Expert Analysis

“Bringing in Palestine Investment Fund chief Mohammed Mustafa and pushing out the current prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh is the rearranging of the deck chairs on the Palestinian Titanic. Both men are part of the problem. They are both cronies of Mahmoud Abbas. Neither figure has the power or will to reform the PA. This is not a serious effort to bring better governance to the West Bank, let alone Gaza. The United States must demand more.” — Jonathan Schanzer, FDD Senior Vice President for Research
“The PA has become largely irrelevant and desperately needs to be reformed. Palestinians overwhelmingly reject the authority’s corruption and repression. Replacing one Abbas loyalist with another is not the reform the Palestinians need.” — David May, FDD Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst

PA Failing to Reform

Washington has repeatedly said that a “revitalized” PA should govern Gaza after the war. However, concerns remain over the PA’s ability to govern an independent Palestinian state, especially one ruled in coordination with Hamas. Abbas, who is in the 20th year of a four-year term, has presided over a corrupt and ineffective government that has lost legitimacy among the Palestinian people. The PA also continues to provide controversial welfare payments for Palestinian terrorists or their surviving families, and allows Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups to operate in the West Bank without significant limitations.

In Search of Palestinian Unity

The West Bank-based terrorist organization Hamas dismissed Shtayyeh’s resignation and said that it “only makes sense if it comes within the context of national consensus arrangements for the next phase.” Hamas is expected to participate in talks with other Palestinian factions in Moscow from February 29 through March 2. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Special Envoy for the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov invited as many as 14 Palestinian groups, including Fatah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, from various Middle Eastern countries to participate.

The post Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Resigns appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

In Tajikistan, over 20% of the population lives in poverty, and millions of citizens have emigrated to Russia to find work. Meanwhile, a feudal elite under President Emomali Rahmon has ravaged the country with corruption, nepotism, and massive drug smuggling of Afghan heroin to Russia and Europe.

Although Rahmon’s successor and son, Rustam Emomali, has been increasingly in the headlines, adopting a presidential look, his stiff and awkward appearance reveals a man seemingly afraid of his shadow. Sources inside the country’s security apparatus report that he is in conflict with his powerful sisters, including Ozada, the head of the presidential office. Experts on Tajikistan in Russia and the West are surprisingly in agreement when it comes to assessing Rustam: He is not ready to assume his country’s leadership, but his greed is matched by his ruthless nature. This makes him a danger to his sisters as they and their supporters vie for control of drug smuggling corridors and lucrative sectors of the economy, such as mining.

President Rahmon sees no other option, in a patriarchal society, than to name his playboy son, enamored by fast cars and football, as his successor. Experts expect the appointment of Rustam to be made sometime this year. A former Russian intelligence officer with knowledge of the regime dynamics noted, “Rustam is mocked by many Tajiks, who refer to him as “the mute” for his public shyness, and he has little credibility.”

The officer, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, noted that besides Rustam’s older sister, Ozada, the most qualified individual to assume the presidency is Rustam’s arch-enemy, Gen. Saymumin Yatimov, head of the country’s secret service, the GKNB. Yatimov is a seasoned diplomat and ruthless enforcer of Rahmon’s rule. The officer noted, “Yatimov is a crafty spy chief who knows where all the Rahmon family skeletons are buried, and for this Rustam sees him as a threat. It is not clear if Yatimov will allow Rustam to force him into retirement. There are indications that Yatimov will not go quietly.”

Regardless of who inherits the presidential office, they will face a dire economic situation. Skyrocketing food prices and shortages of medical aid are well-documented. To make matters worse, during Tajikistan’s harsh winters, there are frequent electrical power outages, leaving citizens to freeze in their unheated homes. Tajikistan’s best and brightest workers have emigrated in search of better lives, and vast numbers of manual laborers have sought work outside the country, taking jobs that ordinary Russians would prefer to leave to others.

Corruption, damn corruption! 

The country is stifled by cronyism and suffocating under elite corruption and state economic capture by a deep state. Every significant position in the government or industry is up for sale – from state prosecutor to banker, from high-ranking military officer to corporate executive. Failure to pay the Rahmon family, in particular Rustam, the required percentage of the proceeds of corruption or even from honestly earned revenue can result in losing one’s job, one’s company, or one’s life.

The kidnapping, torture, and execution of the well-known banker Shuhrat Ismatulloev of Orienbank is one case in point. Sources in Russia revealed that he had fallen out of favor with the Rahmon regime and was “disappeared” as a result. Ismatulloev was one of the regime’s most trusted money launderers and also cryptocurrency traders. He knew too much, according to a Russian source familiar with those arrested for his killing, noting, “This elite banker to The Family possibly wanted out from the sordid world of international crime and corruption, from laundering drug money, and from engaging in illicit high-value financial transactions with the sanctioned Iranian regime. But in Tajikistan, once you’re an insider you can never leave the elite club.”

With Russia’s economy growing and its military achieving new and impressive results on the Ukrainian battlefield, and China building ever-deeper ties with Central Asian states, expert observers are asking whether Tajikistan’s boat can be lifted as well. While other Central Asian states like Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan are strengthening their regional economic and political ties, the question remains whether the Rahmon regime’s pervasive corruption and brittle ruling system will leave Tajikistan behind, the poor stepchild of a thriving Central Asian family?

The post Mass Corruption Shaking Tajikistan appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Dushanbe 25/2 (35.71).

The social networking activity of “influencer” Ismoil Mahmadzoir is causing a stir within the country’s political and security corridors. His grandfather President Emomali Rahmon is planning his succession, which has triggered quiet maneuvering within elite factions, including Mahmadzoir’s relatives. Nobody is clear about how becomes the next president of Tajikistan. The daughters jockeying for the top job besides the grandson.

Video of a bland speech by Tajikistan’s long-time President Emomali Rahmon was posted late last month on Instagram by Buzkashi_1111, a handle created by Ismoil Mahmadzoir, the 25-year-old son of Firuza Emomali, one of the president’s daughters, who is the country’s No. 1 social media influencer with more than 1.3 million combined followers. His visibility on social media, however, has become a political liability.

The younger Rahmon posts often ostentatiously display his wealth, numerous feature videos showing huge piles of bank shrink-wrapped $100 bills, for example, to the exasperation of those in ruling circles. Flaunt it if you got it, seems the theme of the day.

Their fear is that Mahmadzoir’s flaunting of his lifestyle could cause a backlash among less privileged citizens at a time when different factions within Rahmon’s family and advisers are discreetly angling to gain an edge for their side in an unfolding battle to succeed him.

Although Mahmadzoir himself is not a contender to inherit the throne, the favorite is Rustam Emomali, the president’s eldest son, his close relatives are key powerbrokers in the opaque and treacherous succession process.

The U.K. connection

Mahmadzoir’s father, Mahmadzoir Sokhibov, is a construction magnate and top presidential adviser, including on the all-important topic of allocating business concessions to the well-connected. Mahmadzoir’s uncle, is UK-based Shamsullo Sokhibov, head of business conglomerate Faroz and husband of another of Rahmon’s daughters, Rukhshona Emomali.

Both brothers are well-connected to powerful security officials at the ministry of internal affairs and at the State Committee for National Security (SCNS), the national intelligence agency that is known in Russian as the GKNB.

Both Sokhibov brothers are keeping a close eye on the succession process, as is Hasan Asadullozoda, Rahmon’s brother-in-law and owner of one of Tajikistan’s main banks, Orienbank, which oversees major investments in the country. Earlier this year, according to our sources, Asadullozoda began looking for ways to move his capital from Tajikistan, including to the United States.

My Best Friend in Dubai!

To build his brand as a social media influencer, Mahmadzoir posts on Facebook, TikTok and five Instagram accounts. Post by Ismoil8, his handle at the account with the largest following, plays up his standing as a trendy fashionista, his role as president of the national Judo Federation of Tajikistan, and his frolics in Dubai. Managing a company called IM Group, he is frequently seen with his friend Osama Ahmed Abdullah Al Shafar, who holds a seat on the UAE’s 40-member Federal National Council, which helps prepare all proposed legislation in the monarchy.

Al Shafar, a former president of the UAE Cycling Federation, is a member of the management committee at the Swiss-based Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). Al Shafar is also active on Instagram, where he mentioned his “dear friend” Igor Makarov, a billionaire Russian-Turkmen energy magnate, president of Areti International Group and energy adviser to former Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov (IO, 26/04/22). The United Kingdom has hit Makarov with financial sanctions and travel bans over allegedly providing Moscow with important economic and strategic assistance. As a result, various national cycling federations have called for his expulsion from the UCI, where he is also a management committee member.

Photo: On his various social media accounts, Ismoil Mahmadzoir shows himself with his grandfather, Tajik’s President, but also with $100 bills, in Dubai, and in his role as judo federation president. © ismoil8/Instagram – rayison_tj/Instagram – @ismoilim8/Twitter

The post Social media posts by Tajik president’s grandson unsettle ruling circles as leadership succession looms appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Reflecting on the Soviet Union’s collapse 32 years ago and attempting to draw any sort of conclusion is often a matter of perspective. In his new book, “Moscow’s Heavy Shadow: The Violent Collapse of the USSR,” Dr. Isaac McKean Scarborough, an assistant professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Leiden University, writes of the collapse from one of the Soviet Union’s most distant peripheries — Dushanbe. In doing so, he highlights a perspective not often taken into account in Western understanding of the collapse, charting how Moscow’s reforms — glasnost and perestroika — played out in the far-flung Tajik context and ultimately resulted in rapid change, economic collapse, and violence, as they did elsewhere.

But the violence did not end with the collapse in Tajikistan. As Scarborough told The Diplomat’s Catherine Putz, “In Tajikistan, moreover, this collapse was made longer and more visceral by the civil war that followed, and I think we need to keep in mind that for the majority of the citizens of Tajikistan, there is no clear line between the two. The collapse of the USSR became the civil war; one moved smoothly and quickly into the other.”

In the following interview, Scarborough explains the state of affairs in Soviet Tajikistan in the years leading up to the collapse, discusses the effects of reforms on the Tajik economy, the republican government’s reliance on and loyalty to Moscow, and how Tajikistan continues to wrestle with the unresolved tensions of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Your book “Moscow’s Heavy Shadow: The Violent Collapse of the USSR” focuses on the collapse of the USSR from one of its most distant peripheries: Soviet Tajikistan. In this corner of the Soviet Union in 1985 as Moscow was starting to push reforms you note that  “Tajikistani politicians and average citizens alike” viewed the Soviet economic and political system with a “modicum of satisfaction.” For readers who may be surprised by that assessment, can you explain what you mean?

I think there is a general feeling in the West that life in the USSR was fundamentally bad – poor, dirty, devoid of modern amenities – and that most Soviet citizens essentially wished for the Soviet system to collapse. But this really wasn’t the case. Although significantly falling behind European or American standards of living, life in most parts of the USSR was in fact quite decent by the 1970s and 1980s. As the economic historian Robert Allen has shown, for example, if compared to almost any country outside of Europe or the “West,” the economic outcomes achieved by Soviet citizens in this period are amongst the world’s best. Dissatisfaction, then, was driven not by actual economic degradation – but rather by the sense that life was no longer improving by the late 1970s in ways that it previously had.  And in Moscow, or Leningrad, or perhaps Kiev, this was true: Soviet economic life had reached a certain plateau, beyond which the state seemed unable to provide much more in terms of goods, or services, or basic entertainment.

For people in Tajikistan, however, this saturation point had not yet been reached. Life into the mid-1980s was continuing to improve, and the basic amenities of life, such as refrigerators, or cars, or air conditioning units, or children’s theaters, were still spreading and providing tangible and real improvements to standards of living. There were, of course, endemic problems – from the lack of housing available in cities to the cotton monoculture retarding economic growth to Tajikistan’s pitifully low standing in the USSR – but there was no denying that life was all the same getting better, year after year. And this, I think, is what drove the general sense of sanguinity: it wasn’t that things couldn’t have been better – they certainly could have been – but that as it was, the system worked, and there was no obvious reason to change it.

How were Gorbachev’s reforms — glasnost and perestroika — carried out in Tajikistan? What were some of the initial economic and political consequences of the reforms?

One key distinction that should be made between “perestroika” and “glasnost” is that these were legally quite different processes, although in retrospect we tend to clump the two together. Perestroika, in the sense of economic reforms meant to restructure the Soviet Union’s enterprises and consumer sector, was made up of a series of laws that changed the rules governing state-owned production and private enterprises. Glasnost, on the other hand, constituted a more amorphous series of changes – legal amendments changing the legislative system in Moscow, but also informal directives and administrative shifts in policy and tone that were aimed at fomenting criticism of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and promoting social change. 

Perestroika’s legal backing meant that changes to production and enterprise activity were unavoidable, and the leadership of the Tajik SSR had no choice but to implement them across Tajikistan. Loyal to Moscow, they did so very thoroughly, which led to factories lowering production (to save roubles), private businesses being founded, and, by 1989, the initial signs of recession. 

With glasnost an administrative policy, however, there was much more room for local interpretation. Individuals like Kahhor Mahkamov, the leader of the Communist Party of Tajikistan in the late 1980s and a generally conservative figure, used this to their advantage, avoiding any criticism of the state and promoting their own candidates in the new electoral system. When change did occur in terms of political liberalization, it was often the result of direct intervention from Moscow: when Gorbachev’s advisor Aleksander Yakovlev visited Dushanbe in 1987 and caused a local Communist Party shakeup, for example, or when he later helped to push through Tajikistan’s Law on Language in 1989. But the overall situation in Tajikistan by 1989 and early 1990 was both paradoxical and confusing: on the one hand, perestroika’s reforms had led to economic change and even inflation and recession, while on the other the republican government was avoiding glasnost as much as possible and trying to pretend like life was continuing as before.  

In Chapter 5, you discuss the unexpected and bloody riots that took place in Dushanbe in February 1990 and remark that “the idea that the events could have been spontaneous or uncontrolled is frequently dismissed outright.” I see parallels to that in modern Tajikistan, and elsewhere in Central Asia. Why do you think it’s so difficult to digest the idea that a situation, or a series of cascading events, might not have some specific hand behind them?

There’s an understandable temptation, I think, both in Tajikistan and elsewhere (and in fact in the West, too), to find a simple and identifiable cause of political violence or negative political outcomes. And it’s always much simpler to point to particular “bad actors,” or “organizers,” or “outside forces” directing the actions of crowds, rather than to pick apart the motivations of the many people involved and the ways in which their actions came together to instigate violence. This also helps to avoid giving legitimacy to the motivations of those involved, which is emotionally easier – we don’t generally want to justify violence, or to ascribe violent motives to average citizens. So instead of considering how economic recession or the loss of jobs can lead to frustration, mass action, and ultimately violence in a collective way, we blame some unseen individuals. Someone lied to the rioters, someone misled them – they themselves are not to blame, nor do we have to deal with their actual motivations or frustrations.

Immediately after the February 1990 riots, this was the dominant discourse in Dushanbe about the riots: from all sides, politicians found it much simpler, emotionally preferable, and politically more useful to blame each other or outsiders than to ask the rioters why they had been on the square, or how the violence had begun. But by refusing to ask these questions, they unfortunately not only failed to undermine the roots of conflict, but in practice tipped the situation even closer to the edge.

Tajikistan’s Soviet leadership seemed to be in denial that the union was collapsing, but ultimately declared independence as did the other republics. What was the root of the Tajikistani leadership’s reluctance to let its connection to Moscow go? And in what ways did that shape the circumstances which gave rise to the civil war?

A number of years ago, Buri Karimov, the former head of Tajikistan’s State Planning Committee (Gosplan) was kind enough to grant me a long interview in Moscow. I asked him then how he had experienced the move to Russia in the early 1990s after his loss of political power during the February 1990 riots – to which he just shrugged. “We were already here every week,” he said, explaining that government work in Dushanbe essentially meant coordinating nearly everything through Moscow; there wasn’t much for him to adjust to afterwards.

I think this is very representative of how the leadership in Dushanbe viewed their positions of power: as an extension of Moscow’s. Because of the place of the Tajik economy in the Soviet Union as a provider of raw materials (primarily cotton, of course), the state relied even more than most republics on centrally organized financial flows. Institutionally, there was also a clear culture of deference to Moscow – much more than in other small Soviet republics, such as Lithuania, where the historian Saulius Grybkauskus, for example, has done important work demonstrating the local party’s independence and sense of local identity. But the Communist Party of Tajikistan and government leaders in Dushanbe could hardly conceive of operating outside of the Soviet remit – it just didn’t compute.

This didn’t change even after the collapse of the USSR, as the new president of Tajikistan, Rahmon Nabiev, continued to defer to Moscow and largely failed to develop important elements of statehood, including any semblance of a military. No one, in fact, seemed to have developed a clear notion of what the independent Tajikistani state should look like at that point – a muddled situation that created additional space for populist mobilization in the face of non-existent state capacity to oppose it.

In some ways, your book serves as a prologue for the Tajik Civil War — we see the advent of some of the major players and the roots of the conflict to come. How does the history as you’ve laid it out, contrast with the narrative in modern Tajikistan about the civil war?

Curiously enough, there is less of an active debate about the civil war in Tajikistan than might be expected, a few decades after it ended. During and immediately after the civil war in the mid-to-late 1990s, there were a number of memoirs/political treatises published by those involved in the war, which were often largely focused on blaming the opposing side for the war’s initiation and extremes. In the years after 2000, moreover, some very important work was done by Tajikistani scholars to delve into the structural and social causes of the war, and I would highlight the work of the historian Gholib Ghoibov and the journalist Nurali Davlat, upon which I draw extensively. For the most part, though, the narrative has gone fallow since then, leaving an incomplete discussion about the causes, start, and course of the war – but one that tends, in some ways similar to my own work, to situate the war in its immediate context of perestroika, reform, and Soviet collapse. Which exact factors – Gorbachev’s reforms, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the breakdown of political authority – then led to war are argued over to this day, but most people in Tajikistan, I think, would also associate the war with this period immediately prior. 

So in many ways where my work may differ, I think, is more with the established Western narratives of the Tajik Civil War. These tend to look for causes either in earlier history – for example, in the experiences of forced resettlement and larger socialization in Tajikistan’s south from the 1930s to the 1950s – or in the “particularities” of life in Tajikistan, from its relative religiosity to local norms of honor and masculinity. By returning to the historical and archival record of the years immediately before the civil war and first months of war itself, however, I found that these elements of unusualness were neither terribly present nor particularly helpful in terms of explaining politicians’ behavior or the reactions of the people who then participated in violence. As Ted Gurr has argued, it can be quite tempting to appeal to “aggressive instincts” or elements of otherness to explain one or another example of political violence, but in practice war is largely the result of human commonalities across time and geography.  In the case of the Tajik Civil War, I found that the common experience of Soviet collapse and populist mobilization led to violence – in fact as it did in many other parts of the former USSR. I’m hopeful that this is a story that will resonate with people in Tajikistan, who know far better than I the cost of this violence.

How can this history help us understand modern Tajikistan?

Like much of the former USSR, I think, Tajikistan is still living out the consequences of the Soviet collapse, in the sense that not all the final choices seem to have yet been made about what the proper status quo ante should be. In Tajikistan, moreover, this collapse was made longer and more visceral by the civil war that followed, and I think we need to keep in mind that for the majority of the citizens of Tajikistan, there is no clear line between the two. The collapse of the USSR became the civil war; one moved smoothly and quickly into the other. The civil war then defined the country’s political order in both the 1990s during the conflict and in later decades, notwithstanding the formal end to the war in 1997. Violence in fact continued for many years in a variety of forms, and the state’s moves to first incorporate former opposition fighters into the government after 1997 and then remove most of them in the following years meant that the resolution of the conflict started in 1992 stayed immediate for decades.

Where this has left Tajikistani society today, I think, is in a continuing quandary about how to deal with the unresolved tensions of the late 1980s and early 1990s. There has essentially been no opportunity to collectively decide on matters like language policy, or city development, or the privatization of industry, or broad economic modernization, and there remains a great deal of debate and disagreement on all levels about these matters. Should Dushanbe be rebuilt in steel and glass in an attempt to remove the vestiges of colonial Soviet material culture? Should Russian be encouraged in Tajikistani schools as a way of helping the country’s labor migrants in Russian workplaces? When people tell the stories of their lives since 1992 in Tajikistan, it comes out rushed and running together – “in a single breath” (na odnom dykhanii), as they say in Russian. Tajikistanis haven’t had time to breathe since 1992, let alone to answer these questions or to try to comprehend everything that has changed since the collapse of the USSR. 

Source: The Diplomat

The post Isaac McKean Scarborough on Moscow’s Heavy Shadow in Tajikistan appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Prabowo Subianto, a former-general-turned-defense minister, is set to become Indonesia’s next president after taking a huge lead in unofficial results and declaring victory in Wednesday’s general election.

This is the third attempt for 72-year-old Subianto at the presidency, having lost to current President Joko Widodo twice, in 2014 and 2019. Widodo, popularly known as “Jokowi,” is leaving office as a hugely popular leader with an 80% approval rating after serving the maximum two terms.

Subianto joined Jokowi’s government as defense minister in 2019 and has since tried to emphasize that any bitter rivalry with the president is a thing of the past. He aligned his campaign with Jokowi’s popularity by promising continuity with the president’s agenda, including populist domestic programs, and economic modernization.

Subianto also controversially named Jokowi’s eldest son, 36-year-old Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as his running mate, after the minimum legal age to hold office was lowered from 40. Although Jokowi did not formally endorse any candidate, Subianto has widely been considered as Jokowi’s implicit preference to become president.

However, it remains to be seen what shape Subianto’s policy takes after these preliminary results become official and he takes office.

“The key thing here is that Prabowo’s alignment with Jokowi has very much been an electoral strategy, not necessarily a governing strategy,” Doug Ramage, an analyst with BowerGroupAsia, told Reuters news agency.

What were Subianto’s campaign promises?

Subianto’s election manifesto was based on a platform titled “Developing Indonesia,” which included pledges of an 8% economic growth target and improvements to the palm oil production chain.

His campaign also ran on promises to raise salaries for civil servants, police and military officers, and provide more affordable housing, along with a pledge to eradicate extreme poverty in two years.

Subianto also pledged to continue working on a project to move Indonesia’s capital from Jakarta to a planned city called “Nusantara” in the province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. The plan, known as the Nusantara Capital City (IKN) project, had been ratified by Jokowi in 2019.

Aditya Perdana, a political scientist at the University of Indonesia, told DW it is likely that Subianto will be able to fulfil the promise to continue work on the IKN, although “balancing the interest and the investment from the West and China in the new capital project will be a challenge.”

“The next government has to be able to manage it so that it will not heavily favor one side,” he said.

Another cornerstone campaign promise by Subianto was a free lunch program for schoolchildren and free extra nutrition for pregnant women to combat stunting.

Indonesians wait and see

Bhima Yudhistira, director of the Jakarta-based think tank Center of Economic and Law Studies (Celios), said Indonesians will be watching to see whether a Subianto government “will run their policies and populist programs during the first year in office and whether the state budget will support it.”

One of the public’s immediate concerns is food prices and the availability of staples like rice and sugar. “Market players are also looking forward to know who will take over the offices of ministry of agriculture and trade, as this will play an important role,” Yudhistira said.

On the global economic front, Yudhistira said the next administration will face headwinds, as overall economic growth around the world is expected to slow over the next two years.

“The Chinese economy as our largest trading partner is also facing problems domestically. There is a property crisis, there is a slowdown, retail domestic consumption is also weak in China, this will certainly provide challenges” for Indonesia’s government in the future, he said.

Trying to soften strongman image

Subianto has tried to soften his public image, including with a recent social media campaign portraying him as a “cuddly grandpa.”

However, the image makeover belies his murky past with links to Indonesia’s Suharto dictatorship, which ended in 1998. For 15 years, Subianto was Suharto’s son-in-law.

Subianto is accused of involvement in several human rights violations while operating in Timor-Leste in the 1980s and 90s as commander of an Indonesian special forces unit during Indonesia’s occupation of the now-independent country. Subianto has denied those allegations.

He is also accused of commanding a unit that was allegedly involved in the kidnapping and torture of pro-democracy activists during the end of the Suharto dictatorship in the late 1990s.

Although he was never formally charged, Subianto was dishonorably discharged from the military after the incident and went into exile.

For two decades until he became defense minister in 2019, Subianto was banned from entering the United States because of the alleged Timor-Leste human rights abuses.

But it appears Indonesians are willing to leave Subianto’s past behind, as one voter told DW: “Give him a chance, why not, he’s already elderly.”

Source: DW

The post Indonesia election: What to expect from Prabowo Subianto? appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

PA President’s son Tareq Abbas also holds positions in other ventures incorporated by offshore company.

Leaked documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca reveal Tareq Abbas, son of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, holds shares worth nearly $1 million in an offshore company with ties to the Palestinian Authority.

The documents, leaked as part of the massive ‘Panama Papers’ scandal, show that a company called the Arab Palestinian Investment Company (APIC) was registered in September 1994 in the British Virgin Islands. Since then, the company’s economic portfolio has grown substantially, and is active in virtually every Palestinian economic sphere, including food and medical equipment, public relations, vehicles, and shopping malls, according to a report by Ha’aretz.

The Palestinian Authority’s involvement in the company has also grown since 1994, through indirect investments by the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF), which holds 18 percent of APIC’s shares, and over which the office of the Palestinian Authority President has near-total control, Ha’aretz reports.

According to the leaked documents, Tareq Abbas, the PA President’s son, was appointed to APIC’s board of directors in 2011 and held shares worth roughly $982,000 as of June 2013.

Tareq Abbas at the same time holds various positions within a number of other ventures since incorporated by APIC. Tareq served as deputy CEO of public relations firm Sky, a leader in the Palestinian advertising market, when it was purchased by APIC in 1999.

Tareq also serves as deputy CEO of the Arab Palestinian Shopping Center Company, which owns several shopping malls throughout the Palestinian territories, and as a member of the board of directors of the Unipal General Trading Company, a leading product distributor in the territories. Both companies are incorporated by APIC.

The depth of Tareq Abbas’ involvement at APIC, Ha’aretz says, further testifies to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca’s skirting of international standards, which would have required them to identify clients’ conflicts of interests as well as clients who are “politically exposed” through government officials, family members, or business associates, in order to monitor for money laundering, tax evasion, or other corruption offenses.

Lawyer Kareem Shehadeh, speaking on behalf of the Abbas brothers and APIC, told Ha’aretz: “APIC is a publicly listed company in Palestine whose shares are traded daily on the stock exchange. It is subject to oversight by the renowned Deloitte accounting and auditing firm, and complete and transparent details of its dealings appear in an annual report that appears on its website. APIC’s operations are supervised by the Ministry of Commerce and the Palestine Capital Market Authority.”

Another source quoted by Ha’aretz said that ““Tareq Abbas is a salaried employee at APIC, from this dates from before the time his father became the Palestinian Authority’s president. As far as I know, he has no involvement with the investment fund or the Palestinian Authority.”

The office of Mahmoud Abbas did not respond to a Ha’aretz request for comment.

The trove of 11 million Panama Papers documents was anonymously leaked to German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with more than 100 media groups by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The documents have shone light on financial and tax practices of customers across the globe, with more revelations expected over the coming weeks.

Source

The post Panama Papers reveal Abbas’ son’s $1 million stake in company tied to PA appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

President Kassym-Joomart Tokayev approved the new government of Kazakhstan under the leadership of Olzhas Bektenov. The names of the ministers were published on primeminister.kz.

Most of the ministers remained from the old government.

Four ministers were replaced: Nurlan Baibazarov was appointed Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of National Economy instead of Alibek Kuantyrov, Madi Takiyev became Minister of Finance instead of Erulan Zhamaubaev, Akmaral Alnazarova was appointed Minister of Healthcare instead of Azhar Giniyat, and Chingis Arinov became the new Minister for Emergency Situations instead of Syrym Shariphanov.

Members of the government who remained in their positions included First Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar, Minister of Foreign Affairs Murat Nurtleu, Chief of Staff of the Government Galymzhan Koishybayev, Deputy Prime Minister Tamara Duisenova, Deputy Prime Minister Serik Zhumangarin, Minister of Defense Ruslan Zhaksylykov, Minister of Internal Affairs Yerzhan Sadenov, Minister of Justice Azamat Yeskarayev, Minister of Energy Almassadam Satkaliyev, Minister of Agriculture Aidarbek Saparov, Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry Bagdat Mussin, Minister of Education Gani Beisembayev, Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Yerlan Nyssanbayev, Minister of Science and Higher Education Sayasat Nurbek, Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Nurzhan Nurzhigitov, Minister of Culture and Information Aida Balayeva, Minister of Tourism and Sports Yermek Marzhikpayev, Minister of Transport Marat Karabayev, Minister of Labour and Social Protection of the Population Svetlana Zhakupova, Minister of Industry and Construction Kanat Sharlapaev, and Minister of Trade and Integration Arman Shakkaliyev.

There are currently 26 members of the government. The composition was renewed for 16%. There are six deputy prime ministers left. 16% remained women.

President Kassym-Joomart Tokayev decided to resign the government of Kazakhstan on February 5. The duties of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan were temporarily assigned to Roman Sklyar. The next day, the president said the government’s resignation was aimed at providing new impetus and meeting public expectations. In addition, the president promised that the new government will use new approaches.

The head of the Presidential Administration of Kazakhstan, Olzhas Bektenov, headed the government of Kazakhstan on February 6. His candidacy was proposed by the Amanat party, it was supported by the president, the majority of factions of political parties in the Parliament agreed to the appointment. Olzhas Bektenov replaced Alikhan Smailov, who had headed the Cabinet of Ministers since January 2022.

Source: Akipress

The post Four Ministers replaced in new government of Kazakhstan appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

On January 29, China signed off on an agreement to hand Tajikistan the gift of $2 million to fund the construction of a conference room in a government building.

As grants go, it is not a lot, but the real significance of the development lies elsewhere.

As an official press release asserts, that the money was disbursed at all was the result of a visit paid to Beijing by the 36-year-old chair of the Senate, Rustam Emomali, better known to the public for being the son of President Emomali Rahmon. Common Tajik convention dictates that the son adopt their father’s first name as their surname, hence the echo.

In a pattern reminiscent of the father-to-son transition in Turkmenistan, where Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov yielded the president’s chair to Serdar Berdymukhamedov, in 2022, Emomali has increasingly become his country’s face on the international stage.

He has traveled to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, where he has held meetings with the presidents. In Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, Emomali has met with heads or deputy heads of government.

On January 8-9, he was in Iran, where he held talks with President Ebrahim Raisi and came away brandishing $120 million of cooperation agreements and contracts. It was reported that his China voyage produced $400 million of fresh investments in Tajikistan.

But still, the long wait for transition is making some antsy.

Conversations about a succession plan have been ongoing for around a decade.

Under changes to the constitution approved by a curated referendum in May 2016, the age at which a candidate was permitted to run for presidential office was lowered from 35 to 30. It was thought by many that this was being done to pave the way for Emomali, who was 26 at the time, to stand in the 2020 elections.

There has been more klaxon-volume clue-dropping than even that. In 2017, President Rahmon appointed his son mayor of the capital, Dushanbe, thereby shunting out his old comrade and Kremlin pet, Mahmadsaid Ubaidulloyev. Three years later, Emomali was elected head of the upper house of parliament. He holds both jobs contemporaneously.

There are no more available free rungs on the career ladder in Tajikistan.

At 71, Rahmon is by no means ancient, but he is doubtless aware of his own mortality. His older brother, Nuriddin, died of heart failure at the age of 67 in 2017, despite doubtlessly receiving the best available medical care. And nobody could accuse the corpulent leader of always looking like the poster boy for good health.

So why the wait?

One explanation that has circulated is that there is persistent nervousness about Rahmon handing over the reins to a country that has, after all, known civil war in its relatively recent history. As the poorest country to emerge out of the former Soviet Union, Tajikistan has been assailed by many unexpected shocks.

In the year of the most recent presidential election, 2020, Tajikistan was, along with the rest of the world, brought low by the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic impact of smaller numbers of Tajik migrant laborers being able to earn money to send home, usually from Russia, meant fewer people could afford to buy food.

Once that alarm was more or less weathered, another loomed on the southern border. In August 2021, the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, with which Tajikistan shares a difficult-to-monitor 1,357-kilometer border.

The following year, Rahmon brutally dealt with a domestic security crisis of his own making by going out of his way to crush the remnants of the so-called “informal leadership” network of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in the Pamirs.

That confrontation, which culminated in many Pamiri leaders and activists ending up either dead or in prison, was part of a pattern established soon after the 1997 peace agreement that brought an end to the civil war. Every few years or so, Rahmon has picked a fight with one or other constituency that he perceived could challenge his authority and has then proceeded to obliterate them.

Tajikistan has not had a real, viable political opposition group since 2015, the year that almost the entire leadership of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, or IRPT, was thrown behind bars.

The most recent trouble has come in the shape of deadly border conflicts with Kyrgyzstan, in 2021 and 2022. Very much against expectations, though, there are indications that the territorial disagreements that underlay those miniature wars could soon see some kind of resolution. The process is now ongoing.

Observers wonder if tying that loose end could be the key.

“President Rahmon has needed to resolve thorny issues that a young leader could not handle. If internal political issues do not arise in the near future, then after the border issues with Kyrgyzstan are resolved, early elections will be announced,” one source in the halls of government told Eurasianet on strict condition of anonymity.

If that forecast is accurate – and there is rarely any way of knowing beyond doubt – then a timetable could be coming into focus.

Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Japarov has said that he thinks the Kyrgyz-Tajik border question could be wrapped up toward this spring.

In a recent article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the Tajik succession question, analyst Galiya Ibragimova saw other bumps in the road for a would-be President Emomali. Citing her sources, she said there is much apprehension among the extended ruling family that Emomali could shut them out.

“Not everyone within Rahmon’s large family wants to see Rustam as the successor,” Ibragimova wrote. “Numerous relatives of the president who occupy high positions in government and in the world of business are afraid of losing everything after a change of power, even if it is a change of father to son.”

The presidential family is indeed large. Rahmon has nine children: seven daughters, many of them with husbands who have secured important government posts or snaffled valuable assets by less-than-transparent means, and two sons.

There is nevertheless an air of inevitability about succession. In recent years, Emomali has become a constant feature by his father’s side, forever standing next to him at opening of new factories and schools. He makes a point of being seen meeting with businesspeople and successful sportspeople. News of his charitable work gets ample airing.

In a state of the nation-style address on December 28, President Rahmon said that municipal leaders would do well to learn from the mayor of Dushanbe, his son, who he said had created large numbers of new jobs.

“I would like to express the gratitude of the government of the country to the leadership of the city of Dushanbe. This year alone they created 40,000 jobs … 5,000 of them for women,” Rahmon said, before the camera cut away to Emomali sitting within a row of other officials

Source: Eurasia

The post Is Tajikistan’s succession saga any closer to the end? appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Fast forward to December and not only is 2023 likely to pass without major incidents on the border, but both sides are talking with increased optimism about seemingly concrete progress made in delimitation, with Japarov saying recently that the border might be fully agreed upon by the spring.

That is a significant change in tone.

Tokon Mamytov, a former deputy prime minister and security council secretary in Kyrgyzstan, told RFE/RL that the two governments deserve credit for “overhauling the template” in border talks.

If talks had traditionally become stuck on fixations with different Soviet-era maps — Tajikistan’s preferred boundaries date back to the 1920s while Kyrgyzstan’s are from the 1950s — now there is a “new approach” from the bilateral commission working on delimitation, Mamytov argued.

“They go to the place and look at the border. They ask people who live there about facts on the ground. In this way, the intergovernmental commission is turning agreements between the two heads of states into a reality. Communities living near the border will be able to feel safe again,” Mamytov said.

Is ’90 Percent’ Of The Border Agreed Upon?

It is impossible to discount another Tajik-Kyrgyz flare up along the border.

Nearly 17 months separated the “wars” of May 2021 and September 2022 and, in both cases, the escalation was remarkably rapid.

But few would have expected peace to last so long in the fall of last year.

In the immediate aftermath of the second, deadlier conflict, Kyrgyzstan canceled military training exercises on its territory for the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) — a Russian-led regional military bloc — that were scheduled for October 2022 by explaining that Kyrgyz citizens would not accept the presence of Tajik troops on Kyrgyz soil so soon after a conflict that claimed at least 80 Kyrgyz lives and displaced more than 100,000 people.

At talks involving Japarov, Rahmon, and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, that same month, Rahmon conspicuously failed to greet Japarov.

But a year later and just two weeks after Tashiev aired his frustrations over the direction the talks were taking, both he and his Tajik colleague, Saimumin Yatimov, hailed the signing of Protocol 42. Tashiev said the document “provides a basis for resolving all border issues.”

Yatimov was almost as evocative, noting that the two countries were “aiming to reach a comprehensive and fundamental agreement” as quickly as possible.

There were few details then, but Yatimov was more specific when speaking after further talks on December 2, declaring that the question of a troublesome road linking Vorukh — an enclave of Tajik territory in Kyrgyzstan — and the Tajik border settlement of Khoja Alo was “practically solved.”

Then came the news that the countries had agreed on another 24 kilometers of the border after talks held in the Tajik town of Buston, near the Kyrgyz border.

But it was after talks in Kyrgyzstan’s southern region of Batken on December 12 that the two men claimed their countries had preliminarily agreed on more than 90 percent of their shared border.

That would be a significant achievement.

Only last year, around one-third of the approximately 975-kilometer frontier (Kyrgyz officials claim it is slightly shorter) was still not demarcated.

In an interview with RFE/RL, Dushanbe-based political analyst Sherali Rizoyon said incentives for an agreement were raised by a growing impulse in Central Asia toward regional integration and an uptick in diplomatic activity involving several outside powers.

“Whether on the bilateral or regional level, the problem of state borders prevents the countries of Central Asia benefiting from the new opportunities that are appearing today,” Rizoyon told RFE/RL. “Countries cannot afford to remain hostage to border issues for long — they need to restore mutually beneficial cooperation.”

The ‘Deterrent Component’ And Unclear Russian Role

The word “historic” is overused in Central Asian diplomacy, but it would definitely apply to any agreement between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan on their state border.

Although the dispute did not turn violent until independence, analysts note that Tajik and Kyrgyz opinions on where the border begins and ends have been at odds since 1924, when Tajikistan was still an autonomous territory inside the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and the territory of modern-day Kyrgyzstan had a similar status inside the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.

That makes next year the 100th anniversary of the dispute — and as good a time as any to end it.

But if 2023 has proven a year of genuine progress on border talks, it comes on the back of the tremendous human and material price paid by the two poorest countries in Central Asia.

And a big part of that is the increasingly deadly weapons deployed in the last two conflicts, amid a mini-arms race that has seen Kyrgyzstan secure Turkish Bayraktar drones and Tajikistan receiving equivalent weapons from Iran.

Francisco Olmos, a senior researcher in Central Asian affairs at Spain’s GEOPOL 21 Center, noted the “deterrent component” in the Kyrgyz leadership’s boasts about their recently acquired Bayraktar drones while speaking on RFE/RL’s Majlis podcast in November.

The destructive power of the Bayraktar was also in evidence in last year’s clashes, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose investigation published in May 2023 found that forces on both sides had “likely” committed war crimes against civilians.

In an interview with RFE/RL after the release of that report, HRW Senior Crisis and Conflict Researcher Jean-Baptiste Gallopin said the watchdog’s interviews with people on both sides of the border showed that local populations “are tired of these terrifying conflicts and are really yearning for peace.”

At the same time, local communities in Tajikistan’s Sughd Province and Kyrgyzstan’s Batken Province — the scene of most of the violence in recent years — will have their own opinions about what constitutes a good settlement.

Additionally, unrest in Kyrgyzstan over a landmark border agreement reached with Uzbekistan early this year suggests that selling a border agreement to the population is not always easy.

Yet another unknown is Russia, whose failure to prevent large-scale conflict between two of its military allies drew criticism of a Kremlin bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine. Also criticized was the CSTO — a security bloc sometimes framed as Moscow’s answer to NATO.

That trilateral meeting in October 2022 in Astana was more welcomed by Japarov — who unsuccessfully requested Putin’s intervention — than Rahmon, who later launched a tirade focused on Moscow’s shortcomings as a strategic partner.

Putin said after the talks that Russia had offered to retrieve some of its own archival Soviet-era maps to help resolve the dispute.

Since then, Russia has done almost nothing to suggest it is playing a mediatory role.

But on September 20, the Russian Foreign Ministry waded into the diplomatic fallout over Tashiev’s comments, warning against “harsh declarations” that it said could reverse the progress made on the border by the two countries.

“It should be remembered that armed conflicts in the post-Soviet space are beneficial primarily to the collective West, which has its own tendentious goals that have nothing to do with the real interests of Central Asian countries,” the ministry said.

Source: RFERL

The post Can Kyrgyzstan And Tajikistan Consign Their Deadly Border Conflicts To The Past? appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Rahmon’s bid to centralize control includes efforts to silence political opponents, human rights activists, and independent voices. More than a decade ago, Tajikistan’s media environment was relatively diverse and allowed for some criticism and debate, as long as local media avoided reporting on the president and his extensive family. Now, Tajikistan’s media are in their worst state since the violent years of the civil war, journalists told a Committee to Protect Journalists’ representative during a visit to the country late last year and through messaging apps.

Seven journalists were sentenced to lengthy prison terms in retaliation for their work in 2022 and 2023. The United Nations Human Rights Council has criticized “the apparent use of anti-terrorism legislation to silence critical voices” and expressed concern about reports alleging that torture was used to obtain false confessions from prisoners.

In one telling sign of the climate of fear that prevails in Tajikistan, only two among the more than a dozen journalists, press freedom advocates, and experts that CPJ met with were willing to speak on the record.

Some key takeaways from CPJ’s visit:

‘The collapse of independent Tajik journalism’

Prior to 2022, Tajikistan rarely jailed journalists. “For the president [Rahmon], it was important to be able to say we don’t touch journalists,” one local journalist told CPJ.

That changed with the unprecedentedly harsh sentences meted out to the seven convicted in 2022 and 2023 on what are widely seen as charges in retaliation for their work. Four journalists – Abdullo Ghurbati, Zavqibek Saidamini, Abdusattor Pirmuhammadzoda, and Khurshed Fozilov – received sentences of seven or seven-and-a-half years, Khushom Gulyam eight years, Daler Imomali, 10 years, and Ulfatkhonim Mamadshoeva, 20 years – a development seen by many as a deeply chilling escalation in the years-long constriction of independent media.

For Abdumalik Kadirov, head of the independent trade group Media Alliance of Tajikistan, 2022 marked “the collapse of independent Tajik journalism.”

Interviewees told CPJ that only two significant independent media voices now remain in Tajikistan: privately owned news agency Asia-Plus and U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s local service, the Czech Republic-headquartered Radio Ozodi.  

Both regularly face harassment and threats. Their websites have long been subjected to partial shutdowns by local internet service providers – the result of behind-the-scenes orders from state officials, according to local journalists, so that authorities can deny responsibility for the outages.

Asia-Plus has been forced to moderate its content, reducing its political coverage, following a May 2022 threat from authorities to shutter its operations.

A handful of other outlets either avoid political topics entirely, struggle to maintain independence in the face of government repression, or barely function due to lack of funding, multiple sources said. Adding to challenges for journalists are less visible forms of pressure, such as threats of tax fines and surveillance of their work.

“Everything is done indirectly,” one journalist said. “[The authorities] have many levers. They can make it known to a [financially] struggling outlet that it will be hit with huge tax fines, or its management will face criminal charges, and it’s advisable just to lay things down.” Several interviewees said that each media outlet has a “curator” from law enforcement agencies as a reminder that it is being watched, and authorities can threaten rigged tax or other inspections, or even order advertisers to pull their ads.

Particularly since authorities banned the country’s main opposition party in 2015, key independent media have been forced into closure and “dozens” of journalists have chosen exile. A government decree enacted shortly after this requires media outlets to pass an inspection by state security services prior to registration, the head of the National Association of Independent Media of Tajikistan (NANSMIT) Nuriddin Karshiboev told CPJ, with “virtually no new independent media” on the national level being registered since.

Rising fear and self-censorship

The year 2022 had a “devastating” effect on Tajikistan’s already embattled independent media, one journalist said. Several interviewees linked the crackdown on journalists to the authorities’ brutal suppression of protests in the eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in May-June 2022. Immediately after those protests erupted, authorities arrested 66-year-old journalist and human rights defender Mamadshoeva on charges of organizing the unrest, airing what many believe to be a forced confession days later on state TV.

Four journalists with RFE/RL and its project Current Time TV were attacked after interviewing Mamadshoeva immediately before her arrest, and authorities’ shuttering threat against Asia-Plus was issued over its coverage of events in Gorno-Badakhshan. While most of the other jailed journalists did not cover Gorno-Badakhshan, analysts told CPJ their arrests were in part calculated to have a chilling effect on the press amid the crackdown in that region.

Above all, interviewees said, 2022 entrenched a climate of fear and exacerbated already high levels of self-censorship among journalists. “We don’t know who might be next,” one journalist said. “2022 silenced all of us, not just those who were arrested,” said another. “Journalists fear saying anything.”

Several journalists told CPJ they themselves self-censored more following the events of 2022, which had left increasing uncertainty over “red lines,” the topics that are off limits. “Before it was easier as the red lines were clearer – the president and his family, top state officials, and after 2015, coverage of exiled opposition leaders,” one analyst said. “Now, it’s unpredictable – what you might consider neutral, [the authorities] might not. This unpredictability is the most problematic thing for journalism.”

Others agreed with what Kadirov described as a “dramatic fall” in the number of critical articles and an increasing tendency for local media to avoid domestic politics in favor of “safe” topics such as culture, sport, and some international news.

The convictions of five of the seven jailed journalists in 2022-23 on charges of “participation” in banned political groups allowed authorities to successfully portray independent journalists as “extremists,” several interviewees said. “Society falls for this,” one journalist said, “and members of the public often do not want to speak to journalists, and experts are increasingly wary of doing so.”

The events of 2022 also deepened the sense of alienation between independent journalists and authorities and the public. Where 10 to 15 years ago authorities were forced to reckon with independent media as “a real public watchdog,” noted one analyst, officials now engage less and less with the media, rejecting or ignoring their information requests. Access to information remains “an urgent problem of Tajik journalism,” according to Karshiboev, despite some recent encouraging discussions between authorities and media organizations on how to address the issue.

Decline in international donors

“Tajik media’s biggest problem is finances,” Karshiboev told CPJ. Lacking domestic sources of funding amid a limited advertising market, Tajikistan’s independent media have for years been reliant on international donors, interviewees said. Yet in recent years donor support has significantly declined, particularly since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine. “All Western resources and attention go to Ukraine,” one analyst lamented. Others cited a longer-term “donor fatigue” – donor organizations have lost interest in Tajikistan in particular and Central Asia more widely “because they don’t see any improvement,” one journalist said. A particular blow was the withdrawal of the Soros Foundation, previously a major media donor, from Tajikistan at the end of 2022.

Others argued that the problem was not so much a decline in donor funding as its misdirection – away from critical media and much-needed measures for media defense and toward projects of questionable value. Among other reasons, several argued that the ultimate problem is that international donors know the media is a sore spot for the Tajik government and, as Karshiboev put it, “fear damaging relations if they provide real and effective support to journalism.”

Interviewees said donors may also feel constrained by the West’s limited ability to influence on human rights issues in a country with such strong ties to Russia and China. “The Tajik government has increasingly learnt that it can act badly without any major consequences,” one analyst emphasized to CPJ. The war in Ukraine has exacerbated that dynamic.

“Before, when there wasn’t this standoff between Russia and the West, Tajikistan still looked to the West,” one journalist said. “Now they think: ‘What can the West do’?”  

A bleak outlook

Despite memories of a freer media environment only a generation ago, few of the journalists who spoke to CPJ were optimistic about the prospects for Tajik journalism in the near or mid-term future.

Many noted that Tajik journalists have become “demoralized” following 2022, that there’s been an uptick in journalists fleeing the country or leaving the profession, and that young people are reluctant to choose journalism as a career.

A marginalized independent media sector is very convenient for the government, said one analyst, “so it is unlikely to get better.” External support, in the form of more pressure and better targeted funding from Western and international donors and governments, was one of few factors capable of pushing developments in a more positive direction, several interviewees said. Kadirov and others believe that authorities’ tight control over traditional media outlets will cause independent journalists to turn more to social media and blogging to publish their reporting, making authorities likely to seek to exert even more control over those forums too.

“I see my mission as maintaining independent journalism – I can’t say in a good condition – but maintaining it at least to wait for better days,” said Kadirov.

CPJ emailed the Presidential Administration and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan for comment, but did not receive any replies.

Source: CPJ

The post In Tajikistan, independent media throttled by state repression appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.