The Turkmen State News Agency reports that the U.S. Ambassador to Turkmenistan Tracey Ann Jacobson (pictured left) has come to the end of her tenure. She will next be taking up an ambassadorship in Tajikistan. Characteristically, the main business of the final meeting between Jacobson and President Saparmurat Niyazov was mutual congratulation:

“Thanking the Turkmen leader for an opportunity of a personal meeting the diplomat expressed her sincere gratitude to the President, government and people of Turkmenistan for the support that she, as the head of the diplomatic mission, had met with during her stay in Turkmenistan that, according to her, served as an evidence of the fruitful and constructive dialogue established between the two countries.”

Another predictable moment came when Jacobson expressed the hope that upcoming local elections would be genuinely democratic and transparent. The Turkmen State News Agency further reported that Jacobson further suggested that the institutions of representation could only truly flourish if polls were held on an “alternative basis”, although quite what this is taken to mean is not explained. A BBC Monitoring transcript of a Turkmen TV report also includes Jacobson’s stated hope that democratic standards could be transferred to “higher levels of self-governing body”. As Jacobson remarked after her meeting with Niyazov:

“This was my last meeting with the President and, therefore, I tried to touch upon bilateral relations in all areas. For instance, we discussed democratic reforms in Turkmenistan, and the President told me about plans to hold elections for every level of state management starting with elections scheduled on 23 July. He gave me his assurance that the elections would be genuinely democratic and transparent.”

The timing of Jacobson’s departure has necessarily made democracy a key issue in the final meeting, although security and energy have in fact usually been at the top of the bilateral agenda. However, this is not to say that democracy has not been raised before and repeatedly. In an article appearing in Times of Central Asia in April 2005, it is noted that:

“On April 18 Saparmurat Niyazov received the U.S. Ambassador to Ashgabat, Tracey Ann Jacobson to exchange views on a whole range of issues of mutual interest and on the current state and prospects of Turkmen-American cooperation. The [two parties] discussed the most efficient directions of this cooperation, focusing in particular on the need to continue partnership in such fields as culture and education in which good contacts had been already established. In fact, the American side is implementing several projects on restoration of historic and archaeological monuments in Turkmenistan. Apart from that, over 140 Turkmen citizens travel annually to the United States under the auspices of social and educational exchange programmes.

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In an interview after the meeting, Ambassador Jacobson noted the readiness of the United States to improve relations with Turkmenistan in all areas of cooperation. Stressing the significance of bringing closer views on the problems of democracy, the Ambassador underlined the importance of holding democratic elections that, according to her, would engage people with different points of view in the election process and give them an opportunity to exchange their views.”

From a security point of view, the United States has enjoyed an ambivalent relationship with Turkmenistan over the period of Jacobson’s tenure. In an October 2005 visit to Turkmenistan, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph expressed his satisfaction with some key areas of cooperation in security:

“We have had a very good discussion about … the proliferation security initiative and the endorsement of that initiative by [President Niyazov and his government]. Our two presidents share the objective of stopping the trade in WMD and missile-related equipment. And in that context we talked about the need to prevent the over-flight of your country by those states that would use that airspace to ship weapons of mass destruction related materials.”

About a month after Joseph’s visit, the U.S. government donated nine jeeps, three water trucks, and 31 sets of communication equipment, ostensibly in a bid to assist the Turkmen government in securing border security. Although one might conclude this was part of an international campaign against arms smuggling, it is more likely that drugs transported from Afghanistan were a more likely target of this initiative.
As all these snippets of news indicate, U.S. diplomatic presence has had an inevitably nominal significance. Dialogue has a preponderantly symbolic value, stressing the importance of shared interests, but doing little about them. As the United States increasingly adopts a more vigorous and robust line towards Russia, one has to wonder if this will be reflected in diplomatic appointments across Moscow’s strategic near abroad. On one hand, this appears unlikely as the United States increasingly disengages from the political sphere of Central Asia. Yet, as U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney’s visit to Kazakhstan after his severe criticism of Russia’s backsliding on democracy shows, politics, democracy and energy are grey and ambiguous areas for international diplomacy. The United States new representative in Ashgabat could potentially serve as an aggravator of the changeable relations between Turkmenistan and Russia, which, as events in Ukraine have shown, have wider implications. Furthermore, Turkmenistan geographical location, bordering Afghanistan and Iran, suggest that U.S. interest is never more a moment’s thought away. The task that remains for information starved foreign observers, therefore, is to decode the U.S. Embassy’s reactions to the conduct and outcome of July’s elections.