Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

RFE/RL's Turkmen Service, known locally as Azatlyk, has been reporting for many months about the deteriorating situation in northern Afghanistan, just across the border from Turkmenistan.

RFE/RL's Gandhara website has also been reporting about the increasingly lawless areas just south of the Central Asian frontier.

In some of the areas adjacent to Turkmenistan it appears militant groups hold as much, and possibly more, territory than the Afghan government can claim to have under its control. And what is worse, there seems to be at least three extremist groups now present in districts just south of the Turkmen border.

Commander Bobi is the chief of an Arbaki, or local paramilitary force in the Qaysar district of Afghanistan's Faryab Province. Bobi and his forces are located near Jowzjan Province, east of Faryab, and the Arbaki commander has been keeping track of events in the neighboring region.

Bobi said the village of Shakh in Jowzjan has fallen to "Taliban and Daesh (Islamic State)" militants. Bobi claimed these militants have such control over the village that they are able to collect taxes from shopkeepers there.

Asked how he knew there were Islamic State (IS) militants in Shakh, Bobi said some of them "carry the Daesh flag, they speak Arabic…"

That does not necessarily mean these people are IS militants. Arabs have been coming to Afghanistan to fight alongside fellow Muslims since the Soviet invasion of 1979.

However, Afghan government officials have confirmed an IS presence in the country and Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov on March 5 was the latest Russian official to warn about IS militants in Afghanistan. Such warnings during the last year have got the Central Asian leaders worried about the group.

But Bobi said the Taliban and IS are not the only militant groups in Jowzjan. He said there were people "from Uzbekistan...nearly 70 families."

"We heard they came from Waziristan. They live in Shakh now," he added.

Bobi said these Uzbeks were from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

There have been reports coming out of northern Afghanistan for the past few months that IMU fighters, who once were able to shelter in North Waziristanm were chased out by the Pakistani military's offensive on the tribal area that started last June. Pakistan's military has regularly reported Uzbeks being among the militants killed during that campaign.

These Uzbek fighters and their families have been making their way westward across the northern Afghan provinces. Qishloq Ovozi has mentioned the growing number of Uzbek militants in areas near Turkmenistan in previous reports.

Bobi said the militants, who he claimed now number some 2,000, have captured other villages and at one place "the distance between them and Qaysar is no more than two kilometers" and that there was a "combination of people there – Daesh, Taliban, and IMU."

Bobi's claims are, to some extent, supported by the Qaysar district head, Abdujalil Siddiqi, who admitted there were militants in Shakh, and militants located "40 kilometers from the Qaysar district center." Siddiqi also heard about the Uzbeks but again his numbers were different than those given by Bobi. "Some 25 families are settled in Shakh and in nearby villages. They belong to the group of Tohir Yuldash and Juma Namangani," Siddiqi said.

Yuldash and Namangani were the founders of the IMU. Namangani was killed in northeastern Afghanistan in November 2001 and Yuldash was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan's tribal area in August 2009.

Siddiqi said their followers now in Jowzjan "help opponents of the government," sometimes participating in "frontline fighting but they also teach opponents of the government how to plant mines and explosives."

Qaysar is the southern part of Faryab Province, close but not adjacent to Turkmenistan. Asked about militants near the Turkmen border, Bobi responded, "Villages under their [militant] control are all along the Turkmen border." And Bobi knew that Taliban militants last year crossed into Turkmenistan, killed three border guards and took their weapons.

There is no way of independently verifying these claims. What Bobi and Siddiqi said are in keeping with news that has been coming from these northern Afghan provinces for more than a year now. Very few journalists or aid workers go to Faryab and Jowzjan anymore, it is too unstable.

The situation in northern Afghanistan and the response to it in Central Asia will be the subject of the next round table panel discussion that Azatlyk is hosting. Qishloq Ovozi will bring you a report on the proceedings next week.

-- Bruce Pannier, with contributions from RFE/RL's Turkmen Service director, Muhammad Tahir

Kazakhstan is conducting an early presidential election on April 26, which is no surprise. In fact, none of the events surrounding this snap presidential poll is surprising.

With the possible exception of the first post-Soviet presidential election, every presidential election in Kazakhstan has been an early election.

On October 26, 1991, more than two months after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Kazakhstan announced its first postindependence presidential election and set the date for December 1. The Communist leaders in all the former Soviet republics were scrambling to secure legitimacy in the confusing first days after the U.S.S.R. fell apart.

In Kazakhstan, this was deemed so important that Nazarbaev’s victory with 98.8 percent of the vote (his sole challenger received 0.1 percent) came two weeks before Kazakhstan officially declared independence. *

Nazarbaev was elected to a five-year term, but there was no presidential election in 1996; instead, there was a referendum. During the first half of 1995, several events with large consequences for the future took place that really set the stage for Nazarbaev “the strongman” to emerge. **

It started with a challenge to the results of parliamentary elections in 1994 by one candidate in that election, Tatyana Kvatkovskaya, who lost in her bid for a seat in the then 177-seat parliament. Her complaints about the system for citizens living outside Kazakhstan to vote, and the division of electoral districts, were eventually reviewed by the country’s Constitutional Court.

On March 6, 1995, the court ruled the Central Election Commission’s regulations were not constitutional and that the 1994 election was illegitimate.

When he heard the Constitutional Court ruling, Nazarbaev said he was surprised by the decision, vetoed it, and sent it back to the court. Nazarbaev said at the time that he had “great hopes” for parliament.

It wasn’t true. Parliament had continually blocked and slowed Nazarbaev’s attempts at economic reform. Still, on March 9, Nazarbaev did an interview with state television and said, “I support stability or power and that is why I could not remain silent” about the Constitutional Court’s ruling, which he said was unfounded and was in any case outside the court’s jurisdiction.

On March 10, the Constitutional Court upheld its decision and overrode Nazarbaev’s veto. The following day, he told parliament he had sent an official inquiry to the court requesting explanations for the ruling.

Parliament, no doubt encouraged by the president’s remarks, submitted a motion for Nazarbaev to suspend the court.

Nazarbaev responded, “I do not have to sign the proposals of an assembly that no longer exists.” And just to rub it in, Nazarbaev added, “It is the Constitutional Court that has made all market reforms possible to date…and parliament has hampered them.”

He then officially dissolved parliament.

Nazarbaev would eliminate the Constitutional Court just a few months later, but before that, on March 24, a recently formed body called the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan submitted a proposal to have a referendum on extending the presidential term until 2000.

The Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan is the same group that started the calls for an early election in 2015.

On March 26, 1995, Nazarbaev said he needed time to research the legal basis for such a referendum. On March 27, he announced that the referendum on extending the presidential term would be held on April 29.

Admittedly, there was regional precedent, since Turkmenistan held such a referendum in January 1994 and Uzbekistan has just done same on March 26, 1995.

Nazarbaev said this month that he wasn’t sure about running in the April 2015 election.

“Speaking honestly, my personal plans are different…Maybe it’s time for a change of scenery,” he said, hinting he might follow the example of Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who left the post of prime minister but maintained control of his city-state.

In April 1995, as the referendum approached, Nazarbaev also said, “If there was anyone worthy of being president, I would support him with pleasure and go off to be a businessman.”

Of course, Nazarbaev won an extension in the referendum and another referendum in August that year changed the constitution, concentrating more power into the executive branch of power and also annulling the Constitutional Court and replacing it with a Constitutional Council.

In September 1998, four MPs suggested the next presidential election should be brought forward from December 2000 to sometime in 1999. Nazarbaev categorically rejected the proposal on October 1.

On October 5, a group of MPs met with Nazarbaev behind closed doors and convinced him to move the presidential election forward and lengthen the president’s term in office from five to seven years. On October 8, parliament announced January 10, 1999, as the date for the next presidential election. Parliament also approved removing the rule that a president could not be older than 65 and could not serve more than two terms.

In June 2005, with the presidential election scheduled for December 2006, the lower house of parliament, the Mazhilis, appealed to the Justice Minister to clarify the date for the next presidential election.

MPs argued that Nazarbaev had been inaugurated in January 1999 and that if the next presidential election was held in December 2006, Nazarbaev would be serving for 11 months after his mandate had expired.

The Constitutional Council was charged with making a ruling and in August 2005 decided that the presidential election should be conducted in December that year. Parliament had to approve the court’s ruling. Before the Mazhilis did so, Nazarbaev appeared on state television for a well-orchestrated question-and-answer show (a la Vladimir Putin) and said he would run “if” parliament made the decision to hold the election early. ***

In mid-January 2011, parliament voted in favor of holding a referendum to keep Nazarbaev in office until 2020. Nazarbaev rejected the proposal. The Constitutional Council took up the matter and on January 31 also rejected the referendum proposal. The court referred the issue to Nazarbaev, who accepted the decision on February 4; he then announced there would be an early presidential election on April 3 of that year.

-- Bruce Pannier

* Kyrgyzstan declared independence on August 31, 1991; a presidential election was held on October 12.

Tajikistan declared independence on September 9, 1991; a presidential election was on November 24.

Turkmenistan declared independence on October 26, 1991; a presidential election was on June 21, 1992.

Uzbekistan declared independence on September 1, 1991; a presidential election was on December 20.

** And the subject of my first-ever published article in Transition Magazine some 20 years ago

*** I wrote about the event. I’m including two of the “comments/questions” from that session here. Remember, these are from almost 10 years ago:

Dmitri from Ust-Kamenogorsk (also called Oskemen) asks: 'It's well known that several years ago a number of Slavic organizations criticized you, but lately they all voice unconditional support for your policies. What, in your opinion, Mr. President, explains this extraordinary metamorphosis?'"

Nadia Fatkulina, a high-school music teacher from Semipalatinsk:

"Now it's gotten to the point where I don't even feel like turning on the television, as there is hardly a day without bombings, acts of terrorism, and most importantly [news that] innocent people are dying. Thank God that we don't have this in Kazakhstan. Things are calm here. Looking at what is happening in neighboring countries. One is glad that we have no fears for our children, for our relatives and those close to us. And I, as a mother, want to thank you sincerely Nursultan Abisevich [Nazarbayev], for the peace and tranquility in Kazakhstan. Thank you so much."