Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

Khursanai Ismatullaeva, a pediatrician in Turkmenistan, has been fighting a legal battle for nearly four years against her dismissal from a perinatal clinic near Ashgabat.

Now -- after the European Parliament heard details of her case against Turkmen authorities during a meeting on rights abuses in Central Asia -- she has gone missing in the custody of the police.

Late at night on July 16, just a day after the European Parliament was told by rights activists about her legal battle, a group of about 10 men arrested Ismatullaeva at her home in the town of Gokdepe.

Some involved in the raid wore police uniforms while others were dressed in civilian clothes.

The independent news website Turkmen.news reports that the men confiscated telephones and computers from Ismatullaeva’s home before hauling her off to an unknown location.

“Days later, there is no official information on her whereabouts or the reason for her arrest,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on July 20.

In a statement about Ismatullaeva’s disappearance, HRW said the timing of her “extremely alarming” detention and Turkmenistan’s “abusive record” leaves little doubt that authorities “are retaliating against her for allowing her case to be heard in an international forum.”

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“Any failure by the authorities to acknowledge Ismatullaeva’s detention or efforts to conceal her whereabouts would qualify her detention as an enforced disappearance, a very serious crime under international law,” HRW said.

“Every minute that Ismatullaeva spends in custody increases her risk of torture or other ill-treatment, or coercion to get her to confess to bogus charges,” it warned.

“Turkmenistan is one of the most repressive countries in the world,” HRW says. “The government tolerates no criticism and has a horrific record of imprisoning people who expose, or even hint at, its rampant corruption, injustices, and incompetence.”

Unjust Dismissal?

Ismatullaeva had worked as a pediatrician in Gokdepe, a town near the capital Ashgabat, since 1999.

Initially, she was employed at Gokdepe’s maternity hospital. She moved to the Ene Mahri Perinatal Center in Gokdepe after it opened in 2010.

Her troubles began in July 2017 when she took a two-week vacation in order to travel to St. Petersburg, Russia, to receive medical treatment.

Upon her return to Gokdepe, she discovered that she had been fired the day she left on grounds that she would be absent for the two weeks she was in St. Petersburg.

Documents show that the decision to sack her was made on the “personal initiative” of the acting chief doctor of the perinatal center, Annamurat Hanov.

According to Turkmen law, only a trade union committee can decide to dismiss union members like Ismatullaeva for absenteeism.

Ismatullaeva took the matter to local authorities when she discovered that a document from a purported trade union committee meeting on her case contained forged signatures.

At first, the Association of Trade Unions for Akhal Province, where Gokdepe is located, sided with Ismatullaeva.

It ordered Hanov to reinstate Ismatullaeva and pay her salary for what it declared was a lawful paid vacation.

But the situation changed suddenly as Turkmenistan’s court system sided with Hanov.

Ismatullaeva appealed that court ruling without any success to the Prosecutor-General’s Office, Turkmenistan’s ombudsman, and the Ministry of National Security.

Some members of the European Parliament suggest Ismatullaeva was fired because she had worked as an honest doctor within a corrupt health-care system.

A July 22 statement by five deputies from the European Parliament noted that Ismatullaeva had refused orders by managers of the perinatal center to “prescribe unnecessary procedures at the patient’s expense.”

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Turkmen.news found two former patients of Ismatullaeva who vouched for her integrity and professionalism.

One said that doctors at the perinatal center had told her she needed an operation.

But she said Ismatullaeva had provided a second opinion after an examination -- advising her not to get the operation because her condition was not serious.

Then, when the patient sent photos from her ultrasound examination to a friend in the United States, doctors at three different U.S. clinics all agreed with Ismatullaeva that there was no reason for an operation.

The second former patient of Ismatullaeva told a similar story.

The statement from European Parliament deputies said Ismatullaeva’s actions were “in the best interest of patients’ health,” but “led to dissatisfaction among senior management and resulted in her illegal dismissal.”

The deputies and HRW are calling for Ismatullaeva’s immediate release.

RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, has also been reporting about Ismatullaeva’s case.

It has noted similarities between her disappearance in custody and the cases of others who have complained about mistreatment or failures of state authorities.

Businessman Bazargekdi Berdyyev and his wife Aijemal have not been seen since 1998 when they were taken away by a group of unknown men following their attempts to defend their property rights.

Three other cases reported by RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service involve citizens who were forcibly taken from their homes and temporarily put in psychiatric hospitals after they’d made complaints in public.

Pensioner Kakabai Tejenov had complained in 2006 about water shortages in the country.

Amangelen Shapudakov made similar complaints in 2011.

History teacher Sazak Durdymyradov disappeared after he announced in 2011 that he intended to form an opposition political party.

HRW notes that dozens of people have disappeared without a trace within Turkmenistan’s prison system -- “some for more than 15 years, while their families have no information about them, even whether they are dead or alive.”

A rights campaign called Prove They Are Alive has documented 121 cases of enforced disappearances in Turkmenistan.

RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service correspondent Toymyrat Bugaev contributed to this report

Central Asia has long advertised itself as the crossroads of the Eurasian continent -- a region that, with development, could be an important transit hub for shipping goods from east to west and from north to south.

The Asian Development Bank’s Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) trade corridors and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have helped extend Central Asia’s east-west connectivity.

The CAREC maps also envision trade corridors to the south via Afghanistan. But such links remain tenuous.

Nevertheless, calls for trade routes via Afghanistan that would connect Central Asia to Pakistani and Indian ports on the Arabian Sea are not forgotten.

Judging by the attendance at a July 15-16 conference in Tashkent, regional players still see potential in the proposed routes.

Although the conference was independent of CAREC and BRI, some infrastructure initiatives overlap with both projects.

New Optimism?

The major obstacle hindering the projects is instability in Afghanistan.

With Taliban fighters recently seizing control over large swaths of territory, linking Central Asia and South Asia via Afghanistan appears less likely than ever.

Still, other factors that have changed amid the ongoing fighting have given some reason for new optimism.

The venue of the July conference, the capital of Uzbekistan, was symbolic of one of those changes.

During the years Islam Karimov was president, Uzbekistan became increasingly isolationist.

While Uzbek officials lamented being in one of only two the world’s double-landlocked countries, they still cut back ties with their immediate neighbors in Central Asia.

President Shavkat Mirziyoev pledged to improve relations with other countries after Karimov died in 2016. He said he would start with the other Central Asian nations.

According to an article sponsored by Uzbekistan’s embassy in Japan ahead of the recent conference, circulation of goods nearly doubled among Central Asian countries during the period from 2017 to 2019 -- rising from $2.7 billion to $5.2 billion.”

That change is not surprising when one considers that Uzbekistan borders all other Central Asian countries, as well as Afghanistan.

A closed Uzbekistan had hurt many countries in the region. Now, the opening of Uzbekistan by Mirziyoev already has benefited regional trade.

The same article also argued about the importance “for the states of Central Asia to ensure that they take politically coordinated steps aimed not only at intensifying regional economic cooperation, but also reaching a new, interregional level of interconnectivity.”

That is an important distinction as it suggests trade routes south from Uzbekistan could be a conduit for Central Asian trade with South Asia.

Such regional cooperation makes Central Asia more attractive to potential trade partners not only in South Asia but also in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. That’s because they could use the links between Arabian Sea ports and Central Asia.

A Central Asia-South Asia trade network also could connect to other networks much farther afield.

The Importance Of Khan

Meanwhile, another development at the Tashkent conference is being seen as an encouraging sign for Central Asia-South Asia connectivity -- the attendance at the event of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Khan, the first foreign leader to arrive at the event, met with President Mirziyoev before the conference. By all accounts, he was warmly greeted by Uzbek officials.

That marks a sharp contrast to the late 1990s.

In May 1997, during an Economic Cooperation Organization meeting in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Karimov called for then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to publicly declare Islamabad would no longer support the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Sharif, as head of one of the only countries in the world at the time that recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s official government, refused to do so.

In August 1998, when Pakistan's then-Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Mohammad Kanju visited Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, neither Karimov nor Tajik President Emomali Rahmon would meet with him.

Uzbek-Pakistani ties have slowly warmed since then. But Khan’s visit marks a high point in bilateral relations between the two countries. And since Pakistani ports are the closest southern ports to Central Asia, it is important that Uzbek-Pakistani ties be solid.

The Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune predicted that agreements during Khan’s visit should “open doors for increasing Pakistan’s exports to Uzbekistan, while harnessing the potential of a $90 billion market in Central Asia.”

A statement by the Uzbek Embassy in Japan ahead of the Tashkent conference noted the planned attendance by “more than 250 participants from over 40 countries and international organizations.”

In addition to Pakistan’s prime minister, they included Afghanistan’s president, as well as the foreign ministers of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, China, Russia, India, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, the Maldives, and other countries.

They also included UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, and a delegation from the U.S. State Department.

A Central Asia-South Asia Network

There is no doubt that reliable Central Asia-South Asia connectivity would benefit many countries.

A report from UzDaily.com notes that Russia has been moving forward with its north-south transport corridor.

Part of that corridor would connect the Baltic countries and Russia to India via railway lines and ports in Iran and Pakistan -- less than half the distance of the sea routes from northeastern Europe to India.

Russia’s north-south trade corridor also would avoid the increasingly congested Suez Canal.

The Iranian port of Bandar Abbas is currently the quickest option for businesses in Central Asia to trade with partners in the Indian Ocean region.

A modest amount of goods to and from Central Asia also is currently transported through Iran by rail through Turkmenistan or by ship via Kazakhstan’s Caspian ports.

The UzDaily notes that the construction of a railway line from Mazar-e Sharif thru Kabul to Peshawar in Pakistan would reduce Russia’s north-south route by up to 600 kilometers.

That proposed railway was a key topic in the recent talks between Pakistan’s prime minister and Uzbekistan’s president -- even though, under the current security situation, construction of such a route seems impossible.

Similar reductions in distance and shipping times apply to China’s trade with South Asia and East Africa.

Again, Afghanistan is the major obstacle to this Central Asia-South Asia network.

Other concerns include the lack of unified railway track and the absence of unified standards for shipping documents.

Still, the Tashkent conference showed that great interest remains in realizing a Central Asia-South Asia trade corridor network.

That provides added incentive for countries in both regions to work on bringing stability to Afghanistan and reaping the benefits of trade connectivity.