Tag: Turkmenistan

Resources: Curb vast water use in central Asia : Nature News & Comment

Shipwrecks rusting in the desert have come to symbolize the environmental havoc that has befallen the Aral Sea, which straddles Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. More than 90% of what was once the fourth-largest lake in the world has vanished in half a century1, 2, 3. The cracked shores are symptoms of the dramatic overuse of water in central Asia. Since the 1960s, 70% of Turkmenistan has become desert, and half of Uzbekistan’s soil has become salty owing to dust blown from the dry bed of the Aral Sea1.

The republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan were developed as farming states to supply produce to the former Soviet Union1. Today, they are among the highest per capita users of water in the world — on average, each Turkmen consumes 4 times more water than a US citizen, and 13 times more than a Chinese one4(see ‘Top 20 consumers’). More than 90% of the region’s water use is irrigating thirsty crops including cotton and wheat1, 2.

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Like most other parts of the former Soviet Union, central Asian states suffer authoritarian rule and political fragility. Soaring unemployment is leading to a mass emigration of educated people. Current figures estimate that up to one-third of working-age Tajiks are employed abroad. Ethnic, political and religious diversity and difficulties with boundary demarcation fuel nationalism. Internal hostilities, as in the Caucasus, Moldova and eastern Ukraine, are a threat. A full-scale regional conflict, regardless of the rise of radical religious groups, is not out of the question.

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Resources: Curb vast water use in central Asia : Nature News & Comment.

Jashan-e-Nouruz celebrated | The Nation

ISLAMABAD – Officials and families of Iran, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan embassies, donned in their traditional, national and cultural dresses, came together to celebrate Jashan-e-Nouruz — the day marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the year in Iranian calendar — jointly in National University of Modern Languages on Thursday.

The beautiful embroidered dresses, delicious traditional cookies, dry fruits, savourous foods, sweets, desserts and rhythmic music from Iran, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan were a treat among treats for the students and faculty members of NUML.

The “Nouroz Day” celebrations were inaugurated by Ambassador of Republic of Tajikistan Zubaydullo N. Zubaydov by cutting of ribbon of traditional food stalls.  Iranian Embassy Charge De Affairs Mr Rawish, Iranian Cultral Counsellor Dr Sadiqi, Deputy Afghan Ambassador  were also present on the occasion. The cultural troupe from Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan presented the soulful tunes and sung some beautiful Iranian cultural songs and mesmerized the audience thronged at IT Auditorium.

Speaking at the occasion, Ambassador Tajikistan Zubaydullo N. Zubaydov said “It was pleasant to see that a joint effort was made to celebrate the “Nouroz Day” to share the cultural and traditional understanding with their Pakistani brothers and sisters. Such cultural exchanges not only help people from different countries get closer to each other but also help them to understand the global cultural environment”, he added.  Speaking at the occasion, Rector NUML Maj Gen (Retd) Masood Hasan said,  “NUML is a place where 26 international languages are taught and the university always appreciates the arrangement of such events that help our students to understand the culture, norms, traditions and society of a particular language they are learning here”.

Head of Russian Department said  “today’s programme is dedicated to the New Day, i.e. the first day of the spring which is rejoicing of life and its harmony with nature. Each country has its own customs and ceremonies but one theme is common in all i.e. the joy, which is expressed through dance and songs and of course through food”.

Embassies of Iran, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan also held different stalls where they exhibit the traditional dresses, decoration pieces, photographs and national foods to present that how Nouroz Day is celebrated in their respective countries. Besides this documentaries of each country were also shown in IT Auditorium.

via Jashan-e-Nouruz celebrated | The Nation.

Danger waters: Top spots of potential conflict in the geo-energy era – and how Tajikistan is involved.

The Caspian Sea Basin

by Michael T. Klare on January 13, 2012

The Caspian Sea is an inland body of water bordered by Russia, Iran, and three former republics of the USSR: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. In the immediate area as well are the former Soviet lands of Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. All of these old SSRs are, to one degree or another, attempting to assert their autonomy from Moscow and establish independent ties with the United States, the European Union, Iran, Turkey, and, increasingly, China. All are wracked by internal schisms and/or involved in border disputes with their neighbors.  The region would be a hotbed of potential conflict even if the Caspian basin did not harbor some of the world’s largest undeveloped reserves of oil and natural gas, which could easily bring it to a boil.

This is not the first time that the Caspian has been viewed as a major source of oil, and so potential conflict. In the late nineteenth century, the region around the city of Baku — then part of the Russian empire, now in Azerbaijan — was a prolific source of petroleum and so a major strategic prize. Future Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin first gained notoriety there as a leader of militant oil workers, and Hitler sought to capture it during his ill-fated 1941 invasion of the USSR. After World War II, however, the region lost its importance as an oil producer when Baku’s onshore fields dried up. Now, fresh discoveries are being made in offshore areas of the Caspian itself and in previously undeveloped areas of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

According to energy giant BP, the Caspian area harbors as much as 48 billion barrels of oil (mostly buried in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan) and 449 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (with the largest supply in Turkmenistan). This puts the region ahead of North and South America in total gas reserves and Asia in oil reserves.  But producing all this energy and delivering it to foreign markets will be a monumental task. The region’s energy infrastructure is woefully inadequate and the Caspian itself provides no maritime outlet to other seas, so all that oil and gas must travel by pipeline or rail.

Russia, long the dominant power in the region, is pursuing control over the transportation routes by which Caspian oil and gas will reach markets.  It is upgrading Soviet-era pipelines that link the former SSRs to Russia or building new ones and, to achieve a near monopoly over the marketing of all this energy, bringing traditional diplomacy, strong-arm tactics, and outright bribery to bear on regional leaders (many of whom once served in the Soviet bureaucracy) to ship their energy via Russia.  As recounted in my book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, Washington sought to thwart these efforts by sponsoring the construction of alternative pipelines that avoid Russian territory, crossing Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey to the Mediterranean (notably the BTC, or Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline), while Beijing is building its own pipelines linking the Caspian area to western China.

Tajikistan in the context of Central Asia

Central Asia is known by many names, including Eurasia, Middle Asia, and Inner Asia. At its core, the region is composed of five states that became independent nations following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Scholars sometimes include Afghanistan, Mongolia and the Xinjiang province of China within the label Central Asia. For this project, Central Asia is restricted to the five former Soviet countries, while Afghanistan is classified in Southwest Asia, and Mongolia and Xinjiang as part of East Asia. These states have a shared landmass of 1.5 million square miles, about one-half the size of the United States.

The region’s unity comes from a shared history and religion. Central Asia saw two cultural and economic traditions blossom and intermix along the famed Silk Road: nomadic and sedentary. Nomadic herdsmen, organized into kinship groupings of clans, lived beside sedentary farmers and oasis city dwellers. Four of the countries share Turkic roots, while the Tajiks are of Indo-European descent, linguistically re- lated to the Iranians. While still recognizable today, this shared heritage has devel- oped into distinct ethnic communities. Continue reading Tajikistan in the context of Central Asia

ECO members intend to establish a single market for goods and services, much like the European Union.

The Conference on Logistics and Transit Development in the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) region was launched on Monday in Bandar Abbas, Southern Iran.
Iranian Roads and Urban Development Minister, Ali Nikzad, announced in the conference that Iran aims to increase its annual transit capacity to 30 million tons in coming years, from current 12 million tons.  Continue reading ECO members intend to establish a single market for goods and services, much like the European Union.