Speaking at the UN General Assembly in mid-September, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev outlined a democratic vision for Uzbekistan. Just over a year since Mirziyoyev replaced the late strongman Islam Karimov, such a vision naturally generated skepticism. Yet, Mirziyoyev’s actions, not just his words, leave room for guarded optimism. In his UN address on September 19, […]
A Response to Ronald Watson At the end of 2016, we published a series of three articles on Turkmenistan’s economic crisis published by an analyst writing under the pseudonym Ronald Watson. Here, Isaac Scarborough, a PhD candidate in the Department of International History at the LSE, responds by arguing that the crisis may be less […]
Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia (Yale University Press, 2017) A new book by Alexander Cooley & John Heathershaw “A lucid, iconoclastic primer on the region that demolishes the artificial distinction between domestic and international politics in Central Asia once and for all.”—Publishers Weekly Following independence from the Soviet Union, Central Asia’s […]
Part 3: Berdymukhammedov on the brink Turkmenistan’s economic crisis is a product of a personalised and authoritarian regime. To return from the brink the government must do what it has never done before and begin to permit dissent. Turkmenistan’s dependence on energy exports means that economic recovery must rely on the leadership’s steps towards mending […]
Part 2: Gas, dependency, and debt Turkmenistan’s shift from Russia to China as its leading customer has not reduced dependency and has increased its debt. Apart from finding new markets for its resources, Turkmenistan’s energy sector is hampered by bad supplier relations with its existing partners. Without new markets and with its debt to China, […]
Part 1: Running Out of Cash Let us start with the vital element in the economy — the currency. According to the unofficial reports from the capital, the black market USD/Manat rate skyrocketed to over seven in October and up to eight in November, while the official quote is under 3.50 at the state foreign […]
Editor’s introduction by John Heathershaw Turkmenistan is the least-well studied and perhaps most-poorly understood of the Central Asian republics. We have not previously published features on Turkmenistan on this site and rarely does it feature in the research of our group. However, Turkmenistan has been enduring a financial and economic crisis for many years and deserves […]
An odd story is emerging from Tajikistan with regard to the infamous aluminium company (Talco) and its offshore dealings. On 25 October, the country’s Ministry of Finance reported that $1.1Bn (equivalent to more than 14% of the value of country’s GDP [$8.5 Billion in 2013]) has been lost in the period from 2010 until to […]
This article originally appeared at The Conversation on September 9 and got 30,000 reads in the first few days. The death of Islam Karimov, a dictator who ran Uzbekistan since its creation a quarter-century ago, has kicked off a new round of geopolitical competition in Central Asia. Despite the rise of China in the region, Russia has […]
By John Heathershaw and Edward Lemon This article first appeared at The Conversation As Tajikistan marks 25 years since its independence from the Soviet Union, the fragile peace it has made has been offset by a brutal crackdown on the opposition and an impending economic crisis. The Central Asian republic was born amid political turmoil, and […]
Alexander Cooley & John Heathershaw The death of Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s president, marks the end of one of the world’s most ruthless dictatorships. Karimov reportedly tortured dissidents, incarcerated thousands of political prisoners and maintained airtight control over the Central Asian state’s media and social spaces. But he was also a master at leveraging the geopolitical […]
Until 2015, the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT) formed the leading legal opposition movement in Tajikistan, holding two seats in the Supreme Assembly. But in 2015, the party lost its two seats in the parliamentary elections. Hit by a series of scandals, deputies began resigning en masse. The Prosecutor General accused the party’s leader, Muhiddin Kabiri, of […]