Asia Times: Turkmenistan's dream destined to be blown away


	October 26, 2000	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Turkmenistan's dream destined to be blown away
STRATFOR.COM's
Global Intelligence Update
Oct 25, 2000

Summary

Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan's Soviet-era leader and now president-for-life, has embarked on an ambitious plan to create a 1,300 square-mile artificial lake in the Karakum Desert. This scheme, with an estimated cost between US$4 billion and $6 billion and a completion time of 10-20 years, is intended to increase Turkmenistan's agricultural production and enhance its water security. In reality, it will damage them both, while dealing another blow to the region's already shattered ecology.

Analysis

The Turkmenbashi is at it again.

In the eight years since Turkmenistan was granted independence, Saparmurat Niyazov - who styles himself the "Turkmenbashi", or "Leader of the Turkmen" - has developed a cult of personality that would make Stalin blush. In the process he has isolated his Central Asian fiefdom: Most bank accounts are illegal, the Internet is banned, university matriculation requires three-generation security checks and all foreigners are registered and closely monitored throughout their stay.

As a result, the Turkmen economy has withered to almost nothing. Turkmen GDP is two-fifths of its 1990 level, harvests are at record lows and even most petroleum companies are now giving the natural gas-rich state a wide berth. Since Turkmenistan's two leading industries are cotton cultivation and natural gas extraction, this is particularly bad.

Under the new scheme, Turkmenistan will construct 600 miles of collection trenches to redirect water destined from the Amu Darya catchment basin to the sealed Karashor basin near Ashghabat to form a lake. According to the Turkmen government, the lake will provide a backup water supply for the Ashghabat area as well as allow agricultural production on an additional 1,500 square miles of land.

The reality will be nothing of the sort. First of all, diverting runoff from such a huge swath of land will poison much of the transport route with salt while robbing the region's second-largest river of much of its water. Second, because the new lake - and much of the catchment trenches - will be in a desert basin, the amount of water lost to evaporation will be enormous.

Finally, Turkmenistan plans to grow cotton, Central Asia's leading cash crop, in the area around the new lake. Turkmenistan's annual crop usually generates between US$200 million and $250 million, accounting for one-fifth of all export revenues. But cotton is one of the thirstiest crops available and Central Asia is one of the world's most arid regions.

The only reason cotton can grow there at all is due to massive Soviet irrigation systems that diverted water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, the region's two major rivers. The crown jewel of the Soviet scheme was the 700-mile Karakum canal, which draws water from the Amu Darya and routes it to agricultural oases dotting Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert.

These wasteful Soviet practices - continued in modern day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - have created other problems. At the top of the list is the loss of the Aral Sea. Even without Niyazov's latest scheme, the Amu Darya barely reaches the Aral at all. Soviet agricultural practices have reduced the Aral Sea to less than one-quarter of its 1960 volume and made it one of the world's most polluted bodies of water. Niyazov's new plan, which will prevent water from ever reaching the Amu Darya, will compound the Aral's plight.

Compounding the level of fear in this equation is Vozrozhdeniye, once a small island in the middle of the Aral that is now connected to the mainland. This would be little more than a geographic footnote if not for the fact that Vozrozhdeniye was where the Soviet Union once tested its biological weapons.

The destruction of what was the world's fourth-largest lake has already affected the local climate, and with it, water availability. Draining water from a depleted river into a basin in the heart of a desert in order to water a thirsty, non-native crop will certainly not improve matters. The unlucky souls who live on the lower reaches of the Amu Darya have seen their world slowly wither. Thanks to the Turkmenbashi's latest scheme, they will see what is left of it dry up and blow away.

(c) 2000, WNI, Inc.

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