H.E. Abdulla Shahid (left), former President of the UN General Assembly, and Collen Kelapile (center), former UN ambassador to Botswana and former vice-president of the UN Economic and Social Council, speak as panelists at the launch event of ICO's flagship report. Credit: John Okyo Nyaku/UN

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 9 2025 (IPS)

More than one year since its adoption, the UN Pact for the Future is held up as a critical framework for countries to address today’s issues through global cooperation. Its agenda for global governance and sustainable development is ambitious, and it is for this reason the Pact poses implementation challenges when it comes to the direct impact on local communities. It will require the joint efforts of governments, civil society and international organizations to achieve the goals laid out in the Pact.

The efforts of the International Communities Organisation (ICO), a UK-based international NGO, demonstrate what implementing the Pact would look like. Since 2016, ICO has worked to empower minority communities in conflict-affected areas through education and capacity-building opportunities. ICO focuses on directly supporting efforts to build up underrepresented groups’ involvement in community initiatives and diplomatic dialogue and address systemic, societal inequalities.

On December 3, ICO launched its flagship report, For Our Future: Best Practice for the Implementation of the UN Pact for the Future, at the UN Headquarters in New York, presenting a practical framework to support UN member states in advancing the objectives outlined in the Pact for the Future. Several Permanent Missions to the UN, including Bahrain, Guyana, Hungary, Kuwait, Samoa, Singapore, Tajikistan, Tonga, and Uganda, co-sponsored the event.

The UN Pact for the Future represents a shared set of global commitments to sustainable development, peace and security, and redefining global governance for member states. While its adoption marks a decisive moment of global consensus, there remains the challenge of translating the Pact’s guiding principles into meaningful action at the national and regional levels.  Through its ‘Best Practices’ blueprint, the ICO report distills their findings into an adaptable methodology designed to equip policymakers with the tools they need to implement the Pact’s goals effectively.

James Holmes, ICO founder and Secretary General, said, “The Pact reminds us that the strength of nations is measured not only by the power of their armies or the size of their economies, but also by the inclusiveness of their societies and the recognition of all who live within.” “How we treat minority peoples, those who are few in number, vulnerable, or historically marginal, is the true test of our progress and the true test of whether the fact for the future is being successful.”

H.E. Abdulla Shahid, ICO International Ambassador and former President of the 76th United Nations General Assembly, said it was crucial for the world to unite.

“The UN Pact for the Future calls for renewed unity in tackling humanity’s greatest challenges. This report demonstrates that lasting peace is built not only at negotiation tables but also through empowering communities themselves, ensuring that no group is left behind.”

“As UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted at the opening of the ‘Summit of the Future’ in September 2024, ‘21st-century challenges require 21st-century solutions: frameworks that are networked and inclusive and that draw on the expertise of all humanity.’

He added that the ICO’s report embodies this principle, showing how global aspirations can intersect with local action.

Prominent UN diplomats and civil society members were present at the launch event, demonstrating and remarking on their commitment to the Pact for the Future, and specifically to ICO’s work on the ground. Current and former high-ranking UN officials were also in attendance.

“One year after the adoption of the Pact, this discussion is timely,” said Themba Kalua, the UN Director, Pact for the Future Implementation Kalua remarked during the event. “While the world has grown more complex since the adoption of the Pact for the Future, the Pact continues to be central in realizing multilateralism, navigating the current geopolitical complexities and shaping our collective action on the global agenda.”

Kalua noted the efforts made by the UN system towards the Pact, including global panels on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) and the political declarations that emerged from UN conferences on social development in Qatar and financing for development in Spain. He expressed that the Pact was a “strategic priority” for the UN and its Secretary-General, António Guterres.

“From our side in the UN system and the Secretariat, we are committed to doing our part in supporting the implementation of the Pact,” Kalua told IPS.

Presenting the report, ICO’s UN Programme Manager Mia Sawjani broke down its findings and recommendations. She emphasized that countries would need to empower and promote the agency of local actors. This includes building up their capacity and skills to enact positive change in their communities. Countries must recognize adaptability in assessing situations on the ground, particularly in conflict settings that transform institutions and structures.

“The implementation of the Pact can be tangibly realized for all, but particularly to serve marginalized communities. It’s a transformative opportunity and it is our collective responsibility to follow through,” said Sawjani.

After the event, Holmes was heartened by the outpouring of support for ICO’s work, noting that many more countries had agreed to partner with them for future projects. By maintaining their focus on working with minority communities, ICO can “play a major global role” in implementing the Pact for Future.

“I have a big vision, and I have a lot of ambition for ICO,” Holmes told IPS. “We already have a global team, and I see that growing, and I see us having a bigger and bigger role in helping to implement the Pact.”

The launch event of ICO’s flagship report on the UN Pact for the Future at UNHQ in New York. The event was attended by high-ranking UN diplomats. Credit: John Okyo Nyaku/UN

Local actors and stakeholders, namely governments, academia, the private sector and civil society, would play a key role in implementing the Pact’s agenda. Organizations like ICO could serve as a bridge to translate the issues to the national context.

“The more we are able to bridge communities, the more successful it will be for states to deal with Track I diplomacy,” Shahid said to IPS, referencing the formal channel of diplomacy between governments on international issues.

Implementing the Pact for the Future must also mean recognizing the specific needs and challenges that these countries face. Island states like Samoa and Tonga, for example, are uniquely impacted by climate change, energy, and the global financial structures that need to better serve developing countries.

“For us in the Pacific, progress is measured not by rhetoric, but by real improvements that are felt in our villages, outer islands and vulnerable communities,” said Viliami Va’inga Tōnē, the Permanent Representative of Tonga.

Accountability and transparency will also be crucial to ensure countries follow through on the promises of the Pact. This must be present at all levels. Participants at the event emphasized the need for monitoring mechanisms that would measure progress.

The timing of the report coincides with the ongoing reform negotiations under the UN80 Initiative introduced this year. Discussions around the Pact went hand in hand with recognizing the critical step toward reforming the UN system that will optimize its ability to live up to its founding principles and the Pact’s promises.

If the Pact represents ‘what’ the UN and member states need to achieve in the global agenda, then UN80 represents ‘how’ the UN can implement the agenda.

“The UN80 initiative is really part of the UN response to how it can deliver on the ground,” said Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr. Pa’olelei Luteru, the Permanent Representative of Samoa. He said to IPS, “When you look at all the individual actions that need to be taken, these are at the global level, the UN [level], regional level, and national level. They’re all important, because we can’t continue to work in silence. Everything is interconnected now. So we need to make those connections and work together, and you don’t want duplication.”

While New York hosts reform discussions around the UN and its mandates, the organization’s impact will ultimately be felt by local communities across the world.

Dr. Agnes Mary Chimbiri-Molande, Permanent Representative of Malawi, told IPS that the people who serve in multilateral systems like the UN need to “renew or even rebuild trust” with local communities. At a time when people are questioning the UN’s relevance, she said, these discussions must be held and all perspectives need to be respected.

“We need to hear the voices of the local people. Because here we are working for them. We are not working for ourselves,” Chimbiri-Molande said. “So in fact, to be hearing the voices of those peoples, it’s very, very important to inform our work here, whether we are making an impact or we are making differences in the lives of the people in the community.”

Shahid reiterated that the decisions made in the halls of UN Headquarters will affect local communities, adding that the UN’s success is also contingent on its partnerships with civil society and how important it is for civil society to recognize the UN’s relevance.

During his time as President of the General Assembly from 2021-2022, the world was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. His ‘presidency of hope’ championed the progress made by the international system despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic. He also made efforts to promote inclusivity by opening the General Assembly to more participants, including civil society groups.

Shahid invited young diplomats from underrepresented member states to the President’s office to witness international diplomacy firsthand.

Even after his presidency ended, he told IPS, he wanted to continue to deliver on the ideals that defined his tenure.

“I thought that there’s no need to end the presidency of hope after one year. Let us keep delivering the message of hope through other platforms. And ICO provides me the platform, because it is a platform through which I can actually reach out to communities at [the] household level and inspire them not to give up. Keep working, keep aiming to change the status.”

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The raised flags of Turkmenistan and the United Nations marked the official opening of the Third UN Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDC3). Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
AWAZA, Turkmenistan, Aug 5 2025 (IPS)

Heads of State, ministers, investors and grassroots leaders are gathered in Awaza on Turkmenistan’s Caspian coast for a once-in-a-decade UN conference aimed at rewiring the global system in support of 32 landlocked developing countries whose economies are often ‘locked out’ of opportunity due to their lack of access to the sea.

Geography has long dictated the destiny of landlocked nations. Trade costs are up to 74 percent higher than the global average. It can take twice as long to move goods across borders compared to coastal countries. As a result, landlocked nations are left with just 1.2 percent of world trade and are at great risk of being left furthest behind amid global economic shifts.

Speaking during the opening plenary and in the context of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedow stated that his country believes “in the need to accelerate the process of ensuring transport connectivity, as well as to bring fresh ideas and momentum to this process.”

“In connection with this, last year at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Turkmenistan proposed creating a new partnership format, namely a global atlas of sustainable transport connectivity. I invite all foreign participants to carefully consider this initiative.”

The Third UN Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries, or LLDC3, is pushing for freer transit, smarter trade corridors, stronger economic resilience, and fresh financing to boost development prospects for the estimated 600 million people living in those countries.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres stressed that the conference is centered on reaffirming a fundamental truth: that “geography should never define destiny.”

“Yet,” Guterres continued, “For the 32 landlocked developing countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America, geography too often limits development opportunities and entrenches inequality.”

Rabab Fatima, Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, and Secretary-General of the Third United Nations Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries, said, “For too long, LLDCs have been defined by the barriers of geography, remoteness, inaccessibility, and the fact that they do not have a sea. But that is only part of the story.”

She stressed that LLDCs may be landlocked, but they are not opportunity locked, as they are rich in resources, resilience, and ambition. These countries seek to lean into these resources and strong partnerships to counter challenges such as an infrastructure financing shortfall of over USD 500 billion.

For these countries, goods take 42 days to enter and 37 days to exit their borders. Paved road density stands at just 12 percent of the global average. Internet access is only 39 percent. To address these constraints, the Awaza Programme of Action proposes a new facility for financing infrastructure investments. This new initiative aims to mobilize capital in large quantities to bridge the gaps and construct roads.

Meanwhile, as these daunting challenges prevail, Guterres said debt burdens are rising to dangerous and unsustainable levels. And one-third of LLDCs are grappling with vulnerability, insecurity, or conflict. Despite representing 7 percent of the world’s population, LLDCs account for just over one percent of the global economy and trade—a stark example of deep inequalities that perpetuate marginalization.

Guterres emphasized that these inequalities are not inevitable. They are the result of an unfair global economic and financial architecture unfit for the realities of today’s interconnected world, compounded by systemic neglect, structural barriers, and—in many cases—the legacy of a colonial past.”

“Recent shocks—from the COVID-19 pandemic to climate disasters, supply chain disruptions, conflicts and geopolitical tensions—have deepened the divide, pushing many LLDCs further away from achieving the SDGs.”

Further stressing that the conference is not about obstacles but solutions that include launching a new decade of ambition—through the Awaza Programme of Action and its deliverables—and fully unlocking the development potential of landlocked developing countries.

Fatima said the Awaza Programme of Action is a bold and ambitious blueprint to transform the development landscape for the 32 landlocked developing countries for the next decade. The theme of the conference, ’Driving Progress Through Partnerships,’ captures a collective resolve to unlock that potential. It underscores the new era of collaboration where LLDCs are not seen as isolated or constrained but as fully integrated.

Emphasizing that the Awaza Programme of Action provides “the tools to unlock the full potential of LLDCs and turn their structural challenges into transformative opportunities. The implementation of the Programme of Action has begun. We arrive in Awaza with momentum on our side. We have put together a UN system-wide development and monitoring framework with clear milestones and outcomes, comprising over 320 complete projects, programs, and activities.”

“Over the course of the week, we will see here the launch of many new partnerships and initiatives that will bring fresh momentum to its implementation. As we take this process forward, allow me to highlight three strategic priorities that will guide our work in Awaza. First, bridging the infrastructure and connectivity gap remains our top priority,” she said.

Heads of state and governments, including the presidents of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Republic of Armenia, Tajikistan, the Republic of Kazakhstan, and His Majesty King Mswati III from the Kingdom of Eswatini, stressed the significance of the conference for the group of landlocked developing countries in terms of identifying priority areas for further efforts with a focus on addressing modern challenges the international community is facing.

Mswati III said the conference reaffirms a shared commitment to having the structural barriers that hinder LLDCs from participating in the global economy, offering a platform to chart a path of resilience, innovation and inclusive growth. The leaders also shared many of the successes they have achieved amidst daunting challenges.

“To build resilience and ensure sustainable growth, Eswatini is diversifying beyond traditional sectors. We are promoting investment in agroprocessing, tourism, renewable energy, ICT, creativity, industries and private enterprise. This strategy broadens our economic base, creates jobs and supports inclusive development, aligning with our national priorities for 2030 and 2063,” he said.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev, President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, said that his country was “demonstrating strong momentum towards greater openness and transparency in logistics. Complex measures are being implemented to facilitate the digitalization of trade and transport processes. Structural transport and logistics spaces are the basis for dynamic transport implementation.”

Mirziyoyev stated that today, a single transport and logistics space is being established in the region. Comprehensive programs and projects are being implemented to transform Central Asia into a fully-fledged transit hub between East and West and North and South. Recently, mutual trade volumes have grown 4.5-fold, investments have doubled, and the number of joint ventures has increased 5-fold.

“This year, jointly with our partners, we have started construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway. Freight traffic on the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran-Turkey transport corridor has increased significantly. In today’s world, it is crucial to have concrete, feasible, and institutionally supported solutions to overcome common threats and challenges,” he stated.

Fatima, the Secretary-General of the Conference, said the challenges are many, varied and complex, requiring investing in robust implementation tools and partnerships at all levels.

“Our mapping confirms that every target adopted here in Awaza advances inclusive, resilient and sustainable development. But policy alignment alone is not enough. We need a whole-of-society approach,” she expounded.

“This Conference marks a turning point in that regard. For the first time, LLDC3 features dedicated platforms for civil society, the private sector, youth, women leaders, parliamentarians, and South-South partners – each playing a critical role in making the APOA people-centered and responsive.”

Overall, she urged the global community to seize the present moment—with ambition, unity, and purpose—to chart a new path for the LLDCs: one of prosperity, resilience, and full global integration. She stressed that the true legacy of the ongoing conference will not be measured by declarations, but by the real and lasting change that is delivered on the ground.

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Takhmina Haidarova, Tajik advocate for the rights of women living with HIV.

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 7 2024 (IPS)

Born and raised in a rural area in a traditional Tajik family, Takhmina Haidarova managed to finish high school with excellent grades and wanted to go to university.

“[But] it was compulsory for my family to give higher education to boys, and girls were trained to be housewives,” she says. Her dream of higher education was instead replaced by an arranged marriage to a cousin.

“I was strongly against this wedding, but my father decided for me and married me to him. I hadn’t even seen him before the wedding,” she tells IPS.

She became pregnant soon after the wedding, but her husband, who had worked in Russia before he wed her, left to return to his work there two months into the pregnancy. She gave birth to a daughter, who, however, died after falling ill a year later.

Haidarova was referred to doctors, who ran tests and discovered she had HIV.

“When I told my husband about it, it turned out he had known he had HIV for a long time and had hidden it from me,” she says.

Not long after, her husband returned to Tajikistan. He was seriously ill and was admitted to the hospital. When he died soon after, both his and Haidarova’s families found out they both had the disease, and the stigma and discrimination she has faced for many years since then began.

“None of my relatives communicated with me; they all avoided meeting with me,” she tells IPS. “Society in general refuses to recognize people with HIV,” she says.

But Haidarova decided to take a stand against it.

“When I found out I was HIV positive, my life changed dramatically. I lost my family support, my home, my health, and my sense of peace. It was very difficult and painful. But I decided that I would not let this virus define my life or the lives of other women.

“My husband died, and I started to work at an NGO while at the same time pursuing my higher education. Right from the start, I was open about my HIV status and never hid it,” she says.

“I started helping women with HIV because of my own experience of living with the virus. I know how difficult it is to deal with this diagnosis, especially when resources and support are limited,” she adds.

Today, Haidarova is a prominent advocate for the rights of women living with HIV (WLHIV) in Tajikistan, heading the Tajik Network of Women Living with HIV, based in the capital, Dushanbe. The organisation conducts information campaigns, organizes group sessions, and provides psychological and other support services to WLHIV.

“Starting an organization to support women with HIV was a natural step for me. Together with other women, we started to fight for our rights, for access to quality health care, for public education about HIV, and for support for those in the same situation. My goal is to make life easier for women and girls with HIV,” she says.

So far, she says, the work of her organization and others is making some progress. Through years of determined lobbying and cooperation with the government, official policy on HIV/AIDS has moved towards a greater recognition of the need to ensure rights for people living with HIV (PLHIV)—this is specifically set out in the country’s National HIV/AIDS Plan.

One of the most obvious signs of this, HIV advocates say, is a recent ruling by the Supreme Court.

Article 125 of Tajikistan’s Criminal Code currently criminalizes HIV transmission and exposure, carrying a two-year prison sentence, which rises to up to five years for transmission by someone aware of their status, and as much as ten years when committed against multiple people or a minor. Prosecutions can be brought against PLHIV on the basis of just a potential threat of HIV transmission. In some cases, this can be simply the fact that someone is HIV positive.

Women living with HIV make up 70 percent of all convictions under Article 125, according to UNAIDS.

“WLHIV are more often prosecuted [under Article 125]. As a rule, they do not have money for a lawyer [to defend themselves against the charge],” Larisa Alexandrova, an expert on HIV and human rights at the Centre for Human Rights, told IPS.

However, at the end of December last year, the Supreme Court issued a ruling on Article 125 under which the judicial system should in the future take into account other factors apart from simply HIV status, such as whether someone is on antiretroviral treatment and has an undetectable viral load, condom use, and if both parties are fully aware of the other’s HIV status.

Haidarova is optimistic that the ruling will bring positive change and believes it is an important first step towards decriminalizing the disease, which should help WLHIV.

But as some HIV activists in Tajikistan told IPS, what is written on law books is one thing, and what actually happens in practice is another.

“There are laws on paper that guarantee human rights equality for people in marginalized communities, including women. But the public, the police and judiciary, and even wider society break these laws on a regular basis,” one HIV activist who works with marginalized communities in Tajikistan told IPS.

People living with HIV, especially women, routinely report discrimination in the healthcare sector. Haidarova says she is no stranger to such experiences.

“In 2019, doctors told me the baby I was carrying was dead, and I urgently needed to terminate the pregnancy, but the doctors at the polyclinic kept me in the hallway for two hours and eventually said they would not perform the procedure because I had HIV and they wanted to refer me to another facility. I eventually managed to call a doctor who knew me, and she came and performed the procedure herself.

“Then, when I gave birth to a child last year, when it was time for delivery, I came to the maternity hospital, and they took me from the general maternity ward to the isolation ward. None of the doctors would come to me, and I had to call a doctor I knew who was on vacation at the time and explain the situation. She came to deliver the baby herself.  We live in the 21st century, when medicine is so advanced, but despite all this, women’s rights are violated at vulnerable moments when they are powerless,” she said.

Takhmina Haidarova is hopeful that changes to the law that criminalize HIV exposure and transmission in Tajikistan will ensure women living with HIV are not unfairly targeted.

Meanwhile, in wider society, issues around stereotypes and prejudices about gender-based violence (GBV), in part related to religious beliefs among the majority Muslim population, deepen stigma and discrimination, she says, warning that these are having a dangerous impact on the spread of the disease.

“People who are at risk and in need of HIV information, counseling, and testing face barriers to accessing appropriate health care and services. Many of them fear discrimination and negative attitudes from doctors and other health care providers, so they prefer to go without the help they need,” she says.

Law enforcement is another area where WLHIV faces disproportionate discrimination. Activists say that many women living with HIV are victims of GBV but fear reporting the assault to the police or will often withdraw an allegation not just out of fear of finding themselves without economic support—the overwhelming majority of women in Tajikistan are economically dependent on their husbands—but also because of concerns that their HIV status may be disclosed.

Activists say that in some cases, when police attend incidents of GBV and find the woman involved is living with HIV, they will look to take action against her under Article 125 rather than investigate the assault.

The discrimination and stigma women and others living with HIV face is deterring them from accessing prevention, testing, and treatment services and impacting efforts to tackle the disease, activists say.

Tajikistan has over 15,000 people living with HIV, but the number of new HIV infections has increased by 20% over the past 10 years, and the percentage of new HIV cases among women has risen from 31% in 2011 to 36% in 2022, according to UNAIDS.

Haidarova says the government is committed to strengthening rights for people living with HIV, but that more needs to be done to educate people about it and protect vulnerable groups from discrimination.

As she is keen to stress, her own experience shows that stigma and discrimination around HIV can be overcome.

“My story is a painful one, but  everything is slowly getting better for me now. I started a family of love—my husband is HIV negative, and we have two beautiful, healthy children.

“I proved to my family that people with HIV can live a full life, be happy, start a family, and give birth to healthy children. When they found out I wasn’t dead and that everything was fine with me, they quietly began to communicate with me and invite me to their events. It took some time, but they understood that while HIV is scary, you can live with it,” she says.

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Excerpt:

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:

By Daya Thussu
LONDON, Jul 1 2015 (IPS)

As the leaders of the BRICS five meet in the Russian city of Ufa for their annual summit Jul. 8–10, their agenda is likely to be dominated by economic and security concerns, triggered by the continuing economic crisis in the European Union and the security situation in the Middle East.

The seventh annual summit of the large emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – also takes place with a background of escalating tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine and the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), as well as the growing economic power of Asia, in particular, China.

Daya Thussu

Nearly a decade and a half has passed since the BRIC acronym was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, a Goldman Sachs executive, now a minister in David Cameron’s U.K. government, to refer to the four fast-growing emerging markets. South Africa was added in 2011, on China’s request, to expand BRIC to BRICS.

Although in operation as a formal group since 2006, and holding annual summits since 2009, the BRICS countries have escaped much comment in international media, partly because of the different political systems and socio-cultural norms, as well as stages of development, within this group of large and diverse nations.

The emergence of such groupings coincides with the relative economic decline of the West.

This has created the opportunity for emerging powers, such as China and India, to participate in global governance structures hitherto dominated by the United States and its Western allies.

That the centre of economic gravity is shifting away from the West is acknowledged in the view of the U.S. Administration of Barack Obama that the ‘pivot’ of U.S. foreign policy is moving to Asia.“The major countries of the global South have shown impressive economic growth in recent decades … [it is predicted that] by 2020 the combined economic output of China, India and Brazil will surpass the aggregated production of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy”

And there is evidence of this shift. In the Fortune 500 ranking, the number of transnational corporations based in Brazil, Russia, India and China has grown from 27 in 2005 to more than 100 in 2015. China’s Huawei, a telecommunications equipment firm, is the world’s largest holder of international patents; Brazil’s Petrobras is the fourth largest oil company in the world, while the Tata group became the first Indian conglomerate to reach 100 billion dollars in revenues.

Since 2006, China has been the largest holder of foreign currency reserves, estimated in 2015 to be more than 3.8 trillion dollars. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China’s gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed that of the United States in 2014, making it the world’s largest economy in purchasing-power parity terms.

More broadly, the major countries of the global South have shown impressive economic growth in recent decades, prompting the United Nations Development Programme to proclaim The Rise of the South (the title of its 2013 Human Development Report), which predicts that by 2020 the combined economic output of China, India and Brazil will surpass the aggregated production of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.

Though the individual relationships between BRICS countries and the United States differ markedly (Russia and China being generally anti-Washington while Brazil and South Africa relatively close to the United States and India moving from its traditional non-aligned position to a ‘multi-aligned’ one), the group was conceived as an alternative to American power and is the only major group of nations not to include the United States or any other G-7 nation.

Nevertheless, none of the five member nations are eager for confrontation with the United States – with the possible exception of Russia – the country with which they have their most important relationship. Indeed, China is one of the largest investors in the United States, while India, Brazil and South Africa demonstrate democratic affinities with the West: India’s IT industry is particularly dependent on its close ties with the United States and Europe.

Although the idea of BRIC was initiated in Russia, it is China that has emerged as the driving force behind this grouping. British author Martin Jacques has noted in his international bestseller When China Rules the World, that China operates “both within and outside the existing international system while at the same time, in effect, sponsoring a new China-centric international system which will exist alongside the present system and probably slowly begin to usurp it.”

One manifestation of this change is the establishment of a BRICS bank (the ‘New Development Bank’) to fund developmental projects, potentially to rival the Western-dominated Bretton Woods institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF. Headquartered in Shanghai, China has made the largest contribution to setting it up and is likely that the bank will further enhance China’s domination of the BRICS group.

Beyond BRICS, Beijing has also established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which already has 57 members, including Australia, Germany and Britain, and in which China will hold over 25 percent of voting rights. Two other BRICS nations – India and Russia – are the AIIB’s second and third largest shareholders.

Such changes have an impact on the media scene as well. As part of China’s ‘going out’ strategy, billions of dollars have been earmarked for external communication, including the expansion of Chinese broadcasting networks such as CCTV News and Xinhua’s English-language TV, CNC World.

Russia has also raised its international profile by entering the English-language news world in 2005 with the launch of the Russia Today (now called RT) network, which, apart from English, also broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in Spanish and Arabic.

However, as a new book Mapping BRICS Media – which I co-edited with Kaarle Nordenstreng of the University of Tampere, Finland – shows, there is very little intra-BRICS media exchange and most of the BRICS nations continue to receive international news largely from Anglo-American media.

The growing economic cooperation between Moscow and Beijing – most notably in the 2014 multi-billion dollar gas deal – indicates a new Sino-Russian economic equation outside Western control.

Two key U.S.-led trade agreements being negotiated – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and both excluding the BRICS nations – are partly a reaction to the perceived competition from nations such as China.

For its part, China appears to have used the BRICS grouping to allay fears that it is rising ‘with the rest’ and therefore less threatening to Western hegemony.

The BRICS summit takes place jointly with Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Heads of State Council meeting. The only other time that BRICS and the SCO combined their summits was also in Russia – in Ekaterinburg in 2009.

Apart from two BRICS members, China and Russia, the SCO includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. SCO has not expanded its membership since it was set up in 2001. India has an ‘observer’ status within SCO, though there is talk that it might be granted full membership at the Ufa summit.

Were that to happen, the ‘pivot’ would have moved a few notches further towards Asia.

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:

Migrant workers ride in a bus through northern Kazakhstan in May 2014 on their way to find employment in Russia. As the value of the Russian ruble continues to fall, labour migrants from Central Asia say they are less inclined to work in Russia. Credit: Konstantin Salomatin

By EurasiaNet Correspondents
TASHKENT, Dec 26 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Sardor Abdullayev, a construction worker from eastern Uzbekistan, had planned to go to Russia next spring to join relatives working construction sites in the Volga River city of Samara. But now, he says, “I am better off staying at home and driving a taxi.”

As the value of the Russian ruble plummets and Russia’s economy tumbles into recession, millions of Central Asian migrants have seen their real wages dwindle. On top of that, Russian authorities are introducing new, expensive regulations for foreigners who wish to work legally in the country.The return of tens of thousands of labour migrants and the prospect of them joining the vast pool of the already unemployed is making some officials nervous.

Some Uzbek migrants in Russia now say they are contemplating a return home. Such an influx of returnees could have uncertain ramifications for their impoverished country.

According to Russia’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, there are about three million Uzbek labour migrants in Russia, the most from any Central Asian country. Others estimate the number of Uzbeks could be twice that.

Unofficial estimates put their remittances in 2013 at the value of roughly a quarter of Uzbekistan’s GDP. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are even more dependent on labour migrants, with remittances contributing the equivalent of 30 percent and roughly 50 percent to their economies, respectively.

Data from Russia’s Central Bank shows that the funds Uzbeks send home dipped nine percent year-on-year during the third quarter of 2014. Analysts predict the fall will continue. The Russian business daily Kommersant estimates that remittances fell 35 percent month-on-month in October alone.

That was before the ruble, which has steadily fallen since Russian troops seized Crimea in February, nosedived earlier in December. Thanks to Western sanctions, the low price of oil, and systemic weaknesses in Vladimir Putin’s style of crony capitalism, the currency has lost roughly 50 percent against the dollar this year. Most migrants convert their rubles into dollars to send home.

“My salary was 18,000 rubles a month, which several months ago would be equivalent to 500 dollars. Now, it is less than 300 dollars,” Sherzod, a 29-year-old from the Ferghana Valley who was working at a shop in Samara, told EurasiaNet.org.

Sherzod returned home in November and he is not planning to go back to Russia. “The salary is too low.”

It is not only falling wages that labour migrants must consider. Starting on Jan. 1, Russia will require labour migrants to pass tests on Russian language, history and legislation basics, as well as undergo a medical examination and buy health insurance (the entire package will cost migrants up to 30,000 rubles (currently about 500 dollars), by some accounts).

The Moscow city government is also more than tripling the fee for work permits, from 1,200 rubles monthly to 4,000 rubles (currently 64 dollars).

Citizens of countries that are members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which will come into force on Jan. 1, will not be affected by the new regulations. That adds an incentive – some might say pressure – for migrant-feeder countries like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to join. (Kyrgyzstan is hoping to join in early 2015).

Sherzod, the Uzbek labourer, says that faced with falling real incomes, many Uzbeks working in Russia find themselves in a quandary. Thousands are eager to return home. But many simply do not have funds to buy a return ticket. Others worry about being seen in their native villages as failures.

Russian media outlets have quoted a migrant community leader who projected new requirements for guest workers, along with the falling ruble, will prompt up to 25 percent of migrants to leave Russia in the coming months.

With fewer dollars entering Uzbekistan, the Uzbek sum has fallen 15 percent against the greenback on the black market, according to several Ferghana-based shop owners interviewed by EurasiaNet.org. (The tightly managed official exchange rate has declined about 11 percent against the dollar this year. To help support it, from Jan. 1 fruit and vegetable exporters will be required to sell 25 percent of their hard currency earnings to the state at the official rate, Interfax news agency reported Dec. 18).

Despite the economic fallout from Russia, Uzbek leaders remain open to doing business with the Kremlin. During a visit to Tashkent on Dec. 10, Putin wrote off most of Uzbekistan’s 890-million-dollar debt. That deal paved the way for new loans from Moscow. It is unclear what Uzbek leader Islam Karimov promised in return.

Uzbek authorities and well-connected businessmen claim they are prepared to manage the economic fallout, and the large number of returning migrants.

“We have numerous [state-sponsored] urban regeneration construction projects across the country. One can say that the whole of Uzbekistan is a massive construction site. So if migrants return, many of them will find work,” Nazirjan, a former government official who how heads a private construction company in the Ferghana Valley, told EurasiaNet.org on condition his surname not appear in print.

On Dec. 15, President Karimov signed a decree that increased state employees’ salaries by 10 percent. Still, the return of tens of thousands of labour migrants and the prospect of them joining the vast pool of the already unemployed is making some officials nervous.

“The SNB [former KGB] has instructed local authorities and mahalla [neighbourhood] committees to create lists of labour migrants who are returning from Russia. The arrival of migrants usually increases the crime rate, and local authorities have also been instructed to be more vigilant,” a secondary school teacher in the Ferghana Valley told EurasiaNet.org.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The government of Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, seen here addressing the UN General Assembly in September 2010, is considering legislation that could affect NGOs accepting funding from foreign sources. Credit: UN/Rick Bajornas

By Konstantin Parshin
DUSHANBE, Dec 3 2014 (EurasiaNet)

It looks like Tajikistan is following a regional trend by drafting legislation that may sharply restrict the activities of foreign-funded non-governmental organisations. Activists say the bill threatens to hinder the operations of hundreds of organisations working on everything from human rights to public health.

The leaders of several prominent NGOs told EurasiaNet.org they were caught off guard when the bill was introduced earlier in November. They added that they were not involved in the drafting of the legislation, as had been customary for NGO-related bills, and have not been able to obtain details about the specific wording of the draft.“In reality, it implies that the government will be dictating to NGOs which projects they should implement.” -- Nargis Zokirova

The government has said nothing publicly yet about the bill, which comes as state agencies have increased unscheduled inspections and other bureaucratic measures concerning non-profits, the NGO leaders say.

Under current regulations, all NGOs operating in Tajikistan must regularly present detailed reports on their activities to the Justice Ministry, where they are obliged to register; they also must present financial statements to tax inspectors.

The draft law is believed to require local non-profit organisations to obtain the government’s approval before accepting funds from a foreign donor. For now, it is unclear from whom the local organisations would seek permission or who would appoint and manage that body.

“There are reasons to fear that it [the bill], in practice, would amount to a system of pre-authorization for the use of foreign funds that would involve direct government interference into the activities of NGOs, and could result in arbitrary delays and denials to register grants,” according to a forthcoming letter to the Tajik government that has already been signed by at least 70 organisations.

“If adopted, the draft legislation would further worsen the climate for NGOs, and is also likely to contribute to public mistrust and suspicion of foreign-funded NGOs by singling them out for a specific registration regime,” the letter added.

The public first heard about the draft legislation during a November 18 conference on freedom of speech in Tajikistan, during which NGO leaders noted a generally deteriorating climate for basic freedoms.

“In reality, it implies that the government will be dictating to NGOs which projects they should implement,” Nargis Zokirova, director of the Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law, told EurasiaNet.org. “Authorities demand maximum transparency from us. However, the draft law, which directly concerns our activities, was developed without the [input of] civil society organisations. None of us was aware of it.”

It is unclear why a government that frequently touts its commitment to battling corruption would create an additional layer of the kind of bureaucracy that can breed sleaze. Tajikistan already ranks 154 out of 177 countries on Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perceptions Index.

Several activists said they feel Tajikistan’s authoritarian-minded government is simply following the regional trend of tightening regulations in order to silence critics. Many are pessimistic and expect the government will have the country’s rubberstamp parliament approve the bill before the end of the year.

“It is quite obvious that many domestic organisations will have to terminate their activities,” said Nuriddin Karshiboev, director of the National Association of Independent Media (NANSMIT).

Conditions for civil society organisations have deteriorated in all Central Asian countries over the last few years. Russian President Vladimir Putin established a precedent in 2012 by signing a law that requires local organisations receiving foreign funding to self-identify as “foreign agents” – Soviet-era slang for spies.

Legislators in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan are currently pushing an almost word-for-word copy of that 2012 law. If enacted in Kyrgyzstan, NGOs there would have to cope with burdensome reporting regulations.

“In countries where similar laws have been adopted – Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, Uzbekistan – the state authorities keep civil society under tough control and punish human rights activists,” said Karshiboev of NANSMIT.

Long-serving President Emomali Rahmon appears to have a strong grip on power in Dushanbe. Even so, authorities have moved steadily in recent years to limit the space for any form of dissent.

A court shut down the human rights watchdog organisation Amparo in the northern city of Khujand in 2012 for alleged technical violations shortly after an Amparo representative accused the government of failing to address widespread reports of detainees being tortured.

In October, Tajik security forces mustered a massive display of strength at the mere rumor of a demonstration, which never came to pass. This month, the lower house of parliament quickly approved a draft law restricting demonstrations, again without public consultation.

The Asia-Plus news agency quoted political scientist Abdugani Mamadazimov as saying that the law shows that authorities have “opted for stability to the determent of democratic traditions.”

Editor’s note:  Konstantin Parshin is a freelance writer based in Tajikistan.

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. 

Tajik men board a flight from Dushanbe to Russia in June 2013. Many of the Tajik militant jihadis fighting in Syria either fly through Russia on their way to the conflict or are recruited while they are migrant workers in Moscow, from where they eventually travel to Turkey before crossing the border into Syria. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By EurasiaNet Correspondents
DUSHANBE, Aug 13 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Before he became a jihadist, Odiljon Pulatov would travel each year from Tajikistan to Moscow to earn money as a construction worker.

“The money I made was enough to sustain my family. But the last time I went there, I met different people, Tajiks and other [Central Asians]. They persuaded me that jihad is a must for every Muslim,” Pulatov told EurasiaNet.org.“We both have a dream to go to Syria and participate in the war." -- Abubakr

Pulatov, a father of four, traveled from Russia to Syria, via Turkey. Once there, over the course of two weeks, Uzbek speakers like himself indoctrinated him, emphasising the importance of jihad.

“Jihad is conducted for an idea, so that you can be closer to Allah,” explained Pulatov, 29.

Pulatov found conditions in Syria harsh, though, and in July he accepted a Tajik government amnesty, returned home and confessed. Now he is back in Spitamen District in northern Tajikistan, building a home for his family. Authorities made Pulatov accessible to various media outlets, including EurasiaNet.org, in an apparent effort to highlight the amnesty.

Madjid Aliev, a police investigator in Spitamen, says Pulatov remains under investigation. “But we are sure he won’t have any issues. That’s why he has not been detained,” Aliev said.

According to the Interior Ministry, almost 200 Tajiks are fighting in Syria. Aliev, the investigator, said officials were negotiating with others who are in Syria, offering a safety guarantee as an enticement for them to return home.

Along with the amnesty, parliament this summer toughened penalties for Tajik citizens who participate in armed conflicts abroad. But, critics say, such punishment is not a deterrent and the government’s response to the rising threat of homegrown jihadis is ineffective.

“I don’t think that this law on punishing participants will resolve the problem and stop Tajiks from participating. There’s a need to take preventive measures, so that we’re not fighting the consequences, but the reasons [men travel to Syria to fight],” said Dushanbe-based religious affairs expert Faridun Hodizoda.

A lack of work is one of those reasons, contends Hodizoda. Unemployment in Tajikistan is so high that over a million Tajiks work abroad: most, like Pulatov, find work in Russia. That number constitutes approximately half of Tajikistan’s working-age males.

In Russia, labour migrants are widely distrusted and subjected to various forms of harassment, including frequent police shakedowns. The difficulties prompt some to turn to Islam for solace.

At home, Tajikistan’s notoriously corrupt government does little to create jobs. And when it comes to religious affairs, officials tend to crack down on moderate expressions of Islam, harassing members of the Islamic opposition and banning children from attending mosques.

Tajiks in Russia – who are often young men with rudimentary educations and few prospects – are an important source of recruits for Jihadist causes.

“Being a gastarbeiter [migrant labourer] is not an easy thing, there’s a lot of humiliation. But recruiters speak to the gastarbeiters kindly. They provide moral support,” Hodizoda explained, adding that money is also a temptation. “When our citizens are told what they will be doing there [in Syria] and that they will be paid 3,000 dollars and treated well, of course they agree. In Russia, they earn 500-600 dollars a month.”

Tajik officials frequently assert that young Tajik men who go to Syria are, in effect, mercenaries, driven to fight by the allure of a substantial payday. But Pulatov says he was not promised a cent. “When we were recruited, no one said we would be paid,” he said.

Another potential fighter, who introduced himself as Abubakr, 23, communicated with EurasiaNet.org from Russia through a social network. Abubakr, who is from Kulyab, said he is working in Moscow with his father and brother, but he is also in touch with a Chechen friend he met online. “We both have a dream to go to Syria and participate in the war,” he said.

“We weren’t promised any money. How can one talk about money when our [Muslim] sisters and children are being killed there. I [communicated] with Tajiks who are there now, and they tell me sometimes they starve, sometimes there’s no place to sleep, but they are fighting infidels,” Abubakr said via Odnoklassniki – which has been blocked in Tajikistan since mid-July, by some accounts because radicals use it as a recruiting tool.

Abubakr believes that Muslims who criticise jihad do not understand their faith. “My mother is also trying to persuade me [not to fight], but there’s a lot she doesn’t understand about [jihad],” he said.

Officials try to use reason to appeal to vulnerable young men, according to the head of the Fatwa Department at the state-run Muftiate, Jamoliddin Homushev.

“It is said that paradise is beneath your mother’s feet and that by insulting her no one gets to paradise. In Syria, an inter-ethnic fight is going on, like it was in the 1990s in Tajikistan. They [the Syrians] should solve their own problems without external interference,” Homushev told EurasiaNet.org.

Such explanations do not seem to convince many young Tajik Muslims, who do not feel their government listens to their concerns. Others feel the authorities exaggerate the extent of radicalism in the country in order to target the opposition Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT).

Embattled IRPT leader Muhiddin Kabiri told EurasiaNet.org that authoritarianism, the government campaign against Islam and poverty drive young men into the arms of radicals. “They do not have an opportunity to improve their lives at home,” Kabiri said, referring to young Tajiks.

“We still have time to fix the situation, reform the law so young people feel their rights, including religious, are respected. […] So they realise there is no need to take up arms,” he said. “But the government is failing to address their concerns.”

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

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.

Central Asian migrants, including many from Tajikistan, gather in Moscow to pray during the Islamic holy day of Eid al-Fitr, in early August 2013. Estimates vary, but almost half of Tajikistan’s male workforce is thought to be working abroad, mostly in Russia. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By an EurasiaNet correspondent
DUSHANBE, Apr 11 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Labour migrants make up Tajikistan’s economic lifeline, but that’s a fact the Central Asian country’s leadership doesn’t seem eager to acknowledge.

Migrants contribute the equivalent of 48 percent of Tajikistan’s GDP, according to the World Bank, making the impoverished country the most remittance-dependent in the world. Estimates vary, but almost half of Tajikistan’s male workforce is thought to be working abroad, mostly in Russia.“Why don’t we replace the billboards featuring photos of the president with pictures of the people who feed us every day?” -- Olga Tutubalina

The migrant-labour role in the economy is having trouble fitting in with the image of Tajikistan that President Imomali Rakhmon’s administration wants to project to the outside world. Rakhmon has spent huge sums on mega-projects in the capital Dushanbe partly in an effort to distance the country from its reputation as Central Asia’s poorest state.

The government also doesn’t look kindly upon those who would like to honor labour migrants. The most recent such initiative began in February, when Tajik blogger and journalist Isfandiyor Zarafshoni started a petition calling for the construction of a monument to migrant workers.

“Every city in Tajikistan has a monument to Ismoil Somoni, founder of the Tajik state. Many cities and regional centers still have monuments of Vladimir Lenin. Some cities and regions have monuments of [medieval poets] Rudaki and Ferdowsi. But why don’t we have the most necessary and most important monument, to the Labour Migrant?” Zarafshoni told EurasiaNet.org.

“They leave behind their families and children, parents and dreams. With their hard work, they build the Tajikistan in which we live today. They are often treated badly, insulted and humiliated, go unpaid, are beaten and even killed,” Zarafshoni continued.

In 2013, 942 Tajik guest workers returned to Tajikistan from Russia in coffins.

The government has not formally commented on the latest initiative, but officials tell EurasiaNet.org the idea is a non-starter. “I don’t see a need for a monument,” said Suhrob Sharipov, an MP for Rakhmon’s People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan.

This isn’t the first time recently that the Tajik government has appeared uneasy acknowledging the country’s economic reliance on migrants. Last July, the National Bank stopped publishing remittance data, arguing it could be “politicized.” The change has done little to hide the information, as data is still available from transfer points in Russia.

Critics say the government is trying to bury its head in the sand. On April 1, the Asian Development Bank said Tajikistan’s robust 7.4 percent growth in 2013 was “supported mainly by remittances,” and warned the economy is slowing as the government does too little to attract private investment.

The International Monetary Fund has repeatedly said Tajikistan’s dependence on migrant transfers leaves it vulnerable to external shocks and has encouraged the government to focus on local job creation.

In 2011, Olga Tutubalina, editor of Dushanbe’s Asia Plus newspaper, also proposed a monument to migrants. Back then she wrote an open letter to the government, noting that Tajikistan’s population survives because of the labour migrants working in Russia and Kazakhstan.

“Why don’t we replace the billboards featuring photos of the president with pictures of the people who feed us every day?” Tutubalina told EurasiaNet.org.

A spokesman for Rakhmon’s party says monuments are installed for heroes. Migrants, he argues, go abroad to enhance their personal lives. Therefore, they’re not heroes.

“There are 200 million migrants worldwide, but none of their countries have installed a monument to them,” People’s Democratic Party spokesman Usmon Solih told EurasiaNet.org.

His claim is not exactly accurate: Mexico, for example, boasts monuments to its citizens who have gone to the United States to better their lives and the lives of their families back home. Meanwhile, Istanbul has a monument to the unnamed and overlooked porter, outside the famous Grand Bazaar.

Building a monument would “acknowledge that labour migrants play an important role in the internal politics of Tajikistan,” said Shokirdjon Hakimov, deputy chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Party.

Authorities will not permit a monument because their own “ineffective economic policy” has forced migrants to leave the country, which is embarrassing. The National Bank’s decision to stop publishing remittance data was “a political decision,” added Hakimov.

Sharipov, the MP close to Rakhmon, insists the government is not embarrassed. He dismissed the idea the country is financially dependent on migrants and rejected accusations the National Bank’s decision to withhold data was political.

But outside of those in government, few in Dushanbe’s chattering classes seem to buy official explanations. Any acknowledgement of labour migrants’ significance, said political scientist Saimiddin Dustov, “would mean admitting the impotence and the irrelevance of the government’s economic programmes.”

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Last July, authorities in Tajikistan confiscated the only manuscript of a little-known novelist’s latest book. In what can only be described as an Orwellian sequence, after the manuscript was seized at a Dushanbe printing house, the author was hauled in for interrogation and asked questions like, “who ordered you to write this book?”

The author, Pulod Abuev, 69, later appealed to representatives of the feared State Committee for National Security (GKNB) to have his work returned to him. After some time, Abuev was told that a special committee at the state-run Academy of Sciences had reviewed his writings, including stories critical of Tajikistan’s widespread corruption, and decided it “offends the Tajik people.” The manuscript, thus, was not returned.“Take any classical play by Shakespeare or Chekhov, and the bureaucrats will immediately detect ‘a national security threat.’ " -- Barzu Abdurazzakov

At a Jan. 17 news conference, Abdulvokhid Shamolov of the Academy of Sciences, who conducted the review of Abuev’s work, said the author had expressed support for the theories of an unnamed “Uzbek scientist” who has denied the existence of the Tajik nation.

“The Academy of Sciences and the National Security Committee [GKNB] have performed their duties – to ensure security in the country,” Shamolov said in comments carried by the Asia Plus news agency.

Abuev’s case has heightened fears among some in Dushanbe’s creative class that Tajik authorities are trying to stamp out any form of freethinking under the vague pretext of patriotism. Already self-censorship is widespread among journalists who face libel charges and death threats when tackling tricky subjects. Local observers say the chief enforcer of the government’s perceived “group-think” campaign is the GKNB, which is the recipient of training assistance from the American military.

Abuev believes he was labeled an agent of rival Uzbekistan simply for expressing forthright views about the present state of Tajik society. One of the short stories in the manuscript is a thinly disguised tale about a new toll road that profits relatives of the president’s family.

“I write about life, about labour migrants, about corruption and the hypocrisy of bureaucrats. Somebody has seen a threat to national security in my work. This is ridiculous,” Abuev told EurasiaNet.org.

The space for intellectual discourse is vanishing, according to celebrated playwright Barzu Abdurazzakov. He went on to assert that authorities are gagging literature that even the most zealous Soviet censor would have found unproblematic.

“Take any classical play by Shakespeare or Chekhov, and the bureaucrats will immediately detect ‘a national security threat.’ If it keeps going this way, they will ban all of ancient literature and classical dramaturgy – since all those plays tell us about the tragedy of kings and their children,” Abdurazzakov told EurasiaNet.org. (Many of President Imomali Rakhmon’s relatives occupy senior government posts and other prominent positions).

Abdurazzakov, perhaps unsurprisingly in this atmosphere, says he is unable to find work these days in Tajikistan.

When a social critic happens to be a member of an ethnic minority, the personal attacks can get ugly, noted Temur Varky, a Tajik citizen from a minority background who operates an independent television station in Moscow that broadcasts to audiences in Tajikistan.

In several Facebook messages since June, one “Tamara Obidova” has called Varky “a traitor and liar with a family name alien to Tajiks.” Obidova wrote that Varky “is trying to split” Tajikistan, “the crowned nation of Asia.” She went on to compare Varky to Tamerlane, a folk villain in Tajikistan who is revered as a conquering hero in neighbouring Uzbekistan.

In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as in many of the states that gained independence after the Soviet Union’s demise, attempts to define national identity often resort to “us versus them” tropes. Such unsophisticated nationalism enables officials to blame mysterious outside forces, dodge criticism and dilute responsibility for their own missteps. In the pro-government media, arguments about resources or borders often degenerate into disputes about historical rivalries dating back centuries.

Varky and several newspaper editors in Dushanbe who spoke on condition of anonymity believe “Tamara Obidova” and other, similar Internet trolls are working on behalf of the GKNB. (Similar allegations are common in Uzbekistan and Russia, too).

Varky says his troubles with Obidova began soon after he announced his support for Zaid Saidov, an opposition politician arrested a few months before presidential elections last year. (Most independent observers believe the arrest was politically motivated — designed to silence a reformist and potential rival to President Rakhmon, who ended up securing reelection).

Human Rights Watch noted that the November vote “lacked meaningful political competition.” Last month, Saidov was sentenced to 26 years in prison on a variety of charges after a closed trial that few believe was fair.

“Authorities are hounding his [Saidov’s] supporters and those expressing alternative views,” Varky told EurasiaNet.org.

Ironically, Rakhmon scolded officials less than two years ago for not responding to criticism: He called criticism “a constructive phenomenon,” adding that it was “an important factor for development in society.”

That was then; these days those viewing the rich and the powerful with a critical eye often face a backlash. For example, Olga Tutubalina, the editor of the Asia Plus weekly, is being sued for an article she wrote last year criticising members of government-funded creative and artistic unions as government sycophants. Tutubalina – a non-Tajik minority who was born in Dushanbe – has received racist hate mail charging she is trying to destroy the Tajik nation.

Meanwhile, authorities are working to define what is Tajik and what is not. Earlier this month, for instance, the Dushanbe mayor’s office announced it would begin monitoring music in taxis and on public buses to prevent passengers from listening to tunes that are “alien to national and universal human values.”

Editor’s note: Konstantin Parshin is a freelance writer based in Tajikistan. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

An Iranian entrepreneur who is the subject of U.S. and EU sanctions for laundering oil money on behalf of Tehran is operating a successful family of businesses in Tajikistan.

Babak Zanjani’s Tajik empire includes a bank, an airline, a taxi service and a bus terminal that President Imomali Rahmon himself helped inaugurate in March. That cushy relationship, in a country where foreign businessmen say it is impossible to survive without top-level political connections, has coincided this year with increased international scrutiny of Tajikistan’s lax attitude toward money laundering.

Beyond Tajikistan, Zanjani’s business interests are sprawling. On its website, the Dubai-based Sorinet Group, which describes Zanjani as its chairman, lists at least two dozen companies engaging in construction, cosmetics, hospitality, transport, and oil and gas extraction.

The site also lists the Asia Express Terminal in Dushanbe as one of its subsidiaries. A photo on the site shows Zanjani with Rahmon and Dushanbe mayor Mahmadsaid Ubaydulloyev admiring a model of the terminal.

It appears that Rahmon has embraced the head of a group of companies and financial institutions the U.S. Treasury Department says “have been used by the Iranian government to finance its sales of oil around the world”. In April, the Treasury Department targeted Zanjani and a Malaysian bank under his control, along with “an international network of front companies” including Sorinet Commercial Trust.

U.S. officials believe the Zanjani-connected entities are “moving billions of dollars on behalf of the Iranian regime, including tens of millions of dollars to an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) company.” The Treasury Department is also targeting his Kont Investment Bank, based at 43 Bukhara Street in Dushanbe.

Last December the European Union sanctioned Zanjani for being “a key facilitator for Iranian oil deals and transferring oil-related money. Zanjani owns and operates the UAE-based Sorinet Group, and some of its companies are used by Zanjani to channel oil-related payments.”

The Treasury Department did not specifically name Sorinet Group, which oversees the Dushanbe businesses. But Sorinet Group’s website lists Zanjani as its “chairman”. And under Treasury Department regulations, any company controlled by a sanctioned individual is also the subject of sanctions. In addition, Sorinet Group shares a Dubai address with Sorinet Commercial Trust, which Treasury did name.

EurasiaNet.org tried to reach Zanjani to give him a chance to explain his activities. His office in Dubai refused to connect us. But he told the Reuters news agency shortly after the European sanctions were announced that he does not do business with the Iranian government. He suggested that EU regulators were mistaken in their assumption that he was engaging in illicit activity.

BBC Persian reported in March that Zanjani has strong ties with senior Iranian officials and appeared in an unofficial video on a private plane with a senior Iranian security officer involved in the violent crackdown on demonstrators following contested elections in 2009.

Few in Tajikistan seem to know much about Zanjani. Last month, the head of Tajikistan’s National Bank, Abdujabbor Shirinov, said he had never heard of Zanjani or the U.S. embargo on Kont Investment Bank, the Ozodagon news agency quoted Shirinov as saying on Jul. 23.

Nevertheless, senior Western officials are concerned about Zanjani’s relationship with Tajikistan’s leadership and worry that Dushanbe is serving as a money-laundering hub.

“Zanjani’s been embraced by the president. The president even opened the bus station, which is unheard of. It’s too cozy a relationship. We believe he’s using Tajikistan to launder Iranian oil money,” said one senior Western official.

Tajikistan enjoys strong cultural and linguistic ties with Iran – the Tajik language is a close cousin of Persian – leading to relatively high levels of Iranian investment for the region. Moreover, because vast quantities of Afghan heroin are said to transit through Tajikistan each year, analysts believe illicit money is sloshing around Dushanbe.

In June, the Basil Institute on Governance ranked Tajikistan the country fourth most-vulnerable to money laundering and terrorist financing of 149 countries in its second-annual Basel Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Index.

A few days after the Basil Institute index was released, and only five days ahead of an international meeting on money laundering in Oslo that Tajik officials were due to attend, Rahmon called an extraordinary session of parliament and pushed through new legislation that sets criminal penalties for money laundering.

The Asia-Plus news agency noted that lawmakers did not discuss the legislation. As in many of the post-Soviet republics, Tajikistan often passes legislation that is vaguely worded and poorly enforced.

While foreign diplomats welcomed the move in principle, the senior Western official told EurasiaNet.org the legislation was only “window dressing” to give Tajik officials something to boast about at the Oslo inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting. Earlier in 2013, FATF criticised Tajikistan for having some of the weakest anti-money laundering legislation in the world.

In a small economy like Tajikistan’s, a business empire like Zanjani’s can be hard to avoid, even if U.S. sanctions prohibit “transactions between the designees and any U.S. person”.

A number of Westerners in Dushanbe said their embassies, including the U.S. Embassy, recommend Zanjani’s taxi service, Asia Express, because it is prompt, reliable, and, unlike the few other local companies (most taxis are private cars), offers receipts.

The U.S. Embassy – which rights advocates and some diplomats have accused of avoiding criticism of the Rahmon administration for fear of losing his support as NATO withdraws from neighbouring Afghanistan – did not respond to a request for comment.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Official recognition as a member of the intelligentsia in present-day Tajikistan means lots of perks, including apartments and access to state-funded vacation resorts. In exchange, members – described as the “conscience of the nation” – are expected to support incumbent authorities.

But one journalist is kicking up a storm by shining light on intellectual corrosion in the existing system."Should anyone say something about the intelligentsia in the same tone in another country...they would skin that person or would drag him like a sacrificial animal in a game of buzkashi." -- Writers’ Union Chairman Mekhmon Bakhti

The official “intelligentsia” in Tajikistan harkens back to Soviet days, when an artist or writer whose work buttressed state policies would gain membership in one of several state-supported “creative unions”, such as the Writers’ Union. It was a quid pro quo in which the artists enjoyed a relatively cushy life, and the state enhanced its legitimacy via arts and culture.

Important elements of the old Soviet system remain in place in Tajikistan. Loyalty still matters, and members of the existing, officially recognised intelligentsia are expected to embrace President Imomali Rahmon’s policies, providing the administration with intellectual cover.

The current controversy in Dushanbe began when Bozor Sobir, a poet who had long lived in the United States, returned to Tajikistan in late May. Sobir established his reputation during the Soviet era, and supported the United Tajik Opposition during the country’s 1992-97 Civil War.

The victory of forces loyal to Rahmon in that conflict prompted Sobir to leave the country, and he resided in the United States for 19 years before Tajik authorities coaxed him into returning. Upon landing in Dushanbe on May 27, he dutifully praised Rahmon, who will run for another term this fall. Sobir called on Tajiks to unite around the president, and questioned the need for Tajikistan to have multiple political parties.

Those comments prompted Olga Tutubalina, the editor of the Asia-Plus weekly newspaper, to write a scathing commentary on May 30 that condemned Sobir by name and castigated the cozy relationships that many writers and artists maintain with the state. In asserting that many in Tajikistan’s intellectual class are frauds and sell-outs, she quoted a letter that Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin supposedly penned to pro-Soviet poet Maxim Gorky: “In fact, they are not [the nation’s] brains but its [waste].”

“Now, the former democrat and revolutionary [Sobir] has transformed himself into a high priest of authorities’ will,” Tutubalina added, reminding her readers of the poet’s role in the civil war.

Tutubalina’s blast did not go unanswered. A few days later, Writers’ Union Chairman Mekhmon Bakhti reportedly told a meeting of union members that Tutubalina had insulted not only all Tajik intellectuals, but also the whole nation, and that she should be sued.

“The journalist misinterpreted Lenin’s words, and it is obvious that she dislikes Tajiks,” he told the Ozodagon news agency on Jun. 17. Tutubalina is an ethnic Russian born and raised in Tajikistan.

“Should anyone say something about the intelligentsia in the same tone in another country – Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan or Georgia, for instance – they would skin that person or would drag him like a sacrificial animal in a game of buzkashi,” added Bakhti, referring to a polo-like game played with a decapitated goat.

For her part, Tutubalina told EurasiaNet.org that she did not mean to insult anyone. At the same time, she insists she has nothing to apologise for. “One particular segment of the intelligentsia does not deserve respect. I meant those who speak only when they get permission from above,” she said.

“Maybe they will take this to court. Initially, I thought that idea comes from certain individuals from the creative unions,” Tutubalina continued. “Now, I am almost certain that this is an order from above. Bakhti said I ‘insulted not only the intelligentsia, but the nation,’ and that ‘I dislike Tajiks.’ These accusations are groundless, but someone wants to make this into an ethnic issue. These statements are pressure on me personally, and on the independent media.”

Bakhti’s comments have divided Dushanbe’s educated class, many of whose members are privately critical of the government’s handling of the Tajik economy, specifically widespread corruption and the implementation of extravagant construction projects. Meanwhile, outsiders are critical of official creative unions for being silent about the problems facing Tajikistan.

“This so-called ‘conscience of the nation’ has slept for so long in cahoots with all the nasty things around it,” author Temur Varky told EurasiaNet.org. “Now, they are shouting about their honour and dignity. Their essence – their adaptive behaviour, cowardice and uselessness – has not changed.”

Galina Elbaum, a filmmaker and a member of the Cinematographers’ Union, emphasised that Bakhti should not be seen as a spokesman for all in the creative class. “Not all of the creative unions share the opinion of Mekhmon Bakhti. It is unlikely that they would sign a petition against the journalist,” she told EurasiaNet.org. “A professional journalist has the right to argue and reason, and to do this publicly.”

Bakhti maintains that he and at least nine others plan to file a lawsuit. Libel was decriminalised last year, but it remains a civil offence.

Press freedom advocates say that Tajik courts have in the past manipulated damage awards so that they, in effect, cause the bankruptcy of media outlets that have fallen out of official favor. So far this year, according to the National Association of Independent Media, six lawsuits have been brought against journalists, mostly by officials.

Abdugani Mamadazimov, head of the National Association of Political Scientists, told EurasiaNet.org that Tajikistan’s few independent media outlets are more active than its opposition parties, which explains why they face more pressure, especially in election years.

“Our mass media and independent journalists are the first to fight for democracy and civil society,” he said. Asked why the Writers’ Union chief cares so much about Tutubalina, Mamadazimov pointed at the ceiling and said, “He got a call from the top and was told to do this.”

*Editor’s note: Konstantin Parshin is a freelance writer based in Tajikistan.

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.

Early on Mar. 15, a 58-year-old man put on his tracksuit and left home in Qurghonteppa, a 90-minute drive south of Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital. Morning exercise was a regular part of his routine, says Amnesty International.

But on this morning the man, a prominent critic of President Imomali Rakhmon, did not return.

Friends and political allies fear Salimboy Shamsiddinov was kidnapped for his political views, including his critique of Tajik-Uzbek relations. Shamsiddinov, head of the Society of Uzbeks of Khatlon Province, is no stranger to tough talk, often expressing himself freely on politics and interethnic relations in a country where questioning the official line is discouraged, especially in an election year.

In a May 2012 interview with the Dushanbe-based weekly Millat, Shamsiddinov, a lawyer and former police investigator, raised eyebrows with his criticism of the government’s treatment of its minority Uzbek population.

He was equally critical of neighbouring Uzbekistan’s treatment of its ethnic Tajik population: “The actions of both countries in relations to their national minorities are a form of [cultural] genocide,” he said.

A few days after the interview, several athletic-looking men attacked Shamsiddinov, beating him with a metal pipe and causing severe head wounds. At the time, Shamsiddinov said the attack was related to his opinions.

“Ordinary people don’t attack you like that,” he told Radio Free Europe. “This attack must have been ordered by some important people.”

Many speculated that those “important people” were members of the State Committee on National Security, the GKNB, locally known by its Soviet-era acronym, the KGB. The attack happened in broad daylight across the street from the GKNB’s Qurghonteppa office.

One prominent analyst in Dushanbe sees two possibilities behind Shamsiddinov’s disappearance. On the one hand, he says the GKNB – which regularly faces allegations of intimidation, kidnappings, torture and extra-judicial executions – is a likely culprit. The GKNB, this popular theory goes, wanted to silence Shamsiddinov because he had been cavorting with one of Rakhmon’s political rivals ahead of presidential elections scheduled for November.

The analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of provoking the powerful GKNB, also points out, however, that Shamsiddinov had problems within the Society of Uzbeks, especially since his Millat interview, and his disappearance could be related to power struggles within the organisation.

On Mar. 27, police in Qurghonteppa denied any knowledge of Shamsiddinov’s whereabouts and dismissed notions he was kidnapped.

Shortly before his disappearance Shamsiddinov had organised a routine meeting of the Society of Uzbeks. Among the guest participants was Rahmatillo Zoirov, leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and one of Rakhmon’s sharpest critics.

Zoirov has called Shamsiddinov’s disappearance “politically motivated”, and says it was related to his cooperation with the SDP. In addition, Zoirov said in an open letter, Shamsiddinov had agitated for amendments to laws governing the presidential election, in which the long-serving Rakhmon is expected to stand for another term.

Zoirov claims that a day prior to his disappearance, Shamsiddinov had complained by telephone about harassment by government officials.

An alliance between Zoirov and Shamsiddinov could pose a challenge to Rakhmon. Ethnic Uzbeks make up the largest minority in Tajikistan (between one and two million of eight million). Any effort to persuade the community to vote for an opposition candidate, such as Zoirov, could upset Rakhmon’s hold on power. (That assumes a fair election, which, international observers say, has never happened in independent Tajikistan.)

“Shamsiddinov’s disappearance could have been a politically motivated abduction,” Amnesty International said in a Mar. 26 statement. Ahead of presidential elections this year “authorities have been escalating their campaign to silence all critical voices through harassment, shutting down organizations and websites, and seeking extradition of opposition party members.”

A pattern appears to be emerging. Last month, in Kiev, former Prime Minister Abdumalik Abdullojonov, who has been living as a refugee in the United States for about a decade, was arrested on an old Interpol warrant. Dushanbe wishes to try him for attempting to assassinate Rakhmon.

In December, businessman Umarali Kuvvatov, who reportedly fled Tajikistan and formed an opposition group in Moscow last year, was arrested at Dushanbe’s behest in Dubai. He fears being kidnapped and returned to Tajikistan, where he faces charges of embezzlement that his supporters call politically motivated.

In the past, Tajik authorities allegedly have detained a number of Rakhmon’s opponents in Russia, including the leader of the Democratic Party, Mahmadruzi Iskandarov, who, after a long absence, mysteriously appeared in Tajikistan in 2005 and was given a 23-year prison sentence on, among other things, charges of terrorism, banditry, and embezzlement.

For the most part, Shamsiddinov’s disappearance has been met with indifference in Tajikistan. Unlike in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, where a power struggle involving minority Uzbeks helped set off a round of ethnic pogroms in 2010 that left over 400 people dead, few fear Shamsiddinov’s disappearance will have any destabilising effect.

The leaders of ethnic minorities in Tajikistan “have always been marginal members of the intelligentsia with no broader networks or power,” said one expatriate researcher in Dushanbe. Shamsiddinov’s influence does not reach a large portion of Uzbeks in Tajikistan, a community that is “diverse” and lacking an “overall identity”.

Still, the Dushanbe analyst said, it’s hard to avoid the impression that authorities are not a little nervous about the elections this fall.

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

As the leader of a civil rights-related non-governmental organisation, Dilrabo Samadova said she was used to getting hassled by authorities about her group’s activities. But recent government actions to put the clamps on civil society groups like hers in Tajikistan took her by surprise.

Despite the fact that Tajikistan is one of Central Asia’s poorest countries, Tajiks used to consider themselves as better off than their neighbours because they had comparatively more room to operate and pursue their ambitions, Samadova explained.

“We used to be … more free than in neighbouring countries,” said Samadova, the chair of the young lawyers association, Amparo, which was shut down following a late October Tajik court ruling. “Now we’re going backwards.”

A few weeks before Amparo’s closure, instructions were sent to university heads by the Education Ministry, informing them that “conducting any kind of conferences, seminars, other gatherings, or meetings with students through international organisations is against the law.”

In short, students can no longer participate in events sponsored by international NGOs, according to a copy of the order obtained by EurasiaNet.org. It is unclear what law the directive is in accordance with.

The head of the Education Ministry’s international relations department refused to discuss the matter, instead passing the phone to education finance specialist Tagoymurod Davlatov. “It’s not true, there is no document,” he said. “Nothing has changed.”

But in a follow-up email Davlatov altered his tone. “The decision of the ministry is to work closely with NGOs. The main thing is (for students) to attend lessons on time,” he wrote.

The Education Ministry directive already has had a significant ripple-effect. Since the announcement, some NGOs, including London-based International Alert, have been pressured to cancel youth camps, while the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) saw upcoming language testing for international student exchanges nixed.

“It’s really useful for students to participate in this kind of training,” said Samadova of Amparo, which also operated youth camps. “But the government wants to be so bureaucratic and control everything.”

Tajikistan’s government – which relies heavily on donor assistance in a variety of areas, everything from electrical transformer repairs to food security and land mine clearance – is rankling the very international constituency that it needs to have on its side. Western diplomats say they are keeping a close eye on Dushanbe’s actions.

“We and other donor countries will continue to look to support projects that help Tajikistan in economic terms, as well as spread ideas, expertise and knowledge,” said a senior Western diplomat from a major donor nation. “But if this proves to be a concerted effort to shut down NGOs, it will certainly have an impact on international funding.”

It’s unclear who’s behind the recent crackdown, added the diplomat. “It could be someone at the top saying, ‘NGOs are problematic with their Western ideas.’ The sad thing for Tajikistan, as they try to become more developed, is that they need greater access, not less, to international ideas and to organisations, like NGOs that can bring in expertise and help train youth,” he said.

The government ruling will force NGOs to alter their goals and objectives in Tajikistan, said the director of an international NGO that has been working on economic development, health and infrastructure in the country for more than a decade.

“It’s pretty shocking,” he said. “And it makes our work almost impossible.”

Students are the main target audience for most NGOs, said the director, who asked not to be named for fear of government reprisals. “We want to expand young peoples’ capacity both economically and socially, so they can lead their communities into the future.”

Tajikistan’s substandard education system, which is rife with corruption, sees students and parents pay for everything from test results to university degrees. “It would be better if the Ministry of Education actually stuck to its core role and focused on mending an education system that is fundamentally broken and certainly worse than it was under the Soviets,” added the Western diplomat.

The education system has “a lot of problems”, said a law professor who spoke on condition of anonymity. The ruling stopping students from participating in NGO-sponsored initiatives and that “is a problem for students”, the academic added.

Samadova of Amparo suspects the presidential election next year has a lot to do with the recent ruling. The government sees NGOs as conduits for the dissemination of information on issues in which official policy has glaring shortcomings, including public health, the environment and education.

“And with the election next year the government is trying to stop this activity,” she said. Tajikistan has never held an election deemed free and fair by outside observers. Young people are “easier to control if they don’t know anything”, she added.

Others believe President Imomali Rahmon’s administration is merely trying to emulate Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has steadily tightened the screws on civil society groups since protests against his rule erupted last winter.

The government’s attempt to control civil society during the run-up to the 2013 election “is something we will have to pay close attention to,” said the Western diplomat. “Especially post-Khorog, there has been a general lack of freedom of information,” he said, referring to violence this summer between government troops and local warlords.

Adding to concerns, plans surfaced early in November for a new government project to monitor all Internet providers operating in Tajikistan. This comes after months of on-again, off-again blocks of critical news sites.

Once again, the head of the government communications service – which reportedly sent out a letter describing the functions of the new center to relevant government agencies – publicly denied his office was seeking expansive snooping powers.

But other government officials told local media that just such a plan, which they say is in the interests of security, is in the works.

It’s all part of the reelection game, said the Western NGO director.

“In this country it’s not about transparency and accountability, it’s about the oppression of everything,” the NGO representative added.

*This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

In a country with no daily newspapers and soft-hitting state media outlets, the Internet is where an increasing number of curious Tajikistanis go for news and information. That’s apparently got officials worried.

In recent months, some 50 websites, including independent news portals and the video-sharing platform YouTube, have been blocked in Tajikistan. Though most of the sites were reopened on October 10, the government’s communications service won’t say what’s going on.

The mass blockade started during a violent confrontation this summer between government troops and forces loyal to local warlords in the eastern Gorno-Badakhshan region. Authorities in Dushanbe said little about the operation – which is thought to have left about 70 people dead – but they immediately severed telephone and Internet connections with the region and started blocking websites reporting on the conflict.

At the same time, state media outlets all but ignored the developments in Gorno-Badakhshan, instead running programmes featuring traditional songs and dance.

Long after the violence was over, the restrictions persisted. To raise awareness about government censorship, on Oct. 3 journalists launched a campaign called “100 Days for Internet Freedom in TajNet.” Comprising prominent journalists and civil society activists, the group, in a statement, condemned the blocking of websites without a court ruling as illegal, and warned that the government was becoming an “enemy of the Internet”.

The most prominent figure in this story is Beg Zukhurov, the head of the state communications service, who answers to President Imomali Rahmon. Few are satisfied with his explanations regarding recent government actions.

At times, questioned over website blocks, he’s denied knowledge of any official orders; in other conversations, he has said his institution has a “special unit” tracing “black PR agents” that are deliberately slandering Tajikistan. When communications with Gorno-Badakhshan first went down, he suggested that a stray bullet might have taken out the cables.

Earlier in the year, when Facebook was blocked for a week, Zukhurov denied that there had been any order to shut down the site – where, he lamented, people criticise Rahmon. In a move that prompted widespread ridicule, his office then said Facebook was down for “prophylactic maintenance”.

Representatives of two Internet service providers (ISPs) told EurasiaNet.org that they receive their blocking orders by telephone directly from Zukhurov’s office. Failure to comply, they say, can mean losing a license, or an unexpected audit by the tax police. EurasiaNet.org’s repeated attempts to reach Zukhurov for this story failed.

Zukhurov has promised to create a larger office to monitor online publications, without explaining how members would be chosen, or what legal mandate they would have. Reporters Without Borders responded with “profound concern” that “such a system of control could lead to the wholesale blocking of online publications and websites.”

The watchdog organisation also fears that the system could be abused, noting that the communication service “has regularly targeted the websites of leading independent news organisations,” including Dushanbe’s Asia-Plus.

Asia-Plus, perhaps the most prominent independent news agency in Tajikistan, was blocked in July and became available again in late September. At different times, blocked sites have included the BBC’s Tajik Service, RIA Novosti, and prominent Russian-language news portals. As of Oct. 11, the BBC, RIA Novosti and YouTube were again available on most ISPs.

Nuriddin Karshiboev, the head of the National Association of Independent Media (NANSMIT) and one of the initiators of the 100 Days campaign, told EurasiaNet.org that the government regularly reacts to political uncertainty with Internet restrictions. The same thing happened, he said, during fighting between rebels and the government in the Rasht Valley in 2010.

“(Then) the authorities did the same thing. They ordered mobile phone operators to shut down connections, and the Internet providers were advised to block access to important news portals – those covering the clashes between Mullo Abdullo’s rebels and the government,” he said.

At that time, the defence minister said journalists’ criticism of the military operation helped “destabilise” the country.

Parvina Ibodova, head of the National Association of Internet Providers, says Zukhurov’s office has fueled confusion. “Mr. Zukhurov is the public official in charge; he should have clarified the situation with an open statement. Regrettably, the government also ignored the situation,” she told EurasiaNet.org.

For their part, officials often insist that independent media should not question the government. On Sep. 24, at an OSCE meeting in Warsaw on human rights, Muzaffar Ashurov, the president’s representative for constitutional and human rights, had stern words for an Asia-Plus correspondent, alleging that the news agency essentially supported the militants in Gorno-Badakhshan.

“You write that the government acted incorrectly by using force in Khorog (the capital of Gorno-Badakhshan). … You are encouraging people … to come out against the government,” he said.

His comments came shortly after Olga Tutubalina, a deputy editor at Asia-Plus, told participants at the OSCE gathering that information blackouts have become Dushanbe’s routine method for dealing with times of trouble.

“Almost every time when the economic and political situation worsens in the country, it’s accompanied by the blocking of sites and the disabling of [phone] connections,” Tutubalina said. “During the military operation in… Khorog, the official media didn’t even mention it (the events) once. Endless concerts and celebrations were broadcast on state television.”

*Editor’s note: Konstantin Parshin is a freelance writer based in Tajikistan.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

This summer, a 32-year-old musician with Uzbek citizenship was visiting her mother in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. For the last decade, the musician has lived in the Tajik capital Dushanbe with her husband, an ethnic Uzbek, and their 10-year-old daughter.

The visit coincided with Uzbek authorities’ decision to reintroduce exit visas for citizens traveling to Tajikistan. She thus became a virtual prisoner in Uzbekistan, a victim of acrimonious ties between the two long-time rivals.

“When I got to the border on my way back (to Dushanbe), border guards told me that I was missing an exit visa stamp in my passport. I had no clue what this was, but had to obey and returned to Samarkand,” the musician recalled.

“I spent the next two weeks visiting the law enforcement agencies – from the district police station to the Interior Ministry and officials at the SNB (National Security Agency SNB). I was harassed everywhere – one officer called me ‘a prostitute wishing to work in Tajikistan,’ another wondered why I have so many border stamps in my passport, hinting that I am involved in espionage.”

Accusations of passport violations are dangerous in Uzbekistan, a regime infamous for its opaque justice system. Eventually she gave up trying to get an exit visa for Tajikistan. Since one is not required for Uzbek citizens traveling to Russia, she bought an air ticket to Moscow and returned to Dushanbe via the Russian capital. (The musician spoke on condition of anonymity because her mother, whom she’s trying to get out, still lives in Uzbekistan).

Relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have been worsening for years. When the Soviet Union fell apart, air connections ceased. In 2001, Uzbekistan began requiring Tajikistan’s citizens to obtain visas prior to arrival, and mined parts of the border, a practice that has resulted in hundreds of people being killed and maimed.

In recent years, moreover, Uzbekistan has stepped up what its poorer neighbour calls a “blockade”, upping tariffs on goods transiting and often blocking rail shipments. Uzbekistan has increased cargo transit tariffs four times in the past two years. Of 16 border crossings, only two remain open.

The chief source of bilateral rancor is water. Tajik President Imomali Rahmon wants to build the world’s tallest hydropower station, Rogun. Downstream, Uzbek President Islam Karimov has vowed to do whatever necessary to stop the project. Karimov fears the dam will give Rahmon the ability to regulate water flows, and thus exert a measure of control over Uzbekistan’s agricultural sector, including the lucrative cotton crop.

Early last month, Karimov said his neighbour’s hydropower dreams could even lead to war. At the U.N. General Assembly on Sep. 29, Tajikistan’s foreign minister, Hamrokhon Zarifi, said his country’s electricity shortages – which have been exacerbated since Uzbekistan pulled out of a Soviet-era regional energy grid – gave Dushanbe no choice but to pursue the hydropower project. Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov used the same platform to argue against the project.

As the spat drags on, it’s average people, like the Dushanbe musician, who suffer.

In April, seven out of the eight registered political parties in Tajikistan – all except the president’s own People’s Democratic Party – appealed to the two presidents, calling on them to negotiate. (The last time one president invited the other for a visit was in 2001, when the two embraced and declared themselves eternal friends).

“The interests of society and the peoples must stand higher than personal and group interests and personal resentments,” said the parties’ statement. “Both presidents should meet halfway. Great people have always been able to forgive.”

More than one million ethnic Uzbeks are believed to live in Tajikistan; even more ethnic Tajiks live in Uzbekistan, Central Asia’s largest country by population. Many, especially those who were born of mixed marriages, grew up in a Soviet society believing that ethnic identity had little meaning. There are reports of harassment by authorities on both sides of the border.

In 2003, a well-known Tajik ecologist and journalist, Hamid Atakhanov, moved to Bukhara to care for his ailing wife – the two had lived there for many years during the Soviet era and have relatives there. After eight years, in 2011 he was suddenly accused by local authorities of inciting ethnic strife and deported back to Tajikistan.

“They gave me no time even to say goodbye to my wife and neighbours,” he told EurasiaNet.org.

Meanwhile, the Dushanbe musician is searching for ways to move her mother, a schoolteacher, to Dushanbe. Because the teacher has a daughter in Tajikistan, she suffers constant harassment from local authorities, the daughter says. At schools in Samarkand, principals instruct children to report on visitors from Tajikistan to the local police, making her and her mother (a hostess) automatically suspect.

“It sounds insane. Yes, they ask the kids to provide information about their families and neighbours visited by ‘strangers from the hostile country,’” the musician said.

*Editor’s note: Konstantin Parshin is a freelance writer based in Tajikistan.

This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

With a court order to close one of Tajikistan’s most popular mosques, President Imomali Rahmon’s administration is stepping up its campaign to neutralise both Islam and the last vestiges of any political opposition.

The May 28 ruling to close the Muhammadiya Mosque – run by the family of Haji Akbar Turajonzoda, a popular theologian and charismatic leader during the country’s civil war in the mid-1990s – marks the latest confrontation between the authorities and the powerful family.

But the closure is also “part of a larger campaign against Muslim life in all its forms”, said John Heathershaw of the University of Exeter, an expert on Islam in Tajikistan.

Turajonzoda, who was the leader of the state-sanctioned clergy during the late Soviet era, is a contentious figure in Tajikistan’s recent history. Blamed by many for helping fan the civil war by siding with the Islamic opposition, he became first deputy prime minister in 1999 as part of a power-sharing agreement that helped end the civil war.

As deputy premier, however, he turned on his former allies and became a critic of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT), Tajikistan’s main, but now marginalised, opposition movement.

After 2005, when Rahmon demoted him from the cabinet to the senate, Turajonzoda became a critic of the president, and was sacked in 2010. Since then, he has made headlines for making disparaging comments about the president. In addition, he has reportedly mended fences with the IRPT, apparently fueling government fears of a resurgent Islamic opposition.

Despite his popularity, or perhaps because of it, he is often accused of being both an agent of Moscow and a heterodox Islamist. Muzaffar Olimov, head of the Sharq Information and Analytical Center in Dushanbe, describes Turajonzoda as “a politician in the guise of a religious figure”.

Certainly, the Turajonzoda family is a powerful force. Their mosque in Vahdat regularly draws 15,000 men for Friday prayers. The sermons given at the mosque are sold on compact disks around the country.

The current dispute dates back to December. Alleging that Turajonzoda’s brothers, Nuriddin and Mahmudjon, had observed rituals commemorating the death of Imam Hussain – an event known as Ashura, which is observed by Sh’ia Muslims – the state-run Ulema Council, which regulates and interprets Islamic activities in the Sunni- majority country, attempted to remove the brothers and install a more doctrinally reliable imam.

The country’s chief mufti went to the mosque about 30 kilometres east of the capital Dushanbe during Friday prayers on Dec. 9 to read a statement accusing the brothers of trying to disturb the peace by introducing foreign religious rituals. But angry worshipers forced the mufti to flee. The State Committee on Religious Affairs immediately suspended prayers at the mosque for three months and brought charges against the brothers in a local court.

In the reading of a preliminary decision, the Vahdat court stripped the mosque of its right to observe Friday prayers. The written verdict, delivered in late May, however, went further even than the State Committee on Religious Affairs’ original demand, and closed the mosque altogether. A lawyer for Turajonzoda family asserts the court does not have that authority to issue such a closure order, and went on to question the judiciary’s independence.

Turajonzoda himself had earlier predicted the case would be decided against him and his family. Claiming the court order came as a “command from above”, he remains defiant.

“We are not going to stop praying in our mosque. Even if they decide to launch criminal proceedings, we (are) still going to pray here,” the Asia-Plus news quoted Turajonzoda as saying on May 30.

Observers in Dushanbe take him at his word and warn that his legion of followers will likely force the government to back down, for now.

Over the past two years, the government has waged a broad campaign against public expressions of piety. The Ulema Council has issued extensive guidelines on religious curricula in schools, restricted what imams can discuss, recalled Tajik seminary students studying abroad, regulated the annual Hajj pilgrimage, and banned children from praying in mosques.

Courts regularly sentence alleged extremists to long prison terms on flimsy evidence. An unexplained arson at a women’s mosque in October 2010 and raids on IRPT offices have also reinforced a belief among practicing Muslims that the government is intent on stifling religious freedom.

“There is no real concept of religious pluralism or tolerance” in Tajikistan, Heathershaw said. “This is about state control of religion.”

The uneasy relationship and deepening tension between official and uncontrolled religious observance is illustrated in the person of Turajonzoda, whose visible and varied career has spanned both secular and religious politics.

Turajonzoda “never shied away from criticising the government’s policy on religion,” says analyst Alexander Sodiqov. “People respect him mostly because he is not scared of standing up against what he sees as unjust policies on religion.”

The mosque’s closure appears to be an extension of recent attacks on the Turajonzoda family, which have included an aggressive press blitz following his removal from the Senate in 2010, a suspected case of arson at Turajonzoda’s cotton-processing factory in October 2011, and what appears to be a determined media effort to isolate and ostracise the family, publicly harassing many who associate with them.

Sodiqov attributes the government’s timing to presidential elections next year, recent violence that authorities blame on Islamists, and fear that Rahmon’s political opponents are drawing inspiration from the Arab Spring.

“This development is further proof that the regime is not ready to tolerate any kind of political dissent, particularly if it comes from religious leaders and groups,” said Sodiqov.

For Heathershaw, the mosque closure confirms “there is no possibility for dialogue on the place of Islam in Tajikistan.”

“Government policy is not about dialogue or diversity, it is about imposing its very narrow vision of Islam on society,” he said. “This,” he added, “will push more pious or divergent Muslims out of public life” – that is, underground, where observers fear they are more likely to become radicalised.

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Four years ago, Farida Hajimova’s husband left Tajikistan to work in Russia. After a time, he stopped calling. Ultimately, he never returned. She was left at home in Dushanbe with two daughters and not a lot of options.

Now she says she has no choice but to follow in her ex-husband’s footsteps – not to find him, but to find work herself.

Hajimova is one of an increasing number of Tajik women journeying abroad, mostly to Russia, as labour migrants. Until relatively recently, the overwhelming majority of migrant workers leaving Tajikistan were men.

But desperation and poverty are forcing tens of thousands of women to hit the road. Experts voice concern that many female migrants are at risk of being abused and trafficked for sex.

“I have only been able to find part-time work here in Dushanbe,” said 28-year-old Hajimova, who plans to follow two friends who work as cleaning ladies in Moscow. “My oldest daughter will go to school in September and I need to be able to afford to buy her the necessary supplies. The children will stay with their aunt and I will go to Moscow.”

Tajikistan’s dependence on remittances from labour migrants abroad is well-documented. Last year, Tajiks working in Russia sent home 2.96 billion dollars, the equivalent of 45 percent of the country’s GDP, according to the National Bank. That makes Tajikistan the world’s most remittance-dependent country.

The International Monetary Fund is projecting a 13-percent increase in remittance flows into Tajikistan this year. Over one million Tajiks, or roughly one out of every eight Tajik citizens, are estimated to work abroad as migrant labourers.

The share of Central Asian women going abroad to work is quickly growing. An analyst at the State Migration Service in Dushanbe estimates around 15 percent of Tajik labour migrants are now women. In 2003, his office said females comprised six percent of the migrant workforce.

“A mixture of poverty and increasing divorce rates in Tajikistan, which leave many women destitute, have contributed to this rise,” Natalia Bogdanova, Moscow-based rights activist and head of Migrant’s Rights, a non-governmental organisation, told EurasiaNet.org.

Like the men, many female Tajiks work abroad illegally. In December, Konstantin Romodanovsky, director of Russia’s Federal Migration Service, estimated that only 14 percent of the roughly 9.1 million foreign nationals working in the country had work permits, Russian media reported.

Without proper legal protections, Tajik migrants in Russia face threats arising from xenophobia, dangerous working conditions and hostile police. In 2011, Tajikistan received at least 818 boxes of “Cargo 200” – Soviet-era slang for coffins – from Russia, the Interior Ministry said in late December. Eighty-nine of the deaths were attributed to hate crimes.

Women face additional risks. “Most of the women work in domestic jobs, as cooks and cleaners. Many of them work here illegally,” Bogdanova said. “Many of them have very basic knowledge of Russian, leaving them open to exploitation, unsafe working conditions and blackmail.”

“We see cases in which women are promised jobs here and then forced to work for free, sometimes as prostitutes. …Crimes go unreported,” Bogdanova added, “because most women are not officially registered.”

That is what happened to Dushanbe divorcee Mavluda. “I married at 18, but soon my husband took a second wife and kicked me out of the house. A man approached me in Dushanbe and told me that he could arrange for me to work in Russia and I would earn 1,000 dollars a month,” Mavluda, who declined to give her last name for fear of reprisals, recalled.

When she arrived in Moscow, her new employers seized her passport and she was put to work in a café kitchen for no pay. “I was terrified. They told me that if I told the authorities, they would beat me. I begged them and after six months I got my documents back. I returned home to Tajikistan.”

Thirty-five-year-old Karomat Igamova from Kurgan-Tube, in southern Tajikistan, moved to St. Petersburg in 2009 after her husband divorced her and abandoned their four children. She found work selling fruit in a bazaar.

At first she struggled, but “the situation has improved recently,” she told EurasiaNet.org by telephone. “The economy is getting stronger and I am working five days a week now, instead of three. I now send home enough money to support my family,” two daughters and two sons who live with relatives.

Of course, conditions for many migrants remain difficult. “I live in an apartment with six other women,” Igamova said. “There is little privacy or personal space. Our landlord recently threatened to report us to the police unless we paid him a 100-dollar bribe.”

Such tales abound in Dushanbe. But in a country where half the population lives on less than two dollars a day, they are not a deterrent.

“Of course I am scared,” said Hajimova, the mother planning her first move to Moscow. “I have heard stories about life in Russia. But there are no opportunities here. What choice do I have? I have to feed my family.”

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

(END)

When she was 16, Kibriyo Khaitova’s parents told her that if she didn’t marry, she’d soon be a spinster. So, like many girls from Tajikistan, Khaitova married a man her family found for her. Now 20, she has two children, no husband and is fending for herself.

“My parents told me that I was old enough and that I needed to get married,” said Khaitova, who lives in the Ferghana Valley, an area of Central Asia where traditional, conservative social attitudes are entrenched.

“I told them that I wanted to continue my education, but they said that men do not like educated girls and you do not need an education to be a good wife. The first time I saw my husband was at my wedding. I was very scared, but my grandmother told me I would be fine.”

Tajikistan’s widespread poverty is a major cause of early marriage in the country, according to a recent report by the Eurasia Foundation. In rural families, boys become the main breadwinners and girls are often considered financial burdens.

“Some parents feel that their daughters can be better supported by the husband’s family, and marrying them off (early) is a way to conserve their own limited resources,” Azita Ranjbar, the author of the report, told EurasiaNet.org.

The groom’s family also has a motive to push their sons to wed young girls. When Tajik girls marry they become “kelins” (daughters-in-law) and usually live with the husband’s family. While an educated woman might challenge the submissive role a kelin is supposed to play, Ranjbar says, “younger girls are seen as more likely to be obedient, assisting their mother-in-law with chores and, in some areas of the country, subsistence farming.”

Since July 2010, Tajik law has said men and women must be 18 years old to marry. But in practice underage marriage is still common. In fact, the law has had an unintended effect: Because couples cannot register a marriage wherein one party is under 18 years of age, many simply have a local religious leader perform the wedding ceremony. Later, without a civil registration certificate, the bride has few rights in the eyes of the courts.

“Harsh punishments are required to reduce incidences of underage marriage,” says Azim Bayzoev, a professor of gender studies at the Tajik National University. “But by increasing punishment, you also decrease the instances of registration.”

“To be effective, the law needs to be strictly enforced, but there is a lack of capacity and will from local government to do this,” he adds.

Throughout Tajikistan, there is also a growing dependence on Islam to fulfill functions the wilting state can no longer handle. In many rural areas, where local officials do not have the power or the motivation to help, religious leaders offer solutions for everyday problems.

“Islamic law supports early marriage, offering families a way out of supporting their daughters,” says Bayzoev.

Moreover, Islamic clerics are often willing to perform the religious ceremony regardless of whether the couple has registered with the state.

“The Koran does not define a minimum age for marriage,” a Dushanbe imam who asked to remain anonymous told EurasiaNet.org. “Islam encourages women to marry at a young age. This means that they can have children, which is a woman’s duty.”

Women entering polygamous marriages, condoned by Islam but officially banned by the state, also cannot register.

At age 15, Dilnoza Rahimova’s family forced her into a marriage with a man over twice her age. As his third wife, Rahimova endured abuse from his first wife, who felt threatened by the newcomer.

“One night he came home drunk and forced himself on me,” she told EurasiaNet.org. “I told him I did not want to and that he was hurting me, but he would not stop.” Her mother told her that was just part of marriage.

Spousal rape is not uncommon in Tajikistan. According to a 2009 report by Amnesty International, whereas 11.1 percent of men admitted forcing their wives to have sex against their will, 42.5 percent of women report being forced by their husbands.

Divorce for an unregistered wife is often a last resort. “Without a registered marriage, it is extremely difficult for the wife to claim rights to jointly acquired assets and property, alimony, or child support,” says Ranjbar of the Eurasia Foundation.

There are no government statistics on underage marriages. Bayzoev of the National University says the practice became more common during Tajikistan’s 1992-1997 civil war, when “girls were forced to marry early to prevent falling victim to rapists and losing their honour.” But the practice also was common in the pre-Soviet period.

Today, an upswing in underage marriages means more divorces, Bayzoev adds: “The immaturity of young couples and the forced nature of many marriages have undoubtedly contributed to the growing number of divorces in the country.”

Soon after she was married, Khaitova’s husband joined the legions of young Tajik men working in Russia as migrant labourers. After three years, he returned with a new wife.

“He told me that he wanted a divorce and that I had two days to leave,” she told EurasiaNet.org. “Where could I go? I have two children. I have no education. I was forced to live off the charity of my relatives. I make 100 somoni (about 21 dollars) per month repairing clothes, but I cannot support my children.”

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.