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Turkmenistan is a Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention state party, having acceded to it in 1996, five years after gaining independence from the Soviet Union. There is no publicly available evidence that it possesses or seeks to posses biological weapons.
Turkmenistan, located in the southern part of Central Asia, shares borders with Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan and has a long coastline on the Caspian Sea. A ferry service connects the ports of Turkmenbashi (formerly Krasnovodsk), Turkmenistan, to Baku, Azerbaijan. Turkmenistan’s porous borders allow illegal traffickers to use the country as a transit point for drugs and other contraband destined for Russia, Europe, and elsewhere. These trade routes also have the potential to facilitate weapons trafficking.
Turkmenistan became part of the Soviet Union in 1924 as the Turkmen SSR. According to reliable sources, four years later the USSR began its biological weapons program. There is no proof that Turkmenistan had anything more than a minor role in the Soviet biological weapons program, but some Turkmenistani scientists may have learned the skills to isolate and replicate pathogens having potential use as biological weapons agents, as is described in the following paragraphs.
Several bacteria and viruses known to have potential as biological weapons are endemic to Turkmenistan. An abbreviated list includes: plague bacterium (Yersinia pestis), anthrax bacterium (Bacillus anthracis), tularemia bacterium (Francisella tularensis), and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus.[1] Because of the prevalence of these and other pathogenic bacteria and viruses, the Ashgabat Regional Anti-plague (AP) station was founded in 1938 to monitor sites where they occurred naturally. It was created as a part of the larger Soviet AP system to protect populated areas from dread diseases, but with special attention to the plague. Six field AP stations located in Kyzyl-Arvat, Krasnovodsk (Turkmenbashi), Mary, Nebit-Dag, Tashauz, and Chardzhou reported to the Ashgabat Regional AP station.In turn, from the time of its opening until the collapse of the USSR the Turkmen AP system was under the jurisdiction of the Saratov Anti-plague Institute (Mikrob) in Russia. Mikrob collaborated with the Soviet Ministry of Defense on both offensive and defensive biological weapons programs, beginning in the 1950s.[2] This link may indicate that the Turkmen AP system had some role in the Soviet BW program; perhaps collecting bacterial and viral cultures from natural sources and supplying them to Ministry of Defense.
In October 2005, the Peoples’ Council of Turkmenistan declared that Turkmenistan neither maintains nor possesses any type of weapon of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Furthermore, Turkmenistan banned the transportation of all weapons of mass destruction and their component parts through its territory or airspace.[3]
Despite this decree, the problem of enforcement remains a major obstacle to nonproliferation efforts. Poor infrastructure and inadequate border control, as well as rampant corruption mean that Turkmenistan remains a proliferation threat both for biological and other weapons. Recognizing this problem, in June 2003, the United States government donated 40 jeeps as a part of the Export Control and Border Security Program (EXBS), which is designed to address problems of security and nonproliferation by providing advanced training to border guards.[4] In November 2005, the same program donated 9 UAZ jeeps, 3 GAZ water trucks, and radio and networking equipment to further improve Turkmenistani border controls. Of course, border control issues are pertinent not only to biological weapons nonproliferation, but to preventing the proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction.
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Updated October 2008 |
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Key Sources:
[1] Michael K. Faulde, "Vector-borne Infectious Diseases in Turkmenistan," http://www.afpmb.org/pubs/dveps/turkmenistan.pdf
[2] Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, Alexander Melikishvili, Raymond A. Zilinskas, "The Soviet Anti-Plague System: An Introduction," Critical Reviews in Microbiology, January-March 2006, pp.15-17
[3] NewsCentralAsia.com, "Turkmenistan Peoples' Council Statement on Ban of WMD Transit," 24 October 2005, http://www.newscentralasia.com/
modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1539
[4] "U.S. Government Donates Border Security Equipment to Turkmenistan" PAS No 147, November 22, 2005, http://turkmenistan.usembassy.gov/pr147.html
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