Turkmen Report: May 27, 2003

25 May 2003

A dramatic performance to mark Carpet Day was staged in the center of Ashgabat near the Museum of Carpets on 25 May, Interfax reported the same day.

This holiday has been celebrated in Turkmenistan on the last Sunday of May for the past 12 years. The Turkmenkhaly carpet-weaving company organized the show.

The most well-known Turkmen carpet, "Turkmenkalby" (The Turkmen Soul), was made for the Days of Turkmenistan held in Moscow during World War II and remained in Moscow for many years. It covers 199 square meters and could only be displayed at the Bolshoi Theater.

Fifty years later, another giant carpet, "Turkmenbashi," honoring President Saparmurat Niyazov, was woven. It covers an area of 266 square meters. But the carpet "President," which has an area of 394 square meters, recently beat this record.

In 2001 an entry for the world's largest hand-woven carpet appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records. The carpet, named "The Golden Age of Saparmurat Turkmenbashi the Great," has an area of 301 square meters and is on display at the Museum of Carpets, opened in 1994.

Besides giant carpets, the museum exhibits over 1,200 antique and modern carpets. Turkmen carpets are in great demand in the world. Last year alone, Turkmenkhaly exported about 80 percent of the carpets it produced. (Interfax)

24 May 2003

Turkmenistan and Iran have signed the first of several agreements under which Turkmenistan will export electricity to Iran, AFP reported on 24 May, citing the Turkmen state-owned daily newspaper "Neitralnyi Turkmenistan."

According to the report, the heads of the two countries' energy departments have signed a contract to deliver electricity to Iran starting on 1 June. The newspaper did not say how much the contract was worth.

The report said the deal is only the first of several agreements on energy exports to Iran that could bring Turkmenistan up to $140 million annually.

According to the Turkmen newspaper, Turkmenistan also plans to export electricity to Turkey via Iranian power lines. (AFP, "Neitralnyi Turkmenistan")

24 May 2003

A district in Turkmenistan, which was previously named after President Niyazov has been renamed Beyik Turkmenbashi, Interfax reported on 24 May, citing Turkmen media.

The name "Saparmurat Turkmenbashi the Great" was officially conferred on Niyazov in May 2001 by decision of the World Turkmen Humanities Association, which he heads.

Niyazov is the first and only president of Turkmenistan and will serve as president for life.

His name has been given to thousands of administrative areas and organizations, including a district and an avenue in the capital Ashgabat, one or two districts in each of the country's five regions, the former city of Krasnovodsk, the former Krasnovodsk Gulf in the Caspian Sea, a power plant, a research ship, higher educational institutions, and peasants' associations.

Niyazov has been awarded the title of hero of Turkmenistan on five occasions.

A parliamentary resolution to rename a district in the Lebap district to that of Beyik Turkmenbashi said the measure was aimed "at perpetuating the outstanding services of Saparmurat Turkmenbashi the Great to the country, recognizing his invaluable role in the creation and development of the independent sovereign state of Turkmenistan and paying tribute to the services of the beloved Serdar of the nation as a brilliant modern politician and state strategist." (Interfax)

23 May 2003

The head of the Russian State Duma's Foreign Affairs Committee has issued tough criticism of Turkmenistan, accusing the country's leadership of violating the rights of Russians living in Turkmenistan and other misdeeds, ITAR-TASS, AFP, and AP reported on 23 May.

The criticism from Dmitrii Rogozin comes amid strained ties between Russia and Turkmenistan following Turkmen President Niyazov's decision last month to cancel the ability of people in Turkmenistan to have dual Russian citizenship.

In his criticism, Rogozin accused the Turkmen leadership of having links to Afghanistan's Taliban and of also being involved in narcotics trafficking and supporting terrorism. Rogozin offered no evidence to support his claims. No response from Turkmen authorities was immediately available.

Turkmenistan's decision to cancel dual citizenship with Russia followed Turkmen accusations that Russia harbored suspects with dual citizenship who were involved in last November's reported assassination attempt on Niyazov. (ITAR-TASS, AFP, AP)

21 May 2003

Saparmurat Niyazov has promised that Turkmen students studying in Turkey will be provided airplane tickets at half-price if they want to return home for summer vacation, turkmenistan.ru reported on 21 May.

The cost of the offer will be borne by the federal budget. According to the report, the state-owned national airline has been ordered to organize special flights for the estimated several hundred students in Turkey.

The report does not make clear if the discount applies only to those students who have been sent abroad by the government. (Turkmenistan.ru)

22 May 2003

By Charles Carlson

This year's economic forum of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is focusing on three major problems -- the economic impact of drug trafficking, and the fights against trafficking in both human beings and light weapons.

Preliminary seminars on each problem were held, the most recent of which took place in Tashkent in March, devoted to the economic impact of drug trafficking.

Dutch diplomat Daan Everts chaired the Tashkent seminar and is also leading the three-day economic forum, which ends on 23 May in Prague. "We hope in the next few days to come out with some very concrete recommendations," Everts told RFE/RL. "We will look at the realistic nature of some of the measures proposed. We have had enough of talk and analysis. Now we have to come to some very, very concrete measures and packages of policy that will help to make a dent in this business. Because right now, the traffickers are better-organized than we are on the governmental side. That is obvious."

Antonio Maria Costa spoke at the opening session of the Prague meeting. Costa, who is executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, pointed to four main global drug routes: the flow of Afghan opiates through Central Asia to the West, cocaine and heroin trafficking in the Americas, the trafficking of heroin and amphetamine-type stimulants in Southeast Asia, and the illicit trafficking of drugs in sub-Saharan Africa.

In his presentation, Costa noted that opium production in Afghanistan had increased from 200 tons in 1980 to almost 3,500 tons by 2002. Costa added that the number of drug addicts in Russia using drugs originating from Afghanistan more than doubled between 1998 and 2001.

The United States Mission to the OSCE noted the wealth of ideas the three preparatory seminars had produced and suggested the OSCE could support speedy ratification and implementation of the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime and support efforts to promote farming of legal crops.

Meanwhile, in its recommendation to the three discussion groups at the Economic Forum, the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank, emphasized the difficulties in receiving reliable information on the real extent or pattern of drug trafficking in Central Asia. For example, while government sources suggest that just 55 kilograms of heroin were seized in Turkmenistan in 2002, it is believed a large proportion of the total drugs transiting through Central Asia pass through Turkmenistan.

There are also believed to be links between civil servants and businesses and drug traders in Central Asia. Governments in the region have been reluctant to prosecute major narco-traffickers.

The ICG notes that Uzbekistan seized more than 800 kilograms of narcotics in 2002 and initiated 8,000 criminal cases, which resulted in some 900 prosecutions, suggesting that each prosecution was for less than 1 kilogram of narcotics. Uzbek narcotic officers admit they tend to go after low-level gangs and avoid major traffickers, who often have significant political connections.

The Tajik delegate to the OSCE forum, Khodjamakhmad Umarov, told delegates he thinks many participants are avoiding the issue of the suffering caused to individuals by illegal trafficking in people, weapons, and drugs.

Umarov, who heads the Department of Macro-Economics at the Institute of Economic Studies in Dushanbe, told OSCE delegates he now is under the impression that international organizations don't want to upset governments that may have either direct or indirect ties to trafficking, or which may have other geopolitical considerations.

He said he thinks delegates sent to such events do not want to raise such issues out of fear they may lose their jobs once they return home.

RFE/RL asked the OSCE's Everts whether battling the drug trade is more difficult because of the reported involvement in heroin trafficking of some Afghan warlords -- including some who are either members of the Transitional Authority or are senior members of factions in the internationally backed Afghan central government.

Everts confirmed the role of Afghan warlords in the drug trade "obviously" makes anti-heroin-trafficking measures more difficult. But he told RFE/RL that the OSCE does not have direct leverage over Afghanistan because it is, strictly speaking, outside of the OSCE's area of operations.

"But drug trafficking is not just a question of producing countries. It is also transit countries and destination countries. So here, it is again, getting to grips with the trade and making sure that there is transparency. Who are the actors? What is behind it? What do they do with the money? Where are the bank accounts? How can we target their profits? How can we target their practices? It requires concerted efforts, obviously. It's a huge issue. It is a huge fight to come. And right now we have hardly started," Everts said.

During the first two days of the OSCE forum in Prague, the seat of the Afghan representative remained vacant, although Afghanistan has a special "associative status" with the OSCE.

One U.S. specialist argued at the Prague forum that exerting pressure on the Afghan government to crack down on drug cultivation could prove counterproductive.

Phil Williams, a professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, said: "One big source of money in Afghanistan is opium cultivation and heroin trafficking. For the international community to encourage the [Transitional Authority Chairman Hamid] Karzai government, or pressure the Karzai government, to clamp down would actually make it much more difficult for that government to establish a high degree of legitimacy [within Afghanistan]. It's going to be difficult enough anyway. Clamping down on the drug trade now would make it virtually impossible."

The aim of the Tashkent seminar in mid-March was to build on the foundation of OSCE and UN cooperation in the field of combating drug trafficking in Central Asia in order to formulate a policy agenda from an economic perspective. The current economic forum in Prague is expected to make specific recommendations to individual OSCE member states.

The discussions in the four working groups into which the Tashkent seminar was divided focused on the causes of drug trafficking, financial flows and money laundering, the investment climate, links between trafficking networks, and transportation routes.

In Tashkent, Everts emphasized both the security and the economic threat posed by drug-trafficking. "Drug trafficking devastates national economies," Everts said. "The violence and insecurity it brings stops serious foreign and local investors from investing. Criminal networks are increasingly infiltrating the legitimate economy, not just with their money but with their ethics."

Everts said inadequately trained and corrupt law-enforcement officials and customs agents often figure in the payrolls of criminals involved in drug trafficking. "We must get our act together and arrive at a joint strategy to meet the dangers posed by drug trafficking," he said. "Drug trafficking is big business, and the criminals involved will not give up without a fight."

All four groups recommended closer cooperation between law-enforcement bodies and other institutions involved in the fight against drug trafficking and recommended the OSCE increase its preventive work in Afghanistan, even though that country is not an OSCE member. (RFE/RL)