The Global Environment Facility (GEF) announced that donor countries ​p​ledged an initial ​U​SD 3.9 billion to ​the facility for the ninth replenishment cycle​, indicating that nature remains a priority, as in this image, where a veterinary team applies a collar to a sedated elephant​ in KwaZulu-Natal​, South Africa, as part of an ambitious project aimed at conserving the animals. Credit: Dan Ingham/IPS

By Alison Kentish
SAINT LUCIA, Apr 9 2026 (IPS)

With just four years left to meet a series of global environmental targets, governments are committing to shore up one of the world’s main environmental funds, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), with a $3.9 billion pledge.

The funding will form the backbone of the GEF’s ninth replenishment cycle, known as GEF-9, a four-year financing round running from July 2026 to June 2030. Those years are widely seen as decisive for slowing biodiversity loss, tackling pollution and keeping climate goals within reach.

While the $3.9 billion pledge signals renewed momentum, it comes at a moment of deepening environmental strain. Ecosystems are continuing to decline, coral reefs are bleaching at scale and small island states are already grappling with the economic and social fallout of environmental change.

“This replenishment sends a clear message: the world is not giving up on nature,” said Claude Gascon, the GEF’s interim chief executive. He noted that donor countries had “risen to the challenge and made bold commitments towards a more positive future for the planet” despite competing global priorities.

“The coming four years of the GEF-9 cycle will reflect this high-ambition push to achieve the 2030 environmental goals,” he said.

The GEF, the world’s largest multilateral environmental fund, supports developing countries in meeting commitments under major global agreements on climate change, biodiversity, land degradation, chemicals, and ocean governance. Since its establishment, it has provided more than $27 billion in grants and mobilised a further $155 billion in co-financing.

GEF’s next funding round, its ninth replenishment cycle, aims to scale investment and mobilise private capital to close widening environmental financing gaps. Credit: Kea Mowat/Unsplash

Rewiring Economies Around Nature

At the centre of the new funding cycle is a push toward what the GEF calls “nature-positive development”. It is an effort to embed environmental value into economic decision-making rather than treating it as a secondary concern.

That includes reworking systems that drive environmental degradation, such as food production, energy, urban development and public health, so they operate within ecological limits.

The strategy also leans heavily on attracting private investment. Around 25% of GEF-9 resources are expected to be used to mobilise private capital, reflecting a growing recognition that public funding alone cannot close the global environmental financing gap.

Focus on the Most Vulnerable

The allocation of funds carries a clear political signal.

At least 35 percent of resources are expected to go to Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), countries that contribute least to environmental degradation but face some of its most severe impacts. A further 20% is earmarked for Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

For Caribbean nations, where coastal erosion, stronger storms and coral reef loss are already reshaping economies, the funding could prove significant if it translates quickly into action on the ground.

“We need multilateral cooperation more than ever to protect our planet for future generations,” said Niels Annen, describing the replenishment as a “joint effort” between countries in the Global North and South. “Environmental action and sustainable development have to go hand in hand. In GEF-9, we see Germany’s priorities very well reflected: innovative finance for nature and people, better cooperation with the private sector and stable resources for the most vulnerable countries.”

Support for the funding round has also come from Spain and Mexico, with Inés Carpio San Román emphasising the importance of “effective multilateralism” and Mexico backing “country-driven solutions” to global environmental challenges.

Calls to Deliver Results

Civil society groups have welcomed the increased emphasis on inclusion, particularly the allocation for Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

“This will strengthen a whole-of-society approach,” said Faizal Parish, Chair of the GEF’s Civil Society Organization Network, while Aliou Mustafa, of the GEF’s Indigenous Peoples Advisory Group, said the shift reflects efforts to place Indigenous groups “at the centre of decision-making.”

Still, expectations are high and time is short.

“The environmental crises we face are accelerating,” said Richard Bontjer. He described the  replenishment as “a vote of confidence” while stressing that “every dollar must count.”

“This replenishment will sharpen the GEF’s focus on impact, drive greater efficiency and mobilize private finance alongside public investment. It will also strengthen support to SIDS and LDCs and give recognition to the importance of supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities.”

With the 2030 deadline fast approaching, the success of this funding round will ultimately be judged not by the size of the pledges but by how quickly they translate into measurable gains—restored ecosystems, protected coastlines and more resilient economies.

For countries on the frontlines, including those in the Caribbean, the $3.9 billion is not just another funding cycle.

It is a narrowing window of opportunity.

Additional pledges are expected before the end-of-May GEF Council meeting, when countries will lock in the final size and ambition of the four-year funding round.

The 71st GEF Council meeting will be held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from May 31 to June 3, 2026. The meeting will take place in advance of the Eighth GEF Assembly, when individual country pledges will be publicly announced.

Note: This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

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Excerpt:

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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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:

The World Bank has increased financial support for the cotton sector in Uzbekistan, despite evidence that the industry is rooted in a system of forced labour. Credit: David Stanley/CC-BY-2.0

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 22 2015 (IPS)

For an entire month beginning in February 2015, a group of between 40 and 50 residents of the Durgapur Village in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand would gather at the site of a hydroelectric power project being carried out by the state-owned Tehri Hydro Development Corporation (THDC).

All day long the protestors, mostly women and their children, would sit in defiance of the initiative that they believed was an environmental and social danger to their community, singing folk songs that spoke of their fears and hopes.

“I had expected a very constructive conversation with the World Bank. Instead all I am hearing are non-responses." -- Jessica Evans, senior advocate on international financial institutions at Human Rights Watch
Their actions were well within the bounds of the law, but the reactions of THDC employees to their peaceful demonstration were troubling in the extreme.

According to one of the women involved, THDC contractors and labourers routinely harassed them by hurling abusive slurs – going so far as to call the women ‘prostitutes’ and make derogatory comments about their caste – and attempted to intimidate them by threatening “severe” consequences if they didn’t call off their picket.

In a country where activists and communities demanding their rights are routinely subjected to identical or worse treatment at the hands of both state and private actors, this tale may not seem at all out of the ordinary.

What sets it apart, however, is that this hydroelectric project was not simply a government-led scheme; it is financed by a 648-million-dollar loan from the World Bank.

Governed by a set of “do no harm” policies, both the Bank and its private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have – on paper at least – pledged to consult with and protect local communities impacted by its funding.

But according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, the Bank has not only systematically turned a blind eye to reports of human rights abuses associated with its projects, it also lacks necessary safeguards required to avoid further violations in the future.

When silence and negligence equals complicity

Based on research carried out over a two-year period between May 2013 and May 2015, in Cambodia, India, Uganda and Kyrgyzstan – the latter following allegations of rights abuses in Uzbekistan – the report entitled ‘At Your Own Risk: Reprisals Against Critics of World Bank Group Projects’ found that Bank officials consistently fail to respond in any meaningful way to allegations of severe reprisals against those who speak out against Bank-funded projects.

In some cases, the World Bank Group has even turned its back on local community members working with its own officials.

Addressing the press on a conference call on Jun. 22, the report’s author, Jessica Evans, highlighted an incident in which an interpreter for the Bank’s Inspection Panel was flung into prison just weeks after the oversight body concluded its review process.

Withholding all identifying details of the case for the security of the victim, Evans stated that, besides questioning government officials “behind closed doors”, the Bank has so far remained completely silent on the fate of an independent activist working to strengthen the Bank’s own process.

Such actions, or lack thereof, “make a mockery out of [the Bank’s] own stated commitments to participation and accountability,” the report concluded.

HRW has identified dozens of cases in which activists claim to have been targeted – harassed, abused, threatened or intimidated – for voicing their objections to aspects of Bank or IFC-funded initiatives for a range of social, environmental or economic reasons.

Because the bulk of communities in close proximity to major development schemes tend to be among the poorest or most vulnerable, and therefore lack the access or ability to formally lodge their complaints, the true number of people who have experienced such reprisals is “sure” to be much higher than the figures stated in the report, researchers revealed.

Evans told IPS, “On this issue of reprisals the World Bank’s silence and inaction has already crossed the line” into the realm of compliance.

She added that the Inspection Panel raised the issue of retaliation back in 2009, giving the Bank ample time to take necessary steps to address a chronic and pervasive problem.

Instead, it continues to engage with governments that have a poor human rights track record, while remaining apparently deaf to pressures and demands from civil society to strengthen mechanisms that will protect powerless and marginalized communities from violent backlash.

Take the case of Elena Urlaeva, who heads the Tashkent-based Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, and who was arrested in a cotton field on May 31, 2015, while documenting evidence of the Uzbek government’s massive system of forced labour in cotton production.

According to HRW, Urlaeva was detained, abused and sexually violated during an extremely violent cavity probe. On the grounds that they were searching for a data card from her camera, male doctors and policemen conducted such a rough and invasive search that the ordeal left her bleeding.

She was forbidden from using the bathroom and eventually forced to go outside the station in the presence of male officers who called her a “bitch”, filmed her in the act of relieving herself and threatened to post the video online if she complained about her treatment.

Evans told IPS all of this occurred against a backdrop of the World Bank’s increased financial support of the cotton sector – already it has pledged over 450 million dollars to three major agricultural projects of the Uzbek government – despite evidence that the industry is rooted in a system of forced labour.

In the absence of any robust mechanism within the World Bank to make continued funding conditional on compliance with international human rights standards, there is a “real risk” that independent monitors and rights activists will continue to face situations as horrific as the one Urlaeva recently endured, Evans stressed.

A ‘disappointing’ reaction

Both the World Bank and the United Nations have tossed the issue of development-related rights abuses from one forum to another.

In his May 2015 report to the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC), Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston stressed the urgency of “putting questions of resources and redistribution back into the human rights equation.”

He decried several member states’ attempts to keep international economics, finance and trade “quarantined” from the human rights framework, and blasted international financial institutions (IFIs) for contributing to this culture of impunity.

“The World Bank can simply refuse to engage with human rights in the context of its policies and programmes, IMF does the same, and the World Trade Organisation is little different,” Alston remarked, adding that these bodies throw the issue at the HRC, while the latter simply knocks the ball back into the financiers’ court.

It is becoming akin to a game of political ping-pong, with the ball representing the human rights of some of the most impoverished people in the world – at whom multi-million-dollar development projects are ostensibly targeted.

Gretchen Gordon, coordinator of Bank on Human Rights, a global coalition of social movements and grassroots organisations working to hold IFIs accountable to human rights obligations, told IPS, “You can’t have successful development without robust civil society participation in setting development priorities, designing projects, and monitoring implementation.”

If development banks and their member states neglect to take leadership and implement the necessary protocols and policies, she said, “they will continue to see increasing development failures, human rights abuses, and conflict.”

If the World Bank Group’s initial reaction to HRW’s comprehensive research is anything to go by, however, Bank on Human Rights and other watchdogs of its ilk have their work cut out for them.

Though HRW’s researchers invited the Bank and the IFC’s input with an in-depth list of questions back in April, they have received nothing but a rather “bland response” that failed to address the issue of reprisals at all and simply stated that the Bank “is not a human rights tribunal.”

“I had expected a very constructive conversation with the World Bank,” Evans said. “Instead all I am hearing are non-responses. We have proposed really pragmatic recommendations for how the Bank can work effectively in challenging environments, but we are a long way from that at the moment.”

Both the Bank’s Inspection Panel and the IFC’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) have greeted the report with enthusiasm, but they are independent bodies and remain largely powerless to effect change at the management level of the World Bank Group.

This power lies with the Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, who will have to “take the lead and send a clear message to his staff that the question of reprisals is a priority issue,” Evans concluded.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

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 chairman of a Tashkent polling station opens a curtain to a voting booth during the Uzbek presidential election of December 2007. Uzbekistan’s Dec. 21 parliamentary elections feature only four staunchly pro-regime parties to fill the 150-seat lower house, or the Legislative Chamber. No opposition parties are permitted to legally exist in Uzbekistan, and independent candidates are barred from standing. Credit: OSCE

By Joanna Lillis
TASHKENT, Dec 19 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Uzbekistan’s parliamentary elections on Dec. 21 will offer voters a choice, but no hope for change.

Only four staunchly pro-regime parties – the Liberal Democratic Party of Uzbekistan, the People’s Democratic Party of Uzbekistan, as well as the National Revival and the Justice parties – can field candidates for the elections to fill the 150-seat lower house, or the Legislative Chamber.“People have gotten used to all these elections as something staged, and they don’t really care what the outcome will be, because most people think it will all be the way the authorities want it to be." -- A Tashkent-based businessman

They will be joined by representatives of the Ecological Movement of Uzbekistan, which has a “green” quota of 15 seats reserved under electoral law.

No opposition parties are permitted to legally exist in Uzbekistan, and independent candidates are barred from standing.

“The state of political freedoms [in Uzbekistan] is non-existent,” Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, told EurasiaNet.org. “Genuinely independent voices have not been allowed to register and participate in this election, as in all previous ones.”

HRW and other watchdog groups routinely rank Uzbekistan as among the most repressive states on earth. That reputation is not stopping strongman President Islam Karimov from touting this election as evidence that Uzbekistan – which he has led for over two decades, brooking no opposition to his iron rule – is on the path to democracy.

Uzbekistan is “building an independent democratic state” and “creating a civil society” that prioritises “human interests, rights, and freedoms and the supremacy of the law,” he claimed in his Constitution Day speech earlier in December.

Critics say Karimov is merely attempting to add a democratic veneer to a dictatorial system. Thousands of political prisoners are languishing in jail, the media is muzzled, and most civil society activists are “either in prison or in exile,” said Nadejda Atayeva, a France-based human rights campaigner exiled from Uzbekistan.

“The Uzbek government is doing all it can to portray this election as legitimate, without actually making it legitimate – without making the election free and fair,” Swerdlow says, adding that Tashkent is harnessing the vote “as an act of consolidation and public mobilisation around the regime.”

Observers expect a high turnout. “Uzbekistan has never had free and fair elections, but the government will ensure that the turnout is sufficiently high,” Alexander Melikishvili, a Washington-based analyst at the IHS Country Risk think-tank, told EurasiaNet.org.

“The government will organise voting drives among public sector employees, and local administrations will compel people to vote through the community (mahalla) councils.”

Voters in Uzbekistan readily acknowledge that mahallas – state-sponsored residents’ councils that control local affairs – rely on coercive measures to get out the vote.

“Mahalla committees will be going round the houses asking people to go to vote,” one Tashkent-based businessman told EurasiaNet.org on condition of anonymity. “That’s exactly what happened last time there were parliamentary elections.”

The public will dutifully turn up at polling booths to avoid reprisals, he added, but will cast their votes without enthusiasm. “People have gotten used to all these elections as something staged, and they don’t really care what the outcome will be, because most people think it will all be the way the authorities want it to be,” he said.

In practical terms, the parliamentary elections mean little for day-to-day affairs in Uzbekistan. As David Dalton, an Uzbekistan analyst at the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit, points out, “Voting to parliament is heavily controlled, and the real levers of power are anyway located elsewhere.”

International observers will be in Uzbekistan on election day, but the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, or ODIHR, the election-monitoring arm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, will field only a limited mission, partly due to what it describes as “the limited nature of the competition” in the election.

ODIHR has never deemed conditions conducive to sending a full observation mission to Uzbekistan, or judged an election in the Central Asian nation to be free and fair.

Meanwhile, Karimov has been on what Swerdlow describes as a “media blitz” in an attempt to legitimise “an electoral process that’s genuine in form, but not in substance.”

That may be designed to help bolster the legitimacy of another, far more important vote next year: a presidential election due in the spring, in which Karimov has not stated if he will stand, although he has hinted he will.

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

Edited by Kitty Stapp

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Russia’s aggressive actions toward Ukraine are vexing Central Asian states.

First, officials in Kazakhstan were chagrined to hear comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who, during a recent town-hall-style meeting with university students, appeared to denigrate Kazakhstani statehood. Now, Uzbek leaders are showing signs of displeasure with Moscow.“Tashkent is deeply concerned about the potency of Russian media and disinformation campaigns, as well as the potential political vulnerability of the status of millions of Uzbek [labor] migrants in Russia." -- Alexander Cooley

Insular Uzbekistan has long viewed Russia with a wary eye: it has kept its distance from Moscow-led regional bodies and has shown no interest in joining the Eurasian Economic Union, Putin’s pet project to reassert Kremlin influence across the former Soviet Union.

The rhetoric currently coming out of Tashkent suggests that the conflict playing out in Ukraine has unsettled President Islam Karimov’s administration, and is prompting Uzbek officials to consider new steps to distance themselves further from the Kremlin.

During Independence Day celebrations on Sep. 1, Karimov pointedly denounced the tyranny of the Soviet past – and effectively thumbed his nose at Moscow. The “totalitarian” Soviet period, Karimov said, was a time of “oppressive injustice” and “humiliation and affront, when our national values, traditions, and customs were trampled upon.”

Karimov was harking back to the past, but given the battles raging in southeastern Ukraine, and with Putin making no secret of his ambition to expand Russia’s sway over former Soviet territory, the remarks were a clear sally at the Kremlin.

Karimov did not name Ukraine, but spoke of the need to prevent the escalation of conflicts into full-blown warfare in the current “alarming situation.” In comments clearly aimed at Russia, he went on to call for sovereignty and borders to be respected, and the use of force rejected.

Like other post-Soviet states, Tashkent has struggled to formulate a response to the Ukraine conflict, in large part because the Karimov administration finds neither side appealing. On one hand, Tashkent is leery of Kremlin expansionism; on the other, the dictatorial Karimov is no fan of popular uprisings, such as that embodied in the Euromaidan movement.

Analysts say Uzbek President Islam Karimov is clearly apprehensive about the Kremlin’s capacity to use soft power to undermine his long rule if he fails to toe Russia’s line. Credit: Agência Brasil/cc by 3.0

Ukraine “has raised grave concerns [for Uzbekistan], precisely because each side has given the [Karimov] regime something to fear,” Alexander Cooley, a professor at New York’s Barnard College who specialises in Central Asian affairs, told EurasiaNet.org.

Until recently, Karimov’s government may have viewed Euromaidanist Ukraine as representing the larger threat to Uzbekistan’s status quo. But attitudes in Tashkent may be shifting.

“[The] revolutionary change of power seen in Ukraine is something that Uzbek authorities under President Karimov have been tirelessly working to prevent in their country by effectively rooting out any potential pockets of political dissent,” Lilit Gevorgyan, a regional analyst at IHS Global Insight, told EurasiaNet.org.

“It is hard to see Uzbekistan cheering for the popular uprising in Ukraine,” she added – but “they are still likely to be critical, albeit not openly, of Russia’s meddling in Ukraine.”

What Karimov is clearly apprehensive about is the Kremlin’s capacity to use soft power to undermine his long rule if he fails to toe Russia’s line, suggested Cooley.

“Tashkent is deeply concerned about the potency of Russian media and disinformation campaigns, as well as the potential political vulnerability of the status of millions of Uzbek [labour] migrants in Russia,” said Cooley. “They could be a lever for Moscow to bring Uzbekistan further in line with its position.”

Uzbekistan could face a destabilising social crisis if Russia opted to expel Uzbek guest workers. Uzbekistan’s economy would be ill-equipped to absorb such a vast number of returning workers.

Russia’s assertion of a right to defend Russian-speakers abroad is also viewed with trepidation in Tashkent, David Dalton, Uzbekistan analyst at the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit, told EurasiaNet.org.

“As with the other Central Asian countries that have a Russian minority, the Uzbek leadership, already wary of Russia’s ambitions in the area, will have viewed with great alarm Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine on the pretext of protecting Russian-speakers,” he said.

Uzbekistan does not share a border with Russia and has a relatively small ethnic Russian minority, comprising 5.5 percent of the country’s overall population of almost 29 million, but Kremlin policies still make Tashkent nervous.

The Kremlin’s muscle-flexing incentivizes Uzbekistan to boost other alliances, analysts believe. “It will emphasise Uzbekistan’s need to diversify security and economic partnerships to the greatest extent possible,” Cooley said, mainly “through growing partnership with China, as well as economic partnerships with emerging Asian powers such as South Korea, Japan and the Gulf States.”

Tilting east is more promising for Tashkent than attempting to turn westward: partly since Uzbekistan’s geopolitical importance to the West is waning as NATO withdraws from Afghanistan; and partly since many Western states consider doing business with Karimov toxic due to Uzbekistan’s poor human rights record.

Western states, especially the United States and United Kingdom, “remain constrained from increasing their engagement by political and human rights concerns, as well as the negative blowback they received from forging close security ties with Tashkent in the 2000s,” Cooley pointed out.

After 9/11, Washington wooed Uzbekistan (which sits on Afghanistan’s northern border) to open a military base – from which it was summarily ejected after criticising the killing of protesters by Uzbek security forces in Andijan in 2005.

“Uzbekistan has tended to ‘turn West’ when it finds that Russia is becoming too assertive, and then back again to Russia when pressed too strongly by the West on its poor human rights record,” said Dalton. “This could happen again this time – although with most of its gas pipelines connecting with China, and Western forces pulling out from Afghanistan this year, it is not clear what Uzbekistan could offer the West in return.”

Ultimately, China – now a major purchaser of Uzbek gas – stands to benefit from Uzbekistan’s present dilemma. Karimov’s visit to Beijing in August was “an important signal,” said Dalton, “that Uzbekistan wishes to maintain good ties with strong foreign partners, to counterbalance Russian influence.”

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

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A baker stencils patterns into dough to make non, a traditional Central Asian round flatbread, in Bukhara in July 2013. Russian speakers from all former Soviet republics, including Uzbekistan, can now obtain citizenship in Russia, where 2.3 million Uzbek migrants are alreayd working, according to Russia’s Federal Migration Service. Credit: Dean C.K. Cox/EurasiaNet

By Murat Sadykov
TASHKENT, Jul 15 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Judging by the long line outside the Russian Embassy in Tashkent one recent afternoon, new Russian legislation offering citizenship to Russian-speakers is prompting lots of individuals in Uzbekistan to ponder emigration.

Some see a chance to escape economic woes; others, stymied by Uzbekistan’s own Byzantine bureaucracy, want to seize on an opportunity to obtain a proper passport.Many in Uzbekistan still watch Russian state television and are influenced by Kremlin propaganda.

Following Moscow’s March annexation of Crimea, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered citizenship basically to anyone hailing from the former Soviet Union, so long as they speak fluent Russian and renounce their current citizenship.

For migrant workers from Uzbekistan, Russian citizenship offers a solution to the status quo. Uzbekistan sends millions of migrants to Russia annually, who often work with semi-legal status.

According to Russia’s Federal Migration Service, there were 2.3 million Uzbek migrants in Russia as of March. (The real number is thought to be higher). A Russian passport can ease problems with police and employers.

Tashkent does not offer legal or other support to its citizens working in Russia. And though migrants’ remittances make up a sizable portion of the Uzbek economy – at least 16 percent according to Russian Central Bank data – Uzbek officials actively denigrate them.

Last year President Islam Karimov branded migrant workers “lazy” people who “disgrace” all Uzbeks. In May, Uzbekistan-based websites cited Uzbek consulates abroad as stating citizens permanently residing in foreign countries without consular registration could have their citizenship revoked.

The fact that Russia retains a generally positive image among Uzbek citizens is helping to spur interest in the citizenship programme. Many in Uzbekistan still watch Russian state television and are influenced by Kremlin propaganda.

A visit to the Russian consulate off Nukus Street in Tashkent one scorching afternoon recently vividly demonstrated just who is interested in Russian citizenship. Apart from a few Russian citizens trying to resolve consular issues, most people queuing in an alley outside the consular section were Uzbek citizens of various ethnic backgrounds, or stateless persons, many of them of Uzbek ethnicity.

“I want to get Russian citizenship to make it easier to work in Russia and live in Uzbekistan,” an ethnic Uzbek who moved from Tajikistan to Uzbekistan’s southern Kashkadarya Region in the early 2000s told EurasiaNet.org.

Since his arrival in Uzbekistan, he’s been living as a stateless person, making it difficult even to leave Uzbekistan, let alone obtain a Russian visa. (Russian visas are required for stateless persons, but not Uzbek citizens).

Indeed, many people in line were stateless people from other former Soviet republics who have been trying for years, and failing, to obtain Uzbek citizenship. Uzbekistan does not publish data on how many people it grants citizenship each year, but the number is thought to be in the single digits.

An ethnic Korean woman said she and her Tajik partner, who holds an Uzbek stateless person’s document, were queuing to obtain Russian citizenship to make it “easy” for him to live with her in Kazakhstan. She moved to Kazakhstan last year and intends to obtain a residence permit there. Living in Kazakhstan as a Russian citizen, in her opinion, is the best option for her partner.

Uzbekistan does not publish reliable figures on the country’s ethnic breakdown and has not conducted a census since 1989. According to figures published in the Ethnic Atlas of Uzbekistan in 2002, Uzbekistan was home to about two million members of ethnic minority groups in 2000, including 1.2 million ethnic Russians and sizeable numbers of Ukrainians, Koreans, Armenians, Tatars and others.

Many minorities are primarily Russian-speakers, and, thus, are prime candidates to apply for Russian citizenship.

One requirement that should be simple for many Uzbeks to prove – fluency in the Russian language – is difficult to demonstrate in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan does not have an authorized center for language testing, thereby requiring Uzbek residents to travel to neighbouring countries in order to take the 3.5-hour-long language exam.

In the line outside the Russian Embassy, an ethnic Armenian who is an Uzbek citizen and received an engineering degree in Russia four years ago said he hopes to use his diploma to obtain Russian citizenship and eventually find a job in Russia.

The Kremlin may have devised the new scheme to help boost its population after a state program on voluntary settlement of ethnic Russians abroad failed to attract immigrants from the former Soviet Union. That programme has managed to attract fewer than 150,000 people since its inception in 2007, according to the Russian Federal Migration Service, despite state support offered to qualified migrants. The Russian government had hoped for 700,000 by 2012, according to the Kommersant daily.

The new legislation may prove more successful in attracting skilled immigrants, as the queues outside the Russian Embassy seem to testify: In June the Embassy was accepting appointments for no earlier than October.

Editor’s note:  Murat Sadykov is the pseudonym for a journalist specialising in Central Asian affairs. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Rusting and stranded, ships that once operated on the Aral Sea now attract adventure tourists. Credit: Adriane Lochner/EurasiaNet

By Adriane Lochner
BISHKEK, Apr 15 2014 (EurasiaNet)

“I’m going for a swim,” says Pelle Bendz, a 52-year-old Swede, as he rummages in the jeep for his bathing trunks. The other tourists look at him, bewildered. What’s left of the Aral Sea is reputed to be a toxic stew, contaminated by pesticides and other chemicals.

But the weather’s hot and Bendz insists his travel agency told him “swimming” was part of the package.Activists have been jailed for exposing the disappearing sea’s impact on Karakalpakstan residents’ health.

In Nukus, the sleepy regional capital of western Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan region, local tour operators say the number of sightseers is growing each year. Many come to this remote part of the Central Asian country to see the famous Savitsky art collection. There are excursions to ancient fortresses and historic Khiva, once an important stop on the Silk Road.

But the Aral Sea – one of the world’s most infamous, man-made ecological disasters – is probably the top attraction.

“Last year almost 300 foreigners went on camping trips to the coastline, and numbers are increasing,” says Tazabay Uteuliev, a local fixer who arranges transport for several Uzbek travel agencies.

Spring and autumn are most popular, but this year he even had a group in January. “More and more people seem to like it extreme,” Uteuliev tells EurasiaNet.org. The tourists are usually adventurous, not looking for a trip to the beach, but to see the famous lake before the last of the water is gone, he adds.

Bendz, the Swede, claims a special interest in unusual places. On a previous trip to Ukraine he visited Chernobyl, site of the 1986 nuclear accident. As he runs toward the shore, his feet sink in mud. The other two tourists and their driver follow him with their eyes.

The driver explains that over the course of only one year, the coastline has receded about 50 metres. The former seabed is still damp and covered with clams.

“You don’t even have to swim,” Bendz shouts, giddily floating on the water. In 2007, one estimate put the Aral’s salinity at 10 percent. As the sea continues shrinking, salt content is believed to have risen to about 15 or 16 percent, or half the concentration in the famously salty Dead Sea.

For local activists, the swell of foreign interest offers a chance to educate, as well as entertain.

In a hotel in Nukus, a group of Swiss tourists listens to a seminar about the history of the Aral catastrophe as part of their tour programme. The lecturer asks EurasiaNet.org not to print his name because he is implicitly criticising Uzbekistan’s authoritarian government.

He has a legitimate fear: activists have been jailed for exposing the disappearing sea’s impact on Karakalpakstan residents’ health. In 2012, one activist said she was beaten and threatened with forced psychiatric care.

During his presentation, the speaker shows satellite images and videos of fishing boats from the time when the fish-packed Aral Sea was one of largest lakes in the world. He describes the consequences of the water loss for locals: extremely hot summers, freezing winters, dust storms and lung diseases.

“Only the government can do something about it,” the activist says, describing wasteful irrigation upstream on the Amu-Darya River.

In his opinion, poor government management of water resources is the main cause of the environmental problems. Only about 10 percent of the water diverted from the river makes it to the fields, he says. The rest evaporates or leaks out of aging irrigation canals.

“People should [be required to] pay for the water, then they would save it,” he says.

Uzbekistan’s centralised agricultural plan aims to produce three million tonnes of cotton annually. To meet this target, officials require farmers to grow the water-intensive plant and press-gang residents to help with the harvest each autumn.

Environmentalists are also concerned that powerful international interests have little reason to save the Aral: Energy companies from China, Russia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere are drilling in the former seabed for natural gas. The tour group drives past their rigs the next morning, across a salt desert, to visit Muynak.

A generation ago, this former fishing village was a port at the southern end of the sea. Now it is about 100 kilometres from the water’s edge. Ships once anchored offshore are now popular tourist attractions, rusting, leaning over into the desert sand. Local children play on the graffiti-covered wrecks.

Only a few hundred kilometres to the north, on the Kazakhstani side, there is hope for the Aral Sea. There, a dike built with assistance from the World Bank in 2005 catches water from the Syr-Darya River, helping bring a tiny portion of the lake back and spawning a renewed fishing industry.

But the Kazakh side does not attract as many visitors, says a representative at Tashkent-based OrexCA, a travel agency specialising in Central Asia.

The agent says she receives occasional inquiries but no bookings to visit the lake in Kazakhstan. She thinks visitors are discouraged by the higher prices and also because Kazakhstani officials have removed so-called ghost ships, selling them for scrap. Instead she touts OrexCA’s “shrinking Aral Sea tour” on the Uzbek side.

The package includes visits to historical sites and, according to the agency’s website, is “designed for admirers of extreme tourism, adventurers and fans of exotic photography.”

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

Two of the most despotic leaders in the world sit atop the governments of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, according to rights groups. But in sharp contrast to the way they regard their respective peoples, Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov seem to treat each other with courtesy and respect when they get together.

At their most recent meeting, held in late November in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, Berdymukhamedov and Karimov reportedly signed agreements outlining economic and humanitarian cooperation. They also discussed Central Asia’s water disputes, though, as usual, details about that conversation were scarce. Even so, the overall tenor of the meeting was upbeat.

“Today Uzbek-Turkmen cooperation is developing dynamically,” Uzbekistan state media declared on November 25. “The present meeting in Tashkent between the heads of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan is the logical continuation of an efficient and active dialogue.”

The official view is echoed by local political observers. Bilateral relations are “quite stable, businesslike and trustworthy,” said Farkhad Tolipov, a Tashkent-based political analyst.

The relationship today is markedly different than just over a decade ago, when, following a supposed coup attempt in Turkmenistan in November, 2002, Turkmen-Uzbek ties entered a deep freeze.

Back then, Turkmen authorities accused Uzbekistan of aiding the alleged coup plotters; one of whom – former Turkmen Foreign Minister Boris Shikhmuradov – supposedly hid inside the Uzbek Embassy in Ashgabat for about a week before ultimately being captured. Shikhmuradov has had no contact with friends or relatives since 2007.

When he came to power after then-president Saparmurat Niyazov’s sudden death in 2006, Berdymukhamedov promoted a thaw between Ashgabat and Tashkent. Apparently, the new Turkmen leader believed better ties with Uzbekistan would help him consolidate his own hold on power, Andrei Grozin, head of the Central Asia Department at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ CIS Institute, told EurasiaNet.org.

“Berdymukhamedov […] needed legitimacy in the region as a new leader of Turkmenistan. And Uzbekistan sought normalisation of its relations with Turkmenistan because it was hard for Uzbekistan to be in a state of conflict with almost all of its neighbours,” Grozin explained.

During the latter stages of Niyazov’s tenure, Turkmenistan tightened border controls with Uzbekistan, stymying trade. Turkmenistan’s ethnic Uzbek community also was virtually cut off from their kin across the border.

Berdymukhamedov has relied on personal diplomacy to ease bilateral tension. “Annual meetings between the presidents […] point to a higher level of cooperation than under the previous leader of Turkmenistan,” Tolipov, the political analyst, told EurasiaNet.org.

Though few these days see Turkmenistan as a regional leader, neighbouring states are increasingly trying to cultivate stronger ties with Ashgabat, Grozin said. Ashgabat’s growing popularity is linked to its role as an energy and transit hub. In the months prior to the Berdymukhamedov-Karimov meeting, the presidents of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and China all visited Turkmenistan.

In May, Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev visited to help launch a railway connecting Kazakhstan with Iran via Turkmenistan along the Caspian shore. In June Tajikistan’s Imomali Rahmon and Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai attended a ceremony in Lebap Province in eastern Turkmenistan marking the start of construction on a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan railway line that bypasses Uzbekistan.

In September, Xi Jinping of China, which in 2009 opened a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan and sources over half its gas imports from the country, signed a deal to buy even more gas and helped launch processing facilities as the world’s second-largest field, Galkynysh.

Karimov these days may be hoping Ashgabat can help ease Uzbekistan’s problems with petrol shortages and help build a railway to Iran and the Persian Gulf. Such a rail route would allow Uzbekistan to become a transit link between China and the Gulf.

(With Chinese support, including a 350-million-dollar loan inked on Nov. 29, Uzbekistan has started building a railway between its central regions and the eastern Fergana Valley that may eventually link to China via Kyrgyzstan. But Beijing and the Kyrgyz have not yet agreed on the route).

Transportation experts are skeptical that Tashkent’s rail plan will pay off. “The railway corridor from Uzbekistan to the Persian Gulf is only a complementary branch of [other north-south routes], which will be developed with or without Uzbekistan,” noted Jacopo Pepe, a researcher at the Free University Berlin’s Center for Caspian Region Studies.

Giving in to sustained international pressure, authoritarian Uzbekistan is opening up its cotton fields to international monitors this fall.

The International Labour Organisation has confirmed to EurasiaNet.org that it is sending a mission to monitor the Uzbek cotton harvest, which starts in mid-September.“It is in these [Western] capitals’ long-term interests to drive a harder, more public, bargain with Tashkent over its abysmal record.” -- Steve Swerdlow of HRW

“The ILO will be involved in the monitoring of the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan with the aim of preventing the use of child labour,” spokesman Hans von Rohland confirmed by email on Sep. 12. Monitoring will start “in the next few days”.

Uzbekistan has been the target in recent years of international criticism and a widespread commercial boycott over its reliance on child and forced labour to reap the cash crop. Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department assailed Uzbekistan on the forced labour issue.

The surprise news that an observer mission is being allowed into Uzbekistan – which has always denied the use of systematic state-sponsored child and forced labour, but resisted years of pressure to invite monitors in – has received a cautious welcome from watchdog groups. Nevertheless, labour rights advocates are concerned that the ILO’s mandate will not go far enough to stamp out abuses in the cotton fields.

“We are pleased that this year the International Labour Organization expects to deploy teams to Uzbekistan to monitor during the harvest,” the Cotton Campaign, a coalition lobbying for improved standards in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, said on Sep. 9.

“We remain concerned that the ILO monitors will be accompanied by representatives of the Government of Uzbekistan and the official state union and employers’ organizations, whose presence will have a chilling effect on Uzbek citizens’ willingness to speak openly with the ILO monitors,” the Cotton Campaign statement added.

Von Rohland, the ILO spokesman, confirmed that the mission “involves cooperation with the Uzbek authorities who have the mandate to deal with child labour issues, as well as with experts from employers’ organisations and trade unions.”

Uzbek participants will receive ILO training aimed at “ensuring that the monitoring is credible and reliable,” the representative added. One goal “is increasing awareness and building up the capacity of national actors to ensure the full respect of the provisions of ratified Conventions.”

Uzbekistan has ratified two ILO conventions on child labour, but human rights activists say Tashkent routinely flouts them.

Campaigners are concerned that the observers will not gain unfettered access to the cotton fields. “It is essential that monitoring teams be comprised only of independent observers and not include any Uzbek officials,” Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch, told EurasiaNet.org.

Access without minders is essential to allow labourers to speak freely, he said, since “the Uzbek government has a well-documented record of suppressing all forms of dissent.”

Activists are also concerned that the ILO’s remit covers child labour, but not forced labour, although Uzbekistan has signed ILO forced labour conventions which would provide a legal basis to monitor it.

“The mission’s mandate should explicitly include forced labour as the entire system of the cotton harvest as it affects millions of Uzbeks rests on a state-sponsored system of coercion,” Swerdlow said.

The ILO representative countered that “the monitoring will look at child labour, including forced child labour, and important aspects of forced labour are bound to come up.”

The Cotton Campaign has already documented cases of forced labour during harvest preparations.

“During the spring 2013, Government authorities mobilized children and adults to plough and weed, and authorities beat farmers for planting onions instead of cotton,” it reported. In summer it documented “preparations to coercively mobilize nurses, teachers and other public sector workers to harvest cotton.”

Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest rests on forced labour to help farmers meet government-set quotas to pick the crop. Forced labourers can buy their way out: The going rate this year is 400,000 sums (200 dollars at the official exchange rate, or five times the minimum wage), according to the Uzmetronom.com website. Cotton pickers are paid a pittance: the rate was 150-200 sums (7-10 cents) per kilo last year, Uzmetronom said.

For Tashkent the crop, dubbed “white gold”, is a cash cow. Uzbekistan is the world’s fifth largest producer and second largest exporter of cotton, data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) shows. Cotton accounted for 11 percent of Uzbekistan’s export earnings in 2011, according to a report by the Responsible Sourcing Network lobby group.

Uzbekistan has been the target of a sustained campaign over child labour, which two years ago embarrassingly led to Gulnara Karimova, daughter of strongman president Islam Karimov and a fashion designer, being barred from New York Fashion Week.

A pledge organised by the Responsible Sourcing Network “to ensure that forced child and adult labour [in Uzbekistan] does not find its way into our products” has been signed by 131 retailers, including big-name brands like Nike and Adidas Group.

In the face of this barrage of negative publicity, Uzbekistan moved to keep younger children out of the cotton fields last year – “a hopeful reminder that pressure sometimes works, even on governments with records as authoritarian as Tashkent,” Swerdlow said.

However, a report by HRW found that this simply shifted the onus to adults and older children.

Campaigners have long accused Western governments of turning a blind eye to Tashkent’s human rights abuses due to strategic considerations. Uzbekistan sits astride the Northern Distribution Network, a key transportation route into and out of Afghanistan which is assuming fresh importance as NATO troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

Nevertheless, activists say Western governments should set aside geopolitics and seize the moment to ramp up pressure on the Uzbek government.

“It is in these [Western] capitals’ long-term interests to drive a harder, more public, bargain with Tashkent over its abysmal record,” said Swerdlow. “Ultimately, an Uzbekistan that continues to be plagued by such a wide spectrum of serious abuses risks a worse, more explosive type of instability for the country, its 30 million people, and the wider region.”

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

For months, state-run media propaganda in Uzbekistan has warned about the supposedly detrimental effects of foreign media and culture on young people.

Now President Islam Karimov’s administration seems intent on trying to legislate morality.

On Jul. 9, the Uzbek Agency for the Press and Information, the government body responsible for regulating media outlets, announced that “in cooperation with interested state and non-state organisations” it had drafted a bill that would protect minors from information deemed harmful to their “physical and spiritual development”.

Citing vaguely similar legislation adopted in the United States and in EU countries (mostly relating to pornography), the Uzbek agency’s chairman, Amanulla Yunusov, claimed that adopting laws against the distribution of print, audio and video material, as well as computer games, “promoting violence, cruelty, drugs, pornography and other harmful information” would enable Uzbekistan to comply with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Such a claim raised the hackles of international human rights activists, who quickly pointed out a stark dichotomy in the Uzbek government’s attitude toward the welfare of its youngest citizens.

When it comes to keeping foreign influences out, the Uzbek government seems ready to take a tough, proactive stance. But when it comes to the domestic economy, specifically the use of forced child labour in the country’s cotton fields, the government is far less interested in the best interests of children.

Observers point out Tashkent has been reluctant to allow an International Labour Organisation mission to inspect whether forced child labour is used during cotton harvesting, despite ratifying the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention in 2008.

School children were not seen in cotton fields during last year’s harvesting, but human rights activists said that teenagers aged 15 to 17 were forced to work in fields in the autumn instead of attending classes. Anticipating likely criticism of their practices, authorities reportedly coerced parents into signing a pledge agreeing to their children’s cotton picking.

The morality bill is expected to be debated in Uzbekistan’s rubberstamp parliament – where its passage is almost certain – by the end of 2013. It builds on earlier efforts by the Uzbek government to limit public access to independent sources of information, especially on the Internet.

Those efforts have been on-going since the country gained independence in 1991. They were significantly expanded following the large-scale killing of mostly peaceful protesters in the eastern city of Andijan in May 2005.

New life was breathed into the government’s desire to shape public attitudes after the beginning of the Arab Spring in December 2010. A massive campaign was launched in the Uzbek media against social-networking sites, the Internet and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), along with foreign cultural imports – elements that the government feared could be used to foment social unrest in the country.

“We must pay attention to the fact that some destructive forces are seeking to control young minds and use the Internet in their own narrow goals, and this leads to negative consequences,” Karimov said in connection with a holiday celebrating media workers in June 2011.

That was two years ago, but the state propaganda barrage has continued. In July 2012 a documentary aired by the Yoshlar state-run television channel described social networking as a tool used by foreign powers to foment colour-coded revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine back in 2003 and 2004 and, more recently, in some Middle Eastern states.

To counter “destructive forces” on the Internet, Uzbekistan, which has been continuously ranked as an “Enemy of the Internet” by Reporters Without Borders in the past few years, has developed its own social-networking sites, including Muloqot.uz, Youface.uz (now defunct) and Sinfdosh.uz to “improve the moral and physical health of youth and form high morals”.

The campaign against foreign influence hasn’t been limited to the Internet. In the recent past, authorities have declared war against toys that supposedly represent foreign values, censored rap music and banned five musical acts from singing for undermining Uzbek “moral heritage and mentality.”

In addition, authorities have discouraged the observance of Western-oriented holidays, in particular Valentine’s Day and Christmas.

Internet penetration is steadily growing in Uzbekistan: The number of Internet users increased by over 250,000 to 10.1 million during the first quarter of 2013.

Meanwhile, Karimov has acknowledged that it is impossible to completely seal Uzbekistan off from outside influences.

“The Internet cannot be fenced off by an iron wall or banned – this is unthinkable,” he conceded in a speech in April.

Uzbek media outlets are nevertheless keeping up a steady drumbeat against Western culture. For instance, ahead of the announcement of the morality bill earlier this month, two flagship state channels – Uzbekistan and Yoshlar – carried separate shows on the harms of the Internet and Western influence on Uzbek children.

“There are many websites on the Internet that disseminate false information and we can observe websites that aim to manipulate social consciousness. We can also see websites that aim at racism, discrimination, and cyberterrorism, and aim to deprive people of their historical memory and destroy the historical memory.

“Of course, our young people are surfing these websites when they are using social-networking sites,” MP Shuhrat Dehqonov fumed on the “Munosabat” (Attitude) programme, posted on Uzbekistan TV channel’s website on Jul. 9.

Speaking on the evocatively-titled “Bogeyman on the Screen” programme, posted on Yoshlar’s website also on Jul. 9, actor Hojiakbar Komilov joined ranks with those seeking to hold back the Western cultural tide: “We won’t notice it [influence] right now but children are growing. What nurturing are they receiving? … [Foreign] films show violence, blood and murders. What kind of nurturing will children receive after seeing this?”

Armed with the new bill, the Uzbek government appears to be gearing up for a long battle for the minds of its youngest citizens.

Editor’s note: Murat Sadykov is the pseudonym for a journalist specialising in Central Asian affairs. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Uzbek leader Islam Karimov has taken cosmetic steps lately, such as voicing support for probing journalism, to try to put a more human face on his regime. But the true nature of the Uzbek government can be discerned in a treason case against a former military intelligence official.

Lt. Col. Sanjar Ismailov, a 43-year-old former acting head of Uzbek army intelligence, was arrested in late June 2005 and early the following year was convicted on charges of treason, abuse of power and illegal ammunition storage. He was tried in connection to a 2003 incident in which he shared information about Afghan militant groups with the Russian military attaché in Tashkent.

In appealing his conviction, Ismailov insisted that his actions were consistent with his official duties. Russia at the time was (and still is, sort of) Uzbekistan’s strategic ally, not adversary. And, Ismailov contended, the material that he passed along was encrypted and he needed the help of Russian specialists to crack it.

To buttress his argument that he was acting with Uzbekistan’s best interests in mind, he pointed out that he handed over the information to the Russian official in the Uzbek Defence Ministry’s protocol room.

Ismailov’s wife, Natalia Bondar, has claimed that the charges against her husband constitute a case of retaliation. His troubles, she added, began after he criticised another senior Uzbek Defense Ministry official, who supposedly had been given information that Islamic militants were intent on fomenting an uprising in Andijan in the spring of 2005, but did not do anything with the information.

The Andijan massacre in May 2005, subsequently embroiled Tashkent in international controversy.

An Uzbek military tribunal rejected Ismailov’s appeal in 2007. The following year, Bondar brought a complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Council, contending that her husband was deprived of basic rights during his trial and subsequent appeal.

The council finally ruled on Ismailov’s case in March of 2011, and it was only recently that Bondar became aware of the U.N. body’s ruling, coming across it by accident while surfing the Internet. Part of the reason for the lag between the time when Bondar filed her complaint and the council’s decision appears to be the Uzbek government’s lack of response to U.N. officials’ requests for information relating to the case.

The council found that Ismailov’s rights were indeed violated: among the violations was the fact that he was not informed of the reason for his arrest, nor the charges against him, at the time he was taken into custody. The council also found that he did not have adequate time to prepare his defence and was improperly prevented from using privately retained legal counsel.

The council decision said Uzbek authorities must provide Bondar, who submitted the complaint on behalf of her husband, with an “effective” remedy.

“The State party is also under an obligation to consider a retrial … or release, as well as appropriate reparation, including compensation,” the U.N. body’s decision stated. “The State party is also under an obligation to take steps to prevent similar violations occurring in the future.”

The council mandated that it should “receive from the State party, within 180 days, information about the measures taken to give effect to the council’s views.”

Bondar told EurasiaNet.org that Uzbek authorities have taken no action that she is aware of to comply with the council’s decision. “The decision was made but nobody controls its fulfillment,” she said. “So things aren’t moving and nobody knows when everything will be solved. Our agencies, as always, get off with runarounds.”

The U.N. rights council lacks any mechanism to compel member states to recognise and implement its rulings. Human rights groups consistently rank Uzbekistan as one of the most repressive states on earth, and it should be noted that Ismailov case is far from an isolated occurrence. Hundreds, if not thousands of prisoners in Uzbekistan are believed to be estimated to be held on political grounds.

In late 2005, Ismailov had five years taken off what originally had been a 20-year sentence. But his chances at present for an early release appear slim, Bondar indicated.

“He [Ismailov] is continually assigned responsibility for violations and, as a malicious violator, he is not covered by amnesties,” Bondar explained.

Ironically, the once high-ranking Defence Ministry official who Bondar alleges had her husband framed later was himself arrested on fraud charges and handed a nine-year prison term. But he was subsequently amnestied, Bondar added.

She is at a loss to explain why Ismailov remains a target of persecution. “Maybe everybody is afraid of taking responsibility for his release, or I simply do not know that another person who was interested in his arrest,” she said.

*Editor’s note: Marina Kozlova is a freelance journalist focusing on Uzbekistan.

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.

Central Asian states do not face an “imminent” threat posed by Islamic militants, but they need U.S. assistance to help defend against potential dangers, according to top U.S. diplomats.

Such assistance, it appears, may include drone aircraft delivered to Uzbekistan, which democratisation watchdogs rank as one of the most repressive states in the world.

“We do not assess that there is an imminent Islamist militant threat to Central Asian states,” said Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake, speaking at a hearing held by the U.S. House of Representatives on “Islamist Militant Threats to Eurasia” on Feb. 27.

“The most capable terrorist groups with links to Central Asia, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan [IMU] and the Islamic Jihad Union, [IJU] remain focused on operations in western Pakistan and Afghanistan,” added Justin Siberell, the State Departments deputy coordinator for counterterrorism. “Neither the IMU nor IJU are considered exceedingly powerful individually, and will likely remain focused on operations in this same region, even after 2014.”

The hearing took place as Congress, the State Department and Pentagon discuss expanding military aid to Central Asian countries, in particular Uzbekistan. These countries have cooperated with the United States in establishing transportation routes for U.S. and coalition military cargo to-and-from Afghanistan, a network known as the Northern Distribution Network.

Some Central Asian governments are arguing that they need U.S. assistance to protect themselves against Islamist militants following the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014.

The threat may not be imminent, but extending security assistance to the Central Asian states is justifiable, Blake maintained.

“Although the threat has been kept at bay, as our forces withdraw from the region we must continue our efforts to help prevent terrorist recruitment and strengthen the Central Asian countries’ [counterterrorism] capacities, so they can defend themselves in a responsible and measured fashion,” Blake said.

“With Uzbekistan, we’ve begun a very careful, calibrated approach to supporting the defensive needs – because they face real threats, not just because of their support to the Northern Distribution Network, but because of groups like the IMU and the IJU are actively targeting them.”

While Islamist threats do exist in Central Asia, they do not necessarily justify expanded U.S. assistance, said Nathan Barrick, a consultant for CLI Solutions working on a contract for U.S. Central Command, who also testified at the hearing. The threats are likely to be minor, and the security services of Central Asia have proven effective in containing them, he said.

“The desire in Central Asia for U.S. assistance in countering Islamist militants is not the same as a ‘need’ or ‘requirement’ for U.S. assistance,” he wrote in testimony for the committee.

Stephen Blank, of the U.S. Army War College, said that whatever the terror threats in Central Asia, the U.S. military would probably not be able to do much to counter them.

“To bring about good governance that would preclude the outbreak of terrorism in these and other places is probably beyond our capability and resources. … And the U.S. military is no more equipped to undertake those responsibilities than is the rest of the government,” he said in his testimony to the committee. [Editor’s note: Blank is an occasional commentator for Eurasianet.]

Ariel Cohen, of the Heritage Foundation, added that “U.S. assistance must be careful not to strengthen the repressive law enforcement and security services components that the regimes deploy against political opposition.”

The prospect of additional military aid to Uzbekistan has alarmed human rights activists, who assert that Uzbekistan exaggerates the threat of Islamist radicalism to justify its harsh dictatorship. Activists also say U.S. equipment is likely to be used against existing or future political opponents or protesters.

Blake attempted to downplay such concerns, saying he was confident “that the approach we have taken with Central Asia helps proactively strengthen the region’s capacity to combat terrorism and counter extremism, while encouraging democratic reform and respect for human rights.” He also said that Uzbekistan taking steps to improve its respect for human rights “will enable us to do more on the weapons side.”

Some members of Congress did not appear to be so concerned about Uzbekistan’s human rights record. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who was recently named chairman of the Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats Subcommittee, returned on Feb. 25 from a trip to Uzbekistan, where he met with President Islam Karimov.

Rohrabacher suggested that the Uzbek government’s restrictions on human rights are justified because of the threat of Islamism. “Some of the things that they are being criticised in Uzbekistan for denying religious rights and freedom of speech are basically trying to prevent radical sects of Islam from taking hold,” he said. And he recommended treating Uzbekistan like Saudi Arabia, another country with a poor human rights record to which the United States sells weapons for strategic reasons.

Ted Poe, a Texas Republican and chairman of the subcommittee on terrorism, nonproliferation, and trade, was in Uzbekistan with Rohrabacher, and said that Karimov’s concerns about Islamists were justified.

“They [Islamist groups] want to establish Islamic rule in the region, institute sharia law,” he said. “If they had their way they would take over Central Asia just like the Taliban took over Afghanistan. The issue is, can they?”

The particulars of expanded U.S. aid to Uzbekistan remain unclear. The White House agreed last year to reinstate military aid to Uzbekistan after freezing it for several years as a result of human rights concerns. The United States has already said it will provide Uzbekistan with global positioning system equipment, night-vision goggles and body armour. U.S. policymakers are now discussing various proposals for new aid, though few details have emerged.

After the hearing, Blake told reporters that the State Department has formally notified Congress of its intent to supply Uzbekistan with unmanned aerial vehicles, or drone aircraft, but State Department officials declined to provide any details.

Blake told the committee that “his supposition” was that the U.S. aid would not include lethal equipment. “Uzbekistan is not asking for major weapons systems, at least not offensive weapons systems. Their major ask of us these days is to help them defend themselves,” he said.

But Rohrabacher said that in his conversation with Karimov, the president indicated that he wanted dramatically expanded military cooperation with the United States. “They made it clear to us that they would prefer replacing all of their former Soviet equipment … with American equipment,” he said.

The United States is also expanding assistance to Uzbekistan’s law enforcement agencies. The FBI, for example, is providing an Automated Fingerprint Information System to Uzbekistan, which “will make it possible for authorities to identify fugitives while still in custody” and for Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to share that information, Siberell said.

And the United States and Uzbekistan are in talks about reinstating aid under the State Department’s Antiterrorism Assistance programme, which aids law-enforcement agencies and which had been suspended as a result of human rights concerns, Blake noted.

*Editor’s note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC-based writer who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. He is the editor of EurasiaNet’s Bug Pit blog.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Uzbekistan has introduced sweeping new banking and import regulations that appear designed to keep hard currency from leaving the country.

Observers say residents and entrepreneurs should expect a bumpy ride in the coming months, as the cumbersome new measures are expected to drive up prices for basic goods and encourage an expansion of the shadow economy.

At the beginning of February, new rules regulating foreign currency exchange basically made it impossible for Uzbeks to get their hands, legally, on hard currency. Under the new rules, residents can only trade Uzbek sums for virtual hard currency loaded onto plastic banking cards for use abroad or online, not cash.

At the same time, authorities began arresting the currency traders who operate in a thriving black market, where the U.S. dollar fetches approximately 40 percent more than banks offer in exchange for sums.

While the exchange regulations received widespread attention, on Jan. 30 customs authorities also quietly introduced new import rules requiring mountains of paperwork. According to the State Customs Committee, importers must now submit “preliminary” customs declarations for all imported goods 30 days in advance.

Along with the preliminary declaration, importers are also required to procure certificates showing goods’ compliance with Uzbekistan’s strict and oft-changing hygienic, conformity and veterinary standards. The new steps add more paperwork to an already burdensome process.

And in Uzbekistan – routinely classified as one of the most corrupt countries on the planet; Transparency International ranks it tied for 170th out of 174 countries surveyed in its most recent Corruption Perceptions Index – paperwork often gives authorities a chance to find errors, perceived or real, and solicit bribes.

Officially, the new customs regulations stated aim is to “further fundamentally improve the business environment and provide greater freedom to entrepreneurship” and to “liberalize” foreign trade. But with the regulations announced so suddenly, after no public discussion, few are taking authorities at their word.

Instead, some regional media outlets have suggested authorities are trying to keep hard currency from leaving the country; others speculate that authorities are protecting the business interests of a well-connected individual or family (not unheard of in Uzbekistan).

Either way, analysts say it is difficult to imagine Uzbekistan’s limited domestic manufacturing base offering substitutes of sufficient quantity and quality to offset the expected price fluctuations as goods disappear from store shelves.

Import restrictions in Uzbekistan are hardly news: In 2000, Tashkent banned individuals from importing goods for resale. In 2009, the maximum value of goods that could be imported duty-free for personal consumption was reduced to 10 dollars per person.

These rules turned travel abroad for the average Uzbek into a troublesome experience. Long lines are now routine at border crossings, as customs officers sift through bags to identify items subject to customs duties or seizure (or another chance to solicit a bribe).

Because high import tariffs already make consumer goods in Uzbekistan expensive, many Uzbeks have long preferred to shop in neighbouring countries such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. This practice is growing increasingly difficult under the existing regulations.

Unsurprisingly, when it comes to facilitating cross-border trading, the World Bank recently ranked Uzbekistan as the worst performer out of 185 countries surveyed in its Doing Business report for 2013.

Coupled with the latest foreign currency restrictions, analysts believe the new import regulations aim to prevent Uzbekistan’s foreign exchange and gold reserves from dwindling. (By limiting imports, the idea is the authorities are limiting the outflow of precious foreign cash and gold. Most analysts consider current account statistics unreliable).

Tashkent does not publish data on its reserves, or what share of its export earnings are channeled into replenishing reserves. But given the government’s reluctance to borrow, the restrictions on the circulation of hard cash suggest Tashkent is having trouble balancing the books.

“Coming on the back of the recent changes to currency regulations, one reason for the import restrictions is likely to be that the government is seeking to protect the country’s foreign-exchange reserves,” Anna Walker, a Central Asia analyst at the London-based Control Risks consultancy, told EurasiaNet.org.

“It also probably reflects a long-standing policy of encouraging import-substituting industrialization, though this policy has failed to foster a dynamic, domestic industrial sector that produces goods capable of competing with imports.”

Walker doubts the Uzbek government can achieve its economic goals by administrative fiat alone.

“Given the prevalence of imported goods in most sectors, it is highly unlikely that domestically produced goods will be able to substitute for imports. The government’s attempts to attract foreign investment in sectors other than natural resources have been largely unsuccessful, and the domestic manufacturing sector does not have the capacity to fill the gap left by the new import restrictions,” Walker added.

The stifling import and currency regulations often force Uzbek entrepreneurs to operate in the shadows. Privately, many confess they can only survive by bribing tax and customs officials.

One entrepreneur, a jeweler, who agreed to talk to EurasiaNet.org on condition of anonymity, said he thought any new import restrictions were done for one reason only: “To prevent the outflow of foreign currency from the country.”

The new restrictions are likely to backfire, driving up prices and pushing more entrepreneurs into the shadow economy, Walker said: “The immediate result is likely to be an increase in prices, as the availability of goods diminishes, as well as growth in the shadow economy as consumers and retailers attempt to get round the restrictions.”

While there has not yet been a visible impact on the prices for essentials in the capital, Tashkent, the restrictions have started hurting supplies. One shopkeeper told EurasiaNet.org that he was having trouble sourcing chocolate and candy. While other items were still in stock, he explained, his local suppliers have stopped accepting and delivering orders.

Editor’s note: Murat Sadykov is the pseudonym for a journalist specialising in Central Asian affairs.

This story was originally published by EurasiaNet.org.

Newly released documents appear to make a connection between executives from a Swedish company accused of bribing its way into Uzbekistan’s telecoms market and Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the country’s strongman, Islam Karimov.

Two separate bribery and money-laundering probes have been ongoing in Sweden and Switzerland since last fall. Executives at the company under investigation, TeliaSonera, a Swedish-Finnish venture, insist they have “zero tolerance against corruption” and have repeatedly denied making bribes, as well as having any knowledge of dealings with Karimov or his family members.

But evidence recently submitted to a Swedish court by prosecutors appears to undermine these claims.

The Swedish graft probe was sparked by an investigative report aired last fall by broadcaster SVT. The documentation includes e-mails from company executives stating that they believed their negotiating partner to be an intermediary of Gulnara Karimova, a flamboyant and controversial figure once described in a Wikileaked U.S. diplomatic cable as the “single most hated person” in Uzbekistan.

TeliaSonera is standing its ground. In a Jan. 8 statement, it reiterated that its innocence will be proven and “the ongoing investigations will clarify that we have not bribed anyone, or participated in money laundering.”

The TeliaSonera probe is focusing on events in 2007, the year when the company is suspected of making improper payments in order to gain access to Uzbekistan’s cell phone market via the acquisition of a stake in the company that became Ucell.

Specifically, TeliaSonera is alleged to have made shady payments of around 333 million dollars to what the broadcaster SVT described as “a small, one-woman company in a tax haven” – Takilant Limited, run out of Gibraltar by an Uzbek national – Gayane Avakyan, a woman who has been photographed in public in Karimova’s company and who is believed to be an associate of the president’s daughter.

Among the emails that are drawing scrutiny are exchanges between company representatives and Bekhzod Akhmedov, described by a TeliaSonera executive at the time as Karimova’s intermediary. In them, Akhmedov talks TeliaSonera representatives through the details of the agreement that would shortly secure its entry into Uzbekistan’s mobile phone market.

In another e-mail, dated March 2007, Serkan Elden, then CEO of TeliaSonera subsidiary Fintur Holdings (he was later dismissed) believed he was dealing with the president’s daughter’s intermediary, referring to Akhmedov as “the telecom representative of Gulnara Karimova”. Keen to forge links with the ruling family, Elden added that “Lola Karimova, the No. 2 daughter, (i.e. President Karimov’s younger daughter), is willing to meet with us.”

That e-mail was sent to an “S Escudero” (addressed by Elden as “Stan”), who responded that he had sounded out Uzbek diplomats in Washington about TeliaSonera’s ambitions, and Tashkent “views our application favorably”.

The addressee’s identity has yet to be confirmed, but the recipient appears to have the same or strikingly similar name as Stanley Escudero, a retired American diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan in the 1990s, and later became a consultant in the Central Asian and Caucasus regions.

Karimova is known for her extensive financial interests, prompting a description of her as a “robber baron” in another Wikileaked cable. In addition to reported involvement in business ventures, she pursues multiple other professional activities, from fashion designer and pop diva to diplomat, serving as Uzbekistan’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

Karimova has not publicly commented on the corruption investigation, nor responded to numerous requests for comment submitted by EurasiaNet.org. Requests for comment sent to the e-mail addresses indicated in the documents for Escudero, Elden and Akhmedov received no response. Avakyan could not be reached for comment.

The documents submitted to the Swedish court also show that the Uzbek government agency that issued licenses and phone numbers to TeliaSonera has denied any wrongdoing, and Tashkent has protested to the Swedish government over the conduct of the investigation and media coverage.

TeliaSonera has acknowledged knowing that Akhmedov, the middleman, was head of a rival telecoms firm that was once owned by Gulnara Karimova, O’zdunrobita. She sold it to Russian telecoms giant MTS, which last year became embroiled in a major dispute with Tashkent in another scandal on Uzbekistan’s telecoms market also featuring Akhmedov, whom Tashkent accused of corruption before seizing MTS’s assets in Uzbekistan (a decision since overturned).

That case – which remains unresolved – sparked separate and still ongoing money laundering investigation in Switzerland against four Uzbek nationals including Akhmedov, Avakyan and two other associates of Gulnara Karimova.

TeliaSonera is also acknowledging “much speculation and rumors” over whether Avakyan and Takilant were serving as fronts for other interests. “Various rumors around who could be part of this group circulated, including Gulnara Karimova,” TeliaSonera’s Jan. 8 statement said, but in the due diligence process “we could not identify any other beneficiaries than Gayane Avakyan.”

Editor’s note: Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specialises in Central Asia.

This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

Mahfuza, a mother of three in a small town in the Ferghana Valley, has better things to do than spend her afternoons at crowded, smoke-filled Internet clubs. But as a high-school algebra teacher, she has an extracurricular assignment from her bosses: she must monitor the clubs’ clientele – many of them her students – while they play computer games, surf social networking websites, and watch music videos.

A decree from Uzbekistan’s government last spring obliged teachers like Mahfuza (she asked her last name be withheld to protect her from possible reprisals) to frequent Internet clubs to ensure students do not fall prey to supposedly subversive ideas. She’s not thrilled about the task.

“Students spend so much time playing games featuring violence, such as a (first-person shoot-‘em-up) game called Counter-Strike, and chatting with complete strangers online. Parents don’t seem to care, and the burden falls on us, poor teachers,” Mahfuza told EurasiaNet.org.

But Mahfuza has no choice. “The state pays our salaries, so we must comply with their rules even if we find them distasteful,” said a vice principal at the secondary school where Mahfuza teaches. He also spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation for criticizing authorities.

President Islam Karimov’s administration has long relied on educators to shield Uzbekistan’s youth from what it considers dangerous outside influences, including religious radicalism and independent political ideas. (The government keeps a tight lid on all forms of political expression, and even mainstream opposition groups are banned and operate in exile).

A series of popular uprisings in the Arab world in 2011, which were partly fuelled by social media, have heightened Tashkent’s concerns, prompting authorities to view pop culture and social networking as major potential threats to the Uzbek status quo.

Official rhetoric can sound paranoid and archaic to those unfamiliar with the Uzbek government’s modus operandi.

For example, a Nov. 12 statement on how to raise a “spiritually rich generation”, posted on parliament’s official website, contained the following: “Today we observe efforts to undermine (Uzbekistan’s) national interests, ideology, and spiritual moral principles through subversive ideas distributed on the Internet, by mobile phones, computer games, and video products, which are camouflaged as pop culture…The task of creating a favorable information environment for youth is one of our top priorities.”

Inside classrooms, the SNB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, relies on a far-reaching network of informants to ensure conformity, according to students and teachers. A course required in secondary schools, “The Idea of National Independence and Moral Development,” seeks to instill students with patriotism, the vice principal said, by forcing them to memorise Karimov’s speeches.

Bahodir Choriev, leader of the exiled opposition group Birdamlik (Solidarity), told EurasiaNet.org that thanks to such courses, “many young Uzbeks have little idea what political opposition is about.” Choriev fled to the United States in 2004 when Uzbek prosecutors charged him with fraud. He says the charges were designed to silence him.

With classroom discussions observed and controlled, authorities have turned their attention to other areas they deem vulnerable to infiltration by pop culture. Hundreds of webpages are blocked and video games are regularly lambasted on state television as “poison.”

Last January, the Ministry of Higher and Specialized Secondary Education – responsible for students aged 16 and above, and not to be confused with the Ministry of Public Education – introduced a 23-page behaviour code obliging students to abstain from criticising school authorities, eschew flashy clothes, and avoid cultural events (including rock concerts) that are deemed alien to Uzbek national values. The code also encourages students to report unsanctioned religious activity.

Fund Forum, a charity run by Karimov’s jet-setting daughter Gulnara Karimova, is reportedly spearheading the efforts. According to its website, the organisation is funding activities “promoting development of national online content and expanding use of the Uzbek language on the Internet.” Several Tashkent-based observers, including some government officials, believe the Ministry of Culture is following Karimova’s directions.

Critics scoff at the idea that Karimova can serve as an effective publicist for Uzbek values. In recent years, Karimova has adopted a bewildering variety of personas, including that of fashionista and music diva (using her stage name Googoosha). To her critics, these various identities are associated with Western decadence, not modesty.

“Gulnara has complete disregard for Uzbek cultural values; she is all over Uzbek media with her gaudy music videos, she shows up in mosques in skimpy dresses,” said Shahida Tulaganova, an Uzbek journalist based in London, referring to a provocative music video Karimova released in September.

“How can she be a role model for millions of Uzbek youngsters when she has little regard for things (many) Uzbeks view as sacred?”

Education officials, tasked with implementing the new rules in small towns and villages, have quickly discovered how unpopular the ideological directives are. Internet café owners complain the “teacher raids” are bad for business. And parents have reportedly been angered by punishments imposed on students for wearing clothing deemed inappropriate.

Given the level of popular distaste for the government directives on youth behaviour, teachers in many cases are quietly looking the other way when it comes to enforcement, said Dilnoza, a student of Uzbek literature in Tashkent.

“They often delegate the task of monitoring students to Internet café employees,” Dilnoza said.

The vice principal in Ferghana said few, if any, students report suspicious activities. He added that forcing poorly paid teachers to police student behavior outside of classrooms is having unintended consequences.

“Teachers’ salaries are very low. As a result, there are many cases of teachers extorting bribes … for better grades,” he said. Teachers have also been accused of seeking payoffs for not inventing moral infractions. “Students’ moral upbringing is something parents must deal with,” the vice principal added.

Authorities in Tashkent are aware their ideological injunctions are routinely flouted. Parliament is now preparing a new law – “On protection of youth from subversive ideologies and aggressive information” – that is expected to stiffen punishment for non-compliance with ideological directives.

For the vice principal, this just shows how out-of-touch central authorities are. He complains that rather than ensure compliance, state inspectors spend much of their time extorting bribes from school directors and teachers.

“Tashkent needs to get input from various segments of society before devising new policies. Otherwise, they will not be implemented,” he said.

*This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

Uzbekistan is facing a public health time bomb, experts are warning. Authorities contend they are making gains in the battle to contain the spread of HIV/AIDS, but independent specialists say such claims are built on twisted figures and deceptive methodology.

At a late-November speech to mark World AIDS Day, the director of Uzbekistan’s National AIDS Centre, Nurmat Atabekov, said Tashkent is making progress in its fight against HIV/AIDS and that the number of new infections in the country is falling, local media reported.

In 2011, Atabekov said, Uzbekistan saw an 11-percent decline in the number of new infections compared with the previous year; that followed a 5.5 percent decline in 2010. This year, the country should see another drop. The total number of infected people continues to rise – to 24,539 as of Nov. 1 – but the number of new infections per year peaked in 2009, he said.

“We now test over two million people a year and the rate of occurrence (this year) is 0.19 cases per 100,000 people,” Atabekov said. “For comparison, it was 0.43 in 2008.”

That sounds like very good news. But independent experts say Atabekov and his office came up with the rosy numbers by design. Of course, it would not be the first time an Uzbek official has massaged statistics. Since the Soviet days when Uzbek planners reported inflated cotton harvests to Moscow, Tashkent has often distributed misleading numbers.

The U.S. State Department regularly cautions that Uzbek government statistics on everything from economic growth to domestic violence are “not consistently reliable”. In some cases, authorities go to great lengths to conceal facts. For example, from 2007-10, officials tried to cover up a hospital scandal involving the spread of HIV that left 147 children infected in the eastern city of Namangan.

EurasiaNet.org tried to follow up with Atabekov, but he would not take our calls and his staff would not share a copy of his presentation. But his deputy, Gulyam Radjabov, did speak with us briefly and confirmed that though Uzbekistan is testing more people each year, “less and less cases of infected people are being found.”

The key to the decrease, on paper, seems not to be that two million people were screened last year (out of a population of roughly 30 million), but rather who was screened. Several HIV experts familiar with Uzbekistan said the infection rate is dropping because officials are testing people who are at low risk of contracting the virus.

For example, the number of Uzbeks tested has more than doubled since 2009, when HIV testing for pregnant women became mandatory. Couples require a test to obtain a marriage certificate, too. While that is a good practice, HIV experts say, these are low-risk populations and screening them allows Tashkent to trumpet a drop in the overall infection rate.

But are vulnerable groups – specifically injecting drug users and gay men – getting tested? Experts worry that official statistics underestimate the absolute number of infections by as much as a factor of three because Uzbekistan’s conservative society (where homosexuality is illegal) stigmatises these most vulnerable populations, and thus they eschew testing.

Getting HIV data for Uzbekistan is a chore. UNAIDS does not publish basic epidemiological statistics for the country, and the World Health Organization’s latest online data for Uzbekistan, which is full of holes, was published in 2008.

Because of the sensitivity of the issue in Uzbekistan – where most western NGOs have been forced to close by the government, foreigners are routinely denied visas, and a local activist was jailed in 2009 for passing out literature on how to prevent HIV – knowledgeable regional experts would speak only on the strictest terms of anonymity.

Several suggested that authorities are deliberately hiding new infections in order to report numbers that will burnish Uzbekistan’s image. Just a few years ago new infection rates were exploding. Between 2001 and 2005, when international organisations were helping to introduce testing, annual newly registered cases grew by 300 percent.

Atabekov pointed to migrant workers as a particular problem. On this point, experts concur. An estimated three million Uzbeks work in Russia, where the virus is out of control. As in Uzbekistan, social stigma among high-risk populations in Russia discourages testing.

Migrants traveling to Russia from Uzbekistan routinely pay for sex (one 2009 study found 93 percent had) and show little knowledge of how to prevent HIV. In 2010, the Central Asia AIDS Control Project found that only 12.9 percent of Uzbek migrants knew that a condom could prevent the virus. Men seem to be traveling to Russia, picking up HIV from prostitutes, and later passing the virus onto their wives at home.

But there the consensus ends. A Western HIV expert with years of Central Asia experience flagged two additional concerns with the Uzbek National AIDS Center’s statistics.

For one, tests are coming back with false negatives, she said, because samples are not properly refrigerated, especially in rural areas.

If sending HIV-positive people back into the population convinced they are not carriers is not worrying enough, the expert expressed concern that officials deliberately fix infection numbers to show a decline: “The government is artificially keeping (low) the rate of infections by freezing the blood at the point when the (nationwide) infection level reaches a certain (quota) and testing that blood the following year. So if you look at the statistics for each year, most of the infections will be recorded in the first quarter. And the show goes on,” she said.

*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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

The recent travails in Uzbekistan of Russian cellphone giant MTS – hit by employee arrests and a three-month suspension – highlight the perils for foreigners of doing business in Central Asia’s most populous country.

Although Tashkent tries to project an investor-friendly image, experts say pervasive corruption makes it difficult, if not impossible for most foreign entities to enjoy a stable operating environment.

Tashkent suspended the operations of Uzdunrobita, MTS’s Uzbekistan arm, on Jul. 17 for 10 working days, accusing it of using equipment illegally. On Jul. 30, the suspension was extended for three months. Tashkent has also accused MTS representatives of engaging in criminal activity, including evading 1.3 million dollars in taxes and violating Uzbekistan’s Byzantine currency regulations.

Five managers – including Russian citizen Radik Dautov, who was appointed Uzdunrobita’s acting head after director Bekzod Akhmedov fled Uzbekistan – are under arrest. On Jul. 25, Russian officials said they had voiced their “concern” to Tashkent about Dautov’s detention. Six days later, Moscow urged a resolution to an “ever more acute” dispute.

MTS (owned by Russian oligarch Vladimir Yevtushenkov) denies being in breach of the law and is fighting back, condemning “the use of the tactic of intimidation and arrest of Uzdunrobita staff”, and assailing the “ungrounded attacks on a Russian investor’s business”.

The shutdown sparked an exodus of its 9.5 million clients to rivals amid frenzied speculation about the future of Uzdunrobita, which had a 40-percent share of the cellphone market among Uzbekistan’s 29.5-million population.

Observers doubt that a dispute over equipment is really at the root of MTS’s troubles in Uzbekistan. General malaise amid the smoke-and-mirrors nature of Uzbekistan’s economy is fueling such scepticism, as are recent case histories, particularly the rapid demise of the conglomerate Zeromax.

Analysts believe that the most lucrative business opportunities in the country are controlled by a coterie of movers and shakers close to President Islam Karimov, key among them Gulnara Karimova, the president’s daughter whose worth was estimated at 570 million dollars by the German magazine Der Spiegel in 2010.

“Commercial interests are closely tied with political elite in Uzbekistan, although often direct ownership of businesses is hard to trace,” Lilit Gevorgyan, regional analyst at IHS Global Insight, told EurasiaNet.org in e-mailed remarks.

“For those entering the Uzbek market, it is pretty clear that without the continuous endorsement of a very narrow political elite led by President Islam Karimov carrying out business in Uzbekistan bears high risks.”

Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables have detailed the sway of the well-connected over Uzbekistan’s economy. One 2008 cable memorably described the rush for assets as “a fairly brazen, at times seemingly desperate grab by (Uzbekistan’s) elites for portions of the Uzbek economic pie”.

It also spoke of “a steady drumbeat of complaints from foreign investors” – and four years on, the list of disappointed investors continues to grow, encompassing Western, Turkish, and Asian firms, as well as Russian ones like MTS.

The case of UK-based company Oxus Gold illustrates the risks faced by bold investors venturing into Uzbekistan’s high-stakes economy. Following sustained pressure (including the imprisonment of a company metallurgist for 12 years on espionage charges), Oxus agreed to sell its 50-percent stake in the Amantaytau Goldfields mining operation to its Uzbek partners last year – but its troubles did not end there.

Oxus accused the buyers of understating the value of its share and remains locked in litigation, seeking 400 million dollars at international arbitration over what company lawyer Robert Amsterdam has bitterly described as “an ongoing campaign to fabricate a reason to steal the last foreign assets in the mining industry in Uzbekistan”.

Turkish-owned businesses have also come to grief. The once popular Demir supermarket in downtown Tashkent stands shuttered after its owners quit Uzbekistan amid disagreements with authorities; investors in another Tashkent store, Turkuaz, fared worse: one is serving a three-year jail sentence on tax evasion charges, seven other Turks were convicted on the charge, but deported, and Turkuaz (renamed Toshkent) is doing a roaring trade under Uzbek management.

The list goes on: Indian textile firm Spentex Industries this spring lodged a 100-million-dollar compensation claim with Tashkent after “bankruptcy was thrust upon it;” Denmark’s Carlsberg suspended operations this year over what it described as a “shortage of raw materials”.

In this toxic investment environment, Tashkent launched a privatization drive in May, with 497 assets in sectors including energy, metallurgy, agriculture and industry up for grabs.

According to official statistics, growth is robust: the Asian Development Bank says Uzbekistan’s economy grew by 8.3 percent in 2011 and forecasts 8-percent growth this year. Nevertheless, without cast-iron guarantees investors are likely to be leery of stumping up cash.

Tashkent says entrepreneurs’ rights are secured by legislation, which includes guarantees against confiscation without compensation. A presidential decree issued on Jul. 16 also aims to ease the regulatory environment by simplifying often baffling red tape, mainly concerning tax and licensing procedures. Nevertheless, businessmen privately complain that in Uzbekistan laws are at best applied unevenly.

The country fares poorly in international rankings, languishing near the bottom of the World Bank’s Doing Business 2012 report (166th out of 183 states) and Transparency International’s 2011 corruption ranking (177th out of 182).

Uzbekistan’s business environment has even hit Washington’s foreign policy agenda: the United States has urged Tashkent to address “pervasive corruption issues”, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake said on Jul. 24, and simplify “restrictive currency conversion laws”.

Another defining feature of Uzbekistan’s economy is the thriving black market, where a dollar fetches a third more than the official rate of around 1,900 Uzbek soms.

Against this troubled background, “the MTS case will only add to Uzbekistan’s already tainted investment destination image,” Gevorgyan said. “For now, the protection of business rights remains weak and there are no high expectations that Karimov is going to bring positive changes any time soon.”

*Editor’s note: Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specialises in Central Asia.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.