Hard times in Moldova are prompting some Moldovans to warm to the idea of unification with neighboring Romania.

On July 5, thousands of Moldovans, carrying Romanian flags, marched in the Moldovan capital, Chișinău, voicing a preference that Moldova, a predominantly ethnic Romanian country that signed an integration agreement with the EU last year, give up on independence and join Romania, which is already a member of the EU and NATO.

Hard times in Moldova are prompting some Moldovans to warm to the idea of unification with neighboring Romania.

On July 5, thousands of Moldovans, carrying Romanian flags, marched in the Moldovan capital, Chișinău, voicing a preference that Moldova, a predominantly ethnic Romanian country that signed an integration agreement with the EU last year, give up on independence and join Romania, which is already a member of the EU and NATO.

“We tried to change the political elite, from communist to democratic, we tried to ‘move away’ from the East and get closer to the West, but, nonetheless, the degree of citizens’ dissatisfaction has reached its peak,” commented 25-year-old Elena Podoleanu, a demonstrator from ChiÈ™inău. “Corruption, bureaucracy, the political class’ lack of a spine will never allow Moldova to be a developed country as is the case with the Baltic States.” (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, three tiny former Soviet republics, now are EU and NATO members.)

Moldova over the past year has been hard hit economically and politically — especially by a scandal over banking fraud that cost taxpayers billions of dollars and highlighted rampant corruption in the judicial system. Accused of doing nothing to respond to the crisis, Chiril Gaburici resigned as prime minister in June after prosecutors questioned him about the validity of his university degree.

The government touts some economic improvements since the EU deal – a 64.6 percent increase in exports to the EU for the first six months of this year, lower foreign debt and a 4.8 percent jump in GDP. But the July 5 march participants, including 67-year-old Anastasia Fuior, are not impressed with the government statistics.

“In 24 years of independence, Moldova had a chance to show that it can be a functional state,” said Fuior, a resident of Cahul, 175 kilometers south from ChiÈ™inău, near the Romanian border. “That meant that citizens have confidence in the justice system, young women and men can benefit from a good education, a developed economy, a high level of social welfare, conditions that Moldova does not receive from its independence.”

The desire for union with Romania stems from Moldova’s own history.

The Russian Empire wrested the territory now known as Moldova from Ottoman control in 1812, and made it part of its possessions as Bessarabia. Romania, on the western side of the Prut River, remained under Ottoman suzerainty. In 1918, after the collapse of the Russian Empire, Romania and Bessarabia united, but the union did not last long. The Soviet Union in 1940 occupied Bessarabia and additional territory to block Nazi-allied Romania. The Soviet republic of Moldova was born.

Initiatives to reunite with Romania have existed since 1991, but have never gained traction. Activists these days readily admit that unification will not happen soon, but say, Moldova’s problems offer no other choice than to pursue it.

“The only solution now is union,” stressed Vitalie Prisăcaru, one of the organizers of the July 5 event. “Only by union can we go forward.”

Hundreds of activists are literally doing just that: walking by foot from Chișinău to the Romanian capital, Bucharest, a distance of roughly 488 kilometers, or about a six-and-a-half-hour drive.

On July 12, the marchers expect to reach Bucharest and, with their Romanian supporters, said Civic Youth Movement President Anatol Ursu, one of the Moldovan participants, “will go to Cotroceni Palace to ask the Romanian President Klaus Johannis to accelerate the process of reunification.”

“Bessarabia’s place is in Europe,” commented Aurelian Mihai, a Romanian MP who attended the ChiÈ™inău gathering. “Bessarabia’s place is in Romanian history and always will be.”

So far, neither Romania nor Moldova’s government has expressed a public position on the July 5 protesters’ appeal. Romanian media, however, provided heavy coverage of the July 5 gathering, which officials estimated a few thousand Romanians attended.

One former Moldovan president, Vladimir Voronin, has sharply condemned the march to Romania. In a letter to European Parliament President Martin Schulz, released on July 7, Voronin accused Bucharest of fomenting “the destruction and annexation of Moldova.”

“The Moldovan people will fight to strengthen Moldova’s statehood,” Voronin wrote. “Moreover, your carelessness [in reference to European institutions] toward my country can have unpredictable consequences,” he predicted.

That, in particular, could mean Russia.

Russian politicians and officials recently have charged that Moldova blocks their dispatch of alleged peacekeeping troops to Transnistria, a breakaway Moldovan region dependent on Russian aid. Any indication that Moldova is tiptoeing toward merger with a NATO member state would heighten that alarm.

Unionists, working within a National Unity Bloc of 22 non-governmental organizations, say they recognize that Transnistria poses an obstacle for their plans.

Yet many of Moldova’s ethnic Russians, roughly six percent of the population of over 3.5 million, also are indignant about the yearning for Romania.

Fifty-eight-year-old ChiÈ™inău resident Svetlana Macari, saying in Russian that she speaks “Moldovan” rather than “Romanian,” termed the marchers “children” pursuing an impossible “dream.”

Igor Dodon, leader of the country’s largest opposition party, the influential Moscow-friendly Socialist Party, has denounced the government’s silence toward what he described as “officials and representatives of right-wing extremist, nationalist and neo-Nazi” groups from Romania who attended the July 5 gathering.

Moscow and its supporters similarly have claimed that neo-Nazi sympathizers are also active in neighboring Ukraine.

Despite the criticism, activists remain upbeat. “Union will certainly take place, like in 1918, with flowers and hora [a traditional Romanian dance], where Romanians will dance on both sides of the Prut,” predicted Ursu.

Moldova: Pondering Unification with Romania? is republished with permission from Eurasianet.org

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Russia kicked off three days of high-level summitry on July 8, hosting leaders of several Asian and developing countries that it hopes will form the foundation of a new, non-Western world order.

Russia kicked off three days of high-level summitry on July 8, hosting leaders of several Asian and developing countries that it hopes will form the foundation of a new, non-Western world order.

Leaders of countries including China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Pakistan, Iran, and most of the Central Asian states gathered in the central Russian city of Ufa for simultaneous summits of the BRICS countries and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The two groups have been key instruments in Moscow’s strategy to bolster its international position in the wake of its estrangement from the West and the crisis in Ukraine, and the joint summits are an opportunity for Russia to show that, in spite of the efforts of European countries and the United States, it is not isolated.

“The future of the world economy belongs to the BRICS and SCO countries,” said Igor Kholmanskikh, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special representative in the Urals region, which includes Ufa, in the run-up to the summits. “Cooperation with new, growing centers of power … is our answer to sanctions and pressure.”

These new, non-Western groupings are “a matter of international prestige for Russia,” said Mikhail Troitskiy, an associate professor of international relations at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. One of Russia’s aims at the summit is to get a joint communiqué criticizing “unilateral sanctions and attempts at externally orchestrated violent regime change,” which Moscow believes the West is plotting around the post-Soviet space, Troitskiy added.

Russia put great efforts into the preparation of the summit, including building seven new hotels in Ufa, expanding the airport and repaving roads. What was not rebuilt was often hidden, and dozens of dilapidated buildings in the city center were draped with cloth facades, resulting in the inevitable comparisons to the “Potemkin villages” constructed to hide the poor condition of 18th century Russian provincial towns from the visiting Empress Catherine II. The city’s enthusiastic repaving efforts became a local social media meme, with Internet users sharing photos of the lawns and railroad tracks covered with asphalt, and collecting asphalt jokes.

“The Ufa city administration is like a bachelor who didn’t have time to get ready for a girl’s arrival, and in the two minutes while she was coming up in the elevator, tried to quickly clean up the apartment, hiding the dirty socks under the couch,” wrote prominent Moscow blogger, Iliya Varlamov, in a post on Ufa’s preparations.

Ufa is the capital of Bashkortostan, traditional home of the Muslim, Turkic Bashkir people, and particular attention was paid to presenting the city as a “Eurasian” site combining elements of East and West, mirroring Russia’s geopolitical “pivot to the East” embodied by the SCO and BRICS. The regional history museum featured an exhibit on the Silk Road; the city’s art museum hosted an exhibit, The Image of the East in Russian Art, with paintings from Russia’s Muslim periphery. Summit visitors were given a book, Bashkortostan at the Junction of Europe and Asia.

Romantic invocations of Eurasian identity aside, Russia face challenges in shaping the emerging new world order to its liking, including the directions of the SCO and BRICS. Both groups are relatively new (the SCO was formed in 1996, BRICS in 2009) and while all member states share a broad goal of breaking the monopoly of Western-led international organizations, the means by which they will do so are still under discussion.

One of the top items on the Ufa summit agenda will be the creation of an SCO development bank to finance infrastructure development in the region. China has been advocating for such a bank for years, but they had been stymied by Russia, which feared that such a bank would give China too much power in Central Asia, which Russia considers its sphere of influence. China then moved quickly to establish a separate bank that would fulfill many of the same roles, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Russia, however, has recently changed tack and now supports an SCO bank, realizing that China’s influence in the region is rising with or without a bank and that it would be better to have some input into Beijing’s investments in Central Asia, said Gregory Shtraks, a resident fellow at the Center for Russian Studies at East China Normal University in Shanghai. “The Russian economy is really beginning to feel the pinch of sanctions and the low oil prices. Putin will be desperate to bring home at least some good economic news from the Ufa summits and this development bank would be such a deal,” Shtraks said. Eventually funds from an SCO bank could be used to fund projects in Russia, Shtraks added. “This is, of course, a long-term prospect, but with Russia now fully pivoting to Asia an SCO development bank would seem to fit in Russia’s general economic agenda.”

The SCO will be bolstered by the addition of two new members, India and Pakistan, which are expected to formally begin their accession to the group in Ufa. The impact that will have on the organization is unclear: while it will increase the profile of the group and make it appear vital and growing, expansion – particularly the addition of India, a traditional rival of China – could also make it harder for the organization to reach common positions.

That gridlock may be part of China’s strategy, wrote Alexander Gabuev, chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, in a recent analysis. China has moved ahead with new structures like the AIIB and its Eurasian economic integration program, the “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative and now is content to let the SCO stagnate.

“This explains why China gave up its veto over Indian accession, brokering the incorporation of its long-time ally Pakistan in exchange. The addition of the two archrivals will make an already dysfunctional organization even more dysfunctional,” Gabuev wrote. “Now that China has the OBOR initiative, it can quietly observe the slow erosion of the once important SCO. As Russia attempts to use the SCO as a platform from which it can present itself as an alternative to Western hegemony, it has already ceded its role as regional economic hegemon to China.”

by Joshua Kucera: Kremlin Convenes Anti-Western Gatherings is republished with permission from Eurasianet.org

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The Armenian government is pressing ahead with a new effort to contain corruption. But some critics question the integrity of those in charge of the initiative, citing possible conflicts of interest.

Armenia’s cabinet decided to revamp a state Anti-Corruption Council on February 19, one month after the European Union announced plans to allocate 21 million euros (nearly $23.3 million) to Yerevan. The EU money would be designed to promote anti-corruption programs and civil service reform.

The Armenian government is pressing ahead with a new effort to contain corruption. But some critics question the integrity of those in charge of the initiative, citing possible conflicts of interest.

Armenia’s cabinet decided to revamp a state Anti-Corruption Council on February 19, one month after the European Union announced plans to allocate 21 million euros (nearly $23.3 million) to Yerevan. The EU money would be designed to promote anti-corruption programs and civil service reform.

Complaints about corruption in Armenia, the South Caucasus’ poorest country, are nothing new. Much of the graft is “controlled” by officials with business interests who oversee patron-client networks within the government itself, anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International Armenia wrote in a recent report. Sixty-three percent of the 1,068 Armenians surveyed for the organization’s 2013 Global Corruption Barometer stated that ordinary citizens could do nothing to influence this situation.

Against that backdrop, Armenian opposition and civil society members wonder how the reorganized 14-member Anti-Corruption Council can have an impact. Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian, a public figure long dogged by questions about his business interests, leads the council and it includes the justice minister, finance minister, general prosecutor, government chief of staff, and the presidentially appointed chairperson of the ethics commission for senior officials.

In 2014, investigative reporters at the award-winning news service Hetq.am traced the ownership of dozens of companies to family members of Prime Minister Abrahamian, a longtime politician, who has served as parliamentary speaker, presidential chief of staff, and the minister of territorial administration.

That year, Abrahamian, a former director of the Artashat brandy factory, reported that he possessed $1.95 million and 270 million drams (over $564,548), in dollar and dram-denominated financial assets. He also reported a total annual income of over 37.54 million drams (over $78,504). Aside from a monthly salary of 1,719,130 drams (over $3,594), his other sources of income were not specified. He claims that he became a millionaire through “agriculture.”

Questions also have arisen about his use of public funds. On April 13, Hetq.am, citing government contracts, reported that in December 2014 Abrahamian’s office spent 241 million drams (about $503,910) on sculptures, new furniture and gilding for his office without offering a public tender. To explain the expenditures, the government cited a law that permits purchases without a tender in pressing and “emergency situations.”

Finance Minister Gagik Khachatrian is another on-paper millionaire who is a member of the Anti-Corruption Council. In a 2014 declaration to the Ethics Commission for Senior Officials, Khachatrian’s wife, Laura Epremian, claimed assets of 2.7 billion drams (over $5.64 million) under both her name and Khachatrian’s. How Khachatrian – who used to serve as the head of the State Revenue Committee and State Customs Committee, as well as a senior tax-inspectorate official – and his wife obtained these funds has not been thoroughly explained.

Government observers long have believed that Khachatrian, acting via relatives, has interests in telecommunications, supermarkets and food importers. Khachatrian has denied any personal involvement in such business interests.

An earlier iteration of a state anti-corruption council existed for over a decade, without producing notable results. The rebooted version would include two opposition party leaders and two non-governmental organization representatives. Even so, critics contend that government insiders would remain firmly in control of the council.

To date, no opposition or NGO representative has agreed to sit on the committee.

“If we thought that the purpose of the council was the anti-corruption fight, and that the council would bring changes, we would also join the structure, but a structure formed in a rush and made up of the most corrupt officials follows another aim, and we will never join it,” declared Armenian National Congress member Vladimir Karapetian, a former foreign ministry spokesperson.

Artur Sakunts, head of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, a human rights organization in the regional town of Vanadzor, characterized the new version of the council as little more than window dressing designed to impress international donors.

“The council is being formed simply in order to receive financial resources, grants,” said Sakunts. “They [officials] attempt to show that they have a political will in order to get money from all possible international funds.”

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union both has allocated millions of dollars for governance programs, including anti-corruption and tax reform projects. In February, USAID Acting Assistant Administrator Susan Fritz welcomed the Armenian Anti-Corruption Council’s creation and expressed confidence in its ability to get results.

While the European Commission has noted Armenia’s “lack of convincing results in the fight against corruption, including among the police and judiciary,” it has not stated publicly that these shortfalls have influenced funding for additional corruption-fighting programs.

MP Artak Davtian, a member of the governing Republican Party of Armenia, asserted that the government is genuinely committed to combating corruption. “It is clear that the government must stand in the frontline of this fight. This is the explanation for why the prime minister himself is standing at the head of this body,” Davtian told EurasiaNet.org. “If there was no change in previous years, it does not mean that new steps should not be taken; a fight on a new basis should now be initiated.”

Ultimately, said Transparency International Armenia Director Varuzhan Hoktanian, containing corruption depends on more than a council alone. “The problem is not in the council, in creating a new body, but in political will. If there is political will, then there will be change, if not – even if huge agencies are created, whatever they do, everything will be fake.”

by Marianna Grigoryan: Armenia: Doubts Abound on Anti-Corruption Initiative is republished with permission from Eurasianet.org

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Tajikistan’s government is struggling to prop up its currency amid downward fiscal pressure emanating from Russia. Dushanbe’s policies appear to be creating a black market for currency traders with potentially long-term repercussions for the ailing economy.

Tajikistan’s government is struggling to prop up its currency amid downward fiscal pressure emanating from Russia. Dushanbe’s policies appear to be creating a black market for currency traders with potentially long-term repercussions for the ailing economy.

Tajikistan’s top export is workers: labor migrants – mostly men working in Russia – send home the equivalent of 49 percent of GDP in the form of remittances, according to the most recent World Bank figures. That makes Tajikistan the most remittance-dependent country on earth. But with the Russian ruble’s crash in 2014, the dollar value of those remittances – which are critical for keeping many Tajik families afloat and for boosting local spending – fell dramatically, by 8 percent in the fourth quarter. The World Bank expects remittances to shrink another 23 percent this year.

Meanwhile, with less currency flowing into the country, the Tajik somoni has slid almost 17 percent so far this year, to 6.23 somoni per dollar, according to the official exchange rate. Aiming to better manage the rate’s fluctuations, on April 17 the National Bank ordered all private exchange offices to close, accusing them of speculating on the currency. A few days later, law enforcement agencies announced 200 investigations into currency trading violations.

Since then, currency traders have moved into the shadows, where they are now selling dollars at seven somoni per dollar. One says that he has plenty of customers. “Demand is high; the banking rate is [artificially] low. Banks are not selling hard currency. They are either hoarding their dollars and euros or they simply do not have them,” Khotam, the owner of a private currency exchange office near the Shohmansur Market in Dushanbe, told EurasiaNet.org.

Khotam (who declined to provide his last name out of fear of reprisals) complained that the order to shut down his business is costing him dearly, and that he and his partner have no choice but to trade currency illegally. “We have rented premises for our office, we paid taxes,” he said.

“This is not the most profitable business, given the significant risks,” he said, adding that officials would be hard-pressed to stop the black market currency trade, as traders like himself can simply buy protection from Dushanbe’s notoriously venal police.

Economists warn that Tajikistan could emulate neighboring Uzbekistan, where the difference between the National Bank rate and the black market rate has grown to over 40 percent. “Currency is a commodity – just like bread. According to the laws of market economics, the growth of demand over supply causes a deficit,” the Asia-Plus weekly quoted Nozim Ishankulov of the Tajikistan Free Market Center as saying. “Money changers will simply withdraw into the shadows […] charging extra for the [new] risk.”

A black market for currency will make the somoni less tradable and Tajikistan even less attractive for international investors than it already is. The country already has a tenuous reputation among investors, given its rank of 152nd out of 175 countries surveyed in Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perceptions Index.

Meanwhile, the government is burning through reserves to defend the somoni. It is unclear how much it has spent overall, but in March Asia-Plus quoted the National Bank First Deputy Chairman Jamshed Yusufiyon as saying the Bank was spending between $1.5 million and $3 million a day.

Amid the somoni’s decline, retail turnover and imports have fallen. Foreign trade turnover fell almost 16 percent in January and February, compared with the same period the previous year, according to the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. Home sales also appear to be slowing in the absence of buyers – the market had long been fueled by remittances.

It is unclear what the government’s long-term plan for the somoni is. The National Bank promised on April 22 that the trading restrictions would be lifted once the currency stabilized, but gave few details. That does not inspire confidence among some analysts, who fear the effect of surging inflation. The Asian Development Bank predicts inflation in Tajikistan to hit 10 percent this year. “With very limited currency stocks, the authorities need to seriously think about the prices of basic food products and to provide incentives for [food] importers and domestic manufactures,” local economist Shuhrat Azizov told EurasiaNet.org.

Instead, authorities are acting as if money grows on trees. Last month, the president launched construction of a new $100 million National Theater – the biggest in Central Asia – though the capital has no shortage of theaters, only of theatergoers.

New government buildings are rising on large swaths of the old city. The Dushanbe mayor’s office announced on April 24 that it would soon build a giant new tower – dubbed “The Symbol of National Unity” –, which, from designs made publicly available, seems like a hallucinogenic riff on the Eiffel Tower, complete with shops and an observation deck.

All this construction could create jobs, and be part of an anti-crisis measure, optimists say hopefully. However, imported Chinese laborers build most official projects in the capital and building materials are largely imported.

by David Trilling: Tajikistan’s Currency Controls Boost Black Market is republished with permission from Eurasianet.org

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The continued departure of young men for jihad in Syria is raising alarm in Georgia’s Pankisi Valley, a Sunni Muslim area that allegedly has seen scores of men leave for the war over the past few years.

The continued departure of young men for jihad in Syria is raising alarm in Georgia’s Pankisi Valley, a Sunni Muslim area that allegedly has seen scores of men leave for the war over the past few years.

Parents from Pankisi have asked the government’s help to stop the trend. A photo that shows two Pankisi high schoolers armed and posing before the Islamic State flag in a jihadist training camp has added to the sense of urgency. Police had been searching for the duo since April 2, when they vanished after being seen entering the public school they attended.

Now, attention has begun to focus on Georgian border officers as well. One of the two, 16-year-old Muslim Kushtanashvili, allegedly used his father’s passport to slip through the Georgian-Turkish border. (Georgian citizens can enter Turkey visa-free.)

Angry members of Pankisi’s council of elders have demanded that the government take greater responsibility for blocking such departures at the border. The interior ministry has started an investigation.

“It is a tragedy for an entire nation, when kids are taken to war straight from their school desks,” said Meka Khangoshvili, a Pankisi activist and adviser for the Georgian Ministry for Reconciliation and Civic Equality, in an interview with the Kakheti Information Center. She called on the government to step up efforts to integrate the secluded area into Georgian society.

At the same time, according to local media, parents blame individuals they term Wahhabis, who reportedly deny involvement, for the boys’ departure to Syria, and also Abu Omar al-Shishani (born Tarkhan Batirashvili), a Pankisi-born commander with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Exasperation also appears targeted at the young jihadists themselves.

“This isn’t our war. This also isn’t Georgia’s war, and what do our children want there? ”Rustavi2 cited members of Pankisi’s council of elders as saying.

Another young runaway to Syria, Beslan Margoshvili, returned to his Pankisi home after allegedly briefly joining the Islamic rebel army, his father told Georgian media.

Pankisi resident Leila Achishvili, who lost two of her sons to the war in Syria, told the Kakheti Information Center that the area’s scarce employment opportunities make Pankisi youth easy targets for recruitment.

“What can the young men do when there are no jobs, when they have nothing to do?” she asked. “Religion tells us that if you are a man, you have to provide for your family. It is also a matter of pride . . .”

Last summer, EurasiaNet.org reported that some Pankisi residents downplayed claims of an outward bound stream of Pankisi jihadists. One woman estimated that roughly 50 to 60 had left the gorge, but not recently.

Local media estimates that nine Pankisi residents, to date, have been killed in the fighting in Syria.

by Giorgi Lomsadze: Georgia’s ISIS Problem: How to Stop Would-Be Jihadists? is republished with permission from Eurasianet.org

The post Georgia’s ISIS Problem: How to Stop Would-Be Jihadists? appeared first on Economy Watch.

Kyrgyzstan’s prime minister has ordered a halt to the country’s two-year effort to renegotiate operating terms at its flagship gold mine, reasoning that a joint venture is no longer in the country’s best interests. Despite lawmakers’ near-constant chest thumping and promises to nationalize the Kumtor mine, the announcement seemed to catch them off guard.

Kyrgyzstan’s prime minister has ordered a halt to the country’s two-year effort to renegotiate operating terms at its flagship gold mine, reasoning that a joint venture is no longer in the country’s best interests. Despite lawmakers’ near-constant chest thumping and promises to nationalize the Kumtor mine, the announcement seemed to catch them off guard.

Foreign investment has plummeted as Kyrgyzstan and Toronto-based Centerra Gold have struggled to restructure ownership of Kumtor, which is responsible for generating up to 12 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP and about 40 percent of export earnings. Under the current operating contract, signed in 2009, Centerra wholly owns the mine; Kyrgyzstan, in turn, owns one-third of Centerra. Parliament voted in February 2013 to scrap that agreement, arguing it was signed by a corrupt former leader and is not in Kyrgyzstan’s best interests.

But the government has struggled to come to terms that please the raucous legislature, while maintaining that nationalization would be a disaster. In December 2013, the government and Centerra announced the outline of a deal that would equally split ownership of the mine and see Kyrgyzstan cede its Centerra shares, and thus its interest in smaller projects in Mongolia, Turkey and Canada.

As the negotiations dragged through 2014 and into 2015, some lawmakers repeatedly threatened to nationalize Kumtor – a risky option since Kyrgyzstan seems to lack the technical know-how to solely operate the open-pit mine, which is situated at an altitude of 4,000 meters. Moreover, such a move, business leaders in Bishkek fear, would crush any remaining slivers of confidence among Kyrgyzstan’s dwindling cadre of investors.

When Prime Minister Djoomart Otorbaev told a parliamentary committee on April 7 that the proposed 50-50 deal is “not profitable” for Kyrgyzstan, he cited new mine reserve estimates published by Centerra on February 9 that downwardly revised Kumtor’s projected gold reserves from 8.5 million ounces to 6.1 million ounces. (Kumtor produced 731,000 ounces in 2014). With the mine projected to yield less, Otorbaev explained to parliament and again at an April 9 news conference that Kyrgyzstan would be better off keeping its Centerra shares and interests in the company’s investments elsewhere.

Otorbaev also threatened to quit if parliament pushed for nationalization.

As an alternative to the 50-50 deal, Otorbaev proposed to increase the Kyrgyz government’s say over who sits on Centerra’s 11-member board, in order to gain “more influence” over the company. (Kyrgyzstan currently appoints three members). He argued that Bishkek should team up with minority shareholders to appoint independent international experts that would work in the interests of Kyrgyzstan and other shareholders.

But in a country where few believe officials have the public interest at heart, and where Kumtor has been the focus of allegations of corruption and environmental degradation for years (charges Centerra consistently denies), the shift has encouraged conspiracy theories about misplaced loyalties. Board members were paid $85,000 each last year, plus share-based compensation, according to Centerra’s annual report. The positions are sources of patronage.

The head of Kyrgyzaltyn, the state company that holds Kyrgyzstan’s Centerra shares, disagrees with the prime minister’s plan and says he will continue to push for the 50-50 deal, while also seeking to expand Bishkek’s influence over the board.

“We will continue negotiations [for a 50-50 deal], but at the same time we will take a look at changing the board of directors. As shareholders we have this right, but we need much more time,” Kyrgyzaltyn Acting Chairman Kylychbek Shakirov told EurasiaNet.org. Shakirov, who sits on Centerra’s board, also said Kyrgyzaltyn would not be ready to propose a board shakeup by a May 8 shareholders’ meeting in Toronto.

“The possibility to get a 50-50 deal is much greater than [the possibility of] changing the board of directors. Kyrgyzaltyn only has a 33-percent share [in Centerra], nothing more. We do not have majority control,” Shakirov continued.

In an April 9 statement, Centerra said the company “will continue to engage constructively and in good faith” with Bishkek. But company executives cautioned that there “are no assurances that continued discussions between the Kyrgyz government and Centerra will result in a mutually acceptable solution.”

Negotiations for a 50-50 joint venture with Centerra have appeared doomed since last fall. Because Kyrgyzstan’s shares in Centerra are its only major asset abroad, they have been targeted by jilted investors seeking compensation for unrelated business deals that have gone sour in the Central Asian country. Canadian courts have frozen the majority of the shares in three separate arbitration suits that look unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. And, Kyrgyzstan cannot trade the shares for a 50-percent stake in the mine until the arbitration cases are settled.

As the Kumtor dispute drags on, Kyrgyzstan’s mining industry is being battered. Foreign investment in the sector fell 90.5 percent in the first nine months of 2014, compared with the same period in 2013, the National Statistics Committee said in February.

Parliamentary elections, expected November 1, also pose challenges for investors. A Western mining executive in Bishkek expects to accomplish “nothing” this year as populist officials look to score points. “If we raise our head, we become a political football. So we cannot do anything until after the elections. The whole economy grounds to a halt during an election year,” the Western executive told EurasiaNet.org.

After Prime Minister Otorbaev announced his intention to terminate joint-venture negotiations, parliament voted April 9 to approve a non-binding resolution deeming his government’s work “unsatisfactory,” and debated nationalization for two days. The head of parliament’s Ar-Namys faction, Felix Kulov, said Kyrgyzstan must not be afraid, arguing that though nationalization could lead to a $1 billion lawsuit, Kyrgyzstan could countersue for $6 billion. He offered no details to support his claims, but promised Kyrgyzstan would not let Kumtor stop working “for a single day or hour.”

Despite the grandstanding, the legislature and the wider political class appear unsure how to proceed.

On April 10, a small group rallied outside parliament to demand the government’s resignation over the Kumtor affair, but expressly insisted the mine not be nationalized. The following day, in the southern town of Jalal-Abad, opposition leaders called for nationalization.

by David Trilling: Kyrgyzstan’s Premier Says No Gold Deal as Mining Industry Fizzles is republished with permission from Eurasianet.org

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Cracks in the fledging Eurasian Economic Union were on clear display in Astana on March 20 as the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus met to discuss the regional economic slump.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the host president, made a point of affirming Kazakhstan’s support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity – a statement guaranteed to raise the Kremlin’s hackles. Vladimir Putin responded with a call for an EEU currency union, something that is anathema to both Nazarbayev and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.

Cracks in the fledging Eurasian Economic Union were on clear display in Astana on March 20 as the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus met to discuss the regional economic slump.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the host president, made a point of affirming Kazakhstan’s support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity – a statement guaranteed to raise the Kremlin’s hackles. Vladimir Putin responded with a call for an EEU currency union, something that is anathema to both Nazarbayev and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.

“It is necessary to emerge from the situation that has arisen in Ukraine via diplomatic means; no military solution to this problem exists,” Nazarbayev said of Ukraine. “In so doing, it is important that any decisions taken are based on fundamental principles of international law. We are interested in Ukraine remaining a stable, independent, and territorially intact state.”

With Russia’s denying it has fomented separatist strife in southeastern Ukraine, such a pointed public statement from a close partner guaranteed to rouse Putin’s ire. In his remarks, Putin said a ceasefire deal reached in Minsk in February – flouted routinely – created a “real opportunity for a gradual de-escalation of the armed conflict.”

Putin said it was time to put on the agenda the establishment of a single currency for the EEU – something Astana has angrily ruled out and Lukashenko has pledged will not happen under his watch. Putin’s suggestion is more provocative, given the Russian ruble’s precipitous decline over the last year, which has hurt its EEU partners.

Putin said the three leaders had agreed to “continue coordination of monetary policy.” “We think the time has come to talk about the possibility of forming a currency union in the future,” he added. The responses of Nazarbayev and Lukashenko were private.

The trio made it clear that they were gathering – without the EEU’s fourth member, Armenia (whose president is in Brussels) – to discuss anti-crisis measures to combat the regional economic downturn.

“We have not concealed today the problems that exist, and it would not be sensible to conceal them, since they were the original reason for us meeting today,” said Lukashenko.

He pointed out the irony that trade is falling within the fledgling EEU, which was set up on January 1 out of the three countries’ existing Customs Union to boost trade.

Kazakhstan’s trade with its Customs Union partners plunged by 20 percent last year, and its trade with EEU member states dropped by 8 percent in January, according to government statistics.

Nazarbayev blamed the economic difficulties on “a general slowdown in the world economy; the Ukrainian crisis and sanctions policy against Russia; and also a sharp fall in global prices for our main exports – oil and gas.”

The three leaders ordered their governments to draw up an anti-crisis plan to deliver a boost in trade. The fact they need to do so less than three months after the EEU got off the ground is a measure of the difficulties that lie ahead.

by Joanna Lillis: Kazakhstan: Eurasian Union Troubles Obvious as Putin Visits Astana is republished with permission from Eurasianet.org

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Russia is hoping football can become an instrument that it can use to help legitimize its annexation of Crimea.

Russian troops invaded Crimea in late February 2014, in response to the Euromaidan Revolution in Kyiv. Pro-Russian Crimean authorities signed an annexation pact with Russia on March 18, 2014, to formalize the first forceful change of a European border since the end of the Second World War. The European Union and the United States do not formally recognize Russia’s land grab, and have imposed economic sanctions on Russia to punish its aggressive actions.

Russia is hoping football can become an instrument that it can use to help legitimize its annexation of Crimea.

Russian troops invaded Crimea in late February 2014, in response to the Euromaidan Revolution in Kyiv. Pro-Russian Crimean authorities signed an annexation pact with Russia on March 18, 2014, to formalize the first forceful change of a European border since the end of the Second World War. The European Union and the United States do not formally recognize Russia’s land grab, and have imposed economic sanctions on Russia to punish its aggressive actions.

But EurasiaNet.org has learned that Russia is trying to use “the beautiful game” to poke a hole in the EU’s non-recognition stance. Specifically, Russia is pressing UEFA, the European governing body for football, to recognize Crimea as an entity apart from Ukraine. UEFA expects to make a decision on the matter in late March. If UEFA officials go along with Russia’s preference, it could establish a precedent that the Kremlin could use to steadily erode the EU’s non-recognition resolve, and drive a wedge between Europe and the United States on the issue.

A UEFA delegation, led by František Laurinec, the former president of Slovakia’s Football Association, visited Crimea in early March. The mission’s aim was to assess “the situation in reality” in Crimea, in particular how Russia’s takeover has adversely impacted football on the peninsula.

Russian and Crimean officials have tried to paint the issue as a humanitarian matter, glossing over the fact that the Kremlin’s decision to invade is the reason for the current problems. “We tried to hear proposals and ideas from people who work in Crimean football for many, many years, and who now are faced with the current political reality,” Laurinec said in an interview with EurasiaNet.org

Prior to the Russian annexation, two Crimean clubs, FC Sevastopol and SC Tavriya Simferopol, played in the Ukrainian Premier League. Shortly after the land grab, Russian football officials, without Ukraine’s permission, tried to place those two teams, along with a third Crimean club, Zhemchuzhina Yalta, in Russia’s second professional division. In an attempt to create a veneer of legitimacy for the switch, the clubs competed under changed names. But UEFA in January ruled against the move, and Russia complied by dropping the clubs from the professional ranks of the Russian football system.

“The Russian Football Association and Russian state authorities [i.e. representatives of the Ministry of Sport] accepted and respected this decision,” Laurinec said.

But Russian officials did not let the matter rest there. They came up with a plan to form a separate eight-team Crimean league, grouping the Sevastopol, Simferopol and Yalta teams with five heretofore-amateur squads. If UEFA approves the plan, the league could begin to play in April with the season running through the fall.

Laurinec acknowledged that UEFA’s decision could have political implications, even as he sought to distance the football body from responsibility for any potential political fallout. Adopting an Olympic-style stance, he pleaded to consider sporting affairs and politics separately.

“I hope our mission will not undermine the EU’s sanctions against Russia,” he said. “We only want to prevent the death of football in this part of our Europe.”

“To be pragmatic, we have to say that Crimean clubs are not even currently an active part of Ukrainian football,” Laurinec continued. “UEFA wants to help save football in Crimea, especially youth and grassroots [development]. This is a core of our mission and we try to find solutions.”

Ukrainian authorities have not taken a strong stance on Russian efforts to establish a separate Crimean league. But, given the myriad problems facing Ukrainian authorities in Kyiv, including a Russian-sponsored separatist war in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s silence on the matter does not mean acquiescence.

“There is there is no official reaction at the moment,” said Denis Trubetskoy, a football analyst for the UA-football.com website. At the same time, Trubetskoy emphasized that Ukrainian authorities remain firm in their stance: Crimea remains part of Ukraine.

Trubetskoy indicated that Ukraine would not oppose UEFA’s efforts to help sustain football in Crimea on the youth level. The matter of the league is more complicated, he added. Ukraine would be steadfastly opposed to any participation by Crimean clubs in UEFA-sanctioned European tournaments. Laurinec said Crimean representation in such UEFA competitions is not currently under consideration.

Ultimately, a Crimean league would have a tough time surviving without a massive infusion of Russian funding. And with the Russian economy battered on all sides, the necessary financial support is unlikely to be forthcoming.

In Laurinec’s estimation, only “four or five” of the eight clubs in the proposed league have the financial foundation to survive. “Also, the football infrastructure is generally very poor,” he said, adding that there also exists “a shortage of qualified coaches and a general lack of funds.”

The viability of the league may not matter that much too Russian football officials, so long as they gain UEFA recognition of the league as an entity apart from Ukraine.

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Women had stood shoulder to shoulder with men in the Russian Revolution of 1917, according to its leader Vladimir Lenin, and were said to be at the vanguard of the drive to build an equal society in the world’s first communist state; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

From Moscow in European Russia to Tashkent in central Asia, Soviet leaders embarked with revolutionary zeal on a mission to liberate downtrodden women – and by 1930, Joseph Stalin, Lenin’s successor in the Kremlin, declared the job done.

Women had stood shoulder to shoulder with men in the Russian Revolution of 1917, according to its leader Vladimir Lenin, and were said to be at the vanguard of the drive to build an equal society in the world’s first communist state; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

From Moscow in European Russia to Tashkent in central Asia, Soviet leaders embarked with revolutionary zeal on a mission to liberate downtrodden women – and by 1930, Joseph Stalin, Lenin’s successor in the Kremlin, declared the job done.

Moscow had enshrined equal rights in law, and given women of the Soviet state more power over their reproductive rights with the legalisation of abortion in 1920 (though it was banned again for two decades from 1936). It coaxed – or herded – women into the workplace, providing universal child care and generous maternity benefits to oil the wheels of the socialist machine.

Yet despite these apparent freedoms, for the average Soviet woman emancipation meant a life of drudgery; bearing the “double burden” of home-making and child-rearing alongside work outside the home was all the more onerous in a country beset by rampant shortages and widespread abuses.

Today, almost 25 years after the fall of the USSR, many problems faced by women across the post-Soviet states have a familiar ring in the west. Though each country has formally expressed its commitment to equal rights, campaigners say they face a particularly tough job in many of the conservative, patriarchal societies that dominate the region, especially in those countries where the Kremlin’s family values agenda holds sway.

Latvia, where women make up 55% of the population, comes out top for women’s rights in the 13 post-Soviet countries that are included in the World Economic Forum’s 2014 Global Gender Gap report, though – like much of the rest of the world – it still struggles with a significant gender pay gap.

On the other end of the spectrum, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the two post-Soviet states not ranked in the report, are seen as two of the world’s most repressive countries. In the region’s most socially conservative countries – mainly in central Asia and the Caucasus – women confront a host of abusive practices which are difficult to root out, from bride kidnapping to denials of their reproductive rights.

In Kyrgyzstan, which ranks 67th in the gender report, bride kidnapping – never fully stamped out in the USSR – is back with a vengeance. Studies show that some 11,800 women are kidnapped every year, and up to a fifth are subjected to violence, including rape. The government acknowledges bride snatching as a problem and is cracking down, adopting new legislation which more than tripled the maximum sentence to 10 years – but prosecutions remain a rarity.

Meanwhile, women in neighbouring Uzbekistan are reportedly falling victim to a secret government-sponsored campaign of forced sterilisation to control an exploding population – though the government denies any such campaign exists.

Across central Asia and the Caucasus young brides are subjected to humiliating virginity rituals, with bloodied bed sheets brandished as evidence and expulsion from their new home as the penalty for those who fail the test.

“The stigma is attached to the woman – it’s not the groom who’s driven out of the home if there’s no blood,” says Umida Ahmedova, an Uzbek film-maker who produced a harrowing documentary on this practice in 2010. She was prosecuted for her pains, and found guilty of “slandering the Uzbek nation”.

Economic insecurity is also taking its toll, pushing women into becoming “second wives” in countries like Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, where some are married by imams who recognise polygamy under Islamic law – but have no legal rights in a state which does not.

Meanwhile, poverty-driven labour migration is devastating families from Moldova to Tajikistan, and leaving women vulnerable to sex trafficking.

In Russia, where Kremlin views still have considerable influence for many countries in the region, President Vladimir Putin revels in a cult of masculinity. The alpha-male president pulls off macho PR stunts, from bare-chested horse-riding to rescuing a TV crew from a staged tiger attack. For some, this manly version of Russian power comes at a cost for the country’s women.

“With Putin, it’s not just about the masculinity of his persona, it’s a conflation of Putin’s strength and Russia’s strength,” says Professor Valerie Sperling of Clark University in the US, author of Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia.

Domestic violence is not recognised as a crime in Russia, leaving victims and the police with little recourse even as thousands of women die each year at the hands of violent partners. Fighting domestic abuse is an uphill struggle even in former Soviet states which have adopted laws against it, like Georgia, where “alarming and intolerant opinions” prevail in a blame-the-victim culture, the Tbilisi-based Human Rights Centre says.

Sperling says feminism has become “a dirty word” in Russia and any challenge to Putin’s macho image is crushed. Witness Pussy Riot, the anarcho-feminist punk group whose irreverent performance in Moscow’s main cathedral in 2012 landed performers behind bars – and sparked what Sperling calls “anti-feminist hysteria” in Russia. The judge cited Pussy Riot’s feminist beliefs as tantamount to promoting religious hatred, and the influential Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill later gave his verdict on feminism: “a very dangerous phenomenon” promulgating the “pseudo-freedom of women” outside marriage and the family.

Moscow exerts powerful cultural sway over its former colonies, and the Kremlin’s anti-western, family-values agenda chimes with conservative social attitudes already prevalent in the region. For Moscow, foreign policy is often a zero-sum game: its former colonies are either with it or against it, and that means falling in with Russian pressure to resist “western values”. The Kremlin’s hostility towards gay rights often makes headlines – but women’s rights are also at the sharp end of this culture war.

Two countries in the Caucasus – western-friendly Georgia and neighbouring Armenia (which embraced Russia in a foreign policy U-turn last year) – present a striking contrast. Women’s rights are rising up the agenda in Georgia, says the Tbilisi-based Human Rights Centre, and “we think one of the reasons is Georgia’s pro-western policy and European aspiration.”

Meanwhile, campaigners in Yerevan like Lara Aharonian, director of the Women’s Resource Centre Armenia, have faced death threats amid a smear campaign painting gender equality as a western ruse to destroy the family – a potent message in societies which hold the family sacred.

“Today it’s very difficult to use the word ‘gender’ in Armenia,” says Aharonian. “It means an insult.”

In Kyrgyzstan, campaigners are “threatened, they’re attacked, they’re dehumanised, they’re demonised,” says a Bishkek-based activist speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals. “We can feel this backlash with our bodies. That’s how strong it is.”

Despite the many challenges, and sometimes dangers, women across the region maintain small but strong feminist campaigns. “We are part of society and we want to have a voice!” is the rallying cry of Girl Activists of Kyrgyzstan, a group fighting to change mind-sets “in a society where early marriage is a great success in life… where violence is normal… where education [for girls] takes a backseat… where boys are placed a step above us… where people don’t want to listen to us.”

In Ukraine – the country on the bloody frontline of what has turned into a cultural tug of war between Russia and the west – an anarcho-feminist group forced to flee amid a civil rights crackdown has returned since the revolution that installed a pro-western government in February last year. Femen marked the anniversary of the start of the uprising in November with a topless protest in which activists splashed slogans like “death to dictatorship” across their breasts. “The breast is chosen as a weapon, in a bid to reclaim the female body, says co-founder Anna Hutsoi. “The resistance of the patriarchy shows we’re on the right track.”

Nearly a century ago, Lenin confidently proclaimed: “The first proletarian dictatorship is truly paving the way for the complete social equality of women.” Yet in today’s environment, far from the days of Lenin, there is plainly still a long way to go.

by Joanna Lillis: ‘We Want a Voice’: Women Fight for Their Rights in the Former USSR is republished with permission from Eurasianet.org

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As of this year, there’s an army that’s ready to give a paying job to a few members of Tajikistan’s legion of unemployed men—Russia’s.

The 201st Russian Military Base in Tajikistan has long employed local soldiers. But they were prohibited from fighting under the Russian flag abroad. Now, a law signed by President Vladimir Putin on January 2 allows foreign citizens to fight for Mother Russia anywhere in the world.

As of this year, there’s an army that’s ready to give a paying job to a few members of Tajikistan’s legion of unemployed men—Russia’s.

The 201st Russian Military Base in Tajikistan has long employed local soldiers. But they were prohibited from fighting under the Russian flag abroad. Now, a law signed by President Vladimir Putin on January 2 allows foreign citizens to fight for Mother Russia anywhere in the world.

The timing appears connected to Moscow’s standoff with the West, and the Ukrainian crisis, in which Kremlin-backed separatists are fighting against the Ukrainian army and pro-Kyiv militia units. There have been unconfirmed reports recently that several thousand of the 7,000-strong contingent stationed at Russia’s 201st base in Tajikistan have been transferred to the Ukrainian border. Russian military spokespeople deny that – and deny that Russian troops are engaged in hostilities anywhere. But in any case, the new legislation would allow Russia to fill positions at its Tajik base with local troops.

The idea has been on the table since 2003, but only received Putin’s support recently, according to Yaroslav Roshchupkin, a Yekaterinburg-based spokesman for Russia’s Central Military District. The Central Military District is responsible for administering the 201st base in Tajikistan, Russia’s largest military outpost abroad.

Roshchupkin paints the initiative largely as an economic gift for the impoverished Central Asian nation, noting that Tajik soldiers are eligible for the same benefits as any Russian citizen, plus are able to obtain fast-tracked Russian citizenship.

“First, it is not the Russian army that needs recruits from Tajikistan. But we provide them this opportunity because many wish to get Russian citizenship. Contract soldiers get Russian citizenship through a simplified procedure and they can get a [low-interest] mortgage through the military,” Roshchupkin told EurasiaNet.org. He added that the number of Tajiks who have joined the Russian military is a secret.

Roshchupkin said monthly salaries for soldiers at the base range from 17,000 rubles ($273) to 70,000 rubles ($1,125). Tajikistan has the lowest average monthly salary in the former Soviet Union, about $180, according to the CIS Interstate Statistics Committee.

There are no reliable statistics on unemployment in Tajikistan, but over a million people – about half the working-age male population – are believed to spend at least part of the year working as laborers in Russia. They often perform the lowest-paying and most dangerous jobs, such as sweeping streets and working on construction sites. Their remittances account for the equivalent of almost half of Tajikistan’s GDP.

This year, new Russian legislation has made labor migrants’ lives a lot more difficult by demanding expensive tests and work permits. Russian citizenship would provide a way to circumvent those hassles.

Roshchupkin said the 201st base is not equipped to accept applications and added that Tajiks, for now, must travel to Russia (as many already do to search for work) to enlist at a recruitment office there. Priority is given to those who speak Russian and have military training.

Until this month, enlisting could have violated Tajik law, which under a bill passed last year, mandates 12-20 years in prison for citizens who take part in hostilities abroad on behalf of a foreign army or armed group. But this month Dushanbe made an exception for men fighting in the Russian military. Nasrullo Makhmudov, who was a member of the Tajik parliament’s Committee on Legislation and Human Rights until this month, said anyone fighting for the Russian army won’t be prosecuted in Tajikistan. He added that the law only applies to so-called “illegal formations”—such as militant groups in places like Syria.

“I think that Tajik citizens must serve in the official Tajik army. However, there are times when a person has left the country and cannot serve. […] It is up to them. If they want, they can serve in the Russian army,” Makhmudov told EurasiaNet.org.

A Tajik contract soldier serving Russia at the 201st base, who joined the Russian army in 2014, said he chose to serve in Dushanbe. He cannot be identified because Russian legislation prohibits soldiers from giving interviews to the press.

“Here I am quite close to my family and parents. I have received Russian citizenship already. In a short time, when I sign the extension of my contract, I will be able to get a [low-interest] military mortgage,” he told EurasiaNet.org.

He says that when he signed his contract, he clearly understood that he is obligated to fight for Russia, should Russia demand it. He counts himself lucky for being based near home, and understands he could be sent anywhere at any time.

The cousin of another Dushanbe man was transferred from the 201st base to Crimea early this year. “We call each other. He says he does not like Crimea and that everything is very expensive there, but he has to stay there. By the end of this year he is promised an apartment and he will be able to take his family there,” the Dushanbe man said, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his cousin’s career.

Could the Russian recruitment hurt the notoriously understaffed Tajik military? Tajik Ministry of Defense Spokesperson Faridun Makhmadaliev says no, because Tajiks are patriots. “They will never refuse their poor mother in favor of a rich one,” he said.

“People stand in line to serve in the army,” Makhmadaliev told EurasiaNet.org. “We can even choose the best candidates for the Tajik army.”

That assertion contradicts widespread reports of poor conditions and hazing in the ranks, as well as well-documented press-ganging during the annual draft.

Dushanbe-based security expert Sulton Khamad said that the option of Tajik citizens serving in the Russian army might benefit the country. He reasoned that it could make the Tajik army an attractive training ground for soldiers seeking to join the Russian army. And, more prosaically, Tajikistan needs the jobs. “This could help us address the unemployment problem in our country,” Khamad said.

by David Trilling: Russian Army Attracts Tajikistan’s Unemployed is republished with permission from Eurasianet.org

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