glacier snout in the mountains above Bishkek.

The largest of these melt-water lakes is a potential hazard for the capital city, 40 kilometres down the valley, says the team’s debris expert, Vitaly Zaginaev.

“The lake is dammed by an underground ice plug that usually thaws slowly and feeds the Ala-Archa River. If the temperature rises too fast, the ice melts rapidly and can cause a sudden outburst. The flood could develop into a mudslide, endangering not only the valley but possibly also Bishkek,” Zaginaev told EurasiaNet.org.

Thanks to global warming, glaciers are retreating, new melt-water lakes are forming and the risk of so-called glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) is increasing, many scientists agree. Back in 2007, the United Nations Environment Programme classified GLOF’s as “the largest and most extensive glacial hazard […] with the highest potential for disaster and damage.”

But even before that, Central Asia was feeling their effect. In July 1998, more than 100 people died during an outburst flood in the Shahimardan Valley, which Kyrgyzstan shares with Uzbekistan. A similar flood in the Shakhdara Valley in Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains in 2002 claimed 23 lives. In both cases, local communities did not receive early warnings and had no time to take emergency action.

Today, tight budgets and bureaucracy are stretching Kyrgyzstan’s ability to prevent a similar disaster, one that could possibly strike the densely populated areas around the capital.

When the ice holding back Teztor Lake in the mountains above Bishkek melted on Jul. 31, 2012, the Geology and Mineral Resources Agency predicted it with precision.

“Within just a few days, the water level rose by 16 centimetres,” said Sergey Erokhin, head of the research group. But it took the Ministry of Emergency Situations (MChS) several days to release a warning after receiving notice from the scientists.

“We informed MChS 10 days ahead but they didn’t start putting up warning signs and evacuating people until right before the outbreak happened,” Erokhin said.

In a written response to EurasiaNet.org’s queries, MChS deputy head Davletbek Alimbekov credited the ministry’s emergency plan and warning system for averting fatalities and noted that no damage occurred. Local sources, however, reported thousands of dollars in material damage: several yurts were apparently flooded, and the mineral water pipeline to a commercial bottled-water plant was destroyed.

In contemplating hazard-reduction measures, some point to Switzerland, a country with topography similar to Kyrgyzstan’s, as a model. In a case similar to Kyrgyzstan’s Teztor, Grindelwald Lake in the state of Bern burst out in 2008. The material damage was over half a million dollars.

To avoid such a disaster in the future, government and local authorities implemented costly measures: For over 15 million dollars, they built a drainage channel and several automatic monitoring stations. Probes constantly measure the water level during summer. If numbers exceed a critical threshold, sensors trigger an alarm in the valley. In addition, a dedicated website informs residents about changes around the glacier and the lake.

“The probability of catastrophic lake outbursts is still small, but it increases with each new lake. This applies especially to high mountain regions such as Central Asia, the Himalayas, the Andes and the European Alps,” said glaciologist Wilfried Haeberli of the University of Zurich. Haeberli and his team predict melting glaciers will form up to 600 new lakes in Switzerland this century.

“We can quite accurately simulate where and when the new lakes will form. Therefore, it is possible to plan ahead and take early action,” he told EurasiaNet.org.

Haeberli recommends preventative measures including artificially lowering a lake’s water level or building a reservoir dam to break the dangerous tidal wave (a rock slide can trigger a sudden “tsunami”). Early warning systems and emergency plans are important to evacuate people on time.

Of course, impoverished Kyrgyzstan does not have resources like Switzerland’s. Kyrgyz scientists say they have the means to check on only a fraction of the 330 lakes around the country that Alimbekov of MChS says are prone to outburst this year, and only a handful of the 22 that are considered extremely hazardous.

The six specialists from the Geology and Mineral Resources Agency monitor five of Kyrgyzstan’s seven provinces. In southern Batken (where the 1998 outburst that killed more than 100 happened) and Osh provinces no one is monitoring glacial lakes, they say.

In this situation, Zaginaev and his team do the best they can. Each year, they pick the five most dangerous lakes, hike to them by foot and measure parameters like temperature, precipitation and solar radiation. “At least installing some automatic measuring stations would make our work a lot easier,” said Zaginaev.

Editor’s note:  Adriane Lochner is a Bishkek-based writer. This story originally appeared on http://www.EurasiaNet.org

The Kara-Keche coal deposit sprawls through this polluted valley of mines in Kyrgyzstan's Naryn Province. Control over the extraction from the mines and delivery of the coal to power plants has resulted in criminal gangs fighting each other, thereby frightening foreign investors away. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By EurasiaNet Correspondents
BISHKEK, Mar 4 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Kara-Keche, a sprawling deposit containing about 430 million tonnes of coal in mountainous Naryn Province, is a key asset for Kyrgyzstan’s struggling economy.

It’s not just the government and an array of local companies plying the open pit mines that are interested in the dirty black stuff. Last November, a shootout at Kara-Keche among gangsters highlighted an unsavory side of the business.

According to the government’s development strategy, Kyrgyzstan could be sitting on over 3.3 billion tonnes of coal—enough, by some measures, to provide the country with energy for centuries. But with coal production split across a network of inefficient producers, prices are high, meaning that Kyrgyzstan now sources much of its coal abroad.

The strategy says the industry is in “a condition of crisis.” Foreign investors – seen by authorities as a potential balm – are curious, but cautious given the lack of transportation infrastructure, corruption and violence—conditions similar to those which have hampered the development of the country’s gold sector.

Today, annual production is a quarter of what it was during its Soviet-subsidised peak in the late 1970s, according to Almaz Alimbekov, head of the Mining Policy Department at Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Economy.

Bishkek’s central heating plant, the country’s largest coal-powered operation, relies on imports from neighbouring Kazakhstan for 70 percent of its coal consumption; those imports cost the impecunious state budget roughly 40 million dollars a year. The remaining 30 percent comes from Kara-Keche and other Kyrgyz deposits, Alimbekov says.

Coal is a popular topic of discussion, not least because it is used to heat homes across the country during Kyrgyzstan’s harsh winters. Last winter, according to the 24.kg news agency, prices for heating coal varied from roughly 50 dollars a tonne to over 200 dollars a tonne, with prices tending to rise as temperatures drop. Communities closest to coal mines often expect to receive coal at discounted rates, though social assistance is not a mandatory aspect of mining licenses.

Recently local media reports have fixed attention on the fallout from a November shootout at Kara-Keche, reputedly between members of a Naryn-based criminal group and bandits loyal to Maksat ‘the Diver’ Abakirov, an alleged gangster from Issyk-Kul province seen as instrumental in provoking unrest in the communities surrounding the Canadian-owned Kumtor gold mine in May 2013.

While no one was reported killed in that shootout, Aibek Mambetaliev – an individual the Vechernii Bishkek newspaper once described as a Naryn mobster responsible for “deciding whom coal could be sold to” – was found dead at the deposit 10 days later.

Then a group identified as Mambetaliev’s relatives reportedly attacked three police officers on trial in connection with his death inside a courtroom on Feb. 20. The relatives set the three on fire with petrol bombs and subsequently kidnapped one; beating him heavily. Another officer escaped the scene and headed towards a local river, where he is presumed to have been drowned by the mob.

The state prosecutor has launched criminal cases against the assailants, but their location is unknown.

Tumult in the coal sector is not new. Back in 2005, following the overthrow of Kyrgyzstan’s first president, renegade opposition leader Nurlan “The Coal King” Motuyev famously seized the Kara-Keche deposit, expelling the companies working there. He went on to preside over a sharp fall in production.

Bringing a sense of order to the sector will require significant foreign investment, says Alimbekov, the Economy Ministry’s mining specialist. Part of the problem, he says, is that some of the country’s best deposits are mined by a bevy of inefficient local companies that “lack capital and are logistically weak,” making them reliant on traders under the influence of racketeers.

“They can’t provide enough coal for [Bishkek’s heating plant] because they don’t have the best technology for extraction and they don’t have the transport,” Alimbekov told EurasiaNet.org. Ideally, he said, Kara-Keche should be mined by a single foreign investor.

Kara-Keche is in a high-mountain valley accessible only by a winding, muddy road that is frequently blocked by landslides. In the valleys below, the roads aren’t much better. Coal must be transported in bulk to be profitable. A railway link connecting the Kara-Keche deposit with the town of Balykchy, where it would connect to an existing line to Bishkek, would help regulate supplies, Alimbekov says, but such a link would cost “huge money.”

Western firms are eyeing the long-stalled China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan rail link, says Alastair Muir, director of technical operations for Celsius Coal, an Australian mining firm with a license in Kyrgyzstan’s southern Uzgen region.

Kyrgyzstan has “massive potential” for supplying coking coal, a variety used in metallurgy, to steelmakers in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, but “transport is a massive factor for us,” Muir said at the Turkey and Central Asia Mining Summit in Istanbul on Jan. 28. The rail has been on hold for years and shows no sign of being built any time soon.

If foreign investors ever take the plunge, they’ll still have to deal with local communities, warns Valentin Bogdetski, head of the Association of Kyrgyz Miners. Communities’ high expectations for social assistance from mining firms “borders on extortion,” he says, and may frighten investors.

“Some local people think their ‘social package’ entitles them to a lifetime’s worth of free coal,” Bogdetski told EurasiaNet.org. “Under these conditions, production will not be feasible. The government needs to ensure order before we can talk about foreign investment.”

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Ready for the wedding night? Credit: Courtesy of David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By Adriane Lochner
BISHKEK, Feb 27 2014 (EurasiaNet)

It starts out like any gymnastics class: A teacher guides a roomful of women through stretching and breathing exercises. The yoga, ballet and tai chi moves train pelvic muscles, the stomach and legs.

You only realize you are in a “sex class” when the egg-shaped stones appear. They are used for vaginal weightlifting, a Chinese technique for strengthening muscles and increasing sensitivity in the genital area. The goal is something rarely discussed in Kyrgyzstan: better sex.“After the fall of the Soviet Union, sex hit Kyrgyzstan like a hammer. People were not ready." -- Bubusara Ryskulova

“I wanted to create a place where women can develop their femininity,” says 30-year-old Rakhat Kenjebek kyzy, founder of the Jade Gift School, which is named for the stone eggs. When she opened three years ago, people were sceptical. Now the school has more than 150 students between the ages of 18 and 66.

In the Soviet Union, sex was a taboo topic and femininity discouraged.

“Women had to function like robots […] Today they need to wake up from their post-Soviet stupor,” says Kenjebek kyzy, who lived in China for several years. “I was surprised when people there spoke openly about sex. Women proudly showed their feminine sensitivity, elegance and emotionality,” she says, adding that she was surprised by how comfortable Chinese men and women seemed around each other.

Back in Kyrgyzstan, talking about sexuality is still discouraged. Thus many young people are confused about sex. That leads to all sorts of problems, says Bubusara Ryskulova, director of the Sezim women’s crisis centre.

“After the fall of the Soviet Union, sex hit Kyrgyzstan like a hammer. People were not ready,” she says. “Girls were experimenting and wore provocative fashions. This was interpreted the wrong way and rapes happened.”

Since 1998, with foreign donor support, Sezim has operated Bishkek’s only women’s shelter. They also offer a hotline and counseling. About 3,000 women seek Sezim’s help each year: some 60 percent are fleeing domestic abuse; others face trafficking and bride kidnapping.

A lack of awareness about sex contributes to the abuse, Ryskulova says, citing the example of a woman abused by her husband for 20 years. They had had an arranged marriage and the husband repeatedly raped her.

“If a couple is not educated in sex this can lead to unpleasant experiences,” says Ryskulova, “Sex might not be the main cause of a bad relationship but often it is an underlying problem that can make big waves, even lead to domestic violence.”

In Ryskulova’s opinion, sex education is sorely needed in Kyrgyzstan and she cautiously supports the Jade Gift School.

There’s more than just sex ed at Jade Gift, though, which helps explain its success. Besides the regular gymnastics classes (which cost about 35 dollars per month and are advertised on a variety of social networking websites), the school offers one-time classes in “partner massage” and “sexual fantasy.” The courses, says Kenjebek kyzy, help women learn to enjoy and respect themselves.

Jade Gift’s clients are eager to talk about their experiences, on condition of anonymity. A 29-year-old Bishkek woman who has been married for a year-and-a-half says she came to the school because “I wanted to please my man and we are in a very happy relationship right now. This is not only because of great sex but also has spiritual reasons. I learned to love myself and he feels that.”

She has only told her close friends and sisters that she is attending the classes because “there are many people who wouldn’t understand.”

In a culture with rigidly defined roles, men, too, can face extra pressure. “There are cases of men being psychologically abused by their wives. There are also issues caused by unemployment, alcoholism and gambling,” Ryskulova from Sezim says. “At least women can talk with relatives or their kids about it. Men usually don’t have anyone to talk to. They are three times more likely to commit suicide than women.”

Jade Gift has started catering to male clients, too. Recently, it established a “Men’s Power Class” taught by former bodybuilder and fitness coach Alexander Novitsky.

“Like in the female class, we want to strengthen the muscles used during sex,” said Novitsky, who also teaches his students techniques to avoid prostate cancer and gives tips on how to please women.

Currently, he has a group of five students. One of them proudly tells EurasiaNet.org that after two months’ training, both his wives got pregnant. (Polygamy is technically illegal in Kyrgyzstan, though it is thought to be common among wealthy men.)

“We were surprised by the open-mindedness of the men in Bishkek,” says Kenjebek kyzy. “Right now, we are offering just the physical workout but we might teach a cunnilingus class in the future.”

Editor’s note:  Adriane Lochner is a Bishkek-based journalist. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

The Year of the Snake has been full of unpleasant surprises for Chinese living in Kyrgyzstan. Against a backdrop of rising economic nationalism and weak law enforcement, Chinese migrants complain they’re being targeted for robberies and extortion, especially by law-enforcement officers who are supposed to protect them.

In December, Chinese state media publicised a “wave” of attacks on Chinese entrepreneurs and students in and around Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek. The report, published in the Beijing-based Global Times, said many victims feel they’re being ethnically profiled.

It also alleged that Kyrgyz police have been complicit in violent robberies. That same month, the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek took the unusual step of issuing an “emergency safety alert,” warning citizens to be vigilant. Another statement issued by the embassy rebuked Kyrgyz authorities for failing to protect Chinese citizens.

In an interview with EurasiaNet.org, a cautious Bishkek-based Chinese restaurateur described a precarious existence. Criminal gangs, often with police protection, see even small-time Chinese businesses as “cash machines,” the restaurateur said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We live simply and try to save money like anyone. But the gangs think that because China has money, we have money,” the restaurateur said.

Meanwhile, groups of Chinese labourers, often working on infrastructure projects undertaken by Beijing’s state-owned corporations, are being subjected to impromptu document checks from nationalist groups.

These groups, which depict migration from the Middle Kingdom as a threat to national security, thrive on resentment: many Kyrgyz don’t understand why Chinese are taking precious few jobs and hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz are forced to work in Russia. One of the groups, Erkin El, claims that up to 300,000 Chinese are already living in Kyrgyzstan, a country of about 5.5 million. The Global Times estimated the figure to be closer to 80,000.

The Coalition of a New Generation is another youth group that acts as a self-appointed inspector of Chinese workers’ documents. The checks, some of which have been videotaped and have been posted online, are similar to ones that Russian nationalist groups carry out on Central Asian migrants.

Coalition representatives did not respond to EurasiaNet.org’s repeated requests for an interview.

Kyrgyz-language media outlets – many of which have a reputation for race-baiting and indulging in nationalist-inspired hyperbole – have helped stoke anti-Chinese sentiment. In July, for example, the newspaper Alibi sought to blame China for Kyrgyzstan’s chronic political instability in a brash article headlined, “Chinese Migrants May Carry Out the Third Revolution.”

Aigul Ryskulova — a former labour minister who heads a working group on migration in President Almazbek Atambayev’s administration — told EurasiaNet.org that Chinese migration is “not as catastrophic” as nationalist groups describe it.

This past November, officials at the Ministry of Labour, Migration and Youth told parliament that Chinese nationals accounted for around 70 percent of the 12,990 work permits issued last year.

A major problem, as Ryskulova sees it, is the convoluted nature of Kyrgyzstan’s migration framework. The system could benefit from streamlining, she said.

“Inter-governmental agreements that operate outside the quota system, departmental delays and corruption schemes in the process of prolonging visas” all mean the overall figure for Chinese working in Kyrgyzstan is several times higher than the official annual quota, Ryskulova said.

She went on to say that this gap enables “myths” about the number of Chinese migrants in the country to gain traction, as well as fosters a sense of helplessness among Kyrgyz citizens.

Though the increasing visibility of Chinese workers has certainly fuelled xenophobia, the reasons behind the recent spate of violent attacks may be more calculated, according to Li Lifan at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Chinese expatriates, in particular private entrepreneurs, “tend to hoard large amounts of foreign currency, especially dollars” to avoid punitive rates on bank transfers from Kyrgyzstan to China. This, combined with the fact that Chinese “rarely complain,” and often don’t report crime or extortion attempts, makes them “easy targets for local gangs,” Li told EurasiaNet.org.

Diplomats at the Chinese Embassy declined to speak with EurasiaNet.org about the issue.

The Sichuan-born owner of the Chinese restaurant in Bishkek said extortion is nothing new. The downtown Bishkek restaurant, among at least a dozen Chinese-owned restaurants in the capital, has been subject to threats from racketeers. At one point, a group of five men came in and asked for $2,000 in cash, the source said.

“When we said we could not pay, they came the next day, ordered a big meal and left without paying. When we told the police, officers said the group had not committed a crime and that we had shown them our hospitality. It continued twice a week for a month,” the restaurateur said, until the men realised the restaurant wasn’t making much money.

Allegations of police involvement in racketeering and violence are common. And those charges are believable in a country where, according to a 2012 US government-funded survey, the police are the second-least-trusted institution, just after the judiciary.

According to one interviewee cited in the Global Times report, a Bishkek cop emerged as a suspect in at least one attack on a Chinese business in 2012, an incident in which a Chinese citizen died.

The Bishkek restaurateur said the Chinese community was “extremely frightened” last summer by the death of Guan Joon Chan, the owner of a chain of eyeglass stores in the city.

According to various Kyrgyz press reports, Guan was found beaten unconscious late on Jul. 24. He subsequently died in the hospital. Quoting anonymous sources, the Russian-language Vechernii Bishkek published a report on Jul. 30 that alleged Guan had regularly paid protection money to local police, and that he was beaten shortly after a disagreement with a police chief over money.

Currently two men are standing trial in connection with Guan’s murder. One is a senior police officer at the capital’s Sverdlovsk District police department. The other is a former member of a police special forces unit.

Editor’s note:  Chris Rickleton is a Bishkek-based journalist. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

A generation after independence from the Soviet Union, most villages in Kyrgyzstan are ramshackle, broken places, scenes of hopelessness and despair. Able young people leave – for Bishkek, the capital, or for menial jobs in Russia. But thanks to a secret gold mine, one little mountain hamlet is different.

Soviet geologists found the gold vein in remote Naryn Province in the 1940s, villagers say. But the gold was never tapped until economic collapse in the 1990s forced the village’s “wild geologists,” as they call themselves, to explore.

“Without it, our village would vanish in crime and theft,” says one miner, an agronomist by training. “It used to be a very criminal place before people started working at the mine. One wouldn’t even leave a broom in the backyard.”

Though it’s illegal, villagers say about 60 percent of local men work regularly at the mine, and it supports the entire community of approximately 3,000. With other work opportunities scant – and with gold mining increasingly contentious and politicised in Kyrgyzstan – villagers are cautious. They would only speak with EurasiaNet.org on condition of strict anonymity, insisting even the name of the village not appear in print.

Another miner, who has been working at the open-pit mine for more than 10 years, says the gold helped him and his wife, a schoolteacher, raise three children and build a modest home. Now his son is studying geology in Bishkek, intending to continue his father’s work. With deeply wrinkled hands he points at the mountain: “Everything I have today is because of this mine.”

The miner, who asked to be called Bakyt, makes the three-hour trek up to the pit about once every other month with four or five colleagues in a jeep packed with warm clothes, tents, and food they can cook on a portable gas stove – meat, rice, and vegetables. “It needs to be high-calorie food, because it’s very hard labour,” he says.

On trips lasting up to a month, the miners look for quartz and pyrite – two indications of gold. “Once we see small pieces of gold glittering, we start digging with pickaxes and hoes,” Bakyt says.

The miners sort promising rocks into 50-kilo burlap sacks and return home to a jerry-built refinery. One machine crushes the stones into powder; several electric sieves wash away the dust, leaving the heavier gold on the bottom. Even hidden in a garage, the machines make so much noise they can be heard outside. But it seems everyone in the village has an economic stake in the process, and thus an incentive to keep the secret.

The gold dust contains gold, silver, iron, and pyrite. The pyrite is burned away with highly corrosive nitric acid in a process that might frighten health inspectors: Outside, in an open field, with no goggles or other protection, the miners mix the acid and powder in a stainless-steel dish and step back as they burn.

“We … put the dish against the wind, in order not to inhale the smoke,” says Bakyt, describing it first as “black, then yellow. At the end, it turns white and stops. That’s how we know it’s done.”

Nitric acid is available, illegally, in Bishkek for about five dollars per litre. The amateur chemists remove iron with the help of magnets. Eventually, they say, the gold dust is about 83-85 percent gold and about 15 percent silver. This compound is sold to one of several middlemen in the village at an agreed four to five-dollar discount off world market price, per gramme, because of the silver.

Villagers keep a close eye on market price fluctuations with the help of mobile Internet connections.

Those not directly involved in the mining also benefit, explains a member of the elected local council. Shops in the village are well stocked and several men hire themselves out as drivers to ferry miners to the site. Unlike many Kyrgyz villages, where most young men have migrated away to search for work, few are eager to leave. Some who left in the 1990s have even returned.

The mine “benefits these people and the whole village. Everyone is doing what they can to get by,” the official says. “Plus, gold miners contribute money to social events. There’s both an economic and social impact.”

The economic benefits may trickle down illicitly to local officials, too – a phenomenon widespread in Kyrgyzstan and throughout the former Soviet Union. One villager said police sometimes stop vehicles on a road from the mine, demanding a “toll” of 300 som (about six dollars) per bag of stones. (Each vehicle returning from the mine carries up to 10 bags.)

Asked if the miners have the technical expertise to handle and store chemicals like nitric acid, the council member says locals are more careful than foreign investors because “they live here.” Foreign companies are often faulted in the local press for environmental breaches – in some cases justly, in others not.

He says villagers have tried to get permission to operate the mine legally, but never heard back from Bishkek. Now, with parliament considering nationalising the country’s only significant gold mine, Canadian-owned Kumtor, the villagers are afraid to ask again. “I don’t believe the government will listen to us, they will just ban mining,” the council member says.

The off-the-radar mine was contested in the not-too-distant past. In 2011, Kyrgyzaltyn, the state-run gold company, tried to sell it to a Chinese firm, according to Radio Azattyk. The decision seems to have been put on hold after villagers protested in the provincial capital, Naryn.

“This is theft. It cannot be allowed and should be prosecuted by the local government,” said Kadyrbek Kaketaev, recently retired as deputy director of the State Geology Agency.

But villagers have no intention of stopping.

“We don’t care whether it’s winter or summer, we are there the whole year,” says one miner. The mine doesn’t make him rich, but gives him something rare in rural Kyrgyzstan – a comfortable life. It’s also risky, he explains: Some missions return home empty-handed and rack up debt. But a successful trip can gross around 2,000 dollars.

“We have gold fever and will never be healed. We will do this all our lives,” says Bakyt.

Editor’s note:  Asel Kalybekova is a freelance reporter based in Kyrgyzstan. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

The Kumtor gold mine is Kyrgyzstan’s lone economic gem. Yet, despite the mine’s vital importance to the Kyrgyz economy, officials appear to be mulling a doomsday option for the Canadian-run project.

Officials in Bishkek and executives for Toronto-based Centerra Gold, the entity that owns Kumtor, have been struggling to work out a new operating arrangement.

Several senior Kyrgyz government officials say they now see no way to resolve the long-standing impasse, after parliament voted last month to block a restructuring deal. That potential bargain would have seen Kyrgyzstan trade its one-third stake in the company for a 50-percent share in the mine. Parliament demanded at least a 67-percent stake, which Centerra says shareholders would be unlikely to accept.

“There’s no light at the end of the tunnel,” a senior government official told EurasiaNet.org, referring to the negotiations.

MPs have set a deadline of Dec. 23 for the sides to reach agreement. Businesspeople describe the fallout from the Kumtor crisis as a slow-moving train wreck destined to take down the government and undermine faith in Kyrgyzstan’s experiment with parliamentary democracy.

The current negotiations started after parliament voted in February to tear up a 2009 agreement, maintaining it was not in the interests of the country. Centerra countered that it has invested approximately one billion dollars in the mine since signing that contract, the second restructuring in five years. Few believe Kyrgyzstan has the technical know-how to operate the project on its own.

“What’s happening with Kumtor signals to the world that we cannot secure property rights and have normal relations with Western countries,” says prominent businessman Emil Umetaliev.

Pressure on the Kyrgyz side is now building to take unilateral action. Rioters demanding nationalisation have caused trouble on several occasions this year.

Among government officials, civil society leaders and businesspeople, many suspect the protests are led by paid provocateurs working either for MPs, or at the behest of Russia or China. Parliament’s constant, unsubstantiated corruption allegations against Centerra stir these passions.

“There is pressure from parliament and the public saying this project must be shut,” said the senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

Kyrgyzstan’s president, who previously argued against nationalisation, appears to be having second thoughts. “Even if it is very hard and harmful for Kyrgyzstan, maybe, for the sake of pacifying people, we might take a harmful action … like nationalisation,” Almazbek Atambayev told the BBC’s Kyrgyz service on Nov. 7.

On Nov. 12, Omurbek Tekebayev, leader of the Ata-Meken party, welcomed the president’s “initiative,” and said he intends to put a motion before parliament calling for nationalisation.

Because Kyrgyzstan would be unable to buy back its shares, any move by the Kyrgyz government to declare ownership of the mine would amount to expropriation, not nationalisation, Centerra officials stress.

Whether parliament understands the damage expropriation could do to Kyrgyzstan’s economy is unclear. One deputy told EurasiaNet.org he’s not afraid of arbitration, arguing, “We are a poor country. They [Centerra] can take us to court, but we have nothing to seize abroad. We have no assets.”

That misses the point, say business leaders, who are horrified and condemn authorities’ inability or unwillingness to stop violent attacks against other mining outfits.

South Africa’s Gold Fields, one of the largest miners in the world, is pulling out of Kyrgyzstan, seeking to sell its subsidiary Talas Copper Gold. A company spokesman said the decision was not related to “political risk,” though its project has been attacked several times by horsemen wielding Molotov cocktails.

Last month, locals in southern Kyrgyzstan attacked and looted Australian miner Manas Resources’s exploration site.

Two other projects are in international arbitration. Jerooy, the second-largest gold field in the country, is facing a 400-million-dollar suit in Washington from Kazakhstan’s Visor Holding, which lost its license in late 2010 when officials said the company had failed to begin production on schedule.

And on Oct. 31 Toronto-based Stans Energy announced it had filed a 118-million-dollar claim in Moscow because Bishkek stripped it of the license for Kutessay II, a rare earths deposit. Authorities had complained the mine was idle, but a Stans executive has suggested someone in Bishkek has succumbed to pressure from China, which has a near monopoly on rare earths.

Authorities contend that earlier licenses were handed out illegally under previous governments, or in exchange for shady payments. In late October, the Prosecutor General’s Office announced 10 criminal cases related to the first Kumtor restructuring, back in 2004.

The current investigations largely target members of the regime of Askar Akayev, who was ousted in 2005; charges against his son are expected in the coming weeks. But one of the accused is an opposition MP, leading some to suspect the prosecutions are politically motivated.

“All investors now, especially in mining, are watching this case very closely,” said the senior government official. “I hope they understand we are not blackmailing Centerra. This case was not done right. They were dealing with the presidents’ families, which is not the way a Canadian company should work.”

A parliamentary delegation is due to fly to Canada this month to ask Ottawa for help investigating the 2004 and 2009 deals.

In 2011, Kumtor’s taxes totaled seven percent of the state budget and the mine was responsible for generating 12 percent of GDP. But during a workers’ strike in 2012, ice formed in the open pit mine, sending Kyrgyzstan’s overall GDP to minus 0.9 percent. Bishkek borrowed 30 million dollars from Centerra to help cover the budget shortfall.

This year is shaping up to be a decent one at the mine. But still Bishkek faces an enormous deficit, only able to fund 53 percent of its four-year development wish list, according to the European Union. And Kyrgyzstan stands to lose three percent of GDP by closing the U.S. airbase at Manas next year.

“We’ll be a very popular government if we denounce the 2009 agreement. The effect on the economy will be a disaster, but we will be very popular,” said the senior official.

But any popularity gained at the expense of Kumtor is likely to prove fleeting once the economic hangover sets in.

Editor’s note: David Trilling is EurasiaNet’s Central Asia editor. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Almost five years ago, as his village in northern Kyrgyzstan endured daily power outages, rays of light always emitted from Sabyr Kurmanov’s garage. They came from his egg incubator, a 12-volt contraption powered by something he and his neighbours have in abundance – wind.

Kurmanov is no environmentalist. But he knew that he could not rely on the ailing national energy grid for a steady supply of power. “Hatching eggs requires stable light and temperature,” he says. Kurmanov fashioned the turbine himself; parts for the 60-egg incubator setup cost less than 300 dollars.

“Mine was the only business in Kochkor working around the clock,” he jokes.

These days, Kurmanov, a small-time businessman and former engineer, has inspired his neighbours. Each summer, he helps them use solar-powered pumps to get clean water out of the ground. Not far from Kochkor lies an alpine lake, Song-Kul, where shepherds live with their families for a few months a year. Now visitors can enjoy the disorienting experience of waking up in an isolated yurt hearing a shepherd’s favourite brand of techno – the beat powered by the sun.

But while public interest in alternative energy has increased – mainly spurred by an ongoing energy crisis – heavily subsidised domestic electricity, when it works, provides a disincentive for local businesses to invest in off-the-grid options.

Rates in Kyrgyzstan are the cheapest in Central Asia. And mindful of the fate of ex-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was chased from power shortly after imposing a steep utility rate hike in 2010, today’s leaders in Bishkek are wary of raising tariffs, despite the World Bank’s prediction of a protracted supply deficit beginning this winter.

Igor Kuon worked for 14 years in the state hydroelectric sector and now leads Inkraft, a company supplying small-capacity hydropower-units and solar panels. He has been well placed to observe the “deterioration of national energy”. When his company started working on renewables in 2003, there wasn’t much demand for their services, he told EurasiaNet.org.

“Energy was plentiful and it was cheap. The [national] grid wasn’t well managed but it had retained some of its former capacity. The equipment was in better condition. Some specialists had left [Kyrgyzstan], but not all,” Kuon explained.

Since then, however, rapid degradation of physical infrastructure and mismanagement has taken a toll.

“By the time Bakiyev came to power [2005] much of the infrastructure was ruined. … A few people began to realise cheap energy is only useful if it exists,” said Kuon.

Industry experts argue that Kyrgyzstan would be ripe for a renewables drive, if only investment was forthcoming. The country enjoys an average of 270 days of sun per year and only Tajikistan and Russia have more significant hydropower potential among former Soviet countries, says Edil Bogombayev, who coordinates a U.N. project that helps build small hydropower stations (between five- and 300-kilowatts) for rural households and communities living close to rivers.

According to Bogombayev, a five-kilowatt hydropower unit can power a small farm, but with construction and installation costing several thousand dollars, such initiatives are mostly donor-funded. Off-grid energy amounts to less than one percent of the total produced and consumed in Kyrgyzstan, he says.

Small, privately financed initiatives such as Kurmanov’s wind-powered incubator and larger commercial operations such as a 500-kilowatt hydro-powered dairy factory based in the western town of Belovodsk remain the exception rather than the rule.

Although unrelenting budget woes mean the government is short on cash for alternative energy, there is hope that amendments to the Law on Renewable Energies last August will stimulate private-sector investment in low-capacity hydropower stations. Mirroring a global trend, the amendments increased the fee energy producers can make by selling excess power to the national grid, a move that could help relieve stress on the system. Regulators are still working out the details.

Bogombayev sees foreign investment in renewables as integral to taming Kyrgyzstan’s energy risk and notes the interest of Toulouse-based MECAMIDI in constructing and renovating mini-hydro stations in the north of the country. He acknowledges, though, that instability in Bishkek remains a deterrent: “investors will react according to the political situation.”

Nevertheless, despite falling prices over the last few years, fully green commercial operations are currently “not realistic”, a hotelier in Cholpon-Ata, a town on the shore of Kyrgyzstan’s main tourist attraction, Lake Issyk-Kul, told EurasiaNet.org. The hotelier, who insisted on anonymity for fear of hurting revenues, estimates her 15-room facility generates under 6,000 dollars a year in utility bills.

“I have six Chinese solar-paneled water heaters that cost 500 dollars each and heat 150 litres of water each. But solar infrastructure to power the whole hotel would cost 25,000 dollars. It would take nearly five years to earn back.”

By contrast, in places where energy is expensive, such as in Scandinavia, solar users are prepared to wait up to seven years for their capital investments to pay off, notes Kuon, the Inkraft director. Kyrgyz reluctance is explained by “a lack of savings capital and the local mentality”, he explains. People are wary of investing long-term in anything because of ongoing political instability.

“While electricity costs [0.015 dollars] per kilowatt-hour, why invest your own money in solar?” he asks. “People will wait for the system to collapse first.”

Editor’s note:  Chris Rickleton is a Bishkek-based journalist. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

In 2010, Kyrgyzstan tried to promote good governance and reduce corruption by attaching public watchdogs to major ministries and state agencies. Almost three years later, the watchdogs are still functioning, but many express frustration about bureaucratic resistance that hinders their ability to do their jobs.

Observers lauded the September 2010 decree forming Public Advisory Councils (PACs) as a means of giving democratisation a boost in Kyrgyzstan, where a violent uprising in April of that same year ousted an authoritarian-minded president and initiated an experiment in a parliamentary system of government.

Earlier this year, parliament passed a law cementing the PACs’ status. The legislation is now awaiting President Almazbek Atambayev’s signature. But members of the voluntary, unpaid collectives complain that their perennial struggle for acceptance among government officials – regularly rated by transparency indices as among the most corrupt in the world – has kept them from fulfilling their mandate.

Because the councils are free to devise their own work plans – a coordinating body exists but does not control their work – some have yielded better results than others. The PAC overseeing the State Penitentiary Service (GSIN), for example, successfully campaigned for separate cells for female prisoners who were either pregnant or had just given birth. Elsewhere, the Finance Ministry PAC has been instrumental in creating okmot.kg, an online portal where citizens can find information about state tenders and the budget.

“I think we have made steps in terms of transparency,” said Azamat Akeleev, chair of the Finance Ministry PAC. “But there are things that are harder to influence – internal processes, staffing, distribution of the budget, budget policy.”

A number of the watchdogs complain their hands are tied. Jomart Jumabekov, a member of the Ministry of Agriculture’s PAC and the head of a non-profit farming consultancy, echoes a common complaint about access: “The minister thinks he is a god, and has no interest in our council. The [ministry’s] secretary always falls ill whenever we have our meetings. They ignore us,” Jumabekov told EurasiaNet.org.

Galina Davletbaeva, who sits on the PAC of the State Fund for Material Reserves, endured a similar experience before appealing to former president Roza Otunbayeva, who oversaw the creation of the PACs in 2010.

“To begin with, they told us all their documents were secret… I told Roza: ‘Our PAC has nothing to report. We have just been warring [with the State Fund] for the last year-and-a-half.’” After the public dressing down, the leadership of the Fund, which controls Kyrgyzstan’s reserves of foodstuffs and other staples, “began to behave totally differently,” and even provided the council with a room in their building, Davletbaeva said.

Exacerbating their challenges, the watchdogs have not always found easy allies among lawmakers. Although parliament passed a law confirming their status on June 20, several lawmakers spoke out against PACs at a session the day before.

“We don’t need these PACs, because we, the MPs, should be overseeing the work of the ministries,” thundered nationalist lawmaker Jyldyz Joldosheva in comments picked up by the Vechernii Bishkek newspaper.

MP Ismail Isakov, a lieutenant general, said the PACs had “turned the government into a kindergarten” and was especially critical of PACs working on the security structures. He contended that PACs potentially can muddle the chain of command.

Perhaps inevitably, members of the PACs overseeing economically strategic departments such as the Ministry of Energy and the State Agency for Geology and Mineral Resources have been criticised for conflicts of interest; some have faced corruption allegations. Davletbaeva, of the PAC on the State Fund for Material Reserves, says conflicts of interest must be balanced against the need for sector specialists to sit on these boards.

If the watchdog experiment is going to last, it will need stronger support within state structures, members say. The PAC for the Transport Ministry, particularly active in 2011 when it identified a series of tender and labor code violations, was disbanded that December at the request of the ministry. It reemerged in May 2012, but has been quieter since.

The Ministry of Agriculture’s PAC, where Jumabekov works, also hit a wall last year. “We identified [150,000 dollars] that had been written off [by the ministry] for a crop-spraying operation, and demanded they return it to the state budget,” Jumabekov said. “We sent a complaint to the Prosecutors Office, but nothing happened.”

Such incidents have left council members feeling the initiative has lost steam. Timur Shaikhutdinov, who sits on the Interior Ministry oversight board, calls the PAC idea an “ill-fated project.” “It hurts to talk about the PACs. It was a beautiful idea, but it hasn’t worked out,” Shaikhutdinov told EurasiaNet.org.

Editor’s note: Chris Rickleton is a Bishkek-based journalist.This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

With Westerners now leery of investing in Kyrgyzstan, it is perhaps inevitable that officials in Bishkek turn to China as they try to attract capital for infrastructure development.

Beijing professes a desire to help Kyrgyzstan without setting conditions on assistance. Yet, as some Kyrgyz experts note, there are still sovereignty concerns connected to forging closer economic ties to China.

Uncertainty in the mining sector, most notably the government’s continuing efforts to change the terms for foreign investors at the Kumtor gold mine, has dampened enthusiasm among Western companies for investing in Kyrgyzstan.

In the Fund for Peace’s 2013 Failed States Index, Kyrgyzstan fell squarely in the “warning” column, ranking 48th out of the 178 countries surveyed. Only Uzbekistan – ranked 44th in the survey – was deemed to be more unstable among the five countries comprising formerly Soviet Central Asia.

Western wariness was on display during a recent two-day, government-sponsored investment conference in Bishkek on Jul. 10-11.

A joint statement released by representatives of 40 foreign aid agencies and multilateral organisations, issued in response to a government appeal for various infrastructure development projects worth about five billion dollars, noted that donors were willing to earmark almost two billion dollars in “potential resources” to develop Kyrgyzstan’s troubled economy over the next four years.

But it also reminded Kyrgyz policymakers of a need to cultivate “efficient institutions” and trim state expenditures.

China notably did not send a delegation to the investment conference. But on Jul. 15, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Bishkek and offered a glowing appraisal of Kyrgyz-Chinese bilateral relations. Chinese investment – now up to 1.7 billion dollars since Kyrgyzstan gained independence in 1991 – will always be free of “additional conditions” and undertaken on the basis of “equal partnership”, Wang told local journalists.

China’s apparent willingness to extend no-strings-attached assistance is a source of hope for some Kyrgyz. But others suspect China of being more of a loan shark than a friend, and worry that Kyrgyzstan’s sovereignty could be at risk if the country becomes too indebted to Beijing.

“China can offer Kyrgyzstan significantly more investment than all the other donors put together,” said Valentin Bogatyrev, the coordinator of Perspective, a Bishkek-based think tank. He cited strong bilateral relations, mutual membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and geographic proximity as the main reasons for China’s strong position in Kyrgyzstan.

Bogatyrev went on to note that heavy Chinese investment would lead naturally to Kyrgyzstan’s “broader political and economic dependence”, which, in turn, could create risks for the Kyrgyz government. First and foremost, Kyrgyz officials could face localised backlashes against the “uncontrollable shipping in” of Chinese labourers to work on infrastructure projects.

In an illustration of this point, government officials working in tandem with youth organisations recently claimed that up to 970 Chinese were working illegally building a vital oil refinery in the western Kyrgyz town of Kara-Balta.

China’s interest in its small Central Asian neighbour should be primarily seen through the prism of Beijing’s desire to promote stability in its own restive and adjacent Xinjiang province, says Li Lifan, associate research professor at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. By investing in keystone infrastructure projects in Kyrgyzstan, China “has committed to make its own [internal] development of more benefit to neighboring countries,” Li told Eurasianet.org via email.

Another thorny issue for the Kyrgyz government – which already is over-committed on annual budget revenues of roughly two billion dollars – is how to repay China. Li raised the possibility of barter arrangements in which repayment comes in the form of mineral concessions and options to purchase Kyrgyz agricultural produce. Such arrangements would fit in with Beijing’s “global economic model”, Li noted.

Such deals would be sure to give many pause in Kyrgyzstan, where mineral wealth is modest, but jealously guarded. Chinese firms already have grappled with localised mob violence, as well as sniping from Kyrgyz-language media outlets.

For instance, some media outlets have portrayed Ishtamberdy, a Chinese-operated gold deposit in the south of the country, as a knockdown concession for Chinese infrastructural assistance carried out in 2006. In 2011, ex- Kyrgyz Prime Minister Omurbek Babanov came under fire for suggesting mineral concessions as a means of paying for the Kyrgyz section of a controversial railway link seeking to connect China to neighbouring Uzbekistan via Kyrgyzstan.

In a novel example of Chinese collection methods, the Kyrgyz news agency Kloop.kg reported on Jul. 15 that the Kyrgyz State Prosecutor’s Office was opposing a deal struck between Beijing Construction Engineering Group International (BCEG) and the Kyrgyz Ministry of Interior.

The Chinese state-owned firm was set to install speed cameras along sections of the roads connecting Bishkek to the southern city of Osh and the northeastern town of Karakol. The two sides agreed that BCEG would collect speeding fines from motorists caught via the cameras until it recouped its investment.

“Collecting fines is the exclusive competence of the state organs,” the State Prosecutor’s Office complained in the Jul. 15 statement, adding it had recommended the government annul the contract.

As long as Western investors remain cautious about Kyrgyzstan – where, according to Economy Minister Temir Sariyev, the budget loses 700 million dollars annually through corruption – Bishkek appears to have little choice but increase its reliance on China for investment.

“It isn’t that there is no investment out there, it is that conditions in the country don’t allow for its attraction and effective use,” Bogatyrev said.

Editor’s note: Chris Rickleton is a Bishkek-based journalist. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

In early June, a newspaper in Pakistan announced the Asian Development Bank would withdraw from a much-anticipated energy transmission project that aims to connect Central and South Asia. The report stated that security fears in Afghanistan were prompting the ADB to drop its 40 percent interest in the project.The newspaper, the Express Tribune, cited a senior official from Pakistan’s Ministry of Water and Power as the source of its scoop. If true, the move would be a significant blow to American-backed efforts to link Central Asia’s economies with Afghanistan and South Asia, a project known as the New Silk Road.

An ADB representative in Dushanbe would not confirm or deny the report that the bank is pulling out of the project, only stating that the bank is “exploring different opportunities” and “taking a practical approach in supporting regional energy trade, and is building energy infrastructure in stages to support an improved regional energy market.”

Western officials, meanwhile, are reluctant to comment about the project’s future.

Regardless of the ADB’s position, energy experts have doubts about the $950-million-plus project’s feasibility, given regional rivalries and Central Asia’s vast energy deficit.

Dubbed the Central Asia South Asia Regional Electricity Trade Project (CASA-1000), the initiative is designed to transmit 1,300MW of electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan through Afghanistan (which would consume 300MW) to Pakistan. In 2007, the four countries signed a memorandum of cooperation on the project, which, since then, has always seemed to sit a few years off on the horizon.

The idea behind the project is that it would give Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan a way to sell their annual summer energy surpluses. Both rely almost exclusively on hydropower. Because neither country has the capacity to hold enough water to produce sufficient energy in the winter, they have surpluses in the summer when they are forced to release more water than they would like.

Before independence, the two would share electricity with their Central Asian neighbors in the summer months, and import electricity from hydrocarbon-rich Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan each winter. That system has broken down since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are attempting to build new, massive hydropower plants. But until they do, it is unclear just how much energy they can afford to export each summer, especially as local demand increases.

Officials in Central Asia remain enthused about the project. Tajikistan’s First Deputy Minister of Energy and Industry Pulod Muhiddinov told EurasiaNet.org that he is confident that CASA-1000 has enough investors. He added that the ADB will make a firm decision after another feasibility study, which is currently underway. He would not disclose when the study is due, but the World Bank and the Islamic Development Bank are said to be ready to finance the project, which could begin next year and open as soon as 2017.

Industry insiders speaking privately tend to roll their eyes when they discuss CASA-1000. One Western energy expert in Dushanbe said the project is unlikely to ever get off the ground because the participating countries “are never going to agree among themselves” on how much they will supply and what each kilowatt should cost. Others have suggested Tajikistan, being closer to South Asia, will try to squeeze out Kyrgyzstan, which is farther to the north.

There are certainly reasons to believe cooperation will be difficult. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, for example, are unable to agree on the location of roughly half their mutual border.

Still others are concerned the project will provide an easy way for the region’s notoriously corrupt leaders to siphon off electricity for sale abroad while their people sit in the dark. Already, most energy experts in Dushanbe note, approximately 40 percent of Tajikistan’s electricity is consumed by one aluminum smelter, TALCO, in the western town of Tursunzoda. The plant receives deeply subsidized power and the proceeds from the plant’s operations are reportedly stashed offshore in the British Virgin Islands. Without TALCO, Tajikistan’s winter energy shortages (up to 20 hours per day in some areas), would be greatly eased.

To address existing shortages both countries are attempting to build multi-billion-dollar hydropower plants. Kyrgyzstan has secured tentative Russian interest in the $1.7-billion, 2000-MW Kambarata-1 project, while Tajikistan is casting about for investors for the 3600-MW Rogun venture, which would be the tallest dam in the world and cost up to $6 billion. The projects are strongly opposed by downstream countries, especially Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan also may fear the upstream projects could challenge its own energy exports.

Russia’s RUSAL aluminum company had supported Rogun until 2007, when the deal broke down because RUSAL insisted on scaling back the dam’s specifications. More recently, Moscow has expressed a desire to participate in CASA-1000, with President Vladimir Putin repeatedly offering up to $500 million.

CASA-1000 cannot be separated from these massive hydropower projects, said an analyst at the Russian State Duma’s think-tank in Moscow. “Should Russia get involved with [CASA-1000], it would need to invest loads of funds into the construction of large hydropower facilities. Only this could ensure the real feasibility and long-term economic benefits from the project,” he told EurasiaNet.org. “Strategically and politically, the CASA-1000 project would be advantageous for only three countries – Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia.”

But the control Russia would likely demand in exchange for its financial support could make it difficult to collaborate with Western-backed international financial institutions that are eager to move Central Asia out of Russia’s orbit.

The delays and lack of clear backers suggest there are too many moving parts to get CASA-1000 off the ground and develop a New Silk Road, said one Tajik analyst. “It took an Alexander the Great or a Genghis Khan to unite Central and South Asia.” With the region’s current crop of leaders, “the project is not going to happen.”

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Glance at the parking lot outside parliament, at the fleet of Lexus SUVs kitted out with chrome, and you might think Bishkek is the capital of a wealthy country. A block down Chui Avenue, a shiny new Range Rover is parked on the sidewalk. Police drive their own BMWs.

Look a little closer, though, and the real Kyrgyzstan comes into focus.

In the shadow of the hulking White House – as the parliament building is known – Enjegul Kydyralieva, 50, sells lollipops and nuts from a blanket spread on the ground. On a good day, she clears about 250 soms (5.20 dollars). “One hundred percent” of that – after she subtracts 50 cents for daily transportation to and from her village 45 minutes away – goes to feeding three children and three grandchildren, including the four-year-old she’s babysitting on the curb.

“If anyone gets sick we try to save money to buy medicine,” Kydyralieva says as the steel gate opens and another shiny new SUV glides past. “It’s not fair. They drive around with these cars that cost thousands of dollars and we are here working all day to earn a few hundred soms. Plus, they try to chase us away.”

Bishkek today is a city of striking contrasts. The luxury cars – and their tendency to run red lights with impunity – are just one expression of the disparity. “Elite” apartment blocks, where units cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, are mushrooming in central districts. Billboards announce the latest new nightclubs. At a new Turkish-built shopping mall, a pair of Italian loafers costs the equivalent of Kyrgyzstan’s average monthly income.

This is one of the poorest countries in Asia. But it’s not only underemployed grandmothers who struggle.

An engineering lecturer with a doctorate, single mother Elmira Ismailova, 46, earns about 7,000 soms a month (145 dollars). She spends 70 percent of her salary on food, but considers herself lucky, because her parents help with 3,000 to 4,000 soms per month.

“If I didn’t have their support, I wouldn’t call myself middle class. My salary is never enough. If I want to go out somewhere, like a restaurant, I have to save money in advance,” she says.

Many Kyrgyz struggle to put food on the table. An April study by the World Food Program, a U.N. agency, found the average price of wheat flour 42 percent higher than a year ago. The same report estimated that 24 percent of Kyrgyz households were not meeting basic nutrition and calorie requirements. This is partially due to a poor harvest in 2012, high prices for fuel, inflation, and Kyrgyzstan’s overall isolation.

Food insecurity is not limited to Kyrgyzstan’s relatively poorer rural areas. A January study of 1,200 Bishkek residents by El Pikir, a pollster, found that almost 30 percent of the capital’s population spends 80 percent or more of its income on food and utilities. Only a tenth of the population spends less than a third of its income on food and utilities, the study found.

“Kyrgyzstan does not have a middle class. There are poor people and there’s a rich elite, which is maybe 5 to 10 percent of society,” explained Pavel Dyatlenko of Polis-Asia, a think-tank in Bishkek.

Those in the elite are doing well. One indicator is the building boom currently transforming Bishkek’s skyline. Kyrgyzstan’s construction sector grew by 17.3 percent in 2012, the Asian Development Bank says.

There are several common explanations for all the construction: A more liberal economy since 2010, when protestors chased the venal and nepotistic president out of office; the laundering of the vast quantities of Afghan drug money moving through Kyrgyzstan; and the relative absence of alternative investment opportunities.

“We have a mentality: You are rich not because you have money but because you have property,” says a local writer.

Dyatlenko, the analyst, endorses all of the above. Moreover, paradoxically, Kyrgyzstan’s chronic instability also fuels the construction craze, he says. “Since we have many holes in our laws, unoccupied land can be seized. With all these [political] transitions, the situation is very unstable. If you have a building [on your land], it’s more difficult to confiscate,” Dyatlenko told EurasiaNet.org.

While Dyatlenko’s explanation makes sense within the Kyrgyz context, bad times aren’t all good for the construction sector. Kyrgyzstan is covered with the skeletons of abandoned projects. And just last week, protests again swept Kyrgyzstan, starting with a demonstration outside the Canadian-run Kumtor gold mine in Issyk-Kul province.

There, protestors demanded greater social benefits from the lucrative mine. Kumtor executives responded that they pay millions of dollars into a social fund for the province. Privately, however, they admit they can’t stop local politicians from misappropriating the funds.

Kyrgyzstan is certainly not the only country where a growing economy appears to widen social divisions. But with rampant corruption and authorities unable – or unwilling – to enforce the rule of law, many feel the divisions are getting starker.

Across from parliament, on the opposite side of Ala-Too Square, Anar Subankulova, who looks 75 but is 54, sells gum, single cigarettes, and kurut—dried yogurt balls that taste a bit like Parmesan cheese. Subankulova spends 4,200 soms ($87) per month on rent and utilities for the small apartment she shares with her grandchildren. She earns about 300 soms a day. “It’s torture because this is never enough.”

Asked if the 2010 “April Revolution” changed anything, she breaks into tears and says she doesn’t want to talk about it.

*Editor’s note: David Trilling is EurasiaNet’s Central Asia editor.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

As officials in Kyrgyzstan prepare to negotiate with their country’s largest investor in Bishkek this week, new details are emerging about how the Kyrgyz government wants to restructure the agreement covering operations at the country’s flagship gold mine.

Bishkek and Toronto-listed Centerra Gold are engaged in a protracted legal dispute over Kumtor, the largest gold mine operated by a Western company in Central Asia.

Earlier this year, a Kyrgyz state commission claimed Centerra owes approximately 467 million dollars for environmental damages. Then, in February, parliament gave Kyrgyz officials three months to negotiate a new operating agreement, which would be the third in 10 years.

Kyrgyz officials say the current agreement, negotiated under former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev in 2009, shortly before he was ousted amid violent street riots, was unfair. The company, which also operates a mine in Mongolia, argues that it negotiated in good faith with what was at the time the legitimate government, and has threatened to seek international arbitration.

It calls the 467-million-dollar claim — which other miners in Bishkek say is a negotiating tactic — “exaggerated or without merit.” Centerra officials also point out that the agreement gave the company confidence to invest almost one billion dollars in the mine since 2009.

Kumtor is critical to Kyrgyzstan’s economy. Last year the mine, which sits above 4,000 metres in the Tien Shan mountains, contributed approximately 5.5 percent of the country’s GDP. In 2011, a good year, the mine accounted for 12 percent of GDP and over 50 percent of industrial output. Earlier this month, Centerra announced its first quarter revenue rose 44 percent.

Negotiations are likely to focus on current operating agreement’s structure, a source close to the Kyrgyz side told EurasiaNet.org. Under the existing agreement, Kyrgyzstan owns close to one-third of the Toronto-listed company. That arrangement places Bishkek in a bind: if the government fines the company, it hurts its own potential dividends.

Bishkek is ready to divest itself of Centerra ownership, the source said, in return for “both a higher income stream and more direct control over operations at the mine.”

The current agreement “doesn’t allow the nation to properly exercise its function as a sovereign. It actually creates an internal conflict. The more they levy tax, the more they assess environmental penalties, the less revenue is available to them in dividends,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.

“This structure may be very useful to Centerra, but it is very difficult to understand why, in 2009, the Bakiyev regime pressed for this structure. That reinforces the suspicions of corruption.”

Centerra has repeatedly denied allegations of corruption, and Kyrgyz authorities have not presented convincing evidence the company engaged in corrupt practices. But some believe the venal Bakiyev administration was eager to obtain stock options so it could one day sell them and embezzle the proceeds.

Kyrgyzstan’s shares are held by the state-run gold company, Kyrgyzaltyn. Kyrgyzstan “has every interest in seeing shareholder value maximised and Centerra run as a profitable and successful business,” Kylychbek Shakirov, Kyrgyzaltyn deputy chairman for economics and finance, said in a May 10 speech to shareholders.

Shakirov stressed that Kyrgyzstan is not seeking to nationalise the mine, but said his delegation was acting as a “responsible shareholder” by pushing for Centerra to use a new auditor (it has employed KPMG for a decade) and sideline a senior member of the board while he faces insider-trading allegations in Canada.

Shakirov also expressed “strong reservations” about proposals to offer senior Centerra managers pay raises, noting that in the past few years, compensation packages have risen “sharply as the company’s performance overall was falling.”

Centerra’s top five principals each earned, on average, over 1.6 million Canadian dollars in 2012, 56.7 percent more than they earned in 2010, according to the management information circular distributed at the shareholders’ meeting. Yet, over the past two years – while production has fallen and the company has faced repeated calls for nationalisation by some Kyrgyz politicians – the company’s value has fallen roughly 80 percent.

John Pearson, Centerra’s vice president for investor relations, told EurasiaNet.org that the two sides “are making progress” as they approach negotiations, which parliament has said must be completed by Jun. 1.

“The discussions with the government are ongoing. Most recently in our discussion with the government we recommended that they retain external independent advisors on both the financial and legal fronts and they have done so,” he said.

Bishkek is said to have hired DLA Piper, the law firm, and Price Waterhouse Coopers as advisors.

In recent weeks, increased waste rock movement at Kumtor has highlighted long-standing environmental concerns, some of the thorniest issues in the negotiations. Centerra points to studies – including several commissioned by Bishkek – that absolve it of wrongdoing.

But questions remain about whether an accelerated pace of melting ice at the high-altitude mine is being encouraged by extraction activities there.

As part of its approach, Bishkek is expected to push for a review of environmental compliance standards, while it considers ways of tightening its own legislation related to mining’s environmental impact in general.

*Editor’s note: David Trilling is EurasiaNet’s Central Asia editor.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

An authoritative Central Asia-focused news website has defeated attempts to silence it in Kyrgyzstan: authorities have unblocked it. Yet under the prevailing interpretation of a parliamentary resolution, the website, Fergana News, still appears to be banned in the Central Asian nation.

The nationalist-leaning parliament voted unanimously to block Fergana News (Fergananews.com, formerly Ferghana.ru) back in June 2011 after some MPs expressed dissatisfaction with the website’s critical coverage of the interethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan the previous summer.

Though lawyers for several respected civil society organisations argued that only a court could order a website blocked, the State Communications Agency bowed to parliamentary pressure and ordered internet service providers to block access to the site in February 2012.

In November 2012, Fergana News began legal proceedings in a Bishkek court to get the ban lifted.

For five months, Fergana tried to fight its case in court, arguing that the Communications Agency should not have followed the dubious order in the first place. But the proceedings were regularly delayed when officials failed to show and became bogged down in Byzantine legal maneuvering.

For example, when Internet service providers supported Fergana’s case, the judge blamed them for following what they called an illegal order, though they risked losing their operating licenses if they did not comply. Eventually, the judge said a statute of limitations had expired – that by waiting nine months to sue the government, Fergana had missed its chance – and threw out the case.

But Fergana’s persistence, and the embarrassment the trial caused the government, appeared to succeed: in early April, Bishkek backed down. All local Internet service providers, including state-owned Kyrgyz Telecom, opened access to the site following a letter from the State Communications Agency on Apr. 5.

Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, called the lifting of the blockade “a positive sign for Internet freedom in Kyrgyzstan” and emphasised that “by giving readers access to the site again, Kyrgyzstan has honoured its constitutional values prohibiting censorship.”

Mijatovic had previously slammed the ban. The watchdog group Reporters Without Borders had called the blockade “a major step backwards” for Kyrgyzstan.

Yet despite the success getting the block lifted, Fergana News is still trying to get parliament’s resolution overturned, and is wondering what legal force it contains: Could the block be implemented again at any time, representatives of the news website wonder.

Fergana’s lawyers submitted an appeal to the Bishkek city court on Apr. 5 to protest the lower court’s decision to throw out the original case. Thus far, the agency has not received a response, according to Daniil Kislov, editor of Fergana News.

“We believe Parliament’s decision about our website was illegal as there was no court decision,” Kislov told EurasiaNet.org. “We’ve submitted an appeal as we believe that somebody should bear responsibility for illegally blocking access to our website for over 12 months.”

Officials at the State Communications Agency say they were just obeying a legislative directive.

“We had to comply with this decision, so we sent the decree for execution to Internet providers, and they followed it,” Olga Serova, a senior lawyer at the State Communication Agency, told EurasiaNet.org. “The agency did not make any order or decision in this regard. We notified the providers that there was a parliamentary resolution, which must be executed. That’s all.”

There is still confusion about the legal weight of a parliamentary resolution.

“The blockage took place without a court decision on the basis of a request from the State [Communications] Agency. Internet service providers believed that it was inadvisable to escalate the situation into conflict with the government [by disobeying the request],” Aibek Bakanov, the executive director of the Association of Telecom Operators, a lobbying group, explained to EurasiaNet.org.

“Now that the block is removed, the most important thing for us is that in the future any request from the government about blocking [Internet] sites is confirmed by a court decision.”

Journalists say blocking websites is ineffective as Internet users can easily enough gain access to blocked sites through proxy servers. Fergana News editor Kislov says the number of visitors from Kyrgyzstan increased by about five percent after the website became accessible again in Kyrgyzstan. During the ban, he said, most readers simply used proxy servers.

Press freedom advocates are pressing for closure in the case, specifically by seeking a determination on the legality of the original parliamentary resolution confirming that the legislature lacks the authority to act in such cases without a court order.

Marat Tokoev, chairperson of Journalists, a Bishkek-based media watchdog, cheers the unblocking of Fergana News, but fears that parliament still does not understand its legal limitations.

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Authorities at Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Culture want to ban a play that discusses domestic abuse and sexual violence because it “promotes scenes that destroy moral and ethical standards and national traditions of the peoples of Kyrgyzstan.”

The effort points to creeping conservatism in the thinking of Kyrgyzstan’s leaders.

“The Vagina Monologues” is an episodic play where woman address how they relate to their bodies, discuss their sexual experiences, and confront the topic of sexual violence. Since American Eve Ensler wrote the play in 1996, it has been performed in over 140 countries and translated into 48 languages. A performance is scheduled for Apr. 12 in Bishkek.

The Culture Ministry sent a letter to local media outlets on Apr. 1 saying the Vagina Monologues advocates “unnatural, perverted sex under the slogan of feminism”. The letter warned that Kyrgyz law prohibits the distribution of materials that “promote pornography and offend human dignity”.

Organisers say authorities are rushing to judgment. “The play is aimed at stopping violence against women, a very important thing for our society where there is a lot of violence against women,” Aikanysh Jeenbaeva, one of the organizers and a co-founder of the Bishkek Feminist Collective SQ, told EurasiaNet.org.

“The ministry did not say which parts of the Vagina Monologues are supposedly offensive or promote pornography. I think none of them have actually seen the play and they’re just judging it by its name.”

A ministry representative, Ermek Jolochuev, admitted he had not seen the play, but said it “contradicts our mentality. You know that nationalities living on the territory of Kyrgyzstan, and Eastern people in general, are not used to talking about such topics openly or to speaking publicly the names of women’s body parts.”

He confirmed that “prominent” cultural figures stood against the play, but would not name them over the phone. He also did not follow through with a promise to email EurasiaNet.org their names.

Jolochuev said the ministry has no legal recourse to ban the performance. Nevertheless, organisers fear the ministry’s recommendation will engender hostility toward the production. The Russian-language version of the play is scheduled for 7 pm Friday at the Metro Pub theater; 100 percent of proceeds will benefit Chance, a local women’s shelter. If it goes ahead uninterrupted, it will be the Vagina Monologues’ third season in Bishkek, after debuting in 2009 and returning in 2011.

Bishkek was the first location in Central Asia to host the Vagina Monologues; Almaty hosted a sold-out performance this past February.

Organisers have received threats in the past, but have never experienced such interference from authorities.

Kyrgyzstan remains an entrenched patriarchal society where, despite Soviet attempts to extend equal opportunities to women, today women’s rights appear to be backsliding. There is little quantitative data available, but a 2008 U.N. study found one in four Kyrgyz women had suffered from domestic violence.

Stigma is widespread: women who speak out about sexual and domestic abuse are often shamed both as something sullied and as backstabbers betraying their families. Moreover, bride kidnapping, though illegal, has become more common since the Soviet era, activists say.

Given the seriousness of the issue, when the Culture Ministry statement appeared on Apr. 1, “We thought it was an April Fools’ joke,” Jeenbaeva said. Cancelling the play would send a message, members of her group said, that domestic violence is not a serious problem.

The dispute underscores a trend in which the Kyrgyz government is shunning Western liberalism. Last fall, for example, the State Committee on Religious Affairs successfully blocked, with a court order, the screening of a documentary film about gay men in the Muslim world.

In recent weeks, parliament has discussed a bill that would ban young women from traveling abroad, supposedly to protect them from sexual abuse and, in the words of the bill’s author, Irgal Kadyralieva, “increase morality and preserve the gene pool”.

Prominent human rights activist and lawyer Cholpon Djakupova is worried by the trend and feels Kyrgyz society is lashing out at perceived foreign ideas with growing cynicism. She added that, despite years of promises, Western liberalism has done little to improve living standards or confront widespread corruption.

The Culture Ministry’s attempted ban “is the reaction of people who do not like [what has turned out to be a] false and empty democracy. In NGOs and even the term freedom, people see the failed realization of foreign promises,” Djakupova told EurasiaNet.org.

“This concept of freedom is only important for creative people and self-reliant people. Poor people have no access to education or justice. For them, all these liberal concepts are estranged from their difficult lives.”

*Editor’s note: David Trilling is EurasiaNet’s Central Asia editor.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

China is financing the construction of Kyrgyzstan’s first major oil refinery, and excitement is building in Bishkek that the facility could enable the Central Asian nation to break Russia’s fuel-supply monopoly.

At the same time, some observers express concern that the project may stoke local resentment, or become enmeshed in political infighting.

The refinery in Kara-Balta, about two hours west of Bishkek, is expected to produce 600,000 tonnes of fuel annually, enough to end Kyrgyzstan’s dependency on Russian imports, currently pegged at 1,150,000 tonnes a year, according to the State Statistics Committee.

Slated to receive crude piped from Chinese-run fields in Kazakhstan, the project, operated by a smallish Chinese state-run entity called Junda, has already witnessed regular environmental protests and labour disputes, which one lawmaker claims are backed by opposition politicians bent on using the facility as a weapon in a political struggle against the government.

Since gaining independence, Kyrgyzstan has been almost totally dependent on Russian fuel.  Sebastien Peyrouse, a Central Asia watcher at the George Washington University, said the new refinery signals Beijing’s efforts to “win influence” over Central Asian hydrocarbon markets, a sector now defined by “growing tensions” between Russia and China.

Jumakadyr Akeneev, head of Kyrgyzstan’s Oil Traders Association, a lobbying group, agrees the facility is “good news” for a country whose only domestic refining facility produces 70,000 tonnes of low-quality petrol and diesel a year.

Prices in Kyrgyzstan are “determined by one powerful player – Gazprom Neft Asia,” he said, referring to the local subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned energy giant, which is also responsible for around 80 percent of domestic distribution. Gazprom ships the bulk of Kyrgyzstan-bound fuels from its refinery in Omsk.

Kyrgyzstan imports this fuel duty-free. But in the past Russia has used its market dominance to turn the screws on Bishkek when it has suited Kremlin interests. For example, many commentators assert that a sudden fuel duty introduced on Apr. 1, 2010, was a significant factor in the overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s administration six days later.

Kyrgyzstan needs “a diverse, uninterrupted supply of affordable fuel to grow,” Akeneev says, adding that Junda’s petrol “should be cheaper than the Russian’s” because it need not travel as far. “The journey [from Russia] reflects a third of the price.”

Whether the refinery will serve its intended purpose is a separate question, according to Peyrouse, co-author of “The Chinese Question in Central Asia.” He noted that “Sinophobia” is increasing in Kyrgyzstan along with Beijing’s growing economic footprint.

Already the relationship between Chinese executives and local residents in and around Kara-Balta is fraught with tension. The refinery has faced strikes and a demand for pay hikes from local workers. Residents living nearby are unhappy with Junda’s offers of environmental compensation. And local officials complain the plant’s leadership is uncommunicative.

How well the Chinese understand Kyrgyzstan’s chaotic local politics is unclear. “Chinese companies often fail to connect with their host communities, preferring to concentrate on developing relationships with power brokers in the capitals or, as need be, at the local level,” noted a report from the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, last month.

“Rising nationalism, ingrained suspicions about Chinese expansionism, few tangible grassroots benefits and a sense that the companies respect only those who can assist their commercial ventures at the highest level have left many disinclined to view China as a beneficial force.”

In an interview with 24.kg on Jan. 18, Junda’s director, Chu Chan, attributed construction delays to “misunderstandings” that had caused the wrong equipment to be delivered to the site. He promised the refinery would be operational by August, almost 12 months behind schedule. The plant is expected to provide over 2,000 local jobs.

Lawmaker Azamat Arapbayev, a member of parliament’s Energy and Fuel Committee, said he would welcome “10 such refineries” from “any foreign investor” in order to temper Kyrgyzstan’s “dependence on external factors”. Disturbances at the refinery, he maintained, are the work of a “certain circle” of politicians that use local environmental fears to “earn political dividends”.

Observers say the same thing about unrest facing the country’s largest investor, the Canadian-run Kumtor gold mine. Over the past two years, Kumtor has faced protests and roadblocks, calls for nationalisation, and four government inquiries led by politicians of every stripe. The trouble has frightened off international investors.

While Arapbayev refused to name names, one group that has opposed the refinery, as well as “Chinese expansion” in general, is a small gathering of nationalists calling themselves “The Movement for the Salvation of Kyrgyzstan.”

On Mar. 13, the group held a small rally in central Bishkek, where its leader, Mukar Cholponbayev, warned that Beijing was trying to turn Kyrgyzstan into a Chinese tenant, and demanded the release of three opposition figures jailed last autumn for attempting to storm parliament amid calls to nationalise Kumtor.

While these local politics have helped paralyse foreign investment, many observers will continue to view the refinery as a reflection of a bigger, quieter struggle between Russia and China in the region.

For the moment, the clashing interests “could have benefits” for Kyrgyzstan, argues Arapbayev, the MP. The refinery will reduce Moscow’s ability to bully Bishkek, he says, and open up the oil wealth of Kazakhstan, which has heretofore been more profitable for Astana to export further afield.

“China is our close neighbour, a dynamic and rapidly developing country,” Arapbayev told EurasiaNet.org, musing on the dilemmas that geopolitical competition pose for local policymakers. “But then we also have older, more traditional relations with Russia. Those relations are still operational.”

*Editor’s note: Chris Rickleton is a Bishkek-based journalist.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

If bacon, lobster tail and Chicago-style steaks are your thing, the last few months have been a good time to dine out in Kyrgyzstan’s capital.

An abundance of the unusual gourmet items has raised eyebrows in Bishkek, where U.S. military contractors and café proprietors claim with knowing winks that Kyrgyzstan’s sudden flood of bacon strips, seafood and steaks can only have come from one place.

An official at the nearby Manas Transit Center, a critical logistics hub for the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, admitted this month that food losses from the facility have totaled 40,000 dollars since December.

Allegations of theft from the facility are nothing new, but the latest leak appears to be distorting the city’s relatively small market for high-end meat and seafood, prompting opportunities and resentment in equal measure.

One local supplier of pork products complained bitterly that trade had been lean over recent months, something he attributes to the theft of “masses of quality American bacon” designated for U.S. soldiers and contractors. The imported bacon, he complains, is sold for 350 soms per kilo (7.50 dollars), undercutting him by about 50 percent.

Like other businessmen interviewed by EurasiaNet.org for this story, the pork supplier requested anonymity out of safety concerns, believing the flourishing contraband trade was “absolutely organised” and run by figures “either flying under the radar of, or connected to, the country’s criminal groups”.

A local café owner, who serves bacon his supplier claims comes from Manas, said that two middlemen flogging the rashers “used to go door to door. They were quite open about where it came from. But now you can get it everywhere – in bazaars, shops, supermarkets.”

When a EurasiaNet.org correspondent visited Eurogourmaniya, a new delicatessen specialising in imported products, shop assistants showed a vacuum-sealed pack of bacon identical to the one the café owner displayed. Such cuts are uncommon in Kyrgyzstan.

Though pork is widely available in Bishkek and other towns with large ethnic Russian populations, local ham is not sold in strips like U.S.-style bacon. (And though Kyrgyzstan is nominally a Muslim country, few people seem to adhere to Islamic dietary law, which prohibits the consumption of pork or alcohol.)

The base is “aware” of food losses totaling 40,000 dollars over the past three months, a spokesperson said on Mar. 1, adding that “this is the largest incident where food products have gone missing that the Transit Center is aware of.” The Manas spokesperson refused to discuss which specific items have gone missing.

This won’t be the first time the Pentagon has been accused of wasting federal money in the Central Asian state. In 2011, a 750,000-dollar women’s shelter that opened with much fanfare the year before was found deserted; it had cost one-third of Manas’ annual humanitarian budget.

Manas is “reviewing current operating procedures”, the spokesperson said. Base officials are working hard “to ensure subsistence food items are only used for their intended purpose by their intended recipients”.

But what may be an embarrassment for the U.S. is a business opportunity for others.

A waitress at a 24-hour Bishkek lounge, Live Bar, boasted that the restaurant’s menu had “expanded since December”, to include lobster and various types of steak, two items that are thought to have gone missing in large quantities from Manas in December. The waitress claimed the lobster was “imported”, although she could not cite its provenance.

Another restaurant in the capital celebrated Defenders of the Fatherland Day in late February with a crab and beer night. Kyrgyzstan is landlocked and shellfish is not a staple on most restaurant menus.

Another restaurant serves A.1. Steak Sauce in bottles marked, in English, “not for resale”, suggesting it is not procured on local markets.

One U.S. defense contractor with almost eight years experience in Kyrgyzstan said theft from Manas has been common “almost since the base arrived” in 2001.

“A few years ago we had ‘sweetgate’ – local guys getting caught leaving the base with packs of jelly beans duck-taped to their chests. But this thing is bigger. This stuff must be going out with the waste,” he told EurasiaNet.org.

On the contractor’s recommendation, a EurasiaNet.org correspondent visited Yolki Palki, an upmarket restaurant selling T-bone steaks that contractors say bear a striking resemblance to the steaks served at Manas.

Succulent and tender, the meat was certainly a cut above the beef sold in local markets. But unable to extract detailed information about the steak’s origin from the restaurant’s manager, EurasiaNet.org cannot verify on taste alone the contractor’s claim that Yolki Palki’s steaks are “Chicago good”.

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Like most residents of her children’s home in Osh, Nargiza is a part-time orphan. Her father disappeared when she was born and her mother works long spells in Russia. Nargiza has no siblings and doesn’t know her grandparents. But she does see her mother from time to time.

“I live with my mother when she is in town,” says the wide-eyed 10-year-old. “No one comes to visit me when my mother is in Russia. She says nobody gives us money and that is why she must go to Russia to work hard.”

For many, the words “orphan” and “Kyrgyzstan”, when said in one breath, conjure up stories of international adoption scandals, corrupt middlemen, and a moratorium on adoptions by foreign parents. But for sociologists and psychologists, the larger tragedy is that thousands of children with living parents are ending up in Kyrgyzstan’s orphanages in the first place.

They are the so-called social orphans – the offspring of those who leave the country for long periods in search of work. With Kyrgyzstan’s growing poverty, and widespread labour migration, the number of these children is on the rise, experts say.

According to her teachers, who agreed to speak only if the girl’s name was changed, Nargiza regularly attends school, but the instability upsets her development.

“Nargiza’s mother takes her home only occasionally. Being a single mother, most of the time she is in Russia looking for work,” said Nargiza’s teacher Zoya, who declined to give her surname in order to protect Nargiza’s privacy. “The little girl still does not have a birth certificate, and her difficult situation negatively affects her school progress. She is quite reserved and does not socialise much with other children.”

Government dysfunction has left many children to fall through the cracks, says Edil Baisalov, the recently appointed deputy minister of social development.

“Government social support to needy children is not organised,” Baisalov told EurasiaNet.org. “The government does not deliver proper assistance to children in difficult situations. How can it possibly be that 10- to 12-year-old children in the 21st century do not have birth certificates?”

According to research conducted by My Family, a UNICEF-funded NGO in Bishkek, today over 11,000 children live in Kyrgyzstan’s 117 children’s homes, sometimes referred to as orphanages. Most are admitted for one of three reasons: the death of a parent (22 percent); a family’s difficult financial situation (21 percent); or divorce (14 percent). Only six percent have no living parents.

Though Kyrgyz families, according to Baisalov, adopted over 1,000 kids in 2010 and as many in 2011, My Family says the number of institutionalised children is increasing with Kyrgyzstan’s worsening poverty. The Kyrgyz National Statistics Committee reports that 36.8 percent of the population lived below the poverty line in 2011, an increase of 3.1 percent over the previous year.

Poverty is what’s driving the labour migration. By many estimates, 800,000 Kyrgyz – or about 15 percent of the country’s population – are working abroad in Russia and Kazakhstan, mostly doing menial labour like shoveling snow in Moscow or cleaning up in fast-food restaurants.

According to the World Bank, in 2011, the last year for which statistics are available, remittances totaled the equivalent of 29 percent of GDP, making Kyrgyzstan the third-most remittance-dependent country in the world.

“With the growing poverty in Kyrgyzstan, the number of social orphans is growing as well,” said Nazgul Turdubekova, the director of Bishkek-based League for the Rights of the Child, an NGO.

Turdubekova says the government’s 2011 Social Protection Strategy, which aims to provide financial help to children in low-income families, “does not work.”

“There is no effective government programme to deliver social assistance to low-income families,” she told EurasiaNet.org.

Moreover, statistics overlook the vast number of children living with their extended families, says Gulnara Ibraeva, a sociologist at the American University of Central Asia. “Considering the volume of migration, the real number of children living at relatives’ is much higher” than any statistics show, Ibraeva said, warning that the family as an institution is “disintegrating”.

“The life of the child has fallen in value. Children become a crushing burden for parents. The government does not care for children in need. It is a systematic failure. It is a systematic problem. We have several lost generations,” said Ibraeva.

Turdubekova blasts the government for sending the lion’s share of cash benefits to institutions, rather than to families in need, in effect making the institutions “compete” with families.

“The government uses most of its resources dedicated for needy children to finance children’s homes, allocating 6,000 to 11,000 soms (126-231 dollars) per child per month; parents from low-income families receive only 500 soms (10 dollars) per month per child,” Turdubekova said. “The difference between 6,000 to 11,000 and 500 soms is huge. Naturally, it turns out that needy families cannot compete with the government, and they are forced to take their children to orphanages.”

Moreover, through waste or graft, the money sent to institutions is not wisely spent, Turdubekova said: “The child actually receives only 30 to 40 percent of the aid. The rest is spent to maintain buildings, for utilities and staff salaries.”

Even if the funding were reorganised, it would probably do little to stem labour migration, and not help children like Nargiza. But it could make it financially viable for more parents to leave their children with relatives, which psychologists argue is usually preferable to state-run institutions.

Ibraeva, the sociologist, believes authorities must rethink their spending priorities. The government gives each family 1,100 soms as a social benefit at the birth of each child. But the amount paid as a “funeral benefit” at the death of a family member is much higher: Between 1,850 soms and 7,100 soms, for unemployed and employed, respectively.

“What is of greater value – birth or death? Of course, both are sacred, but as more money is spent on death, it appears death is more valuable in Kyrgyzstan,” Ibraeva said.

*Editor’s note: Hamid Tursunov is a freelance writer from Osh.

This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

A surge of economic nationalism is making life uncomfortable for Chinese companies working in Kyrgyzstan.

Faced with obstacles to trade and investment in the restive republic, Beijing is looking for ways to mitigate risk. Kyrgyzstan, Chinese officials know, is not the only place in Central Asia eager for business.

Case in point: Early this month, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted to ban Chinese trucks from entering the country. Accused of damaging roads and monopolising trucking routes, the giant lorries, typically the HOWO make, are the same types of trucks that have been plying the domestic market with cheap consumer goods and fuelling Kyrgyzstan’s re-export trade for years.

Ironically, Chinese companies paid with Chinese credit are repaving many of the highways the lorries may be forbidden from traversing.

That’s not lost on proponents of the ban, who, in addition to insisting they are protecting some 60,000 domestic truck drivers and loaders, also perceive their giant neighbour as a threat to Kyrgyz sovereignty. Temirbek Shabdanaliev, head of the Association of Kyrgyz Carriers, a lobby group that pushed for the ban, says that “parliamentary deputies showed their patriotism” with the vote.

As it stands now, the legislation has no legal force until President Almazbek Atambayev signs it. Yet such a motion would have been unlikely prior to the country’s 2010 uprising, which ushered in a more pluralistic and capricious political system, say observers.

Under ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Kyrgyzstan’s economy became hooked to re-exporting Chinese goods to other Central Asian countries. Kyrgyzstan surpassed Kazakhstan as Central Asia’s leading importer of Chinese goods in 2009, its low tariffs effectively promoting Beijing’s trade interests in the region.

Bakiyev was no great negotiator, says Shabdanaliev. According to the trucker association head, Bakiyev’s administration signed a bilateral agreement with China in 2007 that permitted Chinese lorries to weigh up to 55 tonnes, including cargo. That marginalised local drivers who often operate smaller trucks.

At the start of this year, officials cut the upper limit to 48.5 tonnes, although corrupt border officials often overlook regulations, Shabdanaliev says.

“China’s wealth is good for us. It can enrich the country,” Shabdanaliev told EurasiaNet.org. “But in bilateral negotiations we must defend our national interests. If we let our guard down time and again, there won’t be a national interest to defend.”

Parliament’s Nov. 1 action, initiated by the nationalist former speaker, Akmatbek Keldibekov of the opposition Ata-Jurt party, came just days after a brawl between Chinese workers and local residents at the Chinese-operated Taldy-Bulak Levoberezhnyi gold field. The incident forced workers to abandon the site.

Writing in the Chinese press, the head of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Kyrgyzstan blamed “opposition parties” for creating “an unstable and risky situation” for foreign investors. He implied politicians were stoking fear of China to further their own business interests. The Chinese Embassy in Bishkek refused EurasiaNet.org’s request for comment.

These types of disruptions have not gone unnoticed in Beijing, where officials know they have other export options, says Alexandros Petersen, a China expert and author of The World Island: Eurasian Geopolitics and the Fate of the West. Beijing is investing in road infrastructure across the region.

Petersen argues that Chinese decision makers are “hedging their bets, building the Khorgos Special Economic Zone in Kazakhstan and opening new customs houses at the Kulma Pass to Tajikistan” to diversify its trade routes into Central Asia.

Moreover, while Kyrgyzstan’s liberal trade regime and WTO membership made it a convenient entry point for goods heading toward richer and larger markets, the country remains a small market in and of itself.

Recent events may force China’s trade chiefs to wonder whether Kyrgyzstan is worth the trouble, a pertinent question in light of the two-billion-dollar-plus proposed railway linking its western Xinjiang province with Uzbekistan via Kyrgyzstan. Many in Kyrgyzstan have loudly denounced that project, too.

As the current cargo row demonstrates, China’s economic might has not translated into political leverage in Bishkek’s halls of power. But on the streets, Beijing has friends: market traders and every day consumers.

Damira Doolotalieva – head of Kyrgyzstan’s Union of Traders, which represents entrepreneurs working out of two of Central Asia’s largest markets, Dordoi and Kara-Suu – has urged Atambayev not to sign the lorry law, warning of a potential backlash: Kyrgyz trucks carry only a third as much as their Chinese counterparts can haul.

Chinese carriers are thus cheaper, she says, and the extra expense of using Kyrgyz trucks will be passed onto local consumers. “Parliament has … taken a decision that will fall on the shoulders of regular entrepreneurs and simple people,” she said.

*Editor’s note: Chris Rickleton is a Bishkek-based journalist.

This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

One morning last year in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Dilnoza awoke to find her brand-new Toyota Corolla missing. She knew immediately whom to call, and it wasn’t her local police precinct.

Dilnoza sought the help of a private security agency. And after six days of searching, the firm’s operatives finally tracked down and recovered Dilnoza’s car, which was found in a village outside the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Asked why she didn’t go to the police, she provided a practical answer.

“I paid the company, so they had an incentive to find it. The police did not,” Dilnoza, 33, explained.

Over the past eight years, Kyrgyzstan has seen two presidents chased from office amid violent street protests and widespread looting. As a result, and thanks to widespread corruption, public trust in the police has plummeted. It’s not surprising, then, that a rising number of individuals and businesses are placing their faith in private security agencies to protect property and investigate crimes.

According to figures confirmed by an Interior Ministry official, there are now over 400 private agencies licensed to carry weapons and provide security services in Kyrgyzstan; roughly 30 are operational year-round.

Many, including the firm hired by Dilnoza, who describes herself as “economically comfortable”, refuse to discuss their activities. At the agency’s insistence Dilnoza declined to give her surname for this EurasiaNet.org story.

Of the active Bishkek-based companies, 13 are members of the Union of Security Agencies, a forum that meets regularly with police officials to discuss security-related issues. But while officers from the Interior Ministry attend meetings, says Vladimir Bessarabov, the CEO of Barracuda, a private security and detective agency, cooperation among private and public security structures is rare. “Police see us as their competition,” Bessarabov told EurasiaNet.org.

This is logical, adds Bessarabov, whose firm has grown from 30 employees when it was founded in 2004 to one with 200 staff today, catering both to private individuals and corporate concerns, including the local Coca-Cola bottler. The police also provide guard-for-hire services in exchange for cash, he says. But the private forces are better-paid and more professional.

Union of Security Agencies members send employees to a course – run by Dordoi Securities, one of the largest private firms with about 800 employees – where employees undergo psychological testing and training in first aid and weapons handling.

Kyrgyzstan’s police academy, on the other hand, has a reputation for being a den of graft. A reported brawl at the academy’s graduation party last summer also dented its reputation for professionalism.

“We try not to hire from the ranks of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, because police here are full of bad habits,” Bessarabov continued. “The force is corrupt, and their definition of service doesn’t correspond to the level of work I demand from my guys.”

Many Bishkek residents simply feel that police officers are more interested in using their positions for their personal benefit, rather than promoting public safety.

Omurbek Suvanaliyev, a career police officer who once served briefly as interior minister under ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, admits that a demoralised police force has lost credibility in the eyes of the public.

“People understand that the security structures exist to defend the head of state and other high ranking politicians,” he told EurasiaNet.org. “They (police) have lost their civil functions.”

Nevertheless, Suvanaliyev argues, the rise of private security and detective firms that don’t answer to a centralised chain of command carries risks. Such security agencies can provide cover for criminal activity, he asserted.

“We refused to grant licenses to people we considered a threat to public safety,” says Suvanaliyev, who was twice Bishkek’s police chief and now styles himself an opposition politician. “But later, the Bakiyev family started giving security firm licenses away to everybody, (including) their criminal connections and drug runners.”

Customers like Dilnoza face a choice between potential criminality in the private agencies and open demands for kickbacks by police officers. “The police are thieves, we see this every day,” she said.

As an ethnic minority Uighur without connections in the force, she also feels police are less likely to respond to any request for help. “It is about what you can afford and who will protect your interests better,” she said.

*Editor’s note: Chris Rickleton is a Bishkek-based journalist.

This story was originally published on Eurasianet.org.

When nationalist MP Kamchybek Tashiev led his supporters over a fence surrounding parliament in early October, both foreign and local executives working in Kyrgyzstan’s mining industry braced for the worst.

Throughout the year, the sector has been cloaked in uncertainty, with foreign investors confronting regulatory hassles and nationalisation threats.

Tashiev, the leader of the opposition Ata-Jurt faction in parliament, succeeded in scaling the wrought-iron barrier – but, amid calls to nationalise Kumtor, a part-Canadian-owned gold mine – his alleged attempt to seize control of the government failed. With Tashiev and two confederates now behind bars, representatives of the extractive industry are breathing a little easier. But the sector will never enjoy peace, they say, as long as mines are entangled in political power plays.

The events of Oct. 3 may turn out to be the climax in what had been an escalating confrontation between miners and mobs. Just days prior to the episode, the new prime minister had announced “with authority” that Kumtor, whose operations accounted for roughly 12 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP in 2011, would not be nationalised, and that mineral extraction would be a core economic priority for his newly formed government.

Mining firms were quick to applaud the premier’s vow to fill the State Agency for Geology and Mineral Resources (responsible for overseeing licenses) with sector specialists, rather than patronage appointees, as had been the tendency under previous governments.

Prime Minister Jantoro Satybaldiyev’s statements were meant to end a challenge to Kumtor’s legal status, initiated on ostensibly environmental grounds by a Tashiev ally, Sadyr Japarov, earlier this summer. In June, a commission led by Japarov failed to convince the legislature that the gold giant’s alleged ecological transgressions warranted expropriation.

With corruption cases looming against both Tashiev and Japarov, the duo subsequently decided to take the debate into the streets.

Orozbek Duisheyev, president of the Association of Miners and Geologists, a non-profit that liaises between mining companies and the government, criticised the pair’s ecological arguments. “(Tashiev and Japarov) are members of the legislative branch – lawmakers – and they create this kind of chaos? These people aren’t environmentalists, they are agents provocateurs. This behaviour must be severely punished,” Duisheyev told EurasiaNet.org.

If Japarov and Tashiev were playing a mining card to defend their personal interests, they were doing so because it is one of the most effective in Kyrgyzstan’s political deck. Since President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted in April 2010, conflicts between mining companies and rural communities have been a regular feature of Kyrgyzstan’s political life. While supposed environmental violations are often cited during rallies, miners suspect the protesters are pawns in conflicts between marginalised elites and the central government in Bishkek.

“Mining companies certainly have a responsibility to abide by domestic and international environmental standards,” said a manager of a gold and copper mining firm, an expatriate with many years’ experience in Kyrgyzstan, who discussed the topic on condition of anonymity. “But to plan for, and anticipate shifts in clan politics – that shouldn’t really be part of our job.”

Centerra Gold, Kumtor’s parent company, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Kumtor is not alone in facing operational threats; there is scarcely a mine in Kyrgyzstan untouched by scandal.

In August, locals threatened to burn down the mine of Asia Gold Enterprises – a Chinese-owned firm working in the southern region of Chon-Alai – over concerns about river pollution. The company responded by offering villagers one percent of its operational profits. Villagers agreed and backed off. Earlier this year, the company was also accused of illegally exporting ore.

And in the western province of Talas, after parliament voted in June to suspend the license of Australia’s Kentor Gold on environmental grounds, the firm submitted itself to a rigorous environmental audit that has found little reason for concern.

The long-term prospects for these and other operations may depend less on environmental concerns and more on the government’s ability to enforce order in the countryside – especially in regions where hostile rivals wield influence.

Compared with Kumtor, these mines are small. Kentor Gold believes their Andash field will yield only 10-15 percent of the gold coming out of Kumtor. But the smaller mines are far more vulnerable to protesters. Attempts to nationalise Kumtor in 2003 and 2007 failed, while licenses for smaller outfits have been repeatedly revoked in the past.

Miners are not the only ones concerned by the nationalist opposition’s behaviour. According to Emil Shukurov, head of the ecological non-profit Aleyne and the editor of Kyrgyzstan’s Red Book of endangered species, Kyrgyzstan has “more serious environmental problems” than Kumtor.

Though he believes the mine commits “minor” environmental violations, “this goes with the territory (of mining),” Shukurov said. He complains that opposition rabble-rousing distracts from other important ecological debates, such as protecting biodiversity. Politicians pick and choose their environmental hang-ups, Shukurov added: “Ecology should not be a subject for political speculation.”

*Editor’s note: Chris Rickleton is a Bishkek-based journalist.

This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

During the day, when Uzbek border guards patrol its streets, Mingdon is a sleepy Ferghana Valley town. But after night falls, Mingdon, a hamlet of 10,000 on Uzbekistan’s frontier with Kyrgyzstan, turns into a smugglers’ paradise.

From Kyrgyzstan come bundles of Chinese clothing, crates of electric Chinese appliances and an endless parade of Chinese comestibles. From Uzbekistan, smugglers ship fresh fruits and vegetables into Kyrgyzstan by the truckload.

The smugglers are dodging the most restrictive trade regime in Central Asia. Uzbekistan’s protectionist tariffs are designed to shield domestic manufacturers (which are state-affiliated) from competition. Most consumer goods, including food, clothing, appliances, and motor vehicles, are taxed at rates ranging from 40 percent to 100 percent.

To stop smuggling, in recent years Tashkent has built miles of barbed-wire fences and has even dug trenches in many places. Armed guards often shoot smugglers. Last month, border guards from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan shot at each other, leaving one dead on each side.

If one believes Uzbek-state controlled media, anti-smuggling efforts have been largely successful. According to an early-July state television broadcast, the Uzbek customs service responded to 29,000 violations of the Uzbek customs law, initiated close to 900 criminal cases against smugglers, and confiscated illicit goods worth approximately 110 billion sums (about $60 million) in 2011. “Our borders are tightly controlled, and all violators are punished accordingly,” said the broadcast.

Yet, evidence from small towns such as Mingdon shows that efforts to secure the border are failing. Mingdon is situated on a section of the border that is not fully delimited by Tashkent and Bishkek. Smugglers rely on hidden paths around town (some are located in private yards) to move goods.

“It is practically impossible for authorities to control illicit trade. The border is like a sieve,” said a Mingdon state-paid employee who himself admits to smuggling clothing and small appliances at night.

There are no reliable figures on the volume of smuggled goods. In June, Muradyl Mademinov, a Kyrgyz MP, told local media outlets that he estimates $90 million worth of fruits and vegetables are smuggled from Uzbekistan into Kyrgyzstan annually. According to a 2011 study by Bishkek-based Central Asian Free Market Institute, goods that are illegally smuggled into Uzbekistan are primarily made in China, and consist of clothing and shoes (68 percent), kitchenware (19 percent) and electronic appliances (13 percent). Locals say the proportion of foodstuffs is growing each year.

According to Zarif, a small-business owner from Mingdon, huge profits are driving the trade. “On average, a smuggler can make $300 dollars a day, which is higher than the monthly salary of some state employees,” he said, adding that half of Mingdon’s residents moonlight as smugglers.

Large mafia-style syndicates employing hundreds of people are involved in smuggling, said a farmer from Marhamat, a town of 60,000 just across the border from Kyrgyzstan’s Aravan. Like most of the sources for this story, the farmer, who sells his produce to smugglers, was too afraid of reprisals to give his name.

“[Uzbek] customs officials and border guards have gotten very rich because of bribes [given by smugglers]. Border guards often look the other way while smugglers do their business. For the right price, they will also help smugglers transport goods,” said the farmer. Uzbekistan ranked 177 out of 183 countries surveyed in Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perceptions Index.

According to local residents, for years towns such as Mingdon and Marhamat suffered from economic decline. Now, thanks to illicit trade, the local economies are thriving.

“Real estate prices are booming. Prices for houses located immediately at the border (which are often used as storehouses) are the highest,” said a high school teacher in Mingdon. “We no longer have to send our children to work in Russia [as seasonal labor migrants].”

Officials in Tashkent are aware of local governments’ lax approach to smuggling, said a Tashkent-based journalist who covers agricultural issues for a state-run newspaper.

“The SNB [security services, formerly the KGB] conducts systematic raids in border regions, arresting smugglers and officials who are involved in illicit trade, but they [smugglers and accused officials] tend to bribe their way out,” said the journalist. “It is no surprise to anyone – these days even the SNB is not clean anymore.”

Economists in Tashkent privately say the government should reconsider its draconian approach, liberalize trade and delegate more authority to local officials. But officials seem more interested in centralization and tightening control. “The SNB and border guards have orders to shoot at anyone who is involved in smuggling,” said the government employee-cum-smuggler from Mingdon. “But the risks do little to deter smugglers.”

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Allegations that a member of Kyrgyzstan’s KGB-successor agency organised the brutal rape of his wife have outraged women’s rights activists in Bishkek. But what rights defenders call an ordinary crime is having an extraordinary effect because of the victim’s response: she pressed charges.

Nazgul Akmatbek kyzy has pursued her cause, despite, she says, considerable pressure from authorities to drop the case. Most women in Kyrgyzstan are afraid or ashamed to speak about sexual crimes. In a country with patriarchal norms and a dysfunctional justice system, few men are charged, especially husbands, on sexual assault charges, even though government statistics indicate 92 percent of rapes are committed by sexual partners or former partners.

Moreover, legal experts say police sometimes try to classify rape within the family as an administrative offense, which carries the same fine as burning garbage in the street – about $20.

In the case of Akmatbek kyzy, the accusations boil down to he-said-she-said. As Akmatbek kyzy tells it, late on Jun. 18, 2011, her then-husband, GKNB officer Azamat Bekboev, and his driver, Arzybek Tuuganbaev, took her into the suburbs of Bishkek and both repeatedly raped her and beat her.

Bekboev has denied all the charges. In his defence, he says his former wife (they have since divorced) was the driver’s lover.

A military court acquitted the two men on May 24, agreeing with Bekboev that Akmatbek kyzy was the driver’s lover. Akmatbek kyzy then appealed to a higher military court, which forbid Bekboev from leaving Bishkek and ordered the driver to be jailed. This second trial began earlier this month.

The lack of forensic evidence highlights an additional problem in prosecuting rape cases: Hospitals do not stock rape kits to collect evidence, say women’s rights activists.

In an interview with EurasiaNet.org, Bekboev maintained his innocence: “Imagine, I am an officer. I am a father of four. I lived with her for 14 years. How could I rape a woman I had lived with for 14 years? If I had done this, how could I look into my children’s eyes? I would kill myself.”

When pressed for details of that evening, Bekboev at first refused to discuss it, then said he hadn’t left town that night, then said he had. But he insists his wife was cheating and says he never forced her to have sex and never hit her.

Akmatbek kyzy, a petite woman of 36, says that Bekboev commonly beat her in front of their children, and often raped her. She pursued charges at the urging of her sisters because the incident left her suicidal, she said in a tearful interview with EurasiaNet.org. “If I didn’t have children I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. I wouldn’t want to live if I didn’t have children.”

“At the trial he laughs at me, calls me a prostitute,” Akmatbek kyzy said. “It’s so painful that we lived for 14 years together, we have four children together, and he’s blaming me, saying I was cheating on him. I never cheated.”

The courts have the attitude that “the rape of a wife is a sex game,” says Elena Tkacheva, Akmatbek kyzy’s therapist and head of the Chance Crisis Center in Bishkek, trying to explain why so few women are willing to report marital rape.

“Nazgul had to tell her story 30 times in court. That’s public humiliation. Then the defence finds minor discrepancies and uses them to discredit her,” Tkacheva explained. “Her neighbours and his (the ex-husband’s) family see her as a traitor because she spoke about something no one ever speaks about. When violence happens in the family, survivors don’t ask for help.”

Women who speak openly about sexual abuse in the family face the risk of double stigma – as “fallen women”, who have been dishonored and sullied, and as backstabbers, who have betrayed their own.

Tkacheva and Akmatbek kyzy are also disappointed at how some local media outlets have reported on the trial. “The news reports said she was stupid, that she should have just relaxed and enjoyed the experience,” said Tkacheva.

Some local observers believe such attitudes reflect officials’ laxness in prosecuting sexual abuse.

“The prejudice of investigators sends a message to society,” said Dmitry Kabak, a prominent activist and head of the Open Viewpoint Foundation. “If, instead, law enforcement bodies would actively investigate sexual crimes, it could help stop the daily violence that some people have started calling a tradition.”

International observers say woman in Kyrgyzstan have been particularly hard hit by poverty, which has been growing in the Central Asian nation since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In 2010, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women said poverty was fostering gender inequality in Kyrgyzstan, leading “to a return to traditionalism and patriarchy where women view and depend on the family as the centre of their life and adopt a position of obedience and submissiveness.”

In 20 years of working with battered women, Tkacheva says she hasn’t seen a single case of marital rape be prosecuted as a crime. “No one – not judges, police officers, local government officials, psychiatrists or doctors – recognise it as such,” she said.

There are no reliable statistics on the number of victims of spousal rape. A representative of the Department of Court Statistics at the Supreme Court told EurasiaNet.org that producing statistics would require one month and a written request delivered by courier.

Domestic abuse, however, is considered common. A 2008 UNFPA study found one in four women had suffered domestic violence at home. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence, then, that the same UNFPA study found 70 percent of women convicted of murdering their husbands or other family members were victims of domestic abuse.

*Editor’s note: David Trilling is EurasiaNet’s Central Asia editor.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.