Eurasia News Week in Review - April 18, 2014 Share This /

New data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute points to a growing arms race in the South Caucasus while China’s public security minister proposed establishing a new joint security center for Shanghai Cooperation Organization countries. Below is a roundup of these stories and some of the other top articles and news highlights from around Central Eurasia over the last week:

South Caucasus:

• United States European Command (EUCOM) Deputy Director of Plans, Policy and Strategy, Rear Adm. Patrick Piercy, discussed defense reforms in Georgia, professional military education, and Georgia’s contributions to NATO during a visit to the country. The visit came on the heels of a phone conversation between the commander of EUCOM, General Philip Breedlove, and the chief of staff of Georgia’s Armed Forces.
• On its official blog, the State Department highlighted Armenia’s contributions to international peacekeeping missions and detailed U.S. efforts to strengthen Armenia’s peacekeeping capacities. The post noted that Armenia was the only country added to the department’s Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) in 2013 and explained how GPOI funding has supported peacekeeping trainings and infrastructure improvements to the Zar Training base.
• The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published new data regarding global military expenditures, and as noted by blogger and analyst Joshua Kucera, SIPRI’s data show a significant growth of military budgets in the South Caucasus. While all three states in the region boosted their military expenditures, Azerbaijan’s 493 percent increase in the past decade was second only to Afghanistan’s in the entire world. Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan criticized this apparent arms race during a meeting with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s South Caucasus envoy, stating that the Armed Forces in Europe Treaty and the 2001 Vienna Document are not sufficiently binding to prevent this troubling trend.  
• Azerbaijan’s Defense Minister, Colonel Gen. Zakir Hasanov, visited neighboring Iran this week to meet with senior defense officials. In a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Hasanov vowed that Azerbaijan would not host a foreign military base or allow another country to use its territory to attack Iran, a nod to rumors that Israel might use military bases in Azerbaijan to bomb Iran. Meanwhile, the Iranian Armed Forces’ chief of staff stated that discussions focused on military trainings, arms transfers and future meetings. For more analysis about this visit, check out Joshua Kucera’s post on The Bug Pit.    
• Russian forces detained three Georgian journalists covering “borderization” issues along the boundary between Georgia and breakaway territory South Ossetia. The journalists were freed the following day as a “gesture of goodwill,” as Georgian and Russian officials conducted a pre-arranged meeting to discuss normalization of relations between the countries.  

Central Asia:

• The Security Assistance Monitor blog detailed the different accounts that fund U.S. counternarcotics assistance in Central Eurasia. Interestingly, until 2013 the State Department largely funded its counternarcotics assistance through “economic assistance” accounts: the FREEDOM Support Act and Assistance to Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia.  
• The first implementation review of U.S. – Uzbek cooperation to counter nuclear smuggling took place in late March, the State Department reported this week. The review was deemed “extremely productive” by the head of the U.S. delegation and featured discussions on increasing cooperation between the two countries.
• The security secretaries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) countries met this week in Dushanbe to take up issues of terrorism, separatism, drug trafficking and other challenges in Central Asia. Chinese Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun warned that extremist organizations are returning to the region and using drug trafficking to finance their operations. He proposed creating an SCO joint security center to tackle these challenges. The SCO secretaries also called on the broader international community to increase economic assistance to Afghanistan to enhance regional stability.
• A senior British foreign ministry official visited Kazakhstan to discuss a variety of security and economic issues and to sign an agreement for the transit of British military equipment from Afghanistan through Kazakh territory. 
• A coalition of NGOs in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to prioritize the prevention of torture in the region. The coalition emphasized that first and foremost these countries must implement their obligations under international treaties on human rights.