It could have been worse.
It could have been worse.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Kyrgyzstan hit the global newswires once again. That normally means bad news, riots and revolutions, murder and mayhem, but this time the reports concerned an “Act of God” rather than a manmade event. At about 1:35 in the morning, a massive earthquake struck in a remote and sparsely populated region of the Batken oblast in the extreme south western corner of the country.
Although the magnitude 6.2 quake was apparently felt in cities far removed from the epicenter, in Tashkent, Almaty and Bishkek, I was safely tucked up in bed and slept peacefully through it.. The first I knew about it was when I came down to the office and started checking my email, Facebook and Twitter updates.
At first, I was astounded that people in Bishkek were busy tweeting at that time of night instead of catching forty winks, but there it was: “Wow Rocking!” and “earthquake!”.
As it happens, the epicenter may have been in Kyrgyzstan but we got off relatively lightly in terms of damage and casualties. Indeed, one official even called it “insignificant”. Quite a few buildings did sustain damage but no-one was really hurt. Over the border in Uzbekistan, 13 people died, over 80 were injured and 35 hospitalized. In both countries there was a certain amount of panic as people apparently ran from their homes in case there were further aftershocks. There was one about an hour later but it was much smaller than the original quake.
It could have been worse. Back in 1966 the city of Tashkent was virtually destroyed by an earthquake and a couple of years ago an earthquake in the same area cost 70 lives.
I managed to sleep through it all. Although I did happen to wake up during the night, at about two o’clock, it was just one of those things and nothing to do with earthquake. I just rolled over and went back to sleep. I wasn’t alone in that. No-one else in the office knew anything about it and were shocked when I told them about when they came in for work. Even the kids, who had apparently been awake at the time, told me that they hadn’t felt anything!
It’s as if we have been sleeping through other “crises” as well this week.
There was, for example, a nasty moment when I saw, (again from a tweet on Twitter), about some disorder down in Aravan, (a small town in the region of Osh – just over 20 kilometers from the border with Uzbekistan and where the population is predominantly Uzbek: “In Aravan all is not quiet. An aggressive crowd of young people are creating unrest in the Central Market. The police are inactive.” As usual, it is difficult to try and work out what actually happened as it’s all “as clear as mud”. According to some reports a crowd of about 500 youths had gathered to demand an investigation into the death of a 45 year old Kyrgyz taxi driver who was apparently knifed by a local Uzbek. Some reports suggest that it was the result between taxi drivers of the two different ethnic groups, but then there are suggestions that it is something to do with vegetable market where the incident occurred. Because of the local climate, vegetables and fruit tend to be “early” in Aravan, and so a lot of traders from other regions descend on the town to snap them up and transport them to the markets of Osh and other cities. The constant crush of cars and people creates tension and conflict between different vendors. It copuld have been worse, but as a result the authorities have decided transfer the market out of the town, and the situation was reported as “stable” and that “life goes on as usual”.
The big “crisis” this week has been the lack of petrol – at least some grades – at least, here in Bishkek. The shortage has led to some rationing here in the capital; drivers cannot “fill-up”, and are being limited to just 10 liters each. It seems as if the crisis is mainly limited to Bishkek and petrol stations around the country are still “pumping gas” normally. There is some discrepancy in the explanations as to why we are short of petrol. Some reports suggest that the Russians have decided not to export petrol to Kyrgyzstan because they are still smarting over the previous controversy concerning the supply of oil products to the US base at Manas, and the fact that prices here in Kyrgyzstan are lower than in Russia. Others say that they were responding to requests from Kazakhstan which also has a shortfall, under the provisions of the newly formed Customs Union. Oddly enough, Manas doesn’t seem to be feeling the pinch at all, and for the last two weeks there have been occasional stories in the press about how Kyrgyzstan has been exporting petroleum products! Although deliveries were promised later in the week, there has been a flurry of activity to try and meet the difficulties being encountered. A commission has been set up to look into the pricing policies of the various distribution companies to make sure that no-one is profiteering. The Prime Minister has written to Russia – and even flown to Russia – to seek a resumption of deliveries. According to last night’s news reports, the situation in petrol stations is “normalized”, but I think that means just that the prices are back to the same levels that they used to be. It could have been worse – at least there is still some petrol, although it might be the best grade for every vehicle and may mean having to travel in order to find it, and there appears to plenty of diesel fuel.
Petrol is not the only commodity where there is a problem with supply; the price of sugar has been rising for some time – over 10% since the beginning of the year, and by almost a som per kilogram in just the last week. Although we grow and refine a certain of sugar, (indeed, one of the main cities in the country is called Kant – which is Kyrgyz for sugar – after the sugar refinery that was its main industry – it’s not named after the German philosopher despite what many people think), we import most of our sugar from Russian and Belarus and other countries. It could be worse, however, as the price in Belarus over the last six weeks has, apparently, risen by some 40%. There is hope that the price will fall again as the sugar mills try to empty their warehouses in order to make space for the new harvest.
(As an aside, I remember when the price of sugar rocketed in the UK some 30 years ago, I decided to give up sugar in tea and coffee rather than pay what I considered to be exorbitant prices – and that was something I was able to maintain until I eventually came here. People have a habit of making coffee and adding the sugar automatically, so I started taking it once again … although I still drink tea without sugar … unless it is pretty strong.)
A couple of other basic products which we import are under scrutiny: eggs and flour. This time it’s because the imports are seen as threatening local suppliers and so there is a suggestion to impose a 35% import duty on them.
It’s not all bad news, however, as Gold and Silver prices are still rising which should be good for our balance of payments – assuming, that is, that we can maintain production. Also, it’s been announced that the average monthly salary in the country has risen by over 20% – but that is still only just over USD170, or GBP111 a month.
The nominations for the presidential election are coming in. It started with a trickle but then, towards the end of the week, the flood gates opened. There are 16 nominations at the moment and nominations don’t close until 16th August – three more weeks. Mind you, it could be worse. Remember, there were 57 parties that registered to participate in the parliamentary elections, but in the end only 27 actually took part – and only five won seats. We could have the same situation here; one of the candidates has already withdrawn his nomination. Maybe he was going for a record; the shortest nomination on record.
The Speaker might think that he is facing a crisis – he has certainly been facing some criticism – over an official visit to Malaysia and Indonesia. The 36 strong delegation allegedly spent more than USD200,000 on the week long trip and critics say this was a waste of government funds, that Kyrgyzstan had no trade with either country. It could have been worse. In fact, it was a return visit, a Malaysian delegation had visited Kyrgyzstan back in 2009 and this year the Malaysian government met part of the bill for this trip. It is also true that they were hoping to develop trade links, although we won’t know for some time if they were successful. More to the point, however, one of the opposition politicians came to the Speaker’s defense pointing out that there have been many such trips in the past, but they escaped “under the radar” because there was a lot more scrutiny of public life today compared with the past.
The Prime Minister has also been busy. Apart from a flying, unscheduled, visit to Moscow, he’s been making noises about the number of licenses and permissions for doing business should be reduced; by about a quarter. Of course, various Ministries and Agencies are not too keen to give up their powers so he responded: “We will just cancel them because, unfortunately, each agency will cling to its licenses and permits. We should make a firm decision. Let them come to the Economic Regulation Ministry and justify the need to keep certain licenses.” There should be as few permissions as possible, he said, they should exist only where there is danger for human health. “The rest is the reason to pressure a businessman and to take additional money from him.”
During the week there have been a couple of interesting reports concerning the animal kingdom. Rosa Otunbaeva, for example, went on a visit to the Issyk Kul oblast, visited a museum and opened a hospital. She also visited the rehabilitation center for the Snow Leopard – Bars in Russian, Ilbirs in Kyrgyz. The center is funded by Germany, which is also supporting an international forum on saving this rare animal which is to be hosted in Bishkek next year. This was particularly timely in that new photographs have emerged of the animal in the wild in Afghanistan where it seems to be making a comeback.
But perhaps the strangest story of the week concerned a hippopotamus and came from, not from Kyrgyzstan but from one of our neighbours, Tajikistan, albeit via a Russian news service. It seems that the zoo in Dushanbe has taken delivery of the animal as part of an inter-zoo swap with Kyrgyzstan, in exchange for which the “zoo in Bishkek will get two eagles and two bald bearded sipov – a very large vultures”. Apparently, the exchange took something like four years to arrange. The story quickly circulated and was featured on something like 20 different websites, until someone smelt a rat. The trouble is that there isn’t a zoo in Bishkek. There is only one zoo in Kyrgyzstan – in Karakol – and they don’t have a hippotamus, and never have had one. According to the staff in Karakol, there’s no way they could accommodate a hippo, “We do not have the right conditions”. It seems that the animal came from Shymkent in Kazakhstan, and not Kyrgyzstan at all. It was interesting to note that the Russian reporter not only confused the two countries, but did manage to get the name of the capital, (Bishkek), correct. It just goes to show that you shouldn’t take everything you read in the news, (in the papers, on the internet, on TV or Radio … ), as being the Gospel Truth. Nor, for that matter, in these postcards.
Bishkek