I knew that when I was trying to find a picture to illustrate the Turkmen dictator's New Year's "clean-up," Pinterest -- where I found this lovely old lady above -- wouldn't disappoint. But regrettably, there is no photo credit -- and paging through numerous re-links and even using Google image finder, I couldn't locate it, so if it belongs to someone, let me know.
With the long holidays over, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is now sweeping out his ministries once again -- and terrorizing everyone into likely not doing their jobs very well, setting up the next round of sweeps.
EurasiaNet has the story about dozens of officials from the cotton industry to the Emergencies Ministry getting shuffled on or out in the Turkmen hierarchy
And gundogar.org reports (scroll down): Byashimmurad Khojamamedov, minister of the economy and development is "released" from his duties and transferred -- to an unspecified other position. His deputy Babamurad Taganov is appointed in his place. The minister of public utilities Arslan Yagshimamedov is fired over "shortcomings" (maybe electricity shut-offs in this power-rich country?) and replaced by the hyakim (governor) of Balkan velayat (province). Meylis Mutdikov, chairman of the State Service for Sea and River Transport, is fired after the prosecutor uncovered "facts of gross violations of the law", failure to fulfill contracts and laxness. And a half dozen others.
But for some reason, EurasiaNet didn't cover the largest figure in the gas and oil shakeup: Yagshigeldy Kakayev.
Gundogar.org let us know how severe this latest purge is -- it has touched that holy of holies, the State Agency for the Management and Use of Hydrocarbons Under the President.
I think that very long name tells you all you need to know about this highest of high agencies whose proceeds reportedly flow directly into the president's pocket, as we've been helpfully apprised of by Crude Accountability.
Also shuffled is Turkmengas and the Ministry of Oil and Gas and Natural Resources.
Very little is known about Mukhammednur Khalilov (or you could spell it with his shorter name Muhhamet Halilov or probably about ten other ways), who has now been put in charge of Ministry of Oil and Gas, after his predecessor, Kakageldy Abdullaev, who was acting minister, was moved to Turkmengaz -- when the head of Turkmengaz, Sakhatmurad Mamedov, was fired. I tried all the spellings in English and Russian for Khalilov/Halilov and found he had virtually no Google footprint. Yet. Poor fellow.
After digging around I am told by a very reliable source that he is a smart petroleum geologist who has spent his life in the state's Institute of Oil and Gas, then apparently later moved to the Institute of Geology where he was in the higher ranks, possibly the director.
He is said to be smart, honest, not from the big city although from a village near Ashgabat, and religious -- and that he was tapped for this job and likely told to serve, i.e. he didn't evidently seek it. Apparently that happens a lot in Turkmenistan, and with heads CONSTANTLY rolling, people don't get a choice. So they are rushed to the capital and pushed into jobs where they don't have experience and networks precisely because the Protector (as the dictator is now known) constantly wants to break up networks and experience that he thinks might work against HIM.
Halilov is probably temporary although he wasn't designated as "acting".
In the Turkmen hierarchy, I've always been taught by people from Turkmenistan, that it works like this:
o State Agency for Management and Use of Hydrocarbons
o Ministry of Oil and Gas and Natural Resources
o Turkmengaz
Turkmengaz is a state-owned company and in another world, even in Russia, where Gazprom produced the president of the country, you might think of it as having a lot of its own power. But in Turkmenistan's top-down vertikal, it is very much subject to those other entities of the state. It's just the gas company, not a fulcrum of political power in the country and not a private company of course.
You would also think that an agency would be subordinate to a ministry, right? But in Turkmenistan. *that* agency has super-powers and is higher in the power chain than the ministry. However, I don't know exactly how their reporting chains work, and that may be something that Berdy disrupts and changes, too.
The "strict reprimand" notice for Kakayev has to be the longest one I've ever seen in the Turkmen media: "for improper performance of his official duties and violation of labour discipline, shortcomings permitted in work".
Usually, when "strict reprimands" are issued -- and they're issued by the basketful constantly, every week or month -- there is just a terse announcement: "in connection with shortcomings in their work" or something "severe shortcomings". Sometimes, there is an additional warning that they have 30 days to shape up. They might as well not bother writing that, as it is understood in the Turkmen ministries: if you have received a "strict reprimand," then you are likely to be fired or demoted in 30-60 days.
But here we've gotten considerably more -- that there was improper performance or literally "inappropriate execution" of his job duties and also "violations (literally "non-compliance") with labour discipline".
So that means he exceeded the power of office, or disobeyed orders, or improvised in ways that his boss, the president didn't like. The definition of an innovative Soviet apparatchik was always someone who knew how to invent more ways to please their boss slavishly -- so it can be easy to go off script, even at these towering heights.
I don't know what article of the labour code or internal labour discipline code that Kakayev might have "not complied with," but he may not even know himself.
Kakayev has held on since 2008. He is the person who has been at all the Oil and Gas Conferences Turkmenistan sponsors at home or takes part in abroad, and he is the person -- after Berdy himself, of course --who actually negotiates with foreigners.
What on earth did poor Kakayev do to get this slam in the media -- public humiliation and threat of dismissal?
Of course, nothing is said, and I haven't heard any rumours. When we last tuned in to some of the people who were in these jobs, they would be rumoured to be dismissed because they either told the real situation to foreigners, i.e. that maybe there weren't as large gas reserves as claimed, or didn't get foreigners sufficiently on board to invest in the promises of His Wonderfulness.
These post-Soviet countries still have enormous reservoirs of fear and hatred of foreigners and therefore obsequiousness and flattery as a tactic to deal with them.
You wonder what the scene was with this incredibly powerful official who had his hands on the pulse of billions of oil and gas dollars flowing into Turkmenistan and...not really accounted for much.
Was he seen drinking a beer with a foreigner late at night in a hotel bar, and therefore reported as "suspect" in this conservative country? Or, on the contrary, did he leave work on time to go to a Friday prayer service at the mosque because he was religious -- in a country where you are not to be *too* religious or you will also be suspect? Or did he just come back from London or Singapore without a check in his pocket?
We can only speculate, but I'm going to take a wild-assed guess and say that Mamedov was fired and Kakayev was disciplined because they failed to get investors in TAPI after the roadshow.
This is a conclusion I draw from certain math: a) there was a roadshow b) there were no investors c) therefore someone is to blame.
Of course, what seems to be to blame, as we know from the Indian and Pakistani press, is more about Turkmenistan failing to pony up a piece of the gas fields to foreigners -- cutting them into the gas deal seriously. Foreign companies want that kind of upstream ownership if they get involved in downstream construction, logistics, headaches.
And so far, in Turkmenistan, these production-sharing agreements have never been given to European, let along American companies, and only given to China, and I think the Malaysian company, Petronas. If you see RWE or other Western companies drilling, maybe they have a permit for exploration, or maybe they sell equipment for exploration, but they don't own a piece of the result.
In the Protector's world, you have to invest somehow in Turkmenistan before you can expect to harvest any profits from the gas. The Chinese understood this and laid out at least $8 billion, and probably more, to get the 30 billion cubic meters -- now to be 50 -- out of the ground and into their country ("the Great Chinese Take-out," as the late Roman Kupchinsky called it in a book by that name).
Petronas has just sponsored a new gas and oil institute for Turkmenistan, where the Turkmens, with Malaysian help, are going to educate their own people instead of having to export them to the Russian Gubkov Institute and have to deal with Russians which they don't want to do. They simply feel more comfortable building up that "multi-vector" foreign policy and trade with another smaller Muslim Asian state than Russia which has been historically nasty to them and even is suspected of blowing up their pipeline when it couldn't get the price deal it wanted.
This thorough shakeup and all the other "grandiose" reform efforts (that's actually literally the word the Turkmen state press uses) all seem like "enterprises of great pith and moment" but likely they, too, their "currents turn awry" and will "loose the name of action," as Hamlet put it.
Supposedly, Turkmenistan is now selling off state assets -- which means likely some agencies controlled by the vertikal will simply have closer responsibility for them and still enrich the presidency; this sell-off does not include anything in the oil and gas industry, which is why my hierarchy above with Turkmengaz as the last point in the chain is likely to remain accurate for some time to come.
