Tajik rescuers aiding Turkiye quake relief return home

Two weeks after the devastating earthquakes in Turkiye and Syria, a 50-member Tajik rescue team that arrived in Turkey on February 9 has completed its tasks and is returning to Tajikistan on the night of February 22-23.

 

“A plane with Tajik rescuers on board is expected to land in Dushanbe airport in a Thursday early morning, at 1:00 am,” Ms. Umeda Yusufi, a spokesman for the Emergencies Committee under the Government of Tajikistan, told Asia-Plus in an interview.

 

Recall, Tajikistan sent a group of 50 rescuers and doctors, as well as 2.5 tons of special equipment, to Turkey on February 9 to help deal with the aftermath of the February 6 earthquake.

 

This was the first time that rescuers from Tajikistan have traveled abroad to provide assistance and participate in disaster relief efforts.

 

Over two weeks of recue-and-search operations, Tajik rescuers have saved three people and pulled more than 200 bodies from the rubble.

 

Tajik rescuers reportedly saved three people, including two children, in the earthquake-hit Kahramanmaras province.

 

On February 11, Tajik rescuers reportedly pulled a man his six-month-old son alive from under the rubble of a collapsed of a building. According to statement released by the Emergencies Committee, they were trapped under the rubble of the building for six days

 

Turkiye’s Anadolu Agency (AA) reported on February 12 that Tajik rescue workers have found and pulled a 3-year-old baby alive from under the rubble of a collapsed building. He reportedly spent 158 hours there.

 

The operation was carried out with use of special devices for detecting people under rubble, according to AA.

 

Since February 18, Tajik rescuers had reportedly worked in Hatay province.

 

During his visit to the Hatay province Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on February 20 reportedly highly appraised the work of Tajik rescuers and expressed sincere gratitude to the government of Tajikistan and the Tajik people for the assistance and support provided the Turkish people in such a difficult time.

 

A devastating earthquake of 7.8 on the Richter scale hit Southern Turkiye in the early hours of February 6 (4.17 am local time), with epicenter in the Pazarcık district of Kahramanmaras province.

 

Source: Asia-Plus

Our service is mistaken for carrier, says Yandex go

Yandex go, the company which has been talked about in Tajikistan for months, said last week that it intends to enter the Tajik market.

 

Its online travel booking service has reportedly operated in the country since February 15.  The reaction immediately followed this – the Dushanbe Administration said that the activity of the service in the country is illegal and the law enforcement agencies have detained taxi drivers who began to work with it.

 

Commenting on the situation, the company told Asia-Plus on February 22 that it operates in Tajikistan in accordance with the country’s legislation.

 

“The model of the online travel booking service itself is new to the country, and therefore, our service can be mistaken for carrier, but it is not so.

 

“Yandex go is an international information platform. We do not have our own drivers and cars. We work with local partner carriers, who, in turn, cooperate with the drivers and provide transport services to users,” the company’s written response reads.

 

“Essentially, our platform helps users place their travel requests through the app and help, and helps transport carriers find them,” the company notes.

 

Yandex Go is an app to request rides, order food from restaurants, carsharing or send items across city.

 

Carsharing is a membership based service available to all qualified drivers in a community. No separate written agreement is required each time a member reserves and uses a vehicle. All CSOs offer members access to a dispersed network of shared vehicles 24-hours, 7 days a week at unattended self-service locations.

 

Owned by the Russia-based internet company Yandex, Yandex go (called Yango in some countries) is a ride-hailing, delivery and e-grocery service operating in more than 1,000 cities, including 300 large cities across Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Serbia, Israel, Ivory Coast, Finland, Ghana, Romania, Norway, and Bolivia. In the latter seven countries, it operates under a brand called Yango. More than 700,000 drivers are reportedly connected to the network.

 

Source: Asia-Plus

Why does Tajik need a Russian passport?

According to data from the Interior Ministry of the Russian Federation, a record number of Tajiks received Russian citizenship last year – 173,634 people, which is 69,953 people more compared to 2021. In 2021, 103,681 Tajiks received Russian citizenship.

 

Tajikistan tops Central Asia\s nations in terms of the number of citizens receiving Russian citizenship last year.

 

In 2022, 42,010 nationals of Kazakhstan and 27,220 nationals Uzbekistan received Russian citizenship.

 

The Russian Interior Ministry adds that that 121,122 other Tajik nationals have obtained a Russian permanent residence permit. It means that they are on the verge of getting the Russian citizenship, and most likely, they will become Russian nationals already this year.

 

A Russian permanent residence permit has a five-year validity period and can be extended without any limitation. However, just like the temporary residence visa, it must be authenticated on an annual basis.

 

Besides, 47,987 other Tajik nationals have a temporary residence permit, which is the first step to obtaining citizenship.

 

Analysis made by the Russian Interior Ministry shows that over the past seven years, the number of Tajikistan nationals receiving Russian citizenship has increased more than 6.5 times.

 

Thus, more than 830,000 Tajik nationals received Russian citizenship during the period from 2016 to 2022.

 

In 202, Russian authorities made amendments to the country’s federal law “On Citizenship of the Russian Federation”, which came into force on 1 July 2002. The amendments make it easier to get Russian citizenship for foreign nationals who signed a contract for service in the Russian army for a period of at least a year.

 

In accordance with the amendments, this category of foreigners does not need to obtain a residence permit for receiving the Russian citizenship.

 

The reason for this was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. By this way, Russia has decided to encourage foreign citizens, primarily those from the CIS member nations in order to replenish the ranks of the mobilized people.

 

Tajiks choose Russian citizenship because they consider that it gives them access to better employment opportunities and accordingly to a better quality of life.

 

Source: Asia-Plus

 

EU increases agricultural productivity in Tajikistan

The European Union Integrated Rural Development Project / TRIGGER supported the PO Cross-Border Economic Relations of the Sughd province in conducting B2B meeting of the Project partners in Khujand.

 

During the meeting, the partners presented their innovative projects, such as the creation of innovative greenhouses for drying and growing apricot seedlings in target areas, as well as expanding access to water for irrigation within the framework of small infrastructure grants.

 

The key presentation of the meeting was the discussion of the new mobile application “Electronic Farmer’s Journal” developed by the PO CBER Sughd with the support of the Integrated Rural Development Project/TRIGGER.

 

In the second part of the event, the participants got acquainted with the activities of the bio-laboratory functioning under the leadership of the village adviser of the village Langar, Spitamen district Mr. Khusainov Murtazokul. He acquainted the participants with the results of a study on the production of vermicompost for soil improvement.

 

As a result of the meeting, the partners signed 24 contracts/memorandums for a total of more than TJS 400,000 on cooperation in the purchase and sale of seedlings, seeds and seedlings of tomatoes, biohumus, biological plant protection products, mineral fertilizers, dried fruits, agricultural machinery, as well as the provision of agrotechnical services and services for processing of fresh produce.

 

At the meeting was also reached an agreement with the Deputy Head of the Department of Investment Management of the Sughd Region, Mr. Rachabzoda Muhammadchobir, on conducting a meeting of the partners of the Integrated Rural Development Project/ TRIGGER with the Agro-Industrial Complex of the Sughd Province to expand successful practices implemented under the Project (in particular, the production of bio humus implemented under the Project, in particular, the production of biohumus, the use of a mobile application “Electronic notebook of the farmer”, as well as support for the initiative promoted by the PO of the Sughd region to process sheep wool for improving soil and retain moisture.

 

The Integrated Rural Development Project (IRDP)/ Towards Rural Inclusive Growth and Economic Resilience (TRIGGER)` is a joint project of the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to boost the added value of agricultural production in Tajikistan by improving water security and sustainability, enhancing the productivity of selected value chains, supporting market development, export readiness, enterprise promotion and economic policy advice.

 

Source: Asia-Plus

China In Eurasia Briefing: This Isn’t A Cold War, But It’s Getting Close

Talking China In Eurasia, a new podcast hosted by me, will air live on Twitter Spaces today at 3 p.m. CET/ 9 a.m. EST and later be available on RFE/RL’s website, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you like to listen. I’ll be joined by Charles Dunst, the author of Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman, and we’ll be taking questions live. Tune in here.

 

I’m RFE/RL correspondent Reid Standish and here’s what I’m following right now.

 

Not A Cold War, But Close

Top foreign policy officials from the United States and China spent most of the last weekend at the Munich Security Conference stressing that their governments were not seeking a new Cold War, but amid tense rhetoric and accusations, a chill across much of the world is already being felt.

 

Finding Perspective: The Munich gathering is Europe’s premier foreign policy conference and has long been a mainstay for leading officials from the West and elsewhere to hobnob and take the pulse of the current world order.

 

This year’s diagnosis was far from optimistic. While the West showed that it is perhaps more united now than in recent years and that support for Ukraine is entrenched — a message reinforced by U.S. President Joe Biden’s unannounced visit to Kyiv — it’s hard to shake the sense that the West remains more out of step than ever with the rest of the world and that the damage done by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can’t be undone.

 

Rightly or wrongly, Beijing clearly believes the West is in decline and is now sensing an opportunity to shore up its rising global status.

 

In Munich, China was represented by top foreign policy official Wang Yi who projected a message of self-confidence and swagger to Western officials as he took aim at the United States and accused it of fueling the war in Ukraine.

 

Wang also said China would launch its own peace plan for ending the war and that it would underscore the need to uphold the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the UN Charter.

 

Those calls came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said China may be preparing to give weapons and ammunition to Russia, which would mark a significant escalation in the war and Beijing’s relationship with Moscow.

 

China has brushed the accusations aside but not denied them, saying Beijing “will never accept U.S. finger-pointing or coercion on China-Russia relations.”

 

In interviews with German and Italian newspapers following the accusations from Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that China supplying weapons would result in a “world war,” and that he hoped Beijing would refrain from doing so after making a “practical assessment.”

 

Why It Matters: The United States has few good cards to play with China and, given the fallout from the Chinese spy balloon incident, a stabilization of relations isn’t on the horizon.

 

Still, it’s unclear if Beijing is willing to cross this threshold and suffer the consequences for explicitly supplying Moscow with weapons.

 

In the meantime, China’s mention of a peace plan was met skeptically by U.S. and European officials, who largely see it as a move about optics as Beijing continues to up its standing across the Global South, where Chinese calls to portray the West as warmongers and itself as a peacekeeper have a receptive audience.

 

“China wants to be seen as very strong and as a leader of the global south and a peace promoter,” a senior European Union official told RFE/RL. “[And] no, Europe is not wooed.”

 

Read More

 

  • Another talking point from Munich was parallels between Russia’s war in Ukraine and a future war between China and Taiwan. As NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg cautioned at the conference: “What is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow.”

 

  • During a February 19 interview on NBC’s Meet The Press, Blinken was asked by host Chuck Todd, “If it’s not a Cold War, what is it?” in reference to competition with China. His response: “It’s complicated.”

 

Expert Corner: China’s Sanctions Skirting Power

Readers asked: “China and Russia’s trading relationship is moving away from the dollar and more toward the yuan (renminbi). How does that affect the ability of Russia — and similar countries — to skirt Western sanctions?”

 

To find out more, I asked Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director at the Economist Intelligence Unit:

 

“Over the past decade, China, Russia, Iran, and other countries at odds with the United States have made de-dollarization a priority in a bid to circumvent U.S. sanctions. This strategy is especially visible when it comes to Russia and China. Since 2020, bilateral trade between the two countries is mostly denominated in [the] Russian ruble and Chinese renminbi. In addition, more than half of the foreign-exchange reserves of the Russian Central Bank are denominated in non-Western currencies (such as the renminbi), shielding them from sanctions-related freezes.

 

“This de-dollarization strategy is an important tool to circumvent sanctions, but de-dollarization alone would not be enough for rogue countries to completely bypass sanctions. This is why China, Russia, and others are busy building full-fledged non-Western financial channels that include alternatives to SWIFT (the Belgian co-operative that connects all banks with each other) and digital currencies. Taken together, de-dollarization, alternatives to SWIFT, and digital currencies will make it possible for countries to entirely bypass Western financial channels and therefore U.S. sanctions.

 

“This is a dangerous development, which will decrease Western leverage over Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran. Sanctioned countries will not be the only beneficiaries of these developments. Groups involved in illicit activities, such as nuclear proliferation or terror attacks, will also be able to skirt Western oversight of financial channels, helping them to finance illicit activities covertly.”

 

For more, listen to Demarais’s recent appearance on Talking China In Eurasia.

 

Do you have a question about China’s growing footprint in Eurasia? Send it to me at StandishR@rferl.org and I’ll get it answered by leading experts and policymakers.

 

Three more stories from Eurasia

  1. Wang Yi’s Europe Tour

 

Capping it off with a visit to Moscow, Wang completed a weeklong — and by all accounts, successful — diplomatic tour of Europe as Beijing tries to repair relations with Europe while still keeping Russia close.

 

The Details: Wang visited France, Italy, Hungary, and Russia along with a stop at the Munich Security Conference where he also met with multiple European officials, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

 

While the visit might have been light on substance, it certainly showcased an active China on the world stage and one that European leaders are willing to engage with despite tensions over Beijing’s support for Russia amid its war in Ukraine.

 

French President Emmanuel Macron is planning an upcoming trip to Beijing and agreed to attend this year’s Belt and Road Forum in China. Both Rome and Berlin also signaled that they hope to continue building economic ties with China, with Scholz saying that the Germans opposed any form of economic decoupling, according to a Chinese readout.

 

Wang also received a warm welcome in Budapest, where Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto praised China’s role on the world stage and the need for peace in Ukraine.

 

Despite the warm words and flattering photo ops, there’s still not much indication that this has moved the needle in terms of how Europe as a whole is viewing China, especially as it stands by Russia’s side.

 

  1. Why The Czech Republic Is Rethinking Its China Ties

 

The Czech Republic has been souring on its relations with China and boosting ties with Taiwan in recent years, but with a new president elected Prague now believes it’s well-positioned to lead other European capitals in breaking new ground in engaging with Taipei.

 

What You Need To Know: To find out more, I interviewed Petr Kolar, a former Czech diplomat who advises Czech President-elect Petr Pavel on foreign policy issues.

 

Pavel made headlines when he accepted a 15-minute phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen on January 30, making him the first elected European head of state to speak directly with a Taiwanese leader.

 

Kolar told me that Pavel is looking to align his foreign policy views with the Czech Republic’s postcommunist tradition of backing democracy and human rights globally — adding that support for Taiwan should be seen as part of a broader paradigm shift in Europe shaped by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

 

“We shouldn’t let China do to Taiwan what Russia is doing to Ukraine,” Kolar said.

 

In his view, robust engagement with Taiwan now from Europe can help deter a move from Beijing in the future. He added that now that the Czech parliament and the president’s office are aligned on foreign policy issues, that Prague intends to be a leader on this issue and can now “influence or persuade” other EU governments to follow suit and step up their ties with Taipei.

 

During Pavel’s call with Tsai, he vowed to also meet in person. Given that Taiwan is not officially recognized as a country, this creates some complications in how this could take place.

 

Kolar told me that a visit from Pavel to Taiwan is not in discussion, nor would an official visit from Tsai to Prague. But, as Kolar stressed, should Pavel and Tsai find themselves in the same location, such as at a conference or summit in the Czech Republic or elsewhere in Europe, then “there’s no reason for him to not meet with her.”

 

  1. Hikvision Comes To Bulgaria’s Capital

 

Surveillance cameras from China’s Hikvision continued to be installed across Sofia’s public transit system, but the Chinese company is now facing scrutiny in Bulgaria, my colleague Elitsa Simeonova from RFE/RL’s Bulgarian Service reported.

 

What It Means: The use of CCTV cameras on public transit is commonplace across much of the world, but the controversy in the Bulgarian capital centers on the documented vulnerabilities surrounding the use of Hikvision cameras and concerns over a lack of oversight in their procurement.

 

Hikvision is the world’s largest manufacturer of video-surveillance equipment but has also found itself sanctioned in the United States for links to the Chinese state and developing special technology to surveil and track Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.

 

In the past few years, independent researchers have also documented multiple vulnerabilities within Hikvision systems that could allow the 4,500 cameras across Sofia’s transit system to be accessed and potentially taken over by private or government-backed actors.

 

Activists and opposition lawmakers have been prodding Bulgarian authorities to ensure such vulnerabilities have been patched, but they have so far dodged detailed questions on the issue, including those posed by Elitsa in her reporting.

 

Across The Supercontinent

Reviving Ties: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi made a three-day visit to China on February 14 as part of an effort to reinvigorate ties between the two countries, including breathing life back into a 25-year cooperation agreement signed in 2021.

 

The visit didn’t turn up much in deliverables and won’t do much to dispel the feeling in Iran that economic engagement with China has not delivered.

 

Canceled: Erkin Tuniyaz, the governor of China’s Xinjiang region, canceled his controversial trip to London, Paris, and Brussel after widespread concerns from lawmakers and activists.

 

One-Year Anniversary: What has China learned from one year of Russia’s war in Ukraine? Evan Feigenbaum and Adam Szubin explain here in Foreign Affairs.

 

Back To Basics: Tajikistan has finally ended all border restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic, including with China, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reported.

 

One Thing To Watch

It’s hard to go a week without seeing new warnings from Western officials about Chinese intent to take over Taiwan. Such concerns are not unwarranted, especially as Chinese officials — including Wang in Munich — do little to dispel such fears.

 

But Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy, recently offered a more sober assessment. In a recent interview with Defense News, he said that he doesn’t “see anything that indicates [an invasion of Taiwan] is imminent in the next couple of years” and that Beijing is far more likely to pursue avenues beyond military force, such as political and economic pressure, in any attempt to annex Taiwan.

 

Copyright (c) 2015. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.