By Rob Packer

First of all, this museum is really called the State Historical Museum. During Soviet times, it was called the Lenin Museum and I’m not sure how much has really changed since then. The first floor is a scene-by-scene re-enactment of the October Revolution cast in Socialist Realist bronze. In my opinion, it’s one of Bishkek’s must-sees. Take a look at the pictures and decide for yourselves.

Outside the State Historical Museum on Bishkek's main square.

Life was pretty miserable before the October Revolution, especially if you were one of the many "emancipated" serfs after 1861.

Hello boys! Marx and Engels to the rescue.

Getting the good news in Iskra.

He's back! Lenin comes out of hiding.

The Proletariat strikes back.

Come with us!

Finding the proletarian Holy Grail.

Which way for freedom?

"All power to the soviets". Any student of the October Revolution will know that this is not what happened next; it was all power to the Communist Party.

Looking very pleased with their socialist freedom.

Marching as to war.

By Rob Packer

It’s been a tense week and a half while my Uzbek visa process has been going through. Uzbekistan is notorious amongst Central Asia veterans and novices as being the second-hardest of the ‘Stans to get into (number one is famously bizarre Turkmenistan). So I stayed sceptical of my chances when I arrived on a cold Tuesday morning last week at Bishkek’s Uzbek embassy as a citizen of a country, which does not have a fantastic relationship with Tashkent, with nothing but my passport, some photos and a visa form. For a select number of nationalities, these are supposed to be all you need, but for everyone else you’re supposed to be invited by a travel agency and arrive at the embassy brandishing a letter of invitation. None of these were required and as I sit here with an Uzbek visa in my passport, I’m left wondering whether Anglo-Uzbek relations have thawed, the fierce look I tried to give as I went in worked wonders, the woman took a liking to me, the rules really have changed, or I’ve just seen the consular equivalent of an astronomical conjunction.

My Uzbek visa. Worth the wait.

Although I didn’t have to come bearing paper, I did have to deal with the bureaucrat’s other weapons: multiple visits (three), a long wait (10 days processing) and slavishly following your request (I may have the world’s only 11 day visa). And then there was one last hurdle and CIS special: the soiled note. This is when you give someone a US bill and they decide it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on because it’s dirty, torn or has some other imperfection. My $100 bill’s crime? That note had a very small stamp mark, probably done by someone in a bank. This is a fight that can only be won with a new bill. So I jumped back into the car with the driver from work who took me to the nearest bank while I was sweating inside my coat. On the way back from the bank, where they seemed to be getting their dollars straight from the US Mint, Zakir was telling me about when he’d been at the Russian embassy in Tashkent and had been asked to explain why they was a pen mark on his bills and who’d put them there: I decided the best answer would be Barack Obama. At least when my unsoiled Franklin was changed hands, I got the crispest notes I’ve ever seen in return.

A soiled $100 note. See the small grey mark? Not counterfeit, but as good as.

Happy Thanksgiving, any of you USA people!

In case you are thinking of purchasing the new global version of Amazon’s Kindle for Christmas, be aware that there are still quite a few places that the global version will NOT work.  I was disappointed to find that the new version still will not work in my country.

Apparently the new global version will only work in SOME countries.   I thought it would be helpful to most expats to have a complete list of which countries it will, or will not work in (below).

It’s also interesting to note the PATTERN of groups of countries where the Kindle doesn’t work–some countries probably lack satellite coverage or delivery systems, while others probably don’t WANT readers to be able to download whatever they want by satellite.

STARRED (*) countries marked below indicate that Kindle needs to be ordered from a SPECIAL PAGE on the Amazon site.

The Global Kindle version DOES work in (as of Dec. 2009):

Aland Islands, Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Australia*, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Boznia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guernsey, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Holy See, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Kenya, Kiribati, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Liberia, Leichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Moldovia, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Mozembique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Réunion, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Seychelles, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka,  Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Virgin Islands – British, Virgin Islands – U.S.,  Wallis and Futuna, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

The Global Kindle version does NOT work in (as of Dec. 2009) the following countries:

Afghanistan, Algeria, Antarctica, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bouvet Island, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, Chad, China, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, French Southern Territories, Gambia, Guinea, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Isle of Man, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea – Democratic People’s Republic of, Korea – Republic of, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco (including the Western Sahara), New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Territories, Pitcairn, Qatar, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Helena, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, Sudan, Svalbard and Jan Mayan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tokelau, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Uzbekistan,  Yemen.

Nature and Animal Conservation

 

     Preserving species and their habitats is important for ecosystems to self-sustain themselves. Yet, the pressures to destroy habitat for logging, illegal hunting, and other challenges are making conservation a struggle.

Visit : http://www.globalissues.org/article/1…

 What is Biodiversity ?

 

    The variety of life on Earth, its biological diversity is commonly referred to as biodiversity. The number of species of plants, animals, and microorganisms, the enormous diversity of genes in these species, the different ecosystems on the planet, such as deserts, rainforests and coral reefs are all part of a biologically diverse Earth.

   

    Appropriate conservation and sustainable development strategies attempt to recognize this as being integral to any approach. Almost all cultures have in some way or form recognized the importance that nature, and its biological diversity has had upon them and the need to maintain it. Yet, power, greed and politics have affected the precarious balance.

Does it really matter if there arent so many species?

Biodiversity boosts ecosystem productivity where each species, no matter how small, all have an important role to play.

For example, a larger number of plant species means a greater variety of crops; greater species diversity ensures natural sustainability for all life forms; and healthy ecosystems can better withstand and recover from a variety of disasters.

And so, while we dominate this planet, we still need to preserve the diversity in wildlife.

Who Cares?

  Biodiversity boosts ecosystem productivity where each species, no matter how small, all have an important role to play. For example, a larger number of plant species means a greater variety of crops; greater species diversity ensures natural sustainability for all life forms; and healthy ecosystems can better withstand and recover from a variety of disasters.

And so, while we dominate this planet, we still need to preserve the diversity in wildlife.

Loss of Biodiversity and Extinctions

It is feared that human activity is causing massive extinctions. From various animal species, forests and the ecosystems that forests support, marine life. The costs associated with deteriorating or vanishing ecosystems will be high. However, sustainable development and consumption would help avert ecological problems.

 

  

8 November 2009, a member of Memorial Human Rights Center, Bakhrom Khamroev, was illegally detained by representatives of the State Service for National Security (GSNB). Khamroev was collecting information on persecution of independent Muslims in Southern Kyrgyzstan. Without any kind of reason, the Russian citizen was held in detention for about 14 hours, subjected to interrogations and scare-tactics, before being put on a plane to Moscow on the morning of the following day.

The threats of extradition to Uzbekistan went on for 8 hours – until the human rights defender half way through the third night was told about the decision to send him to Moscow. One of the officers said, “The Uzbeks will pay 50 thousand for you. We don’t mind some extra money for New Year’s. How much can you pay? You don’t understand? If you don’t understand, we’ll buy you a ticket to Moscow via Tashkent, you know yourself what will happen there.”

We don’t exclude that Bakhrom was saved from extradition only by the fact that the information about his arrest reached foreign media outlets that same evening. On the evening of 18 November, the organization Human Rights Watch urged the authorities in Kyrgyzstan to immediately free the detained. Many international human rights organizations expressed concern at the events.

This is part one of a three-part post on remittances with forthcoming blogs by Meg Gray (KF9, Nicaragua) and Agnes Chu (KF9, Samoa).

In the US or Western Europe, we often think about remittances as something that people send from our home countries back to their families in Mexico, Ghana, the Philippines, Ecuador, and so on. Remittances and the hope of wealth are the one of the driving forces in all kinds of global migration, so it seems fitting that the subject of remittances is a recurring theme in the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report from October 2009, which this year focuses on migration and aims to “challenge our preconceptions”. While movement from the West to developing world is one side to the story of remittances, it is not the only side: remittances do not necessarily touch the “rich world” of North America or Western Europe, or they can linger below the radar and have an enormous impact on countries where people are barely aware that they have an emigrant community. The three Kiva Fellows contributing to this co-ordinated post are posted in the countries currently hosting a Kiva Fellow and where remittances make up the largest percentage of the country’s gross domestic product (data from the World Bank): Samoa (22.8% of GDP), Nicaragua (12.9% of GDP) and Kyrgyzstan (19.1% of GDP).

In the West, we like to think that we bear the brunt of migration and the topic of immigration crops up with frightening regularity on election manifestos around the world, and to listen to some of the more hysterical politicians you might imagine that there were hordes of people ready to swoop on our countries to steal our jobs. I’ve sometimes been struck by the parallels between such apocalyptic visions and the 1938 radio production of The War of the Worlds: the base feelings of hysteria that Orson Welles managed to play on for one pre-war Halloween night are really no different from the images of bogeymen conjured up by politicians the world over. I personally subscribe to the theory that migration is mostly beneficial as it allows opportunities which wouldn’t be available in home countries or environments. A gross generalization, but one I believe in.

I’ve always found the topic of migration interesting and during a chance research project for my MFI I stumbled across the UNDP’s 2009 Development Report. While searching through the report for mentions of Kyrgyzstan, some figures jumped out at me that sparked off wild ideas in my head. For instance, nearly 20% of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP comes from remittances and around 10% of the population works abroad. A separate project to build the Kyrgyzstan lending team brought me up against very slim pickings when looking for groups of Kyrgyz émigrés. Something here didn’t add up: where were these migrants and where we they sending money from? When I found out the answer, it seemed like it had been staring me in the face all this time. They vast majority of remittances come from Russia, Kazakhstan and the odd other country of the CIS, and interestingly have not fallen as much in ruble terms as dollars with the economic crisis. That was why I could only find a handful of Kyrgyz-interest groups in the West. As soon as I started to think about remittances in the context of Kyrgyzstan, my next question was whether a society’s semi-dependence on remittances makes microfinance more or less equitable.

Mushroom-picking is a common activity throughout the forests of the CIS, although I’ve not discovered it on this trip, and there is supposed to come a moment when you get the hang of searching for mushrooms and the forest goes from seeming like there are no mushrooms, to seeming like its full of them. Once I started watching out for stories about migration and remittances, I started to find them everywhere. I spent an enjoyable day collecting journals in Kara-Balta with a loan officer called Mayrambek, who’d worked on a construction site in Russia for a spell before the economic crisis sent him back to Kyrgyzstan. And I spent an afternoon racing through canyons south of Bishkek with Kananbek, an incredibly friendly taxi driver who’d been a policeman in Kyrgyzstan before spending two years working in a security firm in Yakutia, Russia. The fact that he spent two years sending money home without seeing his wife and two children in Bishkek is a sad fact of migration. The fact that he’d spent two years in Yakutia blows my mind: Yakutia is an India-sized republic of the Russian Federation in the middle of Siberia and probably counts as one of the most remote places on the planet, which makes it hard for me to imagine that it would be a destination for a migrant. When I asked him why, I was struck by the obvious simplicity of his answer: the money he was getting there was better than anything he could’ve found in Kyrgyzstan.

Tatiana, one of Kiva and Mol Bulak's borrowers in Kyrgyzstan whose life has been touched by remittances.

And then there was Tatiana. Tatiana runs an old-people’s shelter in Kemin, a small town in the north of Kyrgyzstan. Like many women in the region, her husband left for Rostov region, Russia in 2008 but, unlike most others, had second thoughts and came back after a month. And her residents have a similar story: she explained that the reason why she runs the shelter is that a lot of her elderly residents have children who have all emigrated to Russia and can’t take their parents with them. She’s also a Kiva borrower and recently took out a loan to buy livestock to support her shelter. It’s not normal to think of an old people’s shelter as a business or as its owner as an entrepreneur, but in rural Kyrgyzstan’s landscape of limited chances it’s hard for her to be otherwise. As you can see in the video, when we met her Tatiana kept saying how happy she was with the loan and that without it she wouldn’t know what she would have done. She’s received funds from local charities to buy a fridge or do renovations. However, for the day-to-day running of the shelter, hers is a story depressingly typical and continually repeated across rural Kyrgyzstan. People buy a milk cow and sell the milk for profit, or in her case, she supplements the state pensions that around half of her 12 residents receive. As she explains herself in the video, of her residents who do receive their state pensions every month, these range from anything from 400 som (USD 9) to 700 som (USD 16). Even if they’re lucky enough to get a state pension, she ends up spending around 1,500 som (USD 35) on food every month. It simply doesn’t add up. Tatiana didn’t specify if her residents received remittances, but it seemed that the elderly people wouldn’t need her care if they did. Remittances are not a one-size-fits-all solution, especially if the money doesn’t arrive. For Tatiana, this is where Kiva and its field partner, Mol Bulak Finance, come in.

Last week, Ilmari Soininen asked the question whether microfinance is cutting up the proverbial pie into more pieces or whether it’s making a bigger pie. Weighing everything, my gut feeling is that in the case of Kyrgyzstan, it’s cutting up the pie into more pieces, but it is remittances which are cooking the bigger pie. The first question I had when I looked at Mol Bulak Finance’s client base on Kiva was “And who buys all the milk?” I suspect that the buyers are women who’ve received some cash from their husband working in construction, security or mining in Novosibirsk, Moscow or St Petersburg. It’s a slow process to spread the wealth around and one that will probably take generations and countless pails of milk to complete. Microfinance is part of that process in that allows people to build out their businesses and economic capacity; for the time being, remittances are the part of the process that ensures that the milk continues to be sold. I hope that this almost symbiotic development process continues as long and as much as is necessary for the development process.

One thing is certain: no-one said it would be easy.

Here is a video of Tatiana showing us around her home and her journey to bring her project to fruition.

Rob Packer is a Kiva Fellow currently working with Mol Bulak Finance in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Join the Kyrgyzstan lending team. There are borrowers from Kyrgyzstan with Mol Bulak Finance who you can help by contributing to a loan today, and many other entrepreneurs from around the world on the Kiva site.

By Rob Packer, KF9 Kyrgyzstan

This is a repost from the Kiva Fellows’ Blog and is part one of a three-part post on remittances with other posts by Meg Gray (KF9, Nicaragua) and Agnes Chu (KF9, Samoa).

In the US or Western Europe, we often think about remittances as something that people send from our home countries back to their families in Mexico, Ghana, the Philippines, Ecuador, and so on. Remittances and the hope of wealth are the one of the driving forces in all kinds of global migration, so it seems fitting that the subject of remittances is a recurring theme in the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report from October 2009, which this year focuses on migration and aims to “challenge our preconceptions”. While movement from the West to developing world is one side to the story of remittances, it is not the only side: remittances do not necessarily touch the “rich world” of North America or Western Europe, or they can linger below the radar and have an enormous impact on countries where people are barely aware that they have an emigrant community. The three Kiva Fellows contributing to this co-ordinated post are posted in the countries currently hosting a Kiva Fellow and where remittances make up the largest percentage of the country’s gross domestic product (data from the World Bank): Samoa (22.8% of GDP), Nicaragua (12.9% of GDP) and Kyrgyzstan (19.1% of GDP). (read more…)

Amazon's Global Kindle Reader

I heard that Amazon now has a global version of Kindle. I was disappointed to find this morning that the new version still will not work in my country.

Since I’ve wanted one for some time, but have been waiting until they got a version that would work in my country, I checked out their website this morning, only to be disappointed again. Apparently the new global version will only work in SOME countries.

In case you are thinking of purchasing the new Global Kindle for a Christmas gift this year, since the new version will only work in SOME countries, I thought it would be helpful to most expats to have a complete list of which countries it will, or will not work in.

STARRED (*) countries marked below indicate that Kindle needs to be ordered from a SPECIAL PAGE on the Amazon site.

The Global Kindle version DOES work in (as of Dec. 2009):

Aland Islands, Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Australia*, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Boznia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guernsey, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Holy See, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Kenya, Kiribati, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Liberia, Leichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Moldovia, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Mozembique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Réunion, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Seychelles, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Virgin Islands – British, Virgin Islands – U.S., Wallis and Futuna, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

The Global Kindle version does NOT work in (as of Dec. 2009):

Afghanistan, Algeria, Antarctica, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bouvet Island, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, Chad, China, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, French Southern Territories, Gambia, Guinea, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Isle of Man, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea – Democratic People’s Republic of, Korea – Republic of, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco (including the Western Sahara), New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Territories, Pitcairn, Qatar, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Helena, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, Sudan, Svalbard and Jan Mayan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tokelau, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Uzbekistan, Yemen.

Pokrovka, Kyrgyzstan. April 23, 2006.

Hands

Hands of dough and string beans, picking onions, fisting in threat
at a descending flock of garden-munching birds

Hands at rest on a lined notebook
purchased for more than it costs for a loaf of bread

Careful penmanship forming lines of words
in a foreign alphabet — English

She asks, what is the word for something twisted, something not straight?
Gnarled, I say. Relishing the sound of a perfect word in my mouth

A word she knows in Russian
A word I’ve forgotten

But not her hands

Carrying me pancakes baked that morning,
buckets of raspberries, a slab of fresh pork

Gifts I don’t know how to accept, but if I give back,
she brings twice as much next time

Then returns to her garden, to bale hay and feed rabbits
aside her ten year old daughter and seventy year old father

A family alone,
hands paler than their neighbors,

Religion and speech and superstitions make them
orphans in their own home—

All the other Russians got out when they could

Now, from afar, her hands are writing letters
in the English I gave her

Studying, memorizing, relating
At fifty years old you aren’t expected to learn another language

But she did

And my hands remember, holding her last gift
her words

I wrote this at a Poetry Workshop with Leslea Newman at the 2009 Write Angles Conference. The poem is about a friend of mine from my time serving in the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan.

Defections from regional distribution network may destroy Soviet-era effort to ensure equitable sharing of electricity.

By Gulnura Toralieva in London (IWPR RCA No. 596, 20-Nov-09)

Kazakstan’s decision to withdraw from the Central Asia-wide electricity grid and strong hints by Uzbekistan that it will follow suit have highlighted the fragility of energy arrangements in the region. Analysts are warning that political leaders urgently need an action plan to avoid a potential crisis.

The Soviet Union created a common power system for Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan which worked as long as they were part of the same state. But the system began fraying at the edges after 1991, as the newly independent countries began asserting competing interests.

Rogun, Tajikistan

Electricity generating capacity is distributed unevenly in Central Asia. Mountainous Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have close to 80 per cent of the region’s water resources, allowing them to build and benefit from hydroelectric power stations, whereas Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have substantial oil and gas deposits but depend on their smaller neighbours for water.

Disputes arise whenever Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan store up water for the winter, the time they need it most for electricity production. The three lowland states want the water to flow downstream in spring and summer to provide irrigation during the growing season.

The Uzbeks export their natural gas to Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. They also supply electricity to Tajikistan, as well as providing a transit route for Kyrgyz and Turkmen electricity going to that country. But Tashkent periodically stops supplying gas in autumn and winter because of non-payment of bills, and earlier this year suspended the transit of Turkmen electricity to Tajikistan.

Following a meeting of the council which coordinates regional power supplies in mid-October, Kanat Bozumbayev, head of the Kazak electricity distributor KEGOC, said he had been told that Uzbekistan was leaving the network.

This was denied in a statement from the Uzbek state company Uzbekenergo. A spokesman said they merely wanted to alter the terms of transit arrangements.

“We would like to charge fees for electricity transits to Kyrgyzstan, which were previously regarded as transfers and were free of charge,” he said.

Although the problem was resolved – the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks reached a compromise on compensation – Uzbekenergo subsequently sent out further signals about withdrawing from the entire regional set-up.

In an article published in a state newspaper on November 5, Esso Sadulloev, who heads Uzbekenergo’s distribution office, said Uzbekistan planned to leave the Central Asia-wide grid, which he said was become increasingly unsustainable as certain member states were siphoning off electricity

“The unified electricity system is beginning to be obsolete, and is becoming the source of confrontation between participating states,” said Sadulloev.

His remarks appeared in the press two days after Kazakstan – Central Asia’s strongest economy and major oil producer – made the shock announcement that it too was withdrawing from the grid.

Deputy energy minister Duysenbay Turganov said KEGOC had taken the decision because the system was being disrupted by Tajikistan, which was taking more electricity than it was entitled to and failing to respond to instructions issued by the regional agency which manages the network. In February, Kazakstan temporarily withdrew from the Central Asian energy network because supplies to its southern regions were being disrupted by Tajikistan, which had begun taking electricity from the common grid in order to see its population through the winter months. The Tajiks began tapping the system, without consultation, after Uzbekistan halted transit supplies from Turkmenistan.

Toktogul Hydropower Station, Kyrgyzstan

Kazakstan’s decision had serious consequences for Kyrgyzstan, which was forced to impose strict limits on power use for consumers as the supply faltered.

Energy experts say the current disagreements arise from longer-running shortcomings in the way the network has functioned. Some say it is just a matter of time before the entire system disintegrates.

The Central Asian network links and regulates supplies from 80-plus power stations across the region, and the departure of even one member could prevent it functioning as a whole.

The resulting energy shortages could provoke instability and unrest which no government would want to see. Bazarbay Mambetov, an economist in Kyrgyzstan, says no one can afford to let this happen.

“The energy grid was created as a single mechanism and has been ensuring a reliable, uninterrupted power supply across the region,” he said. “Whether its participants like it or not, we are all now linked together by this system.”

But it is a network whose infrastructure has not been maintained since the Central Asian republics went their separate ways.

“It is old and it hasn’t been properly maintained, and was designed for a different environment,” said Cleo Paskal, a researcher on energy and environmental matters at the London-based think-tank Chatham House.

The system was set up based on calculations of rainfall and river volumes over previous decades, whereas environmental conditions in the region may now have changed to the extent that the design is redundant, she said.

NO ONE COMES OUT AS WINNER

Ularbek Mateyev, an energy expert in Kyrgyzstan, says, “The Soviet Union designed and built the most viable energy grid, so no country will benefit from leaving it.”

One of the consequences would be to increase the number of outages due to accidents, as there would be no central mechanism for mitigating the effects of power surges by switching supplies from one country to another.

If Uzbekistan, centrally located with the four other states around it, were to leave, everyone else’s national grid would be placed under severe strain.

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan would be worst hit, despite existing hydroelectric schemes and plans to build more, analysts say.

“Tajikistan, the northern part in particular, will suffer most,” said Anvar Kamolidinov, a water management expert in Tajikistan. “Soghd province depends on Uzbek electricity coming from the common energy grid. Soghd’s power plant at Kairakkum power plant provides only 20 per cent of the energy consumed there. If Uzbekistan leaves, two million people in [Soghd] region will be left without power.”

Meanwhile, Kamolidinov said, central and southern Tajikistan will also lose out as they will no longer get power generated in Turkmenistan and transferred through Uzbekistan.

Kyrgyzstan, too, will suffer from the loss of electricity coming from or via Uzbekistan.

Kazakstan’s energy minister Sauat Mynbayev says his country would probably struggle through, by keeping a power station in the southern Jambyl region running continuously.

“It would be a huge load, but in terms of power supplies, it would help us – and also northern Kyrgyzstan – survive this period,” he said at a government meeting in late September.

Experts warn, however, that the larger states will face significant problems just as smaller Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan will. Neither Uzbekistan nor Kazakstan is currently in a position to assure a constant, uninterrupted flow of power.

Kamolidinov believes Kazakstan and Uzbekistan would have left the parallel system already if they were not dependent on their neighbours to fill in the gaps at certain time.

“Kazakstan might leave, but it will mean additional costs, including spending to build the infrastructure that will be required,” he said. “If Uzbekistan goes, it will have supply problems at peak periods in the morning and evening. Without the Nurek power plant… in Tajikistan, it will be technically problematic and costly for Uzbekistan to meet this peak consumption.

Mambetov say the Uzbeks also need to be able to draw on Kyrgyz electricity.

“Leaving the common grid will have negative consequences for Uzbekistan itself, first and foremost,” he said. “The Uzbek energy grid needs Kyrgyz power in order to regulate a constant current.”

POWER CLOSELY CONNECTED WITH REGIONAL POLITICS

Aside from periodic electricity shortages, the breakdown of regional energy arrangements will have wider implications, analysts say.

For one thing, neither the Tajiks nor the Kyrgyz will have much of an incentive to honour the already loose arrangements for opening up the dam sluices in spring to let water down the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, so that their neighbours have enough irrigation for their crops. Their natural tendency will be to hold as much back until late autumn, when they need to begin generating more power.

Within the Soviet Union, water and fuel were exchanged between republics as free, shared commodities. But in the post-1991 world, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have become increasingly annoyed that their neighbours charge them for gas, oil and coal, yet their own natural resource – water – still has no monetary value placed on it.

Kamolidinov expressed the sense of dissatisfaction common in Tajikistan that “virtually for nothing”, the country stores up the waters of the Syr Darya river in its Kairakkum reservoir for release to Uzbekistan and southern Kazakstan when they need it.

“It’s going to be difficult to reach a [water] agreement on previous terms after the [Uzbek] power supply to Soghd region is interrupted in winter,” he added.

Many analysts see disputes over water and energy as inextricably linked with the political differences between the Central Asian states.

“The system inherited from the Soviet Union is in the process of being dismantled because Central Asian leaders are unable to reach agreement,” said Shairbek Juraev, an assistant professor of international and comparative politics at the American University in Central Asia, based in Kyrgyzstan.

Disagreements over water and energy have been festering for a long time, but Juraev says political confrontation has picked up pace recently.

“There is a risk that the situation may worsen, and that it will affect ordinary people most of all, with shortages of power and water and limits on freedom of movement,” he said. “It may lead to deteriorating conditions along borders, interethnic tensions, and a general worsening of the political situation in the region.”

Uzbekistan’s unhappiness with the current electricity arrangements form part of a wider pattern of disagreements with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, over their plans to complete major new hydropower schemes.

The Roghun and Kambarata power plants would bring Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, respectively, a lot closer to self-sufficiency in energy. But Uzbekistan worries that the new dams would block off water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, and is insisting on an international study on the possible effects of the projects before they are completed. (For more on this, see Uzbek Overtures to Kazakstan on Water Dispute.)

Russia’s role in the region is an added complicating factor. There is talk of Moscow investing in both the Roghun and Kambarata schemes, and the Uzbeks are also concerned about plans for a new Russian military base in southern Kyrgyzstan, not far from their border. (See Kyrgyzstan: Russian Base Plan Alarms Tashkent on this issue.)

These interconnected issues make it difficult to attribute blame to any one state when disputes arise.

“All the countries in this region do not take one another’s interests into account, and are thus responsible for the current situation,” said Farhod Tolipov, a political analyst in Tashkent. “Since they gained independence, these countries have had many reciprocal grievances and disagreements.

“You cannot criticise Uzbekistan alone, for announcing its decision to leave the common grid even though it was aware this would have certain consequences for its neighbours. Its actions were prompted by the behaviour of Kyrgyzstan, which is planning to build the Kambarata plant and open a Russian military base in the south, although it knows the reaction this would bring from Uzbekistan.”

According to Paskal, worsening inter-state relationships are ultimately the legacy of Soviet-era arrangements for “enforced cooperation” which are no longer working.

In addition, she said, the once-united Central Asian states are starting to undergo “real cultural polarisation and social fragmentation, which make cooperation difficult. If social cohesion starts to break apart, all relations become difficult.”

BUILDING SEPARATE NETWORKS

When it comes to electricity, however, the Central Asian states are not standing still, but are already taking steps to forge new one-to-one arrangements with one another while strengthening their own national grids.

The Kazaks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks and Uzbeks are currently working towards bilateral and trilateral deals on infrastructure and supply, bypassing the regional level at which agreement seems so difficult.

As Nargiz Kassenova, professor of political science at the Kazakstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research, noted, “The countries in the region are making great efforts to ensure energy security by making their own grids more autonomous and developing new capacity.”

Mateev agrees that a movement towards fully independent power networks is under way, while pointing out that it goes against the international trend towards greater cooperation and efficiency through economies of scale.

“In the next three to four years, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan will find solutions and free themselves from energy dependence on Uzbekistan,” he predicted.

Kamolidinov agreed that the Tajiks and Kyrgyz were heading away from reliance on other Central Asian states.

“Energy independence has long been on the agenda of these two countries,” he said. “Uzbekistan leaving the grid and the problems this will create for them will only strengthen their desire for energy independence.”

Gulnura Toralieva is a freelance journalist from Kyrgyzstan.

Representatives of the Kyrgyz State Service for National Security (SSNS) arrested the two men in southern Kyrgyzstan. Hamroev, a Russian citizen, works for the Russian rights group Memorial Human Rights Center. Rakhmatillaev is the head of Law and Order, an Osh group that investigates possible rights violations in southern Kyrgyzstan.  The activists were investigating accusations of government rights violations against individuals accused of extremism.

“The Kyrgyz government is out to stop research into abuses committed against so-called extremists in the region,” said Andrea Berg, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It is crystal clear that the two men were detained in retaliation for their work.”

Hamroev arrived in Kyrgyzstan on November 10, 2009, to conduct research into alleged human rights violations by Kyrgyz government forces in cases of alleged religious extremism and terrorism.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has begun a third round of discussions in Almaty about upcoming counterterrorism exercises.
Representatives from SCO members Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and China also visited the Otar training grounds in southeastern Kazakhstan, where the maneuvers involving some 10,000 troops are to be held next year.

Delegations from all SCO members except Uzbekistan are attending the meetings. The Uzbek government has recently limited its involvement in the Eurasian security organization, in which Russia and China are the dominant partners.

In September, the Uzbek parliament adopted legislation on its cooperation with the SCO that limits it to sending observers to the counterterrorism maneuvers after members of the upper house of parliament noted that Uzbek law forbids sending troops abroad.

The SCO was founded as the Shanghai Five in 1996 and changed its name in 2001 after Uzbekistan joined as a member.

…to fully reveal that which the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan repeatedly told his government, to no avail, and at the cost of his job.

Craig John Murray was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002-2004. While serving in that nations’ capital, Tashkent, he accused the administration of Uzbekistan President Islom Abdug‘aniyevich Karimov of human rights abuses. Murray repeatedly complained to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office that intelligence linking the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to al-Qaeda, suspected of being gained through torture, was unreliable, immoral, and illegal. He described this as “selling our souls for dross”. Murray was subsequently removed from his ambassadorial post on October 14, 2004. [Source]

Craig Murray has chronicled his saga in the book Murder in Samarkand, which I have recently read and which has prompted this article.

Murray’s main point is that the USA, from 11 September 2001, was so intent on fighting “the war on terror” that its government tolerated the kind of official behavior in Uzbekistan which it declaimed against under Saddam Hussein’s Iraq—that is, repression, torture and atrocities on its own people. Further, the then government of the United Kingdom fully supported the USA position and was complicit in consciously ignoring violations of human rights, under the United Nations Charter including, especially, the use of torture to gain “intelligence.”

The British government has denied this, to date.

REPORT OF THE UN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, February 2003—Mission to Uzbekistan: Civil and Political Rights, Including the Questions of Torture and Detention and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. [Please click on the report's title, above, to access it in MS Word and PDF format)].

Karshi-Khanabad is an airbase in south-eastern Uzbekistan. Between 2001 and 2005 the United States Air Force used the base, also known as K2 and “Stronghold Freedom”, for support missions against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. [Source]

The USA ended its official relationship with Uzbekistan in late 2005 when it “closed its air base in Uzbekistan that was used for Afghanistan operations, a shutdown ordered by Uzbek President Islam Karimov after the United States joined calls for an international inquiry into the authoritarian leader’s handling of the Andijan uprising.” [Source]

The Andijan massacre occurred when Uzbek Interior Ministry and National Security Service troops fired into a crowd of protesters in Andijan, Uzbekistan on 13 May 2005. Estimates of those killed on 13 May range from between 187, the official count of the government, and 5,000 people, with most outside reports estimating several hundred dead. A defector from Uzbekistan’s secret service alleged that 1,500 were killed.

Calls from Western governments for an international investigation prompted a major shift in Uzbek foreign policy favoring closer relations with Asian nations. The Uzbek government ordered the closing of the United States air base in Karshi-Khanabad and improved ties with the People’s Republic of China, India, and Russia, all of which supported the regime’s response in Andijan. [Source]

The unrest in the Ferghana Region has a lot to do with its minority Tajik population which were then (possibly still are) repressed and labeled, at various times, as Islamic extremists. Some observers claim that the repression drove some Tajiks toward extreme Islamism. But there is no doubt that at least a small fraction of Tajik-Uzbeks belong to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

The region’s ethnic politics are complicated by the fact that the Soviet Union purposefully changed the borders of the “Soviet Republics” of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as you can see from this tortuous border around the Ferghana Valley.

[Source of Map. Please click on the image for clearer detail.]

For a variety of reasons the designers of the Soviet “national delimitation” in Central Asia discriminated against the Tajiks, having deprived the newly formed republic of Tajikistan of the two most important centers of Tajik urban culture, Bukhara and Samarkand, as well as regions of Fergana, Surhandarya and Khwrazm which were awarded to Uzbekistan. The majority of population in Uzbekistan are Tajiks. In the words of William Beeman, professor of anthropology at Brown University: “The Tajik situation in some ways resembles that of post-colonial Africa. Tajiks have been given an impossible piece of territory with disparate population and have been forced to make a nation out of it.”

The majority of Tajiks live outside border of what is known as Tajikistan today.The largest number of Tajiks are living in Uzbekistan, where the majority of Tajiks are forced to be registered as Uzbeks (the Tajiks on the official Uzbeki data, make about 4% of the population of this republic), but the real number of Tajiks living in Uzbekistan believed to be over 50 percent (11-14 millions) of the population.“ [Source]

I offer, in closing, these observations and sources regarding the Republic of Uzbekistan:

[Image Source]

…(N)on-governmental human rights watchdogs, such as IHF, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as United States Department of State and Council of the European Union define Uzbekistan as “an authoritarian state with limited civil rights” and express profound concern about “wide-scale violation of virtually all basic human rights.” According to the reports, the most widespread violations are torture, arbitrary arrests, and various restrictions of freedoms: of religion, of speech and press, of free association and assembly. The reports maintain that the violations are most often committed against members of religious organizations, independent journalists, human rights activists and political activists, including members of the banned opposition parties. In 2005, Uzbekistan was included into Freedom House’s “The Worst of the Worst: The World’s Most Repressive Societies. [Source].

Press Service of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan

Governmental Portal of the Republic of Uzbekistan

President Visits Ferghana Region

Dictator of the Month, December 2006

US slams Uzbek election as unfree, unfair and laughable [January 12, 2000]

More women died during child birth in Kyrgyzstan in 2009, Ministry of Healthcare reported yesterday with a local MP warning that the country faces a deep recession in the healthcare system.  Doctors’ unprofessionalism is one of the reasons of shocking rise of women deaths, according to the other MP who argued that to solve the problems the government should pay greater attention to the training of doctors and medical students.

According to recent report by officials, Kyrgyzstan leads the maternal mortality league among Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS) countries.  It shows the rate of maternal mortality has increased dramatically this year.  

Results coincide with the deaths of 6 women during childbirth where the doctors were said to be to blame.

 “Six cases of maternal mortality during the last four months are a huge emergency for the country. This is a consequence of a criminal negligence of the whole society and lack of attention from the government to the problems of healthcare systems which has a huge number of problems,” said Ernst Akramov, Member of Kyrgyz parliament, experienced surgeon.

Sixty-two mothers have died during childbirth in the last 8 months including the 6 deaths caused by doctors’ negligence. In 2008 officials recorded fifty-eight women’s deaths which are much less taking into account the doctor’s prognosis that more deaths will be recorded by the end of this year.

Special commissions were organised to determine the reasons for the women’s deaths. The Special Ministerial Commission and Public Special Commission had top officials present including representatives from the Ministry of Healthcare, Members of Parliament and the Institute of Ombudsmen.

The women who died were aged between 29 and 36. Most of them had complications during their pregnancies and were in need of special care.

The commissions decided that all 6 deaths were due to the incompetence of doctors. But the circumstances surrounding each death were different.

Following the publication of these results, the prosecution service at the capital of Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek city) has started criminal proceedings against the four doctors found guilty by the commissions’ investigation. Four medical directors have also resigned.

But, Kyrgyz MP, Zulhabira Bekenova has said that punishing guilty doctors will not solve the issue. It is the root of the problem that needs to be investigated: “It is important to pay attention to education. We should urgently start to prepare competent specialists in the medical departments. Also the centres of family practice should be encouraged to work together with maternity hospitals and centres of maternity and child welfare services”.

For decades, a unique collection of historic photographs of the Orient lay forgotten at the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology. Now, the stock of 18,000 pictures has been catalogued and made accessible to the public in the form of an exhibition. Nimet Seker reports

Unique and rare glimpse into the world of Kazakh nomads around 1900: on his 1899 scientific expedition Samuil Martinovič Dudin (1863–1929) travelled Kazakhstan, Russia, China and Mongolia

A huge store of historic photographs from the Islamic world accumulated at the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology over generations, and although it is difficult to believe, for decades, it was entirely disregarded by museum staff.

It wasn’t until 2004 that a group of scientists – with the support of the ZEIT Foundation Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius – began the process of categorizing, digitalizing and reconditioning the collection of 18,000 photographs. This was a detailed and scholarly undertaking lasting a number of years, and the results can be seen today in the form of a richly illustrated catalogue of more than 700 pages, published in conjunction with the eponymous exhibition “Mit Kamel und Kamera” (With Camera and Camel).

Read full article at source

->>>>><<<<<-

To say that I am interested in languages is an understatement, as my friends know. Every language that I discover has its own particularities and aspects I like. The almost limitless vocabulary of English, the Chinese characters, the infinite possibilities of forming new words in Arabic, the childhood memories Swedish brings back, Uzbek with its funny agglutinative structure, Japanese and its tons of cool movies, the softness of Russian spoken by my teacher…

Although my attempts at learning Kyrgyz were cut short by the realization that I should probably focus on getting at least my Russian to a halfway useful level, it has grown on me: I will miss the particular melody of Kyrgyz women’s sentences when they express astonishment, for instance, which sounds a bit like the trill in a blackbird’s song. But most of all I like the wonderful interjections of Kyrgyz language:

There’s the “uppah” that you utter when getting up after having sat on a shyrdak for too long and your knees are all sore.

Then the “ou”, a polite way of responding if someone calls your name and which apparently means something like “I love you, what can I do for you?” Nobody pronounces it as gently as my colleague Ainura.

There’s the expressive “ya!”, which (according another colleague of mine, Almaz) either – at the end of a sentence – means “isn’t it?” or “don’t you think so?” or else – standing alone – is the equivalent of “What (did you just say)?” or “Pardon?”.

And then there’s the long-time classic “chön ele” – an almost untranslatable expression somewhere between “just like that”, “for no particular reason”, and “just to have a look / try it out”.

I was nominated for Central Asia back in May (a region including Turkmenistan, Kyrgyz Republic and Kazakhstan), but I recently read that volunteers have been denied entry to Turkmenistan (so that’s out). However, I was nominated for March 2010 (and Turkmenistan staging was back in September), so if all goes as planned it looks like I could be heading to Kyrgyz Republic. Why do I think this? Well, according to the Peace Corps Wiki, Kyrgyzstan is the only Central Asian country with a staging date in March. So, barring major changes, I could soon be saying Bishkek or bust!

CBS News report on Turkmenistan

By Rob Packer

Anyone who has heard anything from me over the last week has probably heard me complain about the cold, and more specifically, the fact that I only have heating in one room of my apartment. Now that I’ve been to Dordoi market to get a coat, my winter wardrobe is complete, and there’s one item that’s easily my favourite: my gloves. There’s nothing like walking along in the cold with your hands in gloves. Even with my Russian-style coat, going without them just makes everything so cold. And I don’t mean to sound like Curley from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, but gloves definitely keep the amount of moisturizer you use in the winter to a sub-industrial level.

I love my gloves. They are one of my prized possessions, and it’s not just because I’ve realized that I can just about use my phone with gloves on. What makes these guys really special is that you can clip them together. Isn’t that great? It’s the non-five-year-old version of tying them together with wool and threading them through your jacket, although I have a feeling not even that stopped me when I was younger. Yes, this means that if you’re going to lose them, you’re going to lose both at once. While that sounds like an absolute pain, there is nothing worse than having a pair of gloves, and then coming home after a vodka-fuelled night in Bishkek (it could happen) and only having one glove. Seriously, one glove is useless: it’s nothing like a lost sock. In a desperate moment, you could just about get away with matching one odd sock with another, as long as you keep it quiet and blamed the fact that you got dressed in the dark if anyone notices. One glove just mocks you, telling how much warmer your hands would be if you hadn’t been such an idiot for losing its other half. And I’ve never found somewhere that really sells single gloves, so it means you have to buy another pair anyway.

Gloves. So great.

Simply put, I love my gloves.

Central mosque (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)

Cargado originalmente por sana banana nana

This is the Central Mosque of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. This attractive and well kept mosque was open even during Soviet times. It is always open and the five daily prayers are held every day. There is a spacious courtyard and a prominent minaret.

By Rob Packer

Kiva Fellow Initiation Test: Offal

A couple of weeks ago at work, we had some delicious salad to go with our samsy, a delicious Kyrgyz meat-filled pastry that bears quite the resemblance to the Cornish pasty. The salads were a slightly pickled shredded carrot with mushrooms or tofu. While I was passing through the supermarket after my Russian class this evening, I saw the salad section and suddenly remembered how delicious they were. I pointed at my salad of choice, mumbled some Russian (it’d been a hard class) and went on my way.

I arrived at home toying with the idea of making some pasta, but a gurgling sound and no water from the tap quickly made up my mind. The first place I went to check after that was the gas stove to see if the water was coming out of there. Instead I decided to have some lepyoshka (flat Kyrgyz bread, delicious when still warm), cheese and my salad. I’d had an enormous plate of rice for lunch, so a German-style Abendbrot seemed like good idea. I was not happy when I opened my salad, and saw that instead of tofu skin, I had a carrot and tripe salad.

I feel like a bit of a hypocrite complaining about a spot of tripe, especially after a semi-boast yesterday about my love of thousand-year eggs and durian. In my defence, I like offal slightly more than the next guy, which I why I happily chugged down the lamb bits on the top of the plov, Central Asian pilaf, at the weekend. But tripe is something I’ve never been able to get into: whenever I’ve had it before it has to have a pretty strong sauce and be hot to make me like it. The slightly spicy vinegar dressing didn’t hide the fact that I was eating a carrot and tripe salad. Nor was it hot.

Tripe salad. Even at this distance those could be mushrooms. Caveat emptor!

When I was taking a night-time stroll to my supermarket to top up my internet credit, I decided to stop by the salad section. Sure enough, next to where my tripe salad had been, were more cartons: one was carrot and mushroom, the other was carrot and tofu. Suddenly it became clear my the woman was slightly hesitant to give me the carton I was pointing out when I picked it up.

I feel that it’s almost understood that an offal experience will be part of every Kiva Fellow’s time in the field, and I’ve been patiently waiting for mine. I just never expected it to be self-inflicted.

On November 11 at the session of Kyrgyz parliament Ak-Jol President’s party rejected idea of ratification of international pact on cancellation of death penalty, adopted by UN General Assembly resolution in 1989.

Kyrgyzstan joined International pack on civil and political rights, dated October 7 of 1994. Now the subject of discussion is the second protocol to this pact, saying about the cancellation of capital punishment.

In accordance with optional protocol no party, the subject to the jurisdiction of current Protocol member-state, shall introduce capital punishment; besides, each member-state puts all efforts within national legislation to cancel death penalty.

During the discussion deputies Raisa Sidorenko, Askar Salymbekov, Ernest Akramov were against the ratification of this protocol, noting that the rights of victims must be observed. They pointed out that crime was growing in the republic while the humanization of legislation favors criminals.

So far this is unclear whether this issue will be considered at the parliamentary session.

Turkish low-cost carrier Pegasus Airlines reports that it’s talking with Boeing about a deal to buy 23 737s.

The deal would double the size of the airline’s fleet by 2012, according to Bloomberg News. The report says the deal would be worth $2.3 billion, but in reality, an order for 23 737-800s — the primary plane in the Pegasus fleet — would be worth about $1.7 billion at list prices, meaning the airline would pay about $1.1 billion after what analysts say are typical discounts.

Pegasus already has planes on order from Boeing, having placed firm orders for six in 2006 and another six in 2007.

Pegasus has been busy lately. In October, it formed a joint-venture with the government-owned airline of the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan to create Kyrgyz Pegasus Airlines, which will start offering service this month from Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, to Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Turkey. Pegasus has also formed a codeshare agreement with German carrier Air Berlin to sell seats on each other’s flights, particularly those between Germany and Turkey. The airline also is planning an initial public stock offering in 2010, with the goal of selling a 25- to 30-percent stake in the company, which now is solely owned by Turkish investment company Esas Holdings.