On October 25-26, Tajikistan hosted the third Inter-parliamentary forum “Russia-Tajikistan: Potentials for Inter-Regional Cooperation” with the participation of the Tajik president, Emomali Rahmon; the Chairman of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation, Sergei Mironov; and parliamentarians and representatives of the business communities in the two countries. The forum’s agenda included plenary sessions and roundtables devoted to issues of intra-regional trade, mutual investments, economic partnership and cooperation, aiming to increase the overall turnover between the two countries by 20%, bringing the total to US$ one billion in the coming year. The first day of the forum took place in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, as a Tajik-Russian open business forum, with the second being held Khujand, the second biggest city of Tajikistan. The forum closed with Tajikistan and Russia signing a treaty of cooperation and collaboration, which is meant to strengthen partner relations to solve important problems of social and economic development to mutual benefit.

The legal foundation of Tajik-Russian cooperation includes 174 agreements signed on the interstate, intergovernmental and interagency levels, covering almost all fields of bilateral cooperation between the two countries. It is estimated that 15% of Tajik commodity turnover is with Russia, which was behind over 60% of overall foreign direct investment in Tajikistan in the past nine months. Emomali Rahmon took part in the opening ceremony, where he lamented that little progress was made after similar forums in the past and expressed his hopes that new agreements made would be fully implemented by the two sides. Among many subjects discussed in the forum, the issue of labor migration received special attention. Local authorities asked Russian officials to increase the number of days given to labor migrants for registration as legal residents from the current three to ten days on the grounds that three days is often insufficient. Another highlight of the meeting was the president’s invitation to Russian businessmen to participate more actively in investing into the local economy. Emomali Rahmon promised to provide a stable, profitable business environment, and emphasized that Tajikistan was still waiting for a Russian offer to extract and process local uranium.

In early November 2008, the third unit of the Sangtuda-1 hydropower plant of 670 MW, was put into operation, increasing much-needed electricity supplies to residential customers and enterprises. The Sangtuda-1 is a joint Tajik-Russian project, completed only due to Russian investments which consequently gave Russia 75% of the shares, with 25% remaining for Tajikistan. The construction of the Rogun hydropower plant is another joint Tajik-Russian project, where Russia’s passivity, constant wavering and request for more than 90% of the entitlement made Tajikistan opt out and turned the project unprofitable. It is obvious that without Russian capital, these projects would have stagnated; however, when Russia decides to invest, it tends to adopt an “all to me” policy.

A current ongoing dispute over the military airport in Ainy known as “Hissar” is another instance of this policy on Russia’s part. While official Dushanbe insists on a joint utilization of its national airport, Russia offered a scheme according to which the airport should fall under Russia’s full authority. Abdugani Mamadazimov, a representative of the National Association of Politicians commented that since the agreement on the joint exploitation of “Hissar” in itself represents a geopolitically significant favor made to Russia, giving Russia full rights to the airport should not even be discussed. Countries like India and United States have frequently expressed their interest in using the base, but the Ministry of Defense of Tajikistan refused, citing the president’s statement that “there are no, were no and will never be any foreign bases on the territory of Tajikistan, but Russian ones.”

The agreement on joint utilization of the “Hissar” airport was finalized on August 29, 2008, between the Tajik president and Dmitry Medvedev, who pledged that Russia will finalize existing construction works on the airport. Today, Russian officials object to this agreement, saying that it does not see the necessity in finalizing the constructions, claiming that they can be used in their present condition. It was estimated by Tajikistan that the final completion of the airport will cost approximately US$5 million.

Tajik-Russian military cooperation is of mutual interest to the two sides. Given Tajikistan’s scarce military and economic resources, a Russian military presence is deemed necessary for neutralizing external and internal threats. However, it is clear that Russia’s military-political presence in Tajikistan will not be effective and durable unless complemented by the development of mutually beneficial economic cooperation, and above all, investments in the country’s production potential.