When Turkmenistan's President Saparmurad Niyazov approved the creation of a joint Council for the Supervision of Foreigners on June 15, he took a significant step toward completing his policy of total isolation from the outside world. All foreigners – welcome and unwelcome – must realize the seriousness of this policy.

The Council, to be run jointly by the National Security Committee (KGB), Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Foreign Ministry, will monitor the movement of foreign nationals arriving or temporarily residing in Turkmenistan, according to a Reuters report.

To a large degree, the creation of the Council is hardly news, since the state has engaged in surveillance activities of foreigners – and its own citizens -- for years. But it is an alarming departure in that it strengthens and institutionalizes the state's intolerance for interference in its domestic affairs. As President Niyazov declared at his meeting with Chinese president Jiang Zemin on July 6, "We will build a democratic society in Turkmenistan, but with regard to Central Asian mentality and without instruction ... on how that should be done."

Indeed, the Council may be seen as simply the natural culmination of President Niyazov's extreme isolationist policy, which the state touts as "neutrality."

The state has monitored all foreign mail and telephone calls since the mid-1900s. Even indirect access to the outside world, via Russian print and electronic media, is virtually nonexistent, and what does get through is heavily censored. In line with this policy, this spring the government stripped all independent Internet-providers of their licenses, rendering free information exchange impossible.

In 1997, the government closed all international bus and railway routes and cancelled international flights from all cities except the capital, Ashgabat. It introduced prohibitively high customs duties in 1998, which virtually paralyzed all non-commercial highway traffic with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Recently, the government allocated money to accelerate re-routing all inter-urban and interregional traffic within the borders of Turkmenistan. (Traffic from Teshauzsk region to other regions currently runs partially through sovereign Uzbekistan.)

Almost a third of the country's territory is already off limits to foreigners. The so-called Marine Belt stretches along the borders with Iran and Afghanistan and extends to the main highway connecting Charzhou, Ashgabat, and Krasnovodsk. This isolated stretch has been the site of drug smuggling; discrimination against the Beludgi, an ethnic minority; heavy poaching in Caspian waters; and sensitive contacts with the Taliban. President Niyazov, who prefers to show foreigners only the luxurious downtown of Ashgabat, recently approved the idea of extending the Marine Belt to cover the entire country.

While the Council for the Supervision of Foreigners is part of a larger policy of isolation, it serves several specific functions. First, it will be used to control the activities of foreign diplomats and tourists. These temporary residents pose a potential danger to Turkmen authorities because they are best placed to document and expose human rights violations and other misdeeds by the state. In 1998-99, the Turkmen authorities deported undesirable foreigners, including this author and two other Russian human rights defenders. In addition, it has threatened to deport three hundred Iranian citizens accused of underground religious activities in the beginning of 2000.

The Council will also regulate the activities of CIS citizens residing in Turkmenistan, principally citizens of Uzbekistan and the "Russian-speaking" population.

Several hundred thousand Uzbeks live in the two eastern regions of Chardzhou and Tashauz. Turkmen authorities have implicated Uzbek citizens in several fatal shoot-outs with Turkmen law enforcement officials in the last two years. In response, at the beginning of 2000 President Niyazov ordered 500 new border guards to fortify the border with Uzbekistan. The plan is unlikely to genuinely improve control, since the border stretches almost 1,000 kilometers through extremely remote terrain. But it will have the negative effect of creating barriers between Turkmenistan's Uzbeks and their families across the Amu Darya.

Turkmenistan's "Russian-speaking" population poses another perceived threat to President Niyazov. For example, the Protestant missionary movement in Turkmenistan took root within this community, setting up a number of active congregations. Turkmen authorities had the missionaries deported to Russia, citing its stricter visa regime. Russian speakers who remain in Turkmenistan will be made to feel even less welcome by the government's announcement this year of mandatory nation-wide certification in Turkmen language for all state employees.

These anti-foreigner policies are risky. The authorities do not want a mass emigration of thousands of highly skilled Russian-speakers. Indeed, it is likely that President Niyazov's remark in his June 15 speech that "many foreign citizens are responsible for violations in the real estate sphere" was a jab at these potential emigrants, who generally are able to finance their emigration only by selling their apartments.

The only legitimate reason for Turkmenistan to openly monitor foreigners would be to stem the flow of illegal emigrants and drug and weapons smugglers from Afghanistan, who enter Turkmenistan through its virtually unmonitored southern border. But the work of the Council is likely to demonstrate that President Niyazov's anti-foreigner campaign has far less to do with genuine crime-fighting than with keeping state-sponsored abuses away from international attention.