SCENESETTER FOR THE VISIT TO TURKMENISTAN OF

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 ASHGABAT 000731

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

STATE FOR SCA/CEN (PLEASE PASS TO USCIRF),DRL

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: KIRF PGOV PHUM PREL TX
SUBJECT: SCENESETTER FOR THE VISIT TO TURKMENISTAN OF
USCIRF CHAIRMAN CROMARTIE AND USCIRF COMMISSIONERS, JULY 29
- AUGUST 4

SUMMARY


1. (SBU) Embassy Ashgabat warmly welcomes the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom to Turkmenistan
as the first-ever U.S. delegation here to focus solely on
religious freedom. Your visit will help to reinforce the
U.S. government's message as it has sought to "turn a new
page" in its overall relationship with Turkmenistan that the
United States values freedom of religion or belief. Although
the new president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, is making
significant changes in some sectors, it is important to
realize the country is at the very beginning of a new era.
The wreck of a country left behind by the now-deceased
President-for-Life, Niyazov, combined with 70 years of
colonial Soviet rule, compounded by nomadic/tribal customs
and lack of a nation-state concept, create the need for a new
model. Turkmenistan was never North Korea, but it is not yet
Denmark. Rather, the current state offers a rare opportunity
to develop a new model; a model molded by, and representative
of, the proud people of Turkmenistan, with patient but
consistent nudges by the international community. We
recommend that the tone in this first encounter should be
positive -- to encourage more openness and new ways of
thinking -- but not hortatory. Demands would be
counterproductive. END SUMMARY.

INTRODUCTION


2. (SBU) Turkmenistan is a hydrocarbon-rich state that
shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran. You will find
Turkmenistan in the midst of an historic political
transition. The unexpected death of President Niyazov on
December 21, 2006, ended the authoritarian, one-man
dictatorship that for 15 years made Turkmenistan among the
most repressive countries in the world. The peaceful
transfer of power following Niyazov's death confounded many
who had predicted instability because the former president
had no succession plan. President Berdimuhamedov quickly
assumed power following Niyazov's death with the assistance
of the "power ministries" -- including the Ministries of
National Security and Defense, and the Presidential Guard --
but his position was, in fact, subsequently confirmed through
a public election in which the population eagerly
participated, even though it did not meet international
standards.

NIYAZOV'S LEGACY


3. (SBU) Berdimuhamedov inherited a country that former
President Niyazov had come close to running into the ground.
Niyazov siphoned off most of Turkmenistan's hydrocarbon
proceeds into non-transparent slush funds used, in part, to
finance his massive construction program in Ashgabat at the
expense of the country's education and health-care systems.
Politically, his increasing paranoia -- particularly after
the 2002 assassination attempt against him -- led to
high-speed revolving-door personnel changes at the provincial
and national level, and an obsessive inclination to
micro-manage the details of government. Criticizing or
questioning of Niyazov decisions was treated as disloyalty,
and could be grounds for removal from jobs, if not worse.
Niyazov's "neutral" foreign policy led to Turkmenistan's
political and economic isolation from the rest of the world,
and his policies calling for mandatory increases in cotton
and wheat production led to destructive agricultural and
water-use policies that left much of Turkmenistan's arable
land salty and played-out.

EDUCATION -- "DIMMER PEOPLE EASIER TO RULE"


4. (SBU) Niyazov's attacks on the educational system grew
increasingly destructive in his later years. The Soviet-era
educational system was broadly turned into a system designed
to isolate students from the outside world and to mold them
into loyal Turkmen-speaking presidential thralls. President
Niyazov famously defended this policy when, in 2004, he told
a fellow Central Asian president, "dimmer people are easier
to rule." Niyazov's destruction of his country's education
system included cutting the Soviet standard of ten years of

ASHGABAT 00000731 002 OF 004


compulsory education to nine, firing large numbers of
teachers and introducing his own works as core curriculum
precepts at the expense of the traditional building blocks of
a basic education. He slashed higher education to two years
of study and discouraged foreign study by refusing to
recognize foreign academic degrees. Taken together, these
steps created a "lost generation" of under-educated youth
incapable of critical thinking and ill-equipped to help
Turkmenistan take its place on the world stage.

RULE OF LAW -- A VERY LOW BAR


5. (SBU) Niyazov also left his very negative mark on
Turkmenistan's political system. His authoritarianism left a
legacy of corrupt officials lacking initiative,
accountability and -- in many cases -- the expertise needed
to do their jobs. Young officials who came of age after
Niyazov's destructive changes to the education system are
particularly deficient in skills and broader world vision
needed to facilitate Turkmenistan's entry into the
international community. Laws are repressive and lack
transparency, oversight and recourse mechanisms, and the
population's fundamental ignorance of the meaning of rule of
law has left the bar low in terms of citizens' expectations
of their government.

BERDIMUHAMEDOV REBUILDS THE SYSTEM HE HELPED DESTROY


6. (SBU) Berdimuhamedov still pays nominal lip service to
maintaining his predecessor's policies, but he has started
reversing many of the most destructive, especially in the
areas of education, health and social welfare. He has
restored -- and in many cases -- increased old-age pensions
that Niyazov had largely eliminated. The president is
embarking on a course of hospital-building, with the main
focus on improving medical facilities in Turkmenistan's five
provinces. To this end, he has already authorized
construction of five provincial mother-and-children
(maternity) hospitals. He has also publicly committed to
improve rural infrastructure and to ensure that every village
has communications, electricity and running water.


7. (SBU) In education, Berdimuhamedov is reversing many of
the policies Niyazov ordered him to implement while he served
as Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers for Education.
Since his inauguration, Berdimuhamedov has ordered a return
to the compulsory standard of ten years' education, a return
of universities to five years of classroom study, and a new
emphasis on exchange programs and the hard sciences. On July
13, he called for recognition of foreign academic degrees, a
major step which would allow exchange students to receive
credit for their overseas study. The goal is to repair
Turkmenistan's broken education system as quickly as possible
and to give the country the educated workforce that it needs
to compete commercially. These efforts, however, continue to
be hampered by old-thinking bureaucrats, especially in the
Ministry of Education, who block or impede foreign assistance
programs, which they may view as promoting unhealthy
"foreign" tendencies among Turkmenistan's youth.

ELIMINATING THE CULT OF PERSONALITY


8. (SBU) Berdimuhamedov has incrementally started
dismantling Niyazov's cult of personality. Although you will
still see pictures of the deceased president on many major
buildings and references to Niyazov's literary works,
especially the "Ruhnama," scattered on signs around the city,
the new president has banned the huge stadium gatherings and
requirement for students and government workers to line the
streets, often for hours, along presidential motorcade
routes. That said, in some places, Niyazov's picture has
been replaced by Berdimuhamedov's, and the new president's
quotes are now replacing Ruhnama quotations in newspaper
mastheads. Why he's doing this is opaque to us. It may be
his manifestation of Turkmenistan's "khan culture," or
perhaps he is signaling to the old-guard who put him in
office he is not a radical reformer.

SALVAGING A WRECKED POLITICAL SYSTEM

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9. (SBU) Although Berdimuhamedov made few initial
adjustments to his cabinet, accepting nearly wholesale the
former president's line-up, he has been steadily replacing
senior ministry officials since his inauguration. In most
cases, these efforts appear to be focused on finding
better-qualified individuals. The president has established
a state commission to review complaints of citizens against
law enforcement agencies, which could potentially become a
point of redress against law enforcement organs' most
egregious abuses. (Suggesting that he may be disappointed
with the commission's slow start, Berdimuhamedov on July 13
removed the Chairman of the Supreme Court -- the head of the
commission -- in part because of the Chairman's "lack of
management" of the body.) He also has slowly begun to walk
back some of the most restrictive controls on movement within
the country, first removing police checkpoints on the roads
between cities, then -- on July 13 -- eliminating the
requirement for Turkmenistan's citizens to obtain permits to
travel to border zones (however, the permit system remains in
force for foreigners). And, although the president has been
slower to strengthen the rule of law, correct Turkmenistan's
abysmal human rights and religious freedom record, and
promote economic reform, he has told U.S. officials he wants
to "turn the page" on the bilateral relationship and is
willing to work on areas that hindered improved relations
under Niyazov and to accept visits by U.S. delegations
directed toward promoting change in those areas.

FOREIGN POLICY: A NEW FOCUS ON ENGAGEMENT


10. (U) Notwithstanding his statements that he plans to
continue the "neutrality" policies of his predecessor,
Berdimuhamedov -- probably at the advice of Deputy Chairman
of the Cabinet of Ministers and Foreign Minister Rashit
Meredov -- has put a virtually unprecedented emphasis on
foreign affairs. Indeed, Berdimuhamedov has met or spoken
telephonically with all the leaders in the region --
including with President Aliyev of Azerbaijan, with whom
Niyazov maintained a running feud. He has exchanged visits
with Russia's President Putin, and held a high-profile gas
summit with Putin and Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev in
Turkmenistan's Caspian seaside city of Turkmenbashy
(Krasnovodsk). China has a strong and growing commercial
presence in Turkmenistan, and continues to court
Berdimuhamedov through a series of high-level commercial and
political visits. While Turkey has given Berdimuhamedov
top-level treatment, including an invitation to Ankara, its
relationship with Turkmenistan continues to be colored more
by the image of its lucrative trade and construction
contracts that are siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars
away from state budgets here than by generous development
assistance or fraternal support. Berdimuhamedov has also
held very positive meetings with high-level U.S. State
Department officials and leaders of the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and United Nations
to discuss areas of potential assistance. He met with UN
High Commissioner on Human Rights Louise Arbour in May, the
Head of the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and
Human Rights (ODIHR),Christian Strohal, and agreed to a
visit by the UN's Special Rapporteur on Religious Freedom at
an as-yet undetermined date.

GAS GAMES


11. (U) Turkmenistan has world-class natural gas reserves,
but Russia's monopoly of its energy exports has left
Turkmenistan receiving less than the world price and overly
beholden to Russia. Pipeline diversification, including both
a pipeline to China proposed for 2009 and the possibility of
resurrecting plans for a Trans-Caspian pipeline that would
avoid the Russian routes, and construction of high-power
electricity lines to transport excess energy to
Turkmenistan's neighbors, including Afghanistan, would not
only enhance Turkmenistan's economic and political
sovereignty, but also help fuel new levels of prosperity
throughout the region. Berdimuhamedov has told USG
interlocutors he recognizes the need for more options and has
taken the first steps to this end, but he also took the first

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steps needed to increase the volume of gas exports to Russia
-- agreeing in principle to build a new littoral pipeline --
during the May tripartite summit in Turkmenbashy. He will
require encouragement and assistance from the international
community if he is to maintain a course of diversification in
the face of almost certain Russian efforts to keep
Turkmenistan from weaning itself away from Russia.

U.S. POLICY TOWARDS TURKMENISTAN


12. (U) U.S. policy in Turkmenistan is three-fold:

-- Encourage democratic reform and increased respect for
human rights and fundamental freedoms, including support for
improvements in the education and health systems;
-- Encourage economic reform and growth of a market economy
and private-sector agriculture, as well as diversification of
Turkmenistan's energy export options;
-- Promote security cooperation.


13. (SBU) Turkmenistan remains a tempting target for
increased cooperation on energy and security, but its past
human rights record makes this cooperation problematic for
some. In raising its human rights concerns, the United
States focuses on three areas:

-- Freedom of Movement: Turkmenistan maintains a travel
restriction list ("black list") of individuals not allowed to
leave the country. Most of the restricted travelers have an
immediate or extended family member implicated in the
November 2002 assassination attempt against President
Niyazov. The United States is focusing its efforts on
calling for: 1) a clear and transparent process for placing a
citizen's name on the restricted travel list; 2) notification
to the citizen prior to his/her attempt to travel; and 3) the
establishment of a process for removal from the list. In
recent months, some individuals whose names previously were
blacklisted have been allowed to travel abroad.

-- Religious Freedom: Although Turkmenistan has improved its
religious-freedom record somewhat during the past two years,
some groups, including the Roman Catholic Church, have still
been unable to register (a requirement for legal religious
activity),and most groups report that they continue to have
difficulties importing religious literature other than the
Bible or the Koran. Unregistered and some registered groups
continue to experience police harassment, though for most
registered groups, at least, harassment has decreased fairly
substantially from previous years. However, the government
has resumed prosecuting conscientious objectors for evading
military service after an almost two-year hiatus.

-- Civil Society Group Registration: Since the 2003 law that
required all registered NGOs to re-register, very few
independent NGOs have been registered by the Ministry of
Justice. The embassy has determined that fewer than 10
independent civil society groups have received NGO
registration under the new law. Even those NGOs registered,
however, continue to have problems, including monitoring of
their activities. The embassy has facilitated legal
consultations on registration issues to civil society groups
wanting to register, but ultimately the law on registration
of organizations will probably need to be reformed.


14. (SBU) Berdimuhamedov remains closely tied to Niyazov-era
interest groups focused on self-preservation because he does
not have his own independent political base. Although
security cooperation with the United States continues to
improve and the government has welcomed assistance in
education, health and agriculture, many of the democratic and
economic reforms the U.S. government promotes are viewed
suspiciously by the regime. We continue to link better
bilateral relations and assistance in the areas where this
government wants development to gradual democratic and
economic reform. For the longer term, we are focusing on
preparing the next generation of leaders and society in
general with tools to build a more democratic, secure and
prosperous nation.
HOAGLAND