WELCOME TO IWPR'S REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA, No. 546, June 6, 2008 COPS AND ROBBERS IN TAJIKISTAN Showdown with alleged drug gang revives memories of civil war, but does not herald renewed violence. By Lola Olimova in Dushanbe
KYRGYZ CLEAN WATER PROJECT UNDER SCRUTINY Critics highlight flaws in major project to provide drinking water in rural areas, but public reluctance to pay for upkeep is part of the problem. By Elina Karakulova in Bishkek KAZAKS STRUGGLE WITH OIL AND FOOD PRICES Governments attempt to hold fuel prices down may be too little, too late. By Daur Dosybiev in Almaty **** IWPR RESOURCES ****************************************************************** FINAL CALL TO ENTER THE 2008 KURT SCHORK AWARDS IN INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM: http://iwpr.net/kurtschork.html Deadline for applications June 1. BIANNUAL REVIEW IWPR CENTRAL ASIA: Report available at: http://www.iwpr.net/?p=rca&s=f&o=344218&apc_state=henprca SAHAR JOURNALISTS ASSISTANCE FUND: IWPR has established a fund, in honour of Sahar al-Haideri, to support journalist participants in its training and reporting programmes around the world. The Sahar Journalists Assistance Fund will be used to support local journalists in cases of exile or disability, or to assist their families in case of death in service. To find out more or donate please go to: http://www.iwpr.net/sahar.html **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA RSS: http://www.iwpr.net/en/rca/rss.xml RECEIVE FROM IWPR: Readers are urged to subscribe to IWPR's full range of free electronic publications at: http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=henh&s=s&m=p GIVE TO IWPR: IWPR is wholly dependent upon grants and donations. For more information about how you can support IWPR go to: http://www.iwpr.net/donate.html **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** COPS AND ROBBERS IN TAJIKISTAN Showdown with alleged drug gang revives memories of civil war, but does not herald renewed violence. By Lola Olimova in Dushanbe This was no ordinary arrest the police officers sent in to capture Suhrob Langariev and his group of alleged drug smugglers in southern Tajikistan were armed to the teeth and backed up by armoured vehicles. They were right to come well-prepared for the May 27 operation, as the group of men holed up in Langarievs two-storey home in the city of Kulob (also known as Kulyab) proceeded to put up a ferocious ten-hour fight, which left one captain in the security service and two civilians dead. In the end, special forces managed to storm the building and arrest Langariev and eight others, including two Afghan nationals. Police seized an impressive arsenal of weaponry including Kalashnikov rifles, grenade launchers, satellite communications and radio equipment. The National Security Committee or GKNB, which led the operation, appeared to be well pleased with the outcome. In a statement issued the following day, it said Langariev was believed to head one of the organised crime networks in Tajikistan that ferry heroin over the nearby border from Afghanistan and dispatch it onwards to markets in Russia and beyond. His group consisted of both Tajik and Afghan nationals, it said. The capture of an alleged drug kingpin is a major coup in itself, in a country whose long, often inaccessible and poorly policed border with Afghanistan makes it an important transit route for heroin traffickers. Opium production in Afghanistan has seen substantial annual growth since the fall of the Taleban regime in 2001, and the heroin processed from it is shipped out via Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia. The lucrative trade both transit and some local distribution within Tajikistan has had a distorting effect on the economy of this impoverished country, not to mention the impact on health. However, analysts note that as well as being a success in the war against crime, the Kulob clash has political ramifications, with threads leading back to Tajikistans bloody civil war which lasted from 1992 to 1997. Langarievs brother, Langari Langariev, was a prominent commander in the Popular Front, a paramilitary group which brought the current president, Imomali Rahmon, to power. The Popular Front, like Rahmon and his political allies, was rooted in the Kulob region. The "Kulob faction's" main opponents in this highly regionalised conflict was the Islamic Rebirth Party, IRP, whose support base was strongest in the mountains of eastern Tajikistan. The Popular Fronts leader, Sangak Safarov, was killed in 1993. His son Nurmahmad Safarov, 22, was among the nine men arrested on May 27. The peace deal reached in 1997 brought about the demobilisation of the various armed groups on both sides of the conflict, leaving only the regular military. Since then, Rahmons administration has sporadically targeted and neutralised any remnant units that refused to disarm both those affiliated with the IRP and his own former Popular Front allies. In recent years, the scale and frequency of such confrontations has diminished. In February, men loyal to Mirzohoja Ahmadov, a former opposition guerrilla leader now serving in the local police in the mountain town of Garm, were involved in a shootout with another force of police who had apparently been dispatched from the capital to capture him. One of the commanders of the Dushanbe force was killed in the firefight. Murder Invokes Ghosts of Tajikistans Past, RCA No. 533, 20-Feb-08.) The same month, there was an incident in another remote mountain region, Badakhshan, when a former opposition commander, Mamadbokir Mamadbokirov, opened fire on a police station. There were no casualties, and Mamadbokirov and his men surrendered their weapons. In both these cases, the authorities seem to have decided not to mount a major follow-up operation Ahmadov and Mamadbokirov are still at large. The Kulob operation reflects a much tougher line, which some analysts say is because Langariev was seen as a greater threat to stability, due to his political heritage as well as his alleged role in drug-smuggling. Local people told IWPR that despite being on the wanted list since 2002, Langariev had lived quite openly in his home town, and even visited Dushanbe on several occasions. The Langarievs carried a lot of weight in Kulob, with two of Suhrobs brothers still serving as senior policemen, and the other decorated posthumously for his role as a Popular Front commander in the early stages of the war. Analysts say the decision to eliminate Suhrob Langarievs group shows that the Rahmon administration will not tolerate groups that challenge the state, even if they are former allies. Events in Kulob show that the state has increased its capacity and is quite determined to pursue to its conclusion its war against non-institutional centres of influence that seek to compete with it, political expert Rashid Abdullo told IWPR. The time of the field commanders is past. Those whove been unable to adapt to the new political realities have now got problems. Another analyst, Parviz Mullojanov believes the operation mounted against the Langariev group was conducted in a deliberately demonstrative and unusually public manner. He speculated that this show of force might reflect a period of political turbulence within the regime, involving rival political and regional elites. Yet he stressed that there was no real threat to the regime the authorities had survived much worse challenges over the years, and former paramilitary leaders no longer carry the clout they once had. Economist Hojimahmad Umarov argued that the location of the target in a former hotbed of political activity was significant. Most likely this was an act of intimidation against the people of Kulob, who have always been noted for being active, specifically for forming the core of the resistance against the armed opposition in the war, he said. Why worry about unrest in an area traditionally seen as so staunchly pro-government? Perhaps because, although it has produced many of the countrys political leaders over the last decade and a half, Kulob and the surrounding region have not benefited greatly as a whole, and remain chronically poor and underdeveloped. The living standards in the region are among the lowest in the country, and the divide between rich and poor is growing very fast, said Umarov. All this is aggravated by winter energy crises and unemployment. Tajikistan has been hit by multiple economic problems this year an exceptionally harsh winter led to severe electricity shortages, and the price of fuel and food imports has jumped because of world market conditions. As Abdullo pointed out with reference to the whole of the country rather than Kulob specifically the government cannot afford to have out-of-control factions around at a time when price rises and other economic factors make the public mood more uncertain than usual. At the same time, analysts and ordinary Tajiks argue hat confrontations like the one in Kulob are an echo of the past, not a warning of things to come. Abdullo pointed out that in the latest clash, like the one that took place in Garm in February, the population did not back those who were in conflict with the state. These days, people are more concerned about economic problems than political ones, he added. Sherali, a resident of Kulob, agreed that there was little public appetite for conflict. How much more fighting do they want? Enough of that lets work on the economy and raise living standards, he said. How are things now? In the winter, we survive with candles and wood stoves, like in the Middle Ages. Komil, also from Kulob and now living in the capital, says people from his region may be hotheads, but they would not support armed groups these days. Everybody remembers the grief they felt when their relatives died, he said. God preserve us from war. Lola Olimova is IWPRs editor in Tajikistan. KYRGYZ CLEAN WATER PROJECT UNDER SCRUTINY Critics highlight flaws in major project to provide drinking water in rural areas, but public reluctance to pay for upkeep is part of the problem. By Elina Karakulova in Bishkek A shortage of clean drinking water in Kyrgyzstan has been tackled with multimillion dollar funding in recent years, but critics say the results have at best been mixed. Much of the blame has been directed at the international donors who paid for a major programme to expand and repair water networks in the countryside. But an expert working on the Taza Suu or Clean Water programme said that most of the management problems had been fixed, and the big obstacle now was peoples reluctance to pay a small amount towards upkeep, so their supply system was liable to break down. The governments hygiene and disease department says at least 600,000 people out of a total population of five million have no access to clean drinking water, leading to a high incidence of diseases such as typhus and other gastric illnesses. Unofficial estimates put the figure much higher at close to half the population, overwhelmingly in rural areas where nine out of ten villagers do not have access to clean, properly treated water. The drinking water supply is satisfactory only in Bishkek, said Ularbek Mateev, an expert on water and energy issues. Outside the capital and in remote villages, people drink water right from the aryks. Aryks are traditional channels used for irrigation in Central Asia. Provision has deteriorated in the 17 years since the Soviet Union broke up due to a lack of investment by Kyrgyzstans cash-strapped government. In places where a mains water supply exists, the infrastructure has often deteriorated to an alarming extent, and there were also many areas that were never connected up in the first place. For example, people in Karakol, a town in northeastern Kyrgyzstan, have running water but cannot use it until they have allowed the clay and sand to settle and then boiled the water. In the southern town of Mailuusuu, people without a mains supply are at risk from subsoil water contaminated by radioactive waste from defunct uranium mines. Paradoxically, while arid, low-lying Central Asian states like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan face a perennial shortage of water, mountainous Kyrgyzstan has in theory at least an inexhaustible supply, with massive glaciers and countless rivers. AMBITIOUS PROJECTS, REDUCED EXPECTATIONS In 2001, the Kyrgyz government, in conjunction with foreign donors, launched two big projects to improve access to clean water with the common title Taza Suu (Clean Water). The Asian Development Bank, ADB, was the major funder of one of these projects, providing 36 million of the 45 million US dollar cost, to improve rural water infrastructure in four regions of Kyrgyzstan, while the World Bank and Britains Department for International Development provided 31 million dollars for the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project, covering the remaining three regions. After some delay, both projects are due to end by the end of this year. Both segments of the Taza Suu programme have had to lower their expectations, and the ADB-run project in particular has faced criticism from a local pressure group for the way it was run. Officials at the bank say significant concerns have already been addressed and other teething problems are being dealt with along the way. Although the initial plan was to supply about 1,000 villages with clean water under the two projects, this has had to be scaled back to half that number. According to Nurmamat Mulakeldiev, who heads the water supply department at the Kyrgyz agriculture ministry, this is because the rising cost of fuel and construction materials means the donor funding no longer stretches as far. Mulakeldievs department says just under a third of the approximately 1,700 villages in need of clean water have now been provided for, but there are about 1,200 left. Some of the remaining work will be covered by a second phase of both projects for which donors have allocated about 30 million dollars. Villages where sanitation is particularly and there is typhoid fever and other diseases caused by low-quality water will take part in the second tranche. They will be given priority, said Mulakeldiev. BANK REJECTS ALLEGATIONS The ADB-funded project covering Chui region in the north as well as the whole of the south - Osh, Jalalabad and Batken has come in for fierce criticism from a non-government organisations led by the Taza Tabigat (Clean Nature) group. Taza Tabigat monitored the way the project was implemented and says it found a string of blunders as well as outright abuses. Many villagers in the settlements covered by the project had to collect rainwater and carry water in buckets, Taza Tabigats head Anara Dautalieva told IWPR. Poor-standard, obsolete chlorination plants and toxic asbestos pipes forbidden by the international donors documentation were used within the project. In addition, she said, villagers were unaware of the nature of the project funding while the bulk of it was covered by a loan taken out by central government, five per cent of the costs had to be found by the local community that benefited from works in their area. When we told people how much their villages had to pay, they were surprised they had to pay for water of this quality, said Dautalieva. Dauletalieva says pressure from her group led the ADB to agree to conduct an investigation into allegations of fraud and corruption in the water project, and to restructure the financing to ensure the work was completed, and where necessary, re-do work that had already done. The ADB has not confirmed that an investigation is planned. Its Kyrgyzstan country director Lan Wu has said the bank is to spend an extra four million dollars on sorting out problems. Cholpon Mambetova, an project implementation officer with the ADBs Community-Based Infrastructure Services project, accepted that some of the installation of water infrastructure had been poorly executed and monitoring of the work had been inadequate. She attributed this to management issues in past years, but these had been addressed. She referred to the criminal cases launched against local contractors for Taza Suu following the ousting of President Askar Akaev in 2005. No senior government official has been prosecuted. The old team [in the agriculture ministry] performed poorly in that there were cases which prosecutors are now looking at, involving financial irregularity and allegations of corruption. The problem is that no ones been punished thats our flawed judicial system but all the facts were uncovered and the individuals concerned were identified, if not punished, she told IWPR. All these errors and miscalculations occurred under the previous team. But there is a new team thats now in its second year of work and is cooperating with us to try to resolve problems where these have arisen. Overall, said Mambetova, the project had been a success. Fortunately, its only in a small number of villages that the money wasnt used as it should have been, and we are now correcting the situation in these sub-projects, she said. In most villages, the project has been very successful there is water, residents are satisfied. VILLAGES MUST SHOULDER RESPONSIBILITY Persuading rural communities to pay for the upkeep of the water network was a real headache, she said. We come along and repair the system and hand it over, but people are unaccustomed to paying for it, so theyre unwilling to do so and dont pay. Two years later, the system breaks down again and they blame the ADB and the government. People refuse to understand that repairs have got to be paid for this isnt Soviet times, when everything was laid on for free. Mambetova argued that this failure by villages to maintain networks installed with ADB funding several years ago was often the real reason why problems had arisen and people were now complaining about the quality of work done under the Taza Suu project. She pointed out that the five soms a month around 14 US cents per person that villagers were being asked to pay for maintenance was hardly exorbitant. A bottle of vodka costs 40 soms, and male head of households often take that kind of money and drink it every day, she said. It was crucial to get communities to think about looking after their own water systems. The question of public participation, whether people are ready to take responsibility for maintaining these systems is a very serious one, she said. The government official overseeing the implementation of the project, Mulakeldiev, took a similar line, saying that water supply problems had been identified in only nine of the 500 villages that came under the Taza Suu project, and most of these problems were caused by peoples refusal to pay for the upkeep. Any system is going to break down if it isnt repaired, he said. Elina Karakulova is IWPRs chief editor for Reporting Central Asia, based in Bishkek. Gulnara Mambetalieva, an IWPR-trained journalist in Kyrgyzstan, contributed to this report. KAZAKS STRUGGLE WITH OIL AND FOOD PRICES Governments attempt to hold fuel prices down may be too little, too late. By Daur Dosybiev in Almaty A new ban on exports of petroleum products is designed to stabilise the domestic economy, struggling with inflation across the board and especially with soaring food prices. However, analysts say the measure may not be enough to bring down the cost of fuel. The global economy has suffered a double blow from rising prices of oil and food. In theory, Kazakstan should be in a position to benefit as it is a major exporter of both crude oil and wheat, and has an opportunity to earn higher revenues from both. However, domestic consumers have nevertheless been hit because Kazak producers responded to strong global oil prices by exporting 50 per cent more petrol and fuel in January-March than in the same period last year. They may also have been encouraged to export more of the refined product because the government had announced a higher customs duty on crude exports, effective from May 17. As Kazak-produced fuel became less freely available on the domestic market, prices shot up correspondingly. This came at a time when fuel prices were set to rise anyway because of the demand created by agricultural users in the spring sowing season. Petrol now costs 90 tenge (75 US cents) a litre for the popular 92-octane variety, while diesel is about 130 tenge a litre. The fuel price rises have had an inflationary effect on food prices as farmers pay more for fuel and factor this into their wholesale prices. Coupled with smaller price rises in other areas, some analysts are predicting that year-on-year inflation for 2008 will top 25 per cent, compared with the 18 per cent recorded last year. Although opposition parties have attacked the authorities over the deteriorating economic outlook and the impact this will have on living standards, there is little the government can do about external factors. It has, however, taken steps in areas where it exercises some control. To build up wheat stocks at home, it halted grain exports in April, and these are expected to resume only in September. Then, on May 19, Prime Minister Karim Masimov ordered a halt to exports of petroleum products, once again lasting until September. This should freeze the growth in prices, he told members of a government economic commission. Sauat Mynbaev, Kazakstans minister of energy and mineral resources, added, There are large export volumes both formal and informal - and we have to react because of the price rises on the domestic market. By informal exports, the minister meant the lucrative business of smuggling oil products out of the country. Companies at the smaller end of the fuel retail market expressed concern about the price rises at a press conference in Almaty on May 19. Sultan Ushbaev, the head of Nar Oil, warned that the wholesale costs in agriculture including bread prices might rise by at least 35 per cent as a result. Analysts interviewed by IWPR were not critical of Masimovs fuel export ban, but warned that other factors might dilute its impact. Political analyst Oleg Sidorov said the ban was an appropriate measure, but needed to be complemented by formal price regulation at home, conducted via the state-owned oil and gas production and distribution company, KazMunayGaz. An instruction should go out to the leading player that regulates fuel and lubricant prices, by which I mean KazMunayGaz, he said. If it holds petrol and diesel prices below 80 or 90 tenge a litre, all the other [retailers] will have to reduce prices. Sidorov predicted that cutting export levels would prove more complex than Masimovs blanket ban suggested. Many fuel export firms have already committed themselves to contracts with foreign partners, and cannot simply renege on these obligations. Add to this the volumes of fuel that continue to exported illegally, and the ban is likely to result in no change, or insignificant change to domestic availability and prices, Sidorov said. Eduard Poletaev, chief editor of the Mir Yevrazii news magazine, agreed that smuggling was a well-established industry and was unlikely to be checked at a time when it was particularly profitable. One way or another, crude oil and petroleums products are going to leak out of the country at more profitable prices. No ones going to abandon this lucrative flow, he said. We have long borders, corruption is rife and its easy to get oil products out at profitable prices. There are plenty of loopholes. Gulnur Rahmatullina, head of economic research at the Institute for Strategic Studies, welcomed Masimovs decision but said the limited availability of refined fuel should have been addressed much earlier, when the economic climate was better. Theres been a period of stability since the late Nineties, and Kazakstans three refineries should have used it to gear up for high-quality petrol production, she said. Firefighting measures were not enough, she said, adding, We need to invest in the refining industry, not just in extracting crude oil. The petrol crisis is now infecting other economic sectors. The three refineries in Atyrau, Pavlodar and Shymkent are still unable to meet domestic demand and export requirements, which explains why Kazakstan still imports a quarter of the fuel and lubricants it consumes from Russia, where these items cost more. Among ordinary citizens of Kazakstan, there is some resentment at the perception that the authorities did not do more to avert the pricing crisis. For some reason, the government always reacts too late, said Murat, a taxi driver in Almaty. Its as if nobody knew that consumption would peak in spring and the price of oil products would go up sharply. Daur Dosybiev is an IWPR contributor in Almaty. **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA provides the international community with a unique insiders' perspective on the region. Using our network of local journalists, the service publishes news and analysis from across Central Asia on a weekly basis. The service forms part of IWPR's Central Asia Project based in Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent and London, which supports media development and encourages better local and international understanding of the region. IWPR's Reporting Central Asia is supported by the UK Community Fund. The service is published online in English and Russian. The opinions expressed in Reporting Central Asia are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR. 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