To mark this last-ever edition of our EurasiaChat podcast, we decided to take a glance at the health of the media scene across Central Asia.

The report card does not make for encouraging reading.

Peter Leonard, Eurasianet’s Central Asia editor, kicked things off with Kyrgyzstan, which has been the site of some troubling developments of late.

In the latest alarming sign of decline, a court there last week ruled to dissolve independent media outlet Kloop, which has gained particular prominence for its numerous hard-hitting investigative reports into corruption.

Prosecutors argued that the outlet’s reporting is having a negative effect on the public’s mental health and driving many to take drugs and engage in sexually depraved behavior.

But as Peter and co-presenter Alisher Khamidov noted, this is part of a broader worsening in the state of civil society in the country. This issue was the subject of an Amnesty International statement published on February 8.

Lawmakers started laying the traps early on in the tenure of President Sadyr Japarov.

Kloop has fallen in part prey to a 2021 Law on Protection from False Information, which gave the Culture Ministry the power to order the removal of any publications deemed to contain "false information" without requiring a judicial order. The legislation raised concerns among international observers and domestic civil society about the potential for misuse against journalists and media organizations.

Their fears have been proven right.

Uzbekistan has a different narrative. Not necessarily better, but different.

There was actually good news of sorts earlier this month when a court ordered that Otabek Sattoriy, a citizen journalist in Uzbekistan who had been sentenced to serve more than six years in prison on extortion and libel charges in 2021, be released.

In his part of the country, down in southern Uzbekistan, Sattoriy was among the more prominent practitioners of a genre of citizen journalism – popularly known as blogging – that has emerged since President Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to office in 2016.

The authorities have been caught on the hop by the blogging boom.

As Alisher explained, they have fought something of a rear-guard battle of late against the more troublesome figures through prosecution and by trying to cast them as untrustworthy muckrakers and extortionists.

Kazakhstan too, like Kyrgyzstan, has tried to wrestle with a near-ungovernable social media scene by legislating to give itself the ultimate right to determine the difference between truth and fact. Indeed, the situation there feels like a cross between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Under a law adopted in July, people found to be using social media to disseminate anything deemed to be disinformation could be liable for punishment.

Critics at the time were consternated.

“What is false information?” asked one. “There is no clear definition in the law, anything can be included in theory, so this could be an attempt to introduce self-censorship.”

As Peter argued, this is a problem very much of the government’s own making. Through a combination of censorship for the malcontents and subsidies for the loyalists, the authorities have cultivated a sclerotic media scene. The result is that many rely for news and opinions on a wild social media space that those same authorities now want to suffocate with the la

Dastur, a newly released horror movie in Kazakhstan, has been smashing box office records.

And so, in this latest edition of our EurasiaChat podcast, we decided to speak to our producer, Aigerim Toleukhanova, to find out what all the fuss is about.

First, the plot: the narrative revolves around the fallout that ensues after the wild-child son of a rich businessman rapes a school-leaver walking home after the last day of classes. Her family initially reports the crime to the police. But then social pressure kicks in. To paper over the scandal, the mayor brokers a deal for the girl to marry her assailant.

What follows is a descent into madness and horror that lays bare all manner of decay at the heart of Kazakh society.

As Aigerim explained, it was this unflinching aspect that made Dastur an unlikely holiday season hit.

“The reason why it was so popular … is that the timing was right,” Aigerim said. “The country has had a lot of shocking news about gender violence.”

The topic of gender-based violence is particularly resonant in Kazakhstan at the moment, following the killing in November of Saltanat Nukenova in a restaurant in Astana. Her husband Kuandyk Bishimbayev, a former government minister, is in jail awaiting trial for the murder, which dominated the headlines for weeks.

Another seemingly irresolvable aspect of life in Kazakhstan is industrial disputes.

This week, Alisher Khamidov walked us through a situation that has been unfolding in the Mangystau province, which has been the site of numerous confrontations between oil workers and their employers over the years.

In the first half of December, around 500 workers at an oil services company called West Oil Software went on strike. Their demand was to be employed in subsidiaries of the state oil and gas company KazMunaiGas, which they believe would secure them more secure conditions and higher salaries. The company has since fired several dozen people, but the hardcore strikers are holding out.

These disputes are always about more than just the troubles of any single company, though.

Alisher reminded listeners that the government inevitably views such developments with unease as memories of the bloody culmination of the 2011 Zhanazon protests are still fresh.

Eurasianet’s Central Asia editor Peter Leonard, meanwhile, broadened the conversation to consider what these standoffs say about how the state is dealing with its western Kazakhstan predicament. This part of the country is rich in oil and gas, but the local economy remains underdeveloped and signally unable to meet the growing demands of a fast-expanding population.

Finally in this edition of EurasiaChat, we turned to the increasingly alarming situation around media freedoms in Kyrgyzstan. 

Readers of this website will know that two separate outlets in Bishkek were last week subjected to raids by the security services and the police in quick succession. These events are troubling, although almost certainly not unexpected.

“We journalists, we are operating in this mindset that we're still a somewhat free country,” Alisher said, speaking from Bishkek. “But the reality is different. I think that officials are operating in a different mode… Journalists need to quickly recognize that there's no more freedoms here in this country.”

Kyrgyzstan opened this New Year with a slightly new-look flag. 

The changes were not, in truth, that great. The colors and the sun-like figure at the center of the standard remained more or less the same.

But President Sadyr Japarov, who chivvied lawmakers into proposing this initiative in September, said the sun emblem needed to look less like a sunflower, which he believes to symbolize subservience and weakness.

But the details are probably beside the point, as Alisher Khamidov argued in our latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast.

“This president is trying to send a strong message: ‘Look this is a very important nation-building gesture … I'm in charge,’” Khamidov said.

Indeed, the flag saga, which descended into farce in the first few days of the month, is part of a broader piece.

Alisher and co-presenter Peter Leonard dwelled on this theme in brief, but it is worth checking out a fuller examination of these developments published in Eurasianet last month. 

Much attention in Uzbekistan, meanwhile, has been focused on the publication in December of the Program for International Student Assessment report produced by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The reported ranked Uzbekistan in the group of bottom ten nations as assessed on the educational achievements of its schoolchildren in mathematics, reading and science literacy. 

This has plunged many into a state of despondency about what this means for the country’s future. The bullish reactions of officials to these findings are far from reflecting popular consensus views.

Alisher said that the disappointment is being felt particularly acutely because so much has been invested in trying to enhance the quality of secondary education in Uzbekistan.

“The PISA test results are a wake-up call for the administration [of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev],” Alisher said.

Turkmenistan is a country that likes to keep information close to its chest, but not when it comes to its would-be achievements. Former President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has been in particularly ebullient form of late following back-to-back successes registered by a soccer team named after him.

Arkadag — the name is derived from an honorific meaning “patron of the nation” — was created to represent the eponymous city willed into existence last year by Berdymukhamedov. Despite only having been created last year, the team, which was created by raiding the top talents from other premier league peers, has already won its first title and bagged the Turkmenistan Football Cup in late December.

In a message of self-congratulation, Berdymukhamedov predicted that Arkadag would now surely go on to achieve success in the Asian Football Confederation Champions League, known as ACL, and even in FIFA club world cup, a format for which no Central Asian team has ever managed to qualify.

But the road may be running out for Berdymukhamedov’s delusions. While Arkadag has clearly been allowed to win in domestic competitions, they will not be afforded the same benefit once they compete internationally.

“When you're inside your own little bubble, illusions are fine .. but there's always a point when you can have come up and bump up against reality,” Peter said on the EurasiaChat podcast. “Berdymukhamedov senior is … going to realize next season that actually you can't bluff your way into winning everything.”

On the occasion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Dubai, the latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast focused on how Central Asia is meeting the challenge.

Turkmenistan made headlines with the announcement that it is signing up  to the Global Methane Pledge, a voluntary agreement that commits adherents to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030.

The country has heretofore earned a notorious reputation through its colossal methane emissions — the dark side of its status as the holders of one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas.

Commenting on this ostensibly positively development, Eurasianet’s Central Asia editor, Peter Leonard, expressed concern that Turkmenistan might merely seek to capitalize on its adherence to the initiative as a PR boost and that it’s commitments to environmental issues is not that serious.

Taking a less cynical position, co-host Alisher Khamidov suggested that either way, the fact that such an isolated country is getting involved in an international effort with concrete benchmarks could — in theory — have virtuous side-effects by promoting the values of good governance and accountability.

In Kyrgyzstan, where Alisher lives, an unseasonably mild start to winter has turned thoughts to the fates of glaciers and rivers. 

Even the national leadership, which has tended to steer clear of grappling with the issue, does at least pay lip service to it now. In early November, President Sadyr Japarov traveled to France to attend the One Planet Summit, held as part of Paris Peace Forum, which to go off the event organizer’s own description, is an “international event focused on reviving and improving global governance.” Japarov seized on the occasion to talk about the glacier emergency.

The stakes could not be higher. Some scientists have estimated, as Alisher noted, that Central Asia could lose up to 60 percent of its glaciers by 2100. That has grave implications for farming, and therefore availability of food in a region whose population is growing fast, and the future of hydropower projects in countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Kazakhstan made a few headlines at the COP-28 summit too.

At least three agreements, of varying degrees of definitiveness, were reached between Kazakhstan and investors from France, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates on developing large wind power facilities in the coming years.

These kinds of deals will be encouraging for a government that has set itself a number of important targets on renewable energy technology. Under those targets, at least 15 percent of all electricity generated is to be provided by renewable energy sources by 2030, and that figure should increase to 50 percent by 2050.

When it comes to ostensibly “clean” energy, another part of the conversation involves nuclear. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are all mooting the construction of nuclear power plants, although officials in Astana are so anxious of causing a backlash by high-handedly adopting a decision on this matter that they will hold a doubtlessly carefully choreographed referendum on the matter in the coming months.

Alisher is pessimistic on this push, though. He questions whether any of these countries have reliable enough governments to ensure that nuclear power is administered safely.

Either way, Eurasianet will be monitoring and covering future developments.

This episode was produced by Aigerim Toleukhanova.

In this week’s edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, we turned our attention to the problem of gender-based violence.

This topic has been in the news of late in Kazakhstan following the killing last month of a woman, Saltanat Nukenova, allegedly at the hands of her husband, a former top-ranking official in Kazakhstan’s government. 

 Kuandyk Bishimbayev, 43, is now in jail pending further investigations.

 As podcast co-presenter Aigerim Toleukhanova noted, activists are now calling for the concept of femicide to be included in the statute books. According to UN figures, around 400 women are killed in acts of domestic violence every year in Kazakhstan. 

There is another dimension to this story. By rights, Bishimbayev should have been in prison under the terms of the sentence handed down at his corruption trial in 2018. He was, however, amnestied by former President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2019.

This has only compounded the broader anger sparked by the killing of Nukenova. If Bishimbayev had served his sentence in full this tragedy would never have occurred. 

Next in the podcast, the conversation moved to the phenomenon of migration from Central Asia to the United States.

Co-presenter Alisher Khamidov talked about a number of his own friends who used up all their savings to travel to Mexico, from where they planned to get across the border. 

The number of Uzbeks embarking on this voyage is particularly high. Fox News reported in October that more than 13,500 Uzbek citizens have been detained over two years while attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexican border unlawfully.

Alisher cited the testimony of one friend to explain why this trend is so pronounced.

“She had this idea that if she managed to go to America and start a new life, then all of her problems would dissipate and that she would be happy [and become] … accomplished as a person,” he said. “It seems like America [is a] psychological socio-economic magnet for a lot of people. It signifies freedom, happiness and just the completion of their life’s journey.”

Finally, Aigerim and Alisher addressed the continuing echoes of Bloody January, the deadly political unrest that shook Kazakhstan in January 2022.

In July, a court sentenced Aigerim Tleuzhan, a journalist and civic activist, to four years in prison over her purported involvement in a plot to seize the country’s main air terminal during that unrest. Earlier this month, Tleuzhan embarked on a hunger strike in prison. Reporters monitoring her situation say she has grown troublingly weak.

This episode was edited by Aigerim Toleukhanova.

An explosion at a coal mine in central Kazakhstan last month claimed the lives of 46 workers in what has been described as the deadliest industrial accident in the country’s history.

This week on the EurasiaChat podcast, co-presenters Alisher Khamidov and Peter Leonard opened by dwelling on how the public agenda has been dominated by speculation over who will end up owning the company that controlled the mine.

Its current owner, ArcelorMittal Temirtau, scrambled after the blast to inform the public that it had just signed a preliminary agreement on the transfer of ownership to the state.

For many, this was too little and too late. According to official figures, more than 100 people have died at ArcelorMittal Temirtau facilities over 15 years.

Alisher wondered if this precedent might prompt the government to explore other important industrial assets privatized in less-than-transparent manner.

What is getting less public attention from officials, oddly enough, are questions of safety and worker rights. As economist Kuat Akizhanov noted in an article for Vlast, the Indian manager of ArcelorMittal Temirtau, Palavathu Krishnan, was on a 31.3 million tenge ($67,000) salary, while rank-and-file metals workers had to make do with 300,000 tenge. 

A redistribution of assets is happening in Kyrgyzstan too, albeit in very different circumstances. The target of the expropriations are said to be associates of the late crime kingpin, Kamchybek Kolbayev, who was killed in a security services sweep.

The unaddressed question, though, is the process by which assets are being nationalized and then redistributed.

“Where wealth will end up at is more important than the legality of the issue,” Alisher concluded.

While these shenanigans are happening away from the scrutiny of the public, there are other areas in which governments in Central Asia like to be seen as responding to sentiment on the street.

There is no better example of that than how various authorities are reacting to events in the Gaza Strip. In Kyrgyzstan, a pro-Palestine rally of hundreds of people took place in Bishkek. Activists tried something similar in Uzbekistan, but were prevented from proceeding by the police. The Uzbek government, however, is adopting unusually bold language – by the standards of often quite anodyne Central Asian standards – in its support for the Palestinians.  

Central Asia is grappling with another looming water crisis. In this episode of the EurasiaChat podcast, hosts Peter Leonard and Alisher Khamidov delved into the concerning drop in the Caspian Sea's water level, which has dire implications for the ecosystem and marine economy in the region.

The decline in the Caspian Sea's water level is a complex issue influenced by both natural forces and human activities. This extensive body of water, shared by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Russia, has been experiencing a significant reduction in water levels since 2005. Startlingly, Azerbaijani officials report a staggering 114-centimeter decrease over the past decade, a concerning trend that has been exacerbated by climate change. Factors like reduced precipitation, increased evaporation, and declining water inflow, driven by global warming, are taking a toll on the Caspian Sea.

The most immediate and severe impact is felt in Kazakhstan, where the city of Aktau declared a state of emergency in response to the receding shoreline.

This RFE/RL article tells the story well: https://www.rferl.org/a/caspian-sea-shrinking-kazakhstan/32518243.html

On a different note, Alisher discussed the recurrent anti-government protests in Kazakhstan that often coincide with Republic Day, celebrated on October 25. Mukhtar Ablyazov, a government critic residing in Europe, typically incites these protests. However, recent calls for demonstrations have garnered little enthusiasm. While police resort to questionable legal measures to suppress protests, the engagement in anti-government actions has notably weakened.

Nevertheless, the subdued response doesn't equate to a victory for the authorities. On the contrary, by limiting the avenues for political expression and stifling dissent, they create a volatile and potentially unstable environment, as demonstrated by the sporadic and uncoordinated protests in Kazakhstan in January 2022.

Returning to the Caspian, there is renewed interest in constructing a natural gas pipeline across the sea, connecting Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan. Recent events offer some promising signs. A trilateral summit involving Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan in December aimed to establish a coordinated system for delivering energy resources to global markets. Additionally, President Berdymukhamedov's visits to Hungary and subsequent discussions suggested the potential for a "political agreement" on gas deliveries.

However, to translate this ambition into reality, it will require concrete commercial agreements and financial commitments. Berdymukhamedov's talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week emphasized the importance of an East-West transport corridor through the Caspian region, underscoring the need for tangible deals and investments to drive the agenda forward.

Russia is refocusing its attention on Central Asia.

As Alisher Khamidov and Peter Leonard discussed in the latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, last week saw a notable visit to Kyrgyzstan by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was in the country to attend a Commonwealth of Independent States leader summit. 

Beyond the usual speechifying and deal-making, there was some symbolism of note. As Alisher said, Putin made a point while in Bishkek of laying a wreath at the Ata Beyit memorial complex, which was created to honor victims of the Russian Tsarist suppression of an uprising known locally as Urkun.

 The Kremlin does not do apologies, but the gesture looked like a signal that Russia wants to be perceived as acknowledging its fraught historical relations with one of the few countries to remain a steadfast ally.

This is part of a broader charm offensive aimed at Central Asia and comes as the West is also making efforts to court the region.

In a development unrelated to the CIS summit, but indicative of Russia’s success in reasserting its influence in the region, was the fact that Gazprom began earlier this month delivering natural gas to Uzbekistan, via Kazakhstan. As part of a two-year deal, Uzbekistan, which has endured several chronic energy crises in recent years, will receive around 9 million meters of gas daily from Russia.

Turning to a narrower geopolitical question, the CIS summit provided an opportunity for the presidents of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to meet once again and talk more about the issue of border demarcation. This is the third time in a month that Kyrgyz leader Sadyr Japarov and his Tajik counterpart Emomali Rahmon have met. A press release on the October 13 talks from Rahmon’s office noted that “special attention was paid to the issues of determining the state border line" and that “agreements were reached on this matter some time ago.” 

Less than two weeks before, the powerful heads of the two countries’ security services met in the Kyrgyz city of Batken and later announced that their encounter had produced a “protocol” that would provide the basis for resolving all border issues.

Alisher warned about raising too many hopes, however, that a landmark deal is around the corner. While the protocol represents an important “informal gentlemen's agreement,” many sticking points remain to be resolved.

Tashiyev is having more tangible success in addressing a problem on the domestic front, though.

On October 5, Kamchybek Kolbayev, a gangland kingpin so notorious that he was even wanted by the U.S. government, was killed at the hands of GKNB special forces in an armed standoff in Bishkek.

Tashiyev followed up this incident by warning of an all-out war on the criminal underworld community. So far, he appears as good as his word and substantiated his pledges with a raft of arrests. 

Zooming out, Alisher set these developments in the regional context. 

“What’s happening here in this country is essentially what was happening in the neighboring countries about 10, 15 or 20 years ago. Uzbekistan launched an all-out campaign … against the criminal underworld in the 1990s, and that campaign continued until the mid 2000s and ended with complete eradication of all criminal underworld bosses except for those few that were loyal to the ruling establishment,” Alisher said. “The same thing happened in Kazakhstan.”

 In the latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, resident co-presenter Alisher Khamidov opened with some questions about a visit that Peter Leonard, Eurasianet’s Central Asia editor, recently paid to Tajikistan.

The standard narrative is that the country is in a perennial economic slump. And there is more than enough data to support that idea. Hundreds of thousands of people have to go abroad for work. The government is mired in debt that it will struggle to pay off. Basic services are often lacking.

But as Peter noted, the capital, Dushanbe, can somewhat, albeit misleadingly, confound these impressions. The city, like capitals all across the region, is seeing a busy and seemingly unbridled construction boom. There are more high-end stores and cafes around than there ever were before.

This sheen of apparent prosperity hides some troubling currents, however. Regular Tajiks continue to struggle to make ends meet, and the government, perhaps cognizant of that, continues to repress its population.

Turning to another subject, Alisher and Peter talked about the changing nature of Russian soft power in Central Asia.

A lot of Moscow’s efforts these days have focused on education. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on building Russian schools places like Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and now Uzbekistan. The schools are often deemed prestigious places to send children, as they are invariably better resourced than local government schools.

In some cases, this has met some resistance. As Alisher explained, some people in Uzbekistan have registered concerns that Russian schools might teach their pupils a distorted version of history that aligns with Kremlin propaganda. As history becomes an area of increasing contestation in Central Asia, the operations of Russian educational establishments are going to come under greater scrutiny.

Moving on to Turkmenistan, Alisher and Peter dwelled on that isolated nation’s evolving foreign policy. While ostensibly neutral, Ashgabat has tended to enjoy its deepest and most complex relationship with Russia. The granularity of this is most evident in the highly regular visits paid by Russian political and business delegations.

Alisher argued that Turkmenistan is now looking to diversify its diplomatic relations away from Russia and to engage more actively with the rest of the world.

How this evolves will depend as much as anything on the personalities of the country’s leaders. Turkmenistan has a president, but it also has a so-called National Leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, who happens to be the president’s father and the former incumbent head of state.

This episode of EurasiaChat ended with some thoughts about the curious spate of elite infighting that appears to be gripping Central Asia of late. Eurasianet has reported on these developments in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

These parallel trends inevitably raise questions about whether there might be a pattern in all this. Is potentially destabilizing under-the-carpet, elite bickering simply the tax that authoritarian regimes need to pay for their reluctance to allow democracy to flourish unfettered? And what, if any, consequences could such palace intrigue have for the population at large?

This episode was produced and edited by Aigerim Toleukhanova.

In this latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, EurasiaNet Central Asia editor Peter Leonard and co-presenter Alisher Khamidov first turned their attention to more bad news about media freedoms in Kyrgyzstan.

As they had threatened that they would do, the authorities have gone ahead and ordered local internet service providers to block access to the website of independent news website Kloop. 

The ostensible trigger for the ban, which came into effect on September 13, was an article on allegations that a jailed opposition politician is being mistreated while in custody. The more likely reality is that President Sadyr Japarov’s administration has grown increasingly tired of Kloop’s gadfly investigations – particularly the ones delving into the affairs of the families of the president and his close ally, the head of the security services, Kamchybek Tashiyev.

Kyrgyz officials are mounting an assault on Kloop from another direction in addition to the internet ban. Last month, the General Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit to seek the definitive closure of the news site, citing what they described as its overly critical stance on government policies. 

“The question that is preoccupying the minds of many people here in Bishkek, particularly in the journalist community, is what is going to happen now?” Alisher noted. 

With summer inexorably heading for the exit, thoughts are turning to winter. And winter in Central Asia has come to mean electricity crises.

As Alisher and Peter discussed, the issue boils down to two core problems: ageing infrastructure and artificially low tariffs that do not enable state-run electricity companies to invest in maintenance and modernization. 

Turning to Uzbekistan, Alisher brought us an update on the latest pronouncements of Nuriddin Kholiknazarov, who has been the head of a quasi-governmental body overseeing the country’s Muslims since October 2021. Kholiknazarov took aim in remarks made last month at what he described as an excessive obsession among some Uzbek Muslims with trivial debates over proper dress and beard length. 

The exhortation to avoid superfluous piety is fairly familiar – the authorities have robustly pushed a secular strain of the Islamic faith for decades. But when Kholiknazarov seemed to be critiquing education standards in Uzbekistan, that felt like he was treading on more dangerous ground. Chiding the authorities is not something that muftis typically do. 

 And finally, Peter and Alisher had some thoughts on the consultative meeting of Central Asian leaders that recently took place in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. These get-togethers may be relatively low-key affairs, but Peter argued that the fact that the region’s presidents are able to gather and hash out their ideas on integration – without their overbearing Chinese, Russian and Western partners present – feels significant.

Alisher spoke, however, of some sense of disappointment in Kyrgyzstan at how the Dushanbe meeting panned out. Before the first of two days of meetings was through, Kyrgyzstan’s President Japarov left for home. This snubbing behavior felt significant as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are at present experiencing severe turbulence in their relationship.