Cotton Crackdown in Andijan
New provincial governor applies tough measures to salvage a disappointing cotton crop.
Cotton Crackdown in Andijan
New provincial governor applies tough measures to salvage a disappointing cotton crop.
The regional government of Andijan has cracked down on cotton smuggling after a late and lacklustre harvest in the Fergana valley meant it failed to meet strict production targets.
The campaign comes a year and a half after government forces killed hundreds of people when they opened fire on demonstrators in Andijan. That unrest, which Tashkent blamed on Islamic militants, was widely seen by people in this impoverished rural region as a peaceful protest over economic conditions.
This year, a poor harvest in Andijan means the regional government is prosecuting those suspected of hiding harvested cotton to sell it on or smuggle it into neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, where in previous years businessmen have filled up their homes and storehouses with cotton from Uzbekistan.
In a recent case, Marufjon Ergashev and Akmaljon Mirzakarimov from the village of Beshtol in Namangan region, also in the Fergana valley, were sentenced to four and five years imprisonment, respectively, after being convicted of storing 440 kilograms of stolen cotton worth 160,000 som or 140 US dollars. The buyers were given two years in a prison camp.
Although farms in Uzbekistan are in private hands, the state continues to behave as if the Soviet Union still existed, deciding where cotton is to be grown, setting production targets, buying up all the harvest at very low prices, and preventing farmers from selling their own output privately or taking it abroad. The government’s cotton agencies then sell the product on international markets and earn substantial foreign-currency revenues.
Large “shirkats” – successors to Soviet collective farms – are being privatised, while small “dehkan” or “peasant” farms, generally a family working a small plot of land, exist on the margins. But all are subject to the strictures of the government’s all-powerful agricultural monopoly in which cotton is regarded as state property.
An estimated 600,000 tons of cotton was sold at the Second International Uzbek Cotton Fair held in Tashkent in October, and official estimates suggest that this year’s total haul may exceed last year’s record harvest of 3.7 million tons, which could provide the treasury with as much as one billion dollars.
But there are indications that Andijan’s contribution has been late and below par. Bozorvoy Yoldoshev, a resident of the village of Yorkishloq, says Andijan is always the first province to complete its harvest and sell its cotton quota to the state. But this year, that has not happened.
In October, President Islam Karimov dismissed Andijan regional governor Saidullo Begaliev. Analysts believe the president delayed Begaliev’s removal so as not to imply a direct connection with the Andijan violence. But when Karimov subsequently spoke of the governor’s failure to address social concerns in the province, he appeared to be tacitly accepting that the May 2005 protest was not motivated wholly by Islamic sentiment.
An Uzbek analyst living abroad who asked not to be named said Begaliev’s departure came after several months of rumours that he was about to be sacked. “That’s why he didn’t make arrangements for the cotton harvest,” he said.
The new governor, Ahmad Usmonov, is a former police chief in Namangan region. But the police general arrived in the job too late in the autumn to make a difference to the harvest.
In keeping with his background in security, Usmonov oversaw a crackdown on individuals trying to secure some small personal gain from the crop.
Regional governors can be dismissed for not meeting their production targets, especially for a crop as important as cotton, so the crackdown may be intended to show Usmonov is making a serious effort to catch up on below-average harvest figures, even if the amounts of contraband cotton recovered are not significant.
According to official figures, the bulk of cotton theft occurs in those areas of the Fergana valley closest to Kyrgyzstan. Andijan’s courts have been busy with cotton cases. In September, 20 cases were heard in the Izbaskan criminal court, 11 cases in Qorgontepa, and two in Bulokbashi, with heavy coverage in the state-controlled media.
“In the past, almost nothing was reported about such cases, but during this cotton harvest almost every issue of the provincial newspaper Andijonnoma has carried reports from the prosecutor’s office or the police, naming and shaming people as thieves,” said Bahrom Ubaidulloev, a 65-year-old pensioner from Andijan.
In these reports, cotton is referred to as the “honour and conscience of the Uzbeks”. Such rhetoric may be intended to stoke patriotism and commitment to the harvest, but it is in stark contrast to the widespread international condemnation of the Uzbek cotton industry for its use of child labour and other exploitative practices. Thousands of people are mobilised to pick the crop by hand, including schoolchildren.
According to residents of one village, at the start of the cotton harvest the authorities raised the purchase price to 70 som (about 50 US cents) per kilogram.
“But even the tiny sum that is supposed to be paid for cotton is not always received by the cotton pickers on time,” said Khurnisa Kalonova, a resident of a village in a border region. She says that labourers were paid promptly at first, but then payments became delayed.
“In Kyrgyzstan they offer a much higher prices and pay immediately, which is why several mini-cotton cleaning plants have been set up on the Kyrgyz side of the border, to process cotton coming out of Uzbekistan,” said Kalonova.
Uzbek frontier guards have set up extra border checkpoints and are carrying out more frequent patrols to stop cross-border smuggling.
According to a police officer in Pakhtaobod, in Andijan province, the stolen cotton is transported across the border on horseback. He said police have fired shots in order to disperse horsemen waiting for cotton buyers.
“It is hard to keep control of everyone,” said the officer. “They seem to be decent, adult people, but then they brazenly steal from their own riches.”
Ilhom Khudoiberganov, an inhabitant of Yorkishloq, says that some people are hiding their cotton until winter. They believe that once the snows fall, the border patrols will be end and smuggling can begin again.
“They say cotton is Uzbekistan’s wealth. But where is this wealth? Where does it go?” asked a woman from the village of Shukurmergen, in the Marhamat region of Andijan province. “We work like slaves, not like normal people. I don’t think it’s stealing. It is a struggle for life, a struggle for survival.”
(Names of interviewees have been changed for security reasons.)
The campaign comes a year and a half after government forces killed hundreds of people when they opened fire on demonstrators in Andijan. That unrest, which Tashkent blamed on Islamic militants, was widely seen by people in this impoverished rural region as a peaceful protest over economic conditions.
This year, a poor harvest in Andijan means the regional government is prosecuting those suspected of hiding harvested cotton to sell it on or smuggle it into neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, where in previous years businessmen have filled up their homes and storehouses with cotton from Uzbekistan.
In a recent case, Marufjon Ergashev and Akmaljon Mirzakarimov from the village of Beshtol in Namangan region, also in the Fergana valley, were sentenced to four and five years imprisonment, respectively, after being convicted of storing 440 kilograms of stolen cotton worth 160,000 som or 140 US dollars. The buyers were given two years in a prison camp.
Although farms in Uzbekistan are in private hands, the state continues to behave as if the Soviet Union still existed, deciding where cotton is to be grown, setting production targets, buying up all the harvest at very low prices, and preventing farmers from selling their own output privately or taking it abroad. The government’s cotton agencies then sell the product on international markets and earn substantial foreign-currency revenues.
Large “shirkats” – successors to Soviet collective farms – are being privatised, while small “dehkan” or “peasant” farms, generally a family working a small plot of land, exist on the margins. But all are subject to the strictures of the government’s all-powerful agricultural monopoly in which cotton is regarded as state property.
An estimated 600,000 tons of cotton was sold at the Second International Uzbek Cotton Fair held in Tashkent in October, and official estimates suggest that this year’s total haul may exceed last year’s record harvest of 3.7 million tons, which could provide the treasury with as much as one billion dollars.
But there are indications that Andijan’s contribution has been late and below par. Bozorvoy Yoldoshev, a resident of the village of Yorkishloq, says Andijan is always the first province to complete its harvest and sell its cotton quota to the state. But this year, that has not happened.
In October, President Islam Karimov dismissed Andijan regional governor Saidullo Begaliev. Analysts believe the president delayed Begaliev’s removal so as not to imply a direct connection with the Andijan violence. But when Karimov subsequently spoke of the governor’s failure to address social concerns in the province, he appeared to be tacitly accepting that the May 2005 protest was not motivated wholly by Islamic sentiment.
An Uzbek analyst living abroad who asked not to be named said Begaliev’s departure came after several months of rumours that he was about to be sacked. “That’s why he didn’t make arrangements for the cotton harvest,” he said.
The new governor, Ahmad Usmonov, is a former police chief in Namangan region. But the police general arrived in the job too late in the autumn to make a difference to the harvest.
In keeping with his background in security, Usmonov oversaw a crackdown on individuals trying to secure some small personal gain from the crop.
Regional governors can be dismissed for not meeting their production targets, especially for a crop as important as cotton, so the crackdown may be intended to show Usmonov is making a serious effort to catch up on below-average harvest figures, even if the amounts of contraband cotton recovered are not significant.
According to official figures, the bulk of cotton theft occurs in those areas of the Fergana valley closest to Kyrgyzstan. Andijan’s courts have been busy with cotton cases. In September, 20 cases were heard in the Izbaskan criminal court, 11 cases in Qorgontepa, and two in Bulokbashi, with heavy coverage in the state-controlled media.
“In the past, almost nothing was reported about such cases, but during this cotton harvest almost every issue of the provincial newspaper Andijonnoma has carried reports from the prosecutor’s office or the police, naming and shaming people as thieves,” said Bahrom Ubaidulloev, a 65-year-old pensioner from Andijan.
In these reports, cotton is referred to as the “honour and conscience of the Uzbeks”. Such rhetoric may be intended to stoke patriotism and commitment to the harvest, but it is in stark contrast to the widespread international condemnation of the Uzbek cotton industry for its use of child labour and other exploitative practices. Thousands of people are mobilised to pick the crop by hand, including schoolchildren.
According to residents of one village, at the start of the cotton harvest the authorities raised the purchase price to 70 som (about 50 US cents) per kilogram.
“But even the tiny sum that is supposed to be paid for cotton is not always received by the cotton pickers on time,” said Khurnisa Kalonova, a resident of a village in a border region. She says that labourers were paid promptly at first, but then payments became delayed.
“In Kyrgyzstan they offer a much higher prices and pay immediately, which is why several mini-cotton cleaning plants have been set up on the Kyrgyz side of the border, to process cotton coming out of Uzbekistan,” said Kalonova.
Uzbek frontier guards have set up extra border checkpoints and are carrying out more frequent patrols to stop cross-border smuggling.
According to a police officer in Pakhtaobod, in Andijan province, the stolen cotton is transported across the border on horseback. He said police have fired shots in order to disperse horsemen waiting for cotton buyers.
“It is hard to keep control of everyone,” said the officer. “They seem to be decent, adult people, but then they brazenly steal from their own riches.”
Ilhom Khudoiberganov, an inhabitant of Yorkishloq, says that some people are hiding their cotton until winter. They believe that once the snows fall, the border patrols will be end and smuggling can begin again.
“They say cotton is Uzbekistan’s wealth. But where is this wealth? Where does it go?” asked a woman from the village of Shukurmergen, in the Marhamat region of Andijan province. “We work like slaves, not like normal people. I don’t think it’s stealing. It is a struggle for life, a struggle for survival.”
(Names of interviewees have been changed for security reasons.)
