Central Asia

Many people have already written some great comments on former President Bhutto’s assassination.  Here are the links to what I think are the quality discussions:

The New York Times has a feature story, plus Biographical Timeline on Ms. Bhutto, some of her own writing, and other details accessible on the linked page.

Peter Marton at My State Failure blog focusses upon the security question, and how to judge factional politics–and our inability to do so.

Joshua Foust at Registan.net has several great posts, one a rolling commentary as information came in yesterday, with great discussion, and the other a comment upon facile judgments of the events so far.

A list of possible suspects, including al-Qaeda, is discussed at Wired.  One of the things I most like about this post is that it doesn’t take any one group for granted.  Here is the U.S. we have been ready to believe almost any statement made about al-Qaeda if it links them to atrocities.  Okay, but that doesn’t mean they have done everything they claim to do.  That’s a matter of reputation, and it will take some intelligence gathering to ascertain the truth of the claim. 

Yesterday at the State Department, this official condolence for the Bhutto family, the people of Pakistan, and democratic process went out.  No one expects any salacious or ground-breaking news from the press release, but it sort of underscores that the U.S. message isn’t making any difference in the conduct of politics in Pakistan–at least, once that politics gets to the fundamentals. 

John CK Daly, a really good analyst on Former Soviet states and energy, has written a new article on the duality of Caspian oil negotiations, currently focused on the Kashagan field.

One duality is that of environmental concerns over energy extraction.  In April, Antoine Blua at RFE/RL reported Caspian seals dying in great numbers from unknown causes–an immune deficiency–that may be related to oil exploration/water quality issues.  Caspian sturgeon have been in some jeopardy from water quality and overfishing.  The sturgeon represent an industry in themselves–and if decimated add to the overall reliance on oil and gas for income for Caspian states.  This can feed continued abuse of the environment–and continued economic downturn despite the riches of oil.

It’s up to the state and its regulating bodies to oversee environmental conditions within its territory.  This doesn’t always work so well, and the Caspian can be used as a hypothetical example.  What if state A makes money on extraction, and states B,C, and D, are left with the mess?  It is for this reason that the Caspian is regulated in condominium for environmental issues.

But what if the state uses environmental regulation for a purpose other than the environment?  That’s what happened earlier this year, with the Sakhalin fields in Russia, where Royal Dutch Shell and partners lost a hefty part of their production share for environmental reasons–and the new environmental incursions have been worse.   The question of environment becomes somewhat lost in the shuffle for the goods.

Every side has a point or two to make–and all of them are good ones.

I ran across this article on the Motley Fool’s philanthropy site.  Here is the first sentence:

Across the world, a profound disaster is unfolding: Over the next 10 years, 1 billion young people in developing countries will be competing for about 300 million jobs.

Okay, so these are the choices: create businesses, hire people, or expect them to figure out an illicit business, or, expect them to starve.  Or, we could teach the next generation of entrepreneurs.  That is foolanthropy’s goal, and Mercy Corps has been granted money from foolanthropy to work in Kyrgyzstan.  According to a Mercy Corps press release, the program pairs high-school graduates with craftsmen such as metal-workers in order to teach skilled labor.   There is also a second program which concentrates upon fruit tree development on a community0wide basis in the Ferghana Valley.  A third program uses microfinance to help entrepreneurs develop businesses and jobs.

Further reading:
Mercy Corp’s report on their Ferghana Valley projects 

Last week, on December 16, Kyrgyzstani voters went to the polls for legislative elections.  Those who have been following the politics in Kyrgyzstan this year will be unsurprised–but perhaps unhappy–to learn that the OSCE had harsh words about the election.  Ferghana.ru reports on the OSCE report card, where officials are calling it a “missed opportunity”.  (Complete text of the OSCE press release is up on the OSCE site. )Instead of a diverse planting of ideas and leadership, Kyrgyzstan’s legislature wiill have a monocultural growth–a kind of political desert for ideas and institutions.  This can’t be good.

Daniel Shershen of Eurasianet reports that of the 90 seats in the legislature, 76 went to the Ak Zhol party, the political party that President Bakiev (illegally) endorsed in public the week before.  Voters who went to the polls expecting to vote found their names purged from voter lists. 

The opposition party, gained 14 seats, but did not gain clear enough advantage to hang on to all of those seats according to Parliamentary rules.  It’s another sign of the shortfalls of Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 Tulip Revolution.

New Kyrgyzstan Political Resource: 
Eurasianet has a great, absolutely easy-to-study and thought-provoking special series on Kyrgyzstan’s post-Tulip reforms, new directions, and possible solutions, with local accounts, video, and photos. 

Photo: uberreview.com 

According to Interfax, Tajikistan’s big hydropower plant in work, is delayed again.  This time: no concrete deliveries.  Therefore, the plant–scheduled for its ribbon-cutting ceremony on December 21 or 22–is delayed until “late December or early January”.

Excerpt No. 1: Power to the People

 Tajikistan is rich in hydro resources, however, it lacks 3 - 3.5 billion kilowatts of electricity in winter time. Last winter blackouts occurred even in Dushanbe, as well as rural areas, where about 75% of Tajik of the population lives. There were no electricity deliveries in Tajikistan from last October to this March.

Excerpt No 2: Potential power to the state
We can only hope, for the good of South and Central Asia, that President Rakhmon’s aspirations come true.  The potential is realistically there, if they can just get this plant to operate.  Not to mention that power supply is necessary to develop the economy in general, the power can be exported:

Tajikistan plans to be the largest electricity exporter in Central Asia. Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan have already stated they are ready to buy cheap electricity generated at Tajik hydropower plants.

Concrete and World Markets
However, the reason for a lack of cement for this project are very real.  One of Tajikistan’s neighbors–that would be China– currently dominates the demand for Portland cement and specialty cements–in 2005, a 199 billion Yen market, according to the abstract of a Freedonia paper, and a growth rate in demand at 5.1% per annum across the types of concrete available.  By 2010, China will represent 36% of the demand for concrete.    That is, if they don’t already.

Dreams are abstract: it’s tough to make them concrete. 

Further Reading: from this blog
Kyrgyzstan’s Hydropower Dilemmas  and Hydropower Opportunities

Over 2006 and 2007, Senlis, a European-based think tank with offices in Ottawa, Kandahar, and Lashkar Gul, has been documenting aid progress in Afghanistan–and saying that it’s been inadequate.  In a November 2007 report, the report stated:

The depressing conclusion is that, despite the vast injections of international capital flowing into the country, and a universal desire to ‘succeed’ in Afghanistan, the state is once again in serious danger of falling into the hands of the Taliban.  Where implemented, international development and reconstruction efforts have been underfunded and failed to have a significant impact on local communities’ living conditions, or improve attitudes towards the Afghan Government and the international community.

The report goes through the mission-numbing restrictions of several states, the troop withdrawals both extant and upcoming, and concludes that (rightly) more troops are needed in order to accomplish security.  They report that the U.S. has 36% of the troops in Afghanistan and is one of the six states which gives their ISAF troops some operational mobility.  However, according to some formula they have worked out, the U.S. is actually contributing the least ratio of troops–by GDP per capita.  I guess they can use that as the denominator if they want to, but it wouldn’t have been my choice.  Using this method means that France would have to send over 4,000 more troops and the U.S. close to 17,000.  (p.59)  They also recommend more soldierly participation by Muslim states. 

International Aid
Furthermore, the Taliban are winning the grass-roots efforts on the ground, which means that more aid money is needed.  Now this is a number that I might tie to GDP–and on p. 73 of the report, there is an interesting bar graph that shows Afghanistan receiving less money per capita for aid then Timor-L’Este, Bosnia-Herzegovina, or Sierra Leone.  And of the aid pledged by donor countries, about USD 20 million, only 8 million has actually been expended. (p. 75).   Currently Afghanistan is number 174 out of 178 in the Human Development Index.

The next bar graph shows the way that military spending outweighs aid assistance, with a distinct disproportionality in U.S. spending.  (p.  76).  However, this graph does not take into account the coordination-of-effort/free rider problem–that the U.S. may be paying the bills on joint operations.  It is also not clear if some of the military spending is actually spent on community development, such as the impromptu health clinics, et cetera, which have been reported here or elsewhere.  Nevertheless, the point is well made–that something beyond the guns is required in order to set security.

On December 14, Canada’s went on the offensive after a new installment of the reports evaluated their contributions to Afghanistan aid efforts.  Three Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) officials– publicly contested the report findings–a head of the Afghanistan effort and an aid officer that has worked in Afghanistan.  Previously, CIDA officials had not made much comment on the Senlis reports.  Specifically, they said that Senlis was not portraying actual conditions, and that people in Afghanistan were getting a lot of food aid.  There may be a lot wrong with the Senlis report, but I don’t think there’s that much wrong with it.

Further Reading
Senlis, November 2007, Afghanistan on the Brink (pdf, 113 pages)

Photos: UK’s Ministry of Defence; graphics.cursor.com

Well, that clanking sound you’re hearing in the background: it’s the wheels of commerce in the dark.  John Helmer over at Asia Times has written a fascinating article on Tajikistan’s aluminum company, Talco and its relationship with Norway’s Hydro:

At current LME [London Metal Exchange] linked prices, the alumina is worth about $50 million; the metal is valued at $520 million. For the five years of Hydro’s agreement with Talco, Hydro’s turnover will be almost $3 billion. This makes aluminum Tajikistan’s biggest business and Norway one of Tajikistan’s most important trading partners.

It’s great to hear that Tajikistan has a commodity that could fund some serious domestic development, but, unfortunately, corruption and switched contracts are turning this potential cash cow into mincemeat.  Talco continues to default on loans and contracts, and Tajikistan has asked the international community to forgive the debts–with a USD 1.2 billion annual income, it’s kind of hard to see why Talco can’t pay.  

The EU is apparently paying a consultant to clean up management practices at Talco.  A number of international financiers involved in the business have U.S. ties, which means that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act can be invoked and the U.S. may join Norway in Talco investigations. 

Next year the Great Decisions series at the Foreign Policy Association will have a blog on Russia, which will complement Central Asia reporting here–we are going to press onward. 

For the purposes of Central Asia reporting though, it’s important to note that Russia’s electoral process sends messages to Central Asia as well and suggests the conduct of their elections, diplomacy and economy.  Therefore: it’s official.  Mr. Putin has endorsed Mr. Medvedev as a successor to his premiership.  He was nominated for candidacy by at least three pro-Kremlin parties today. 

Dmitri Anatolyevich Medvedev is Mr. Putin’s chief of staff and a chairman of Gazprom, among other appointments.  Elections are in March of next year.

With a title like this, I had to write in: they finally filmed a mammal in the Gobi desert that, okay, my fellow tree-huggers, is a really cute cross between a mouse and a rabbit: a long-eared jerboa.  BBC has pictures, a story, and a video.  It is also an endangered species.  We should look for new arguments about economic development versus habitat any day now.  And also we should be mindful of the money that comes into communities when people try to save endangered species as well.

Last aesthetic note: this would make one heck of an anime character.  Check it out!

Quick one: Since transparency continues to be an issue in Central Asia and elsewhere, I found this article of interest–and it uses the U.S. as an example, but the principles are perhaps universal.  Over at How Stuff Works: how to launder money. 

Now don’t go saying I told you what to do here!  :-)  The idea is to develop the street smarts on transparency issues. 

Further Reading:
Transparency International Home
TI’s Europe and Central Asia page
The Publish What You Pay coalition, an international effort for states and corporations