Posted on 04/12/2005 6:36:44 AM PDT by prairiebreeze
Turkmenistan has closed down all its international courier companies, the main postal link between the country and the outside world.
The Ministry of Communications said couriers' licences would not be extended, without explaining why.
Turkmenistan is already an extremely isolated country and the move will hit hard, especially businesses and the foreign community.
Big couriers like Federal Express and DHL are lifelines to the outside world.
Many embassies and most businesses send all their documents and other post through them.
The DHL office in the capital, Ashgabat, confirmed that it was no longer operating and was unable to deliver a mounting backlog of post.
An employee said the company was in talks with the government and she hoped the service would resume.
No reason has been given for the abrupt move, but it is in keeping with Turkmen government policy, which controls all communications tightly.
Telephones are monitored, internet use is controlled and TV and radio stations broadcast almost no news.
Ordinary Turkmens, for example, know almost nothing about the fall of the Kyrgyz government last month, even though both countries are in Central Asia.
Businesspeople also point to another possible motive.
Without the international couriers, diplomats and companies may have to use a Turkmen service which the government wants to promote.
The service is slow, unreliable and clearly open to official scrutiny.
Working in Turkmenistan is already extremely difficult. The end of the couriers will make it even more so.
Turkmenistan dictator Saparmyrat Niyazov, known as Turkmenbashi to his subjects, further isolated his already-insular Central Asian nation by apparently cancelling the licenses of international couriers such as DHL and Federal Express. Always paranoid about outside influences undermining his absolute rule, Niyazov may also be looking to promote a native courier service, for his own purposes:
Turkmenistan has closed down all its international courier companies, the main postal link between the country and the outside world. The Ministry of Communications said couriers' licences would not be extended, without explaining why.
Turkmenistan is already an extremely isolated country and the move will hit hard, especially businesses and the foreign community. Big couriers like Federal Express and DHL are lifelines to the outside world.
Many embassies and most businesses send all their documents and other post through them.
This last sentence contains the probable key to Niyazov's latest irrationality. FedEx and DHL make a living off of their reputations for secure deliveries of material, whether that material is product oriented or intellectual property, such as diplomatic transmissions, business formulas, and the like. Niyazov would want to ensure that such delivery systems were not being deployed to undermine his iron-fisted rule, but he also wouldn't mind knowing whatever else he can find out about the diplomatic and commercial interests operating in Turkmenistan. If the only licensee for courier services winds up being an outfit named Niyazov Delivers, or Turkmenbashi Express, its customers can readily assume that whatever actually manages to arrive at its destination will have been thoroughly reviewed by Niyazov's security apparatus.
While milder forms of autocracies have started to wobble or fall to democratization, such as Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan has remained almsot defiantly in the grip of the Stalinist dictator with the almost-satirical personality cult. Some believe that the lesson for Central Asian strongmen is to avoid liberalization and instead follow Niyazov's example to retain their grip on power. It might work, for a while, although Niyazov started when Russia needed its former Soviet republics as buffer states more than it needed them to reform, which allowed Niyazov a healthy and safe head start on his paranoid and megalomaniac rule. However, eventually the increasing isolation and the economic collapse it will bring Turkmenistan will completely destabilize the nation -- and as it is dwarfed by its southern neighbor, Iran, the mullahs there will take special interest in its new direction once that collapse occurs.
In the aftermath of World War I and its liberation from the Ottoman Empire, Turkmenistan turned towards the backwards rule of a Caliphate pretender that took the ancestral home of the Turks from the 19th century to the 12th century through absolute rule of a separate but similar kind. The hapless Turk adventurer and incompetent general Enver Pasha tried playing the Soviets against the Caliphate to install himself in a role almost identical to Niyazov's now, and the result was Russian domination for seven decades. If Niyazov doesn't start opening Turkmenistan to reform, the Iranians may well wind up playing the role of the Soviets in the 1920s in Ashgabat, which will have deeper implications for the rest of the Central Asian republics in the neighborhood. The West would do well to start putting more effort into pressing for democratization to wobble Niyazov into retirement.
At this point it is anyones guess just what is going on over there.
Hard to say which is worse Belorussia or Turkmenistan. I read an article a few years ago that said anyone wanting to marry a Turkmeni national had to pay thousands of dollars to Turkmenistan first. I guess it is the only country in the former USSR that still thinks it's citizens are slaves of the state.
Given everything else going on in the region, I'd say this is the beginning of the end of Stalinist rule for them. If they go democratic Iran will be completely surrounded by democratic nations full of Sunni and Christians.
Hmmm. It’s fine to want to use a local service, I guess, but there are problems.
I can believe DHL has an office there, but it is interesting that FedEx has a physical presence. I mean, as opposed to farming it out to a local entity for delivery.
I believe that’s how UPS operates there – contracts delivery out to Purliev or someone. That’s because it’s expensive to build facilities and establish a network and hire people just to have the rug yanked out from under you later.
At any rate, if you are a diplomat or company and want to send something to Italy, for instance, you can’t get there from here using a local company like Purliev. They have to hand it off to someone else – like DHL or FedEX or UPS.
Unless they just want to force the use of whatever-postal service they have. The problem with that is that even they have to hand off the item to someone else for delivery to another country – like Deutsche Post, for instance. But then, the Deutsche Post has an intimate relationship with DHL that just got booted, so they might not be particularly receptive. Whatever.
Maybe they don’t want anything coming in or going out of the country.
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