Energy Dreams Drive Tajikistan To Desperate Measures

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Tajikistan's government has placed its hopes on completing a "project of the century" that could put an end to its chronic electricity shortages and make it a regional energy powerhouse.

Finishing the most crucial part of the undertaking, however -- the massive Roghun dam that was begun last century, during the Soviet era -- will require huge sums of money.

And with promised foreign aid failing to materialize, Tajik leaders have in desperation called on citizens of the impoverished country to help fund the initiative by donating a month's salary.

Nikolai Savchenkov, who was director of the project when it began in the late 1970s, tells RFE/RL that "Tajikistan's survival as an independent nation depends on the Roghun plant."

Savchenkov says that the project would "solve all economic problems" the country faces. First, it would enable Tajikistan to produce and sell electricity at a profit. Second, it would resolve chronic water-shortage problems.

"Dams around Roghun and the existing Nurek power plant will store enormous amount of water from the Vakhsh [River] over many years," Savchenkov says.

With an abundance of rivers and streams coursing through its mountainous terrain, estimates suggest Tajikistan is capable of producing 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year -- the greatest hydroelectric potential in Central Asia. Ironically, however, the country faces severe energy shortages every winter and depends on its neighbors to provide electricity.

Troubled Investment

Looking to remedy the situation, Dushanbe in recent years turned to Russia to help fund the completion of Roghun, a project originally designed to feed six power-generating units spanning the Vakhsh River in southern Tajikistan.


Tajikistan hopes Roghun and other projects can help control chronic water shortages.Capable of generating 3.6 billion kilowatts of electricity a year, Roghun was to be the most powerful hydroelectric plant in Central Asia and, at 335 meters, the world's highest dam. But shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the project was frozen and remains unfinished.

In 2007 a contract was signed with Russian aluminum giant RusAl to resume the project. But the deal was cancelled due to disagreements over the scale of the project amid strong opposition from neighboring Uzbekistan, which has argued that the dam could threaten environmental disaster for the region and leave the downstream country with severe water shortages.

But a number of countries in the region, including China, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, have expressed their willingness to import Tajik electricity, and Roghun's massive reservoir could be a way to alleviate seasonal water shortages, so Tajik politicians are undeterred.

Public Fund Raising

Now Mahmadsaid Ubaildulloev, the head of the upper chamber of the Tajik parliament, has suggested that if all Tajik workers were to donate one month's salary, this would generate $154 million toward finishing the Roghun project.

That would add to the $130 million the Tajik government has already allocated to fund Roghun's construction in its 2010 budget.

While an estimated $3 billion would be needed to complete the project as originally envisioned, with all six generating units, Tajik leaders are adamant that at least two units can be completed over the next five years using domestic funds.

Earlier this month, President Emomali Rahmon said he was confident that the Tajik people "will do everything they can to help complete" the Roghun project.

Tajik lawmakers have expanded the effort by calling on people to buy shares in Roghun that would be made available for trading on the country's stock market in 2010.


According to Tajik media reports, public-sector workers in some areas have already begun contributing money to the Roghun project, while others, including the Islamic Renaissance Party, have announced their intention to purchase Roghun shares.

'Why Should We Pay?

In a country where the average monthly salary is about $80, not everyone is happy with the prospect of having to donate money to Roghun or obtain its shares.

Kodir Khojaev, a businessman in the northern town of Khujand, says that he "couldn't care less about what happens in five years, I have more immediate problems to take care of


Tajiks are poorest among post-Soviet residents."Most Tajiks live in poverty and our earnings are hardly enough to buy food," Khojaev says. "Besides, how can I trust the government that it will complete Roghun in five years? We've heard these kinds of empty promises before."

With a gross domestic product per capita of about $1,800, Tajikistan is one of the poorest former Soviet countries.

Khojaev wonders why Tajikistan cannot use aid allocated from outside sources to fund the project.

"International organizations and financial institutions, such as the Asian Development Bank and others, allocate huge amounts of money to Tajikistan's development. We know about them from media reports," Khojaev says.

"Instead of asking for donations from the people, our leaders, who dub Roghun the 'project of the century,' should use that foreign investment in this project."

Khojaev's household, like other in the country, has been limited to five hours of electricity a day since the annual six-month rationing period began in early November.

His remarks represent the views of many ordinary Tajiks, who say they no longer expect the government to resolve the country's electricity crisis.

Khojimuhammad Umarov, a Dushanbe-based expert on the Tajik economy, tells RFE/RL that Roghun would solve the country's energy problem "once and for all."

But Umarov also says that Tajikistan would have to cooperate with its neighbors if it wanted to achieve its goal of making money from electricity exports.

"Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have in the past mentioned their readiness to invest in Roghun," Umarov says. "Tajikistan has to ask these two countries to step in now to invest."

Tajikistan also has other hydropower plants under construction, including Sangtuda-1 and Sangtuda-2, which are mostly owned by Russia and Iran, respectively. Sangtuda-1 has been partially completed and has started producing electricity.

Source:rferl.org

Can Tajikistan and 'aiming low' be a model for Afghanistan?

Analogies for the conflict in Afghanistan are many - the Vietnam conflict being the most common. But one influential journal says Tajikistan in the 1990s is more accurate, and calls for the strategy of "aiming low."

While the parallels between the US-led conflict in Afghanistan and the Vietnam war of the 1960s and 70s are many - a diffuse army with a sanctuary across the border, a high cost in "blood and treasure," and an American electorate unsure about being there in the first place - a more apt analogy would be right next door in Tajikistan, according to an essay just published in the influential journal Foreign Affairs.

And, the author contends, the international community's strategy there in the 1990s could provide a model to deal with the current quagmire in Afghanistan.

George Gavrilis, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes of government forces, Islamists and local warlords battling one another across a remote and mountainous territory while the drug trade flourishes, thousands are killed and even more stranded in grinding poverty.

But he is not referring to Afghanistan, rather, his reference here is Tajikistan in the 1990s, when a civil war broke out soon after the former Soviet satellite state declared its independence from Moscow.

While Afghanistan's conflict grinds on in its eighth year, next door, a small intervention by an unlikely team made up of the UN, Iran and Russia turned Tajikistan around in less time and for much less money, providing a detour from a path that was leading to disintegration.

Staying real

The outside players in Tajikistan dispensed with forcing free and fair elections, throwing out the warlords and flooding the country with foreign soldiers.

Instead, in a burst of realpolitik, it was decided to pursue a more limited set of goals: peace talks, integrating the warlords into the political process, limiting the number of peacekeepers on the ground and eventually bringing opposing parties to the table to sign a peace accord in 1997.

Today, Tajikistan is tolerably stable and acts as a transit nation for US supplies to Afghanistan.

"The Tajik case suggests that in trying to rebuild a failed state, less may be more," Gavrilis wrote.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Tajik President Emomali Rahmon
The architects of the plan had to leave out some features they might have liked - namely, a healthy democracy. Tajikistan is hardly an ideal state in Western eyes; it is authoritarian (Emomali Rahmon has ruled the country since 1992) and corrupt. Its economy is sputtering and the all-important remittances from Tajik workers in Russia are suffering.


But while this "aim-low" strategy disappoints idealists, in Tajikistan's case, it has enabled the country to avoid a return of the chaos of the 1990s - civil war and extremism.

"We shouldn't set our sights too high and we should concentrate on what is realistic," Stefan Meister of the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin told Deutsche Welle. "I am skeptical of this form of democracy building that the American have tried in several regions. In my opinion, it works in very few cases."

As in Iraq, the US under George W. Bush envisioned a country running along the lines of a western democracy, with transparent elections, a strong central government and a populace that embraced western values and norms - all accomplished in record time.

But, according to analysts, such a project is almost impossible to pull off, especially using a top-down approach in a country that has little or no history of democratic representation or confidence in government.

"Stabilization is the important thing," said Meister.

Analogy trap

But Meister and others warn that, even while there are similarities between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, making analogies to past conflicts and applying those lessons to current ones is a questionable exercise.

While on the surface there do seem to be similarities between the two neighbors, there are important differences, according to Alanna Shaikh, an international development consultant who lives in the Tajik capital Dushanbe.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Tajiks have had experience with a functioning government; Afghans have not
For example, she told Deutsche Welle, being a Soviet satellite changed Tajikistan in a lot of ways, including giving them experience with the kinds of services that a government can provide. Health care and education in the Soviet Tajikistan were fairly good.

"I feel like that experience with a competent government changed Tajik perceptions of government," she said.

Tajiks remembered what real government was like and therefore were more willing to trade their political and military ambitions away for a government that, in effect, looked a lot like what they had during the USSR.

"That is an experience that Afghanistan didn't have," she said. "And I think that generalizing from conflict to conflict is always too easy."

History, closer to home

Stefan Meister thinks that instead of looking across the border to Tajikistan, perhaps western forces in Afghanistan should look at another nation's experience in the country: Russia's.

The nine-year conflict began at the end of 1979 when Soviet troops entered Afghanistan. It ended after nearly 14,000 Soviet soldiers had been killed and thousands more disabled. Over one million Afghans were killed.

"The Soviets made similar mistakes in Afghanistan in certain aspects such as the central state, dealing with groups, trying to introduce modern societal forms too quickly and hitting strong resistance from the society," the Russia expert said. "Learning from that would help more than looking at another country and making big comparisons."

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 'Aim low' and focus on stability or try to remake society?
It appears that is beginning to happen. Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said on Monday his country is ready to continue dialogue with Russia on Afghanistan-related issues.

Holbrooke's boss, US President Barack Obama, has said he intends to "finish the job" in Afghanistan and it is expected he will announce the deployment of more troops into the country when he reveals his plans to the American public next week.

But that job description is still unclear, and within the Obama administration there has been debate about what the goals in Afghanistan should be: remaking society along a western model or "aiming low," focusing on stabilization and a slower path toward (hopefully) some future democracy.

"The Obama administration can come out of this quagmire if it aims low, targets the bad guys, builds a regional consensus," wrote renowned Pakistan journalist Ahmed Rashid, who has covered Afghanistan for 30 years, "and gives the Afghans what they really want - merely the chance to have a better life."

Source:dw-world.de

Tajikistan fails to curb abuse of women: Amnesty

ALMATY (Reuters) - The government of the Central Asian state of Tajikistan is failing to protect women from violence and abuse, human rights group Amnesty International said in a report on Tuesday.

Mostly Muslim Tajikistan, which borders Afghanistan, is the poorest former Soviet republic, its economy devastated by a civil war in the 1990s.

Observers see its government, led by President Imomali Rakhmon, as less repressive than those in neighboring Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, but London-based Amnesty said the issue of women's rights was pressing.

"Women in Tajikistan are beaten, abused, and raped in the family but the authorities tend to reflect the societal attitude of blaming the woman for domestic violence," Tajikistan expert Andrea Strasser-Camagni said in a statement.

The group said one-third to a half of Tajik women have been regularly subjected to physical, psychological or sexual violence at the hands of their husbands or in-laws and all women had very limited employment opportunities.

"Women are being treated as servants or as the in-laws' family property. They have no one to turn to as the policy of the authorities is to urge reconciliation which de facto reinforces their position of inferiority," Strasser-Camagni said.

"This experience of violence and humiliation in the family makes many women to turn to suicide."

Amnesty said many girls were being denied the opportunity to receive proper education, dropping out of school early to enter marriages, often polygamous or unregistered.

It urged the government to introduce laws and support services to tackle domestic violence and carry out public awareness campaigns addressing illegal marriage issues.

"By writing off violence against women as a family affair the authorities in Tajikistan are shirking their responsibility to a large part of the population," Strasser-Camagni said.

"They are allowing perpetrators of such crimes to act with impunity and, ultimately, denying women their human rights."

Source:reuters.com

Alleged IMU Terrorists Go On Trial In Tajikistan

KHUJAND, Tajikistan -- A court in Tajikistan's northern Sughd Province has begun trying two suspected terrorists, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports.

Provincial Judge Farhod Ziyodulloev told RFE/RL that Qudratullo Nematulloev and Abdulsami Nurmuhammadi are accused of several crimes, including terrorism, murder, and plotting against the state.

Rauf Yusufov, the head of the local branch of the Interior Ministry, told RFE/RL that Nematulloev was detained in Moscow and extradited to Tajikistan earlier this year.

Nurmuhammadi was detained in his home city of Isfara this summer. His lawyer, Jamshed Saburov, says his client joined the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) without knowing its goals but, after learning about the movement's ideology, left it.

Saburov said Nurmuhammadi never took part in any IMU operations. Nematulloev's lawyer, Anvar Nurmuhammadov, says his client has pleaded guilty to some charges.

Some 30 people in the Isfara region have been arrested and sentenced for being members of the IMU, which Tajikistan has categorized as a terrorist organization since 2005.

Source:rferl.org

Boulder teacher traveling to Tajikistan

An Arapahoe Ridge High School teacher will bring her expertise to Boulder's sister city next year as part of an international cultural exchange program.

Jode Brexa, who teaches language arts and English as a second language, will spend two weeks in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in April, sharing her teaching practices with educators and participating in other programs with local schools.

Brexa is one of 40 teachers across the country selected to participate in the educational and cultural exchange program, which is run by the U.S. Department of State and International Research and Exchange Board. Participating teachers will be traveling to 18 countries in Asia, South and Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa.

"I was amazed when I found out that I would have the opportunity to bring the practices I do to that country," Brexa said. "It's a great opportunity."

Brexa will work with three Tajik teachers over the next few months and during her visit, exchanging educational issues and practices. Brexa will also visit Tajik schools, conduct workshops and meet with NGOs during her two-week trip.

One of the things she hopes to introduce to Tajik educators is digital storytelling, which she has been integrating into her classrooms.

As part of the sister cities program, Boulder officials opened a solar-powered cybercafe in Dushanbe last fall in exchange for the Dushanbe Teahouse, which opened here in 1990.

Brexa said she has been to the teahouse several times and put Dushanbe as her first choice because of the city's connection to Boulder. She said she was also swayed by a visit Sophia Stoller -- a member of the Boulder-Dushanbe Sister Cities organization -- made to the school.

"She came to talk about world cultures, and she engendered a lot of interest among students," Brexa said. "It was the first time I thought about Dushanbe as a destination."

Brexa said she has long been involved with international culture and exchange, beginning with her time as a Peace Corps volunteer. She said she's looking forward to learning more about Dushanbe and its educational system.

"I hope to explore the rich tapestry of Tajik culture, and find out what some of the educational challenges are there," she said. "I hope to use the experience to further educational reform."


Source:dailycamera.com

Tajikistan Reacts To Uzbek Decision To Quit Power Grid

DUSHANBE -- The Tajik Foreign Ministry says Uzbekistan's decision to quit the Central Asian power grid is politically motivated, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports.

Foreign Ministry official Khusrav Ghoibov told RFE/RL that the ministry will not officially react to the decision by Tashkent.

He added that while it is understandable for a country to make decisions in its national interests, international law also requires a country to respect the interests of other countries.

On November 24, Uzbek Ambassador to Tajikistan Shoqosim Shoislomov said in Dushanbe that Uzbekistan will end its participation in the Soviet-era electric power grid as of December 1.

He said Uzbekistan has built a new power distribution system that can provide all of its regions with electricity and does not need the outdated electricity grid.

Homidjon Orifov, the head of Tajikistan's National Committee for Dams, said Uzbekistan's move is most likely connected to the Tajik-Uzbek standoff regarding the construction of a new hydropower station near the Tajik city of Roghun.

He said that by quitting the joint grid Uzbekistan shows its opposition to the hydropower station and added that Uzbekistan is also trying to hinder the delivery to Tajikistan of 1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity from Turkmenistan.


Source:rferl.org

U.S. sends Tajikistan medications worth $6 million

DUSHANBE, November 27 (RIA Novosti) - The U.S. State Department has sent Tajikistan medications worth $6.3 million for the Central Asian country's hospitals and medical institutions, a U.S. embassy spokesman said.

The batch that arrived earlier this week contains antibiotics, drugs to treat oncologic, cardiovascular and virus diseases, as well as medications to treat mental disorders, eye and skin illnesses.

This is a third batch of humanitarian aid through project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere) this year. Since 2001, medical aid worth over $203 million has been delivered to Tajik hospitals through the project.


Source:rian.ru

Tajikistan not thriving, but surviving

In Garm, the administrative centre of Tajikistan’s isolated Rakhsh Valley, snow is already creeping down the mountains by mid-October, but in the town’s open air bazaar piles of summer fruits - grapes and apples - are still on sale. Next to the fruit stalls, women in long velvet dresses and men with gold teeth and embroidered hats sell pots of golden honey.

A portrait of President Emomali Rakhmonv dominates Garm’s central square, but even today Dushanbe’s control of the region is tenuous. The Rakhsh Valley was one of the last resorts of the anti-Soviet Basmachi rebels in the 1920s, and this small town was an opposition stronghold during the Tajik civil war.

One of the farmers in Garm for the market, and taking his lunch at the town’s only hotel, is Mumujin Malayev. He owns 25 hectares of land at various sites along the valley, making him one of the largest farmers in this poverty stricken region.

Malayev makes TJS1.5 ($0.35) per kilo from his main crop, potatoes, in the market, but he has bigger ambitions for the future. He plans to set up a processing plant to make potato crisps, which will fetch TJS3 for a 50-gram bag, and other products such as powder to produce potato puree for large-scale catering.

Consultant Balajon Bobokhojaev, another Garm resident, is advising Malayev. “Commercial activity in the Rakhsh Valley is not high, and we need to change people’s mentality,” Bobokhojaev explains. “If this project is successful, it will show people that with professional help they can grow their business and increase their income. Processing facilities for all types of farm produce are needed. Beekeeping is very developed in this region, but the farmers have to sell their honey locally. If there was a packaging facility, they would be able to export it or sell to the supermarkets.”

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will pay half of Bobokhojaev’s fee under a programme to develop local business support services, which are in their infancy in Tajikistan. The concept has been successfully pioneered in urban areas, and is now being expanded to rural areas through cooperation with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) field offices.

Rural development is highly important in Tajikistan - the majority of the population lives in rural areas. “The communist legacy, combined with the donor-driven approach encouraged by the recent involvement of the international community in rural development, created a rural world without basic understanding of a market economy,” says OSCE economic officer Emmanuel Huntzinger.

“The Rakhsh Valley has almost zero industry,” adds Tibor Lakati, head of the OSCE field office in Garm. “The main activity is agriculture - growing fruit, vegetables, wheat and potatoes, beekeeping and animal husbandry. There were factories here in the Soviet times, mainly for food processing, but when the Soviets left they took their money with them. The buildings were mostly destroyed in the civil war.”

The Rakhsh Valley is among the poorest regions in Tajikistan, but the problems it faces are typical of the entire country. Like Garm, the outskirts of Dushanbe, Khujend and other major cities are also full of derelict factories. That’s not to say there is no industry: the Tajikistan Aluminium Company, or Talco, is one of the world’s largest aluminium plants. However, Talco, like the smaller manufacturing operations in the country, has suffered due to the international economic crisis. Industrial production fell 10% year on year during the first 10 months of 2009, according to the CIS Interstate Statistics Committee.

While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts that Tajikistan’s economy will grow by 2% in 2009 (down from 7.9% last year), this is cancelled out in per capita terms by the 2% increase in population. Most of this year’s economic growth was driven by the non-cotton agriculture sector, which benefitted from the unusually wet spring. “The financial crisis didn’t affect Tajikistan, but the real economy crisis is,” says Chiara Bronchi, head of the World Bank in Tajikistan. “Tajikistan is a small, open economy that is very dependent on commodities. Its primary exports are cotton and aluminium. It is a price-taker for both, so its economy is strongly affected by changes in price and demand."

“Tajikistan is also indirectly affected by international commodities markets, since more than 90% of remittances are from Russia, and the Russian economy is also based on commodities,” she adds.

Tajikistan’s official unemployment rate bears little resemblance to the real situation. In most regions more than half the population is effectively unemployed, and this is as high as 80% among young people. Outside the big cities, women have almost no employment options and, therefore, have to work in their home or on the family fields.

Meanwhile, men have left in their hundreds of thousands. From a population of 6.5m, Tajikistan has 2m economic migrants, the majority in Russia and Kazakhstan. Many returned to Tajikistan in 2008, but anecdotal evidence suggest they have started returning en masse.

Government help or hindrance

The Tajik government launched an anti-crisis programme in April in response to the problems the economy was facing. It has also started to reform the agricultural sector, and is restructuring the heavy debt burden on cotton farmers. “The government has done as much as possible to prevent the economy from going backwards,” says Bronchi. “They are very committed to protecting social spending in the budget. Since public revenues are down, they had to revise the budget in order to maintain this. They are making a tremendous effort.”

In addition to the government support, Tajiks claim that the years of hardship they have endured makes them better able to weather the crisis than the residents of more prosperous countries. “When we Tajiks go to Russia or Kazakhstan to work, the people there believe we have nothing. They think we travel around on donkeys. It’s not true,” complains Zohirjon, who manages an import-export business in Khujend. Still in his late 20s, he has all the toys of the modern Tajik businessman - a big car, a shell suit and some slim cigarettes.

“We don’t have a crisis. There has been a crisis for the last 15 years, and things are no different now. The factories have been closed for 15 years. We are used to doing things for ourselves. In Russia or Kazakhstan, if one factory closes it’s a disaster. Here, people manage,” he says. Zohirjon’s main criticism is reserved for the government, in particular the tax officials. “The government lives at the people’s expense. We send our money to Dushanbe and nothing comes back. For businesses, it’s 20% for this, another 10% for that.”

Foreign investment in Tajikistan is at a low level, but has been slowly increasing. Russia’s Gazprom and RusAl are active here, as is Toronto-listed Tethys Petroleum. The Quatari state investment company Diar recently announced plans for a luxury real estate project. “In general, the business climate is encouraging for investors,” says Nazir Sharipov, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce (Amcham) in Tajikistan. “To say it's perfect is not correct. However, what encourages foreign investors is the fact that we have seen strong signs of business climate improvement. Also the government shows strong desire to improve the fiscal regime by amending taxes, customs and laws.”

Bumpy roads

The most serious challenge facing Tajikistan’s businesses has been the situation with the country’s transport and energy infrastructure.

The mountainous country is very difficult to negotiate. Crossing the high passes between Dushanbe and Tajikistan’s second city Khujend is at best uncomfortable, at worst life-threatening. Getting from the capital to the east is even worse. Today, the Dushanbe-Khujend road has been almost completely rehabilitated, in a project funded by Beijing and carried out by mainly Chinese labourers. However, due to flooding, the tunnels under the Fan Mountains and Turkestan Mountains have not yet opened, and both passengers and cargo lorries have to take the old roads. These are potholed gravel tracks that hug the sides of the mountains, with a terrifying drop below and the constant threat of rockfalls from above. “When the new road is completed, it will make a huge difference to Tajikistan because it will halve the travel time between Dushanbe and Khujend, as well as making it safer,” says Bronchi. “This will encourage more road transport, increasing the use of Tajikistan as a transit state, helping domestic trade and reducing poverty.”

The north, traditionally the commercial heart of the country, is likely to benefit the most. It is cut off to the south by the mountains, and the main export route to the north - via Uzbekistan - is often closed by Uzbek officials, a cause of constant frustration to Tajik businesspeople. Tajiks also complain about Uzbek state-owned Uztransgas’ habit of cutting off gas supplies to Tajikistan during the winter months over unpaid bills. Blackouts are frequent, and electricity supplies in the regions are rationed. The problem is at least partly an internal one; Tajikistan’s state energy company Barki Tojik is slow to pay Uztransgas because it charges low prices for electricity, and many of its own customers don’t pay their bills. However, Tajikistan has been working to improve this situation since the record cold of the 2007-08 winter.

Tajikistan is also working on a major hydropower plant construction programme. The Sangtuda 1 power plant was completed by August with Russian help. Tajikistan has already started building Sangtude 2, this time with financial support from Iran. Numerous mini hydropower plants are being built across the country as a stopgap while the big dams are completed. These are not commercially viable in the long term, since the cost to run them is higher than the cost of electricity, but they are an important coping mechanism.

Tajikistan is already exporting electricity to Afghanistan, and could also supply Iran and the cities of northern Pakistan and India. The Central Asia South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project (CASA 1000) project, which would see surplus power from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan being exported to South Asia during the summer months, is still at the discussion stage, but if realised would be a major source of revenue for Central Asia’s smaller economies. Optimists believe Tajikistan has a bright future as an energy exporter, and that this could transform the economy. For now, however, this is a long way off.

Source:businessneweurope.eu