Soviet Union versus independence

After having visited Tajikistan we look forward to explore Kyrgyzstan. Therefore we will travel north. Kyrgyzstan is a country with about 5 million inhabitants that is located between Kazakhstan and China. When arriving in the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, we see a lot of poverty and protest. We want to find out what’s going on and interrogate the Bishkek residents...

After having a talk with these people we realized that living in Kyrgyzstan isn’t that easy. It all changed in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. Kyrgyzstan is the second poorest country of Central Asia and it also was the second poorest country of the former Soviet Union. But recovery seems to be far away. Kyrgyzstan wasn’t rich at all in the Soviet-period and won’t be rich in the future. The reason therefore is that Kyrgyzstan lost 98 percent of its export to several other countries of the former Soviet Union after the fall.Organizations such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank invested and are still investing a lot of money in Kyrgyzstan to ameliorate the economic life over there. And it seems to help! The economic situation improved until 1998, then it became problematic again… The Kyrgyz government couldn’t guaranty social security and fiscal revenues were missing out. The Kyrgyz government isn’t stable at all,in fact we can compare it to the governments in the Middle East. On the one hand, we have some corrupt government leaders and on the other hand we have the opposition. These two parties are fighting each other constantly. We can take this very literally! Sometimes there are fights in the capital Bishkek with a lot of dead civilians as result…

Our conclusion is that the bad economic situation leads to discord in the country. Another striking element is that a lot of business people blame the government of interrupting the growth of the economy which leads to protests. (I’ve met a little excerpt of these political and economic problems underneath this blog to show you how it is going in real life). Nevertheless, Kyrgyzstan has a lot of valuable resources such as coal, gold, uranium and water resources. But the big problem is that they can’t afford them the equipment and machinery that’s needed to develop these sources.  Yeah, we can say that the economic situation in Kyrgyzstan is very poignant…

To be honest, we were very interested in the political and economic situation of Kyrgyzstan, but after realizing that living in this country can be very dangerous, we’d like to move on and go to Uzbekistan.

If you have any questions… You’re welcome!

Jorick Verschraegen                   
Kyrgyzstan week 2 (Politics)        
               
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75SUUV0aLJk

Let’s get started!!!

A lot of my friends were eager to leave Belgium and discover the world! Now, we’re finally off, so let’s hope we’ll all have a great time!

The first country that we and our group visit is Tajikistan. As Lisa already mentioned, Tajikistan and their Tajiks are one of the poorest populations on earth. But how can we interpret this fact? I will try to explain you the economic “development” that the country experienced.

Tajikistan was the poorest country during the Soviet Union and is the poorest country in Central Asia. Reasons include: corruption, uneven economic reforms and mismanagement of the economic leaders. Moreover, the country depends on international assistance, which means they can’t trade on their own… A good example is the bridge between Tajikistan and Afghanistan built in 2004. This bridge was built to improve the trade between South Asia and Tajikistan. But this bridge isn’t built by Tajiks or Afghans, no. The United States of America are responsible for this construction. This example reflects the poor situation in which the Tajiks live. 

What should you do if your own country can’t give you the economic security you need? Personally, I would look somewhere else, somewhere I can find a future, a better life… And that’s exactly what the Tajiks do. Whether they emigrate to another country such as Russia or they go working abroad.

We already know that Tajikistan hasn’t a lot of earnings. But still there must be a source of income. But what does it contains? In fact, it’s a mixture of legal and illegal revenues. The legal sources of income consist of incomes earned by the aluminum production, cotton and remittances from migrant workers. The drug traffic nourishes the illegal checkout. Heroin and raw opium are the most popular types of drugs trade in Tajikistan. Moreover, Tajikistan is on the third place when it comes to illegal heroin traffic.

This was my first blog, I hope you learned something more about a country that isn’t well-known at all. But at the same time I think that this country increased your general knowledge.

Kind regards

Jorick Verschraegen
Tajikistan week 1(Economics)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajikistan#Economy

And off we went

Hello everybody,

Today is the beginning of a great adventure for me and my friends. Up early, we hurried to catch our flight yesterday morning and fortunately we made it to the airport in time. For about three months we will be travelling around the world, starting here in Tajikistan. As you might already know, Tajikistan is a part of Asia and it’s situated next to more known countries as China, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Remarkable to this country is that nearly half of Tajikistan’s population is under 14 years of age and their language is something very close to Persian. Since 1991 Tajikistan is independent from the Soviet Union, and the capital of this country is Dushanbe. Another important fact is that it’s one of the most poorest countries in the world, because at least 44 percent of the population is poor. The inhabitants of Tajikistan are very kind and hospitable and besides that, the architecture of this country is very beautiful. We’ve also taken our first pictures today, where you can see some of the spectacular buildings.

 

What I do have to mention is that the weather here isn’t as good as we thought it would be… Today it’s about 7 degrees outside, and when you know that the temperature during summer is about 40 degrees, that’s rather cold isn’t it? But even though we had hoped for some sunshine and higher temperatures, we’re enjoying our time here and we hope to see a lot of beautiful things during the next few days. In a couple of days one of my friends will write another post about some important subjects as culture, economics,… concerning Tajikistan.

Thanks for reading my post and feel free to leave some comments if you want!

Lisa Van GassenTajikistan week 1


Source: http://www.tajikistan.nl/index.php