VZCZCXRO8832
RR RUEHLN RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHDBU #1267/01 2800257
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 060257Z OCT 08
FM AMEMBASSY DUSHANBE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1030
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHIL/AMEMBASSY ISLAMABAD 0225
RUEHBUL/AMEMBASSY KABUL 0262
RUEHNE/AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI 0177

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 DUSHANBE 001267 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR SCA/CEN 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ECON PGOV PHUM EAID TI
SUBJECT: TAJIKISTAN - FOOD SECURITY TAKES CENTER STAGE 
 
¶1. (U) This message is sensitive but unclassified.  Please protect 
accordingly. 
 
¶2. (SBU) Summary: Food security in Tajikistan likely will continue 
to decline, and the inability of many Tajiks to buy sufficient food 
likely will worsen in the coming winter.  President Rahmon is 
calling for more food aid, and decrying the high price of food 
worldwide and its impact on highly food-insecure and 
import-dependent Tajikistan.  The Government is not coordinating 
effectively with the donor community on strengthening food security, 
however, and the President continues to pursue policies that prevent 
increased food production in Tajikistan.  End Summary. 
 
 
¶3. (U) President Rahmon has begun to call attention to the looming 
food crisis in Tajikistan.  In his remarks at the UN General 
Assembly he noted that food insecurity had "seriously affected" two 
thirds of families in Tajikistan.  He predicted the upcoming winter 
in Tajikistan would be more difficult than the past severe winter. 
Rahmon blamed climate change (for reducing water supplies and 
agricultural output) and world food prices, for the inability of 
many rural Tajiks to buy sufficient food. 
 
¶4. (SBU) USAID partners and the World Food Program report that food 
insecurity - the inability of Tajiks to afford to feed themselves 
properly - this coming winter will be worse than last winter.  World 
Food Program surveys throughout Tajikistan found that 37 percent of 
urban Tajiks and 34 percent of rural Tajiks were food-insecure. 
About one-third of the rural food-insecure, and two-fifths of the 
urban food-insecure are in the category of severely food-insecure, 
unable to afford to feed themselves on a basic food basket of wheat, 
oil, and sugar. 
 
¶5. (SBU) Three main factors contribute to the worsening 
food-security situation.  First, despite pronouncement to the 
contrary, the Government in many regions discourages crop 
diversification away from cotton.  Farmers forced to grow cotton are 
driven further into debt by the artificially low prices they are 
forced to accept for their cotton, in order that cotton investors 
continue to reap profits.  With low incomes and no options to 
diversify, farmers must sell what assets they have to buy food, in a 
downward financial spiral of increasing debt and hunger.  Second, 
Tajikistan is highly vulnerable to increasing world food prices and 
energy, because of its dependence on food imports.  Food prices in 
Tajikistan have doubled since late 2007. 
 
DROUGHT AND A HANGOVER FROM LAST WINTER 
 
¶6. (SBU) Third, last winter was unusually cold, with significant 
power disruptions throughout the country, and was then followed by a 
severe drought.  Precipitation levels in 2008 are less than half 
their historic average throughout the country.  Crops were damaged 
by the weather, and overall food security declined.  Food-insecure 
Tajiks are going into this coming winter in a weaker financial 
state, with more debt and fewer assets to sell to buy food. 
Increasing unemployment has made lower-income Tajiks more dependent 
on remittances and assistance from family members in Russia or on 
the generosity of neighbors. 
 
LACK OF COORDINATION 
 
¶7. (SBU) The World Food Program (WFP) chairs a Food Security Working 
Group combining most international donors, with the Government of 
Tajikistan invited.  Emboff met with WFP's food security specialist, 
Cedric Charpentier (protect).  He said the Government of Tajikistan 
rarely sent a representative to the Food Security Group, which meets 
Qrarely sent a representative to the Food Security Group, which meets 
twice a month.  WFP reported information on food security and donor 
activities to the Ministry of Trade and Economy (which is charged 
with coordinating GOTI efforts to mitigate winter food and energy 
shortages), but received no information in return that would allow 
it to judge whether donor activity was coordinated with Government 
relief efforts. 
 
LACK OF TRUST 
 
¶8. (SBU) Charpentier also questioned food security survey 
information from the Government.  He noted that in the past, 
Government food production figures simply echoed the Government's 
own public production targets, and bore little relation to reality. 
USAID partner Mercy Corps' Director Brandy Westerman (protect) and 
WFP's Charpentier both commented that they could not get any sense 
of the extent of GOTI food and fuel relief efforts during the 
unusually harsh past winter, making them skeptical of Government 
claims to be prepared for the coming winter. 
 
¶9. (SBU) For the Government view, Emboff met with Minister of 
Economy and Trade Bobozoda, on September 30.  He said the GOTI was 
 
DUSHANBE 00001267  002 OF 002 
 
 
stockpiling wheat flour and fuel, and was ensuring that local 
governments around the country had stockpiled coal to heat hospitals 
and schools.  He said the GOTI had successfully distributed 
generators and other relief supplies donated by foreign countries 
last winter.  Bobozoda said he wanted to see better coordination 
between the Government and foreign donors and NGOs, and worried that 
certain NGOs focused too much on specific regions to the detriment 
of overall relief efforts. 
 
¶10. (SBU) The Embassy, like WFP, is skeptical of Government claims 
on its preparations for the winter, because of lack of specifics, 
lack of observed results last winter, and deceptive information 
about related measures to help farmers.  As noted in other 
reporting, official claims about freedom to farm consistently are 
contradicted at the local level, where coercion to farm cotton 
remains a firmly entrenched practice.  When USAID representatives 
met with farmers in Shartuz district recently, the farmers 
complained that they were required to devote 75% of their land to 
cotton, could not find markets for food crops (they noted that food 
processing industries existed in the region during the Soviet Union, 
but they had fallen into disrepair and no longer functioned), and 
were worried about being able to afford food in the coming winter. 
A local government representative at the meeting dismissed their 
worries; the farmers in turn dismissed his assurances, noting that 
the local government was preventing cotton farmers from removing 
cotton stalks to plant winter wheat, in hopes of squeezing a little 
more out of this year's cotton crop. 
 
COMMENT - BLAMING EVERYONE BUT HIMSELF 
 
¶11. (SBU) Rahmon used his UNGA speech and various meetings with 
foreign officials to draw attention to Tajikistan's need for food 
assistance, and this effort is welcome in so far as it helps focus 
attention on the country's serious and worsening economic problems. 
But it does not represent a major departure from the GOTI's usual 
state of denial; Rahmon blamed the food security crisis on the 
weather and on world prices, with no acknowledgement of his own 
culpability in slowing land reform and perpetuating cotton 
monoculture to benefit a few friends - while a large part of the 
population literally goes hungry.  The most imaginative thing Rahmon 
has done in response to increasing hunger has been to dispatch gifts 
of food to 3,000 needy families, identified by local authorities. 
 
¶12. (SBU) Increasing food insecurity has not reached the point where 
rural Tajiks are fleeing their homes in search of food, but it has 
gotten the attention of the President as an issue which could be 
used against him, and therefore a threat to his grip on power. 
Tajikistan will need significant international relief efforts this 
coming winter, and continued long term assistance to build its 
agricultural capacity and reform its agricultural and trade 
policies.