16.01.

22, 18:47 Kazakhstan’s bloody turbulence will affect all of Central Asia - Lesemodus

Kazakhstan’s bloody turbulence will affect all

of Central Asia

THE REVOLUTION, if that is what it was, was as brief as it was bloody,

leaving at least 164 civilians, including children, and 16 police dead.
Peaceful protests against a rise in fuel prices began early this month
in Zhanaozen, a depressed town in Kazakhstan’s western oil region.
Within days they had spread to neighbouring towns. Next, the spark
raced eastward across the vast steppe to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s
commercial hub, and even to the tightly policed capital, Nur-Sultan.
Along the way cost-of-living grievances morphed into demands for
political change. And then, suddenly, violence: a statue of Nursultan
Nazarbayev, the 81-year-old “father” of the nation, after whom the
capital is named, was pulled down. Almaty’s city hall (pictured) was
torched. A mob stormed the airport.

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With some of the security forces dead and his own position as Mr
Nazarbayev’s hand-picked successor apparently at risk, President
Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev went on the offensive. He declared a state
of emergency and an “anti-terrorism” operation against “bandits”
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seeking to overthrow the state. He ordered the security forces to

shoot troublemakers on sight. Most dramatically, he asked for help
from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a
military alliance of six post-Soviet states. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s
president, lost no time dispatching paratroopers and armoured
vehicles by air to guard crucial sites.

It seemed to turn a murky tide in Mr Tokayev’s favour. On January

11th the president delivered a speech whose emollience stood in
stark contrast to his iron-fisted pronouncements of a few days earlier.
He acknowledged economic grievances, criticised the wealth
accumulated by a few well-connected families and even promised
political changes in a system that has been run as a mostly
oppositionless autocracy since Kazakhstan emerged as a state out of
the ruins of the Soviet Union. As The Economist went to press, a
phased withdrawal of Mr Putin’s troops had begun.

Mr Tokayev, pasty-faced and with tinted glasses, is a diplomat by

training, an apparatchik’s apparatchik. Only a week ago he looked out
of his depth, his future precarious. Now, he exudes composure, even
confidence. In police cells around the country, some 10,000 face
charges (and beatings) over the unrest, many of them probably
innocent bystanders swept up in events. Within government the
president has emerged with a firmer grip on power. He has sacked
the prime minister, Askar Mamin, replacing him with a malleable
technocrat, Alikhan Smailov. As for the powerful security chief, Karim
Masimov, who like Mr Mamin (and indeed the president himself) is a
Nazarbayev protégé, Mr Tokayev has not only sacked him but had
him charged with treason. Animosity is said to have grown between
the president and the security chief since it emerged last year that Mr
Tokayev’s phone had been hacked.

Perhaps most dramatically of all to followers of Kazakhstan’s politics,

Mr Nazarbayev’s influence in the state that he erected seems to have
been severely curbed. He is gone from his position as chief-for-life of
the all-powerful security council, from where he was assumed to be
Mr Tokayev’s puppet-master. Now the puppet appears to have cut the
strings. Neither Mr Nazarbayev nor his family, despite their still-
prominent role in business and politics, have been seen since the
unrest began.

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So is that the end of the story? Almost certainly not. A welter of

questions and contradictions emerge from the events and the official
explanations of them.

That protests erupted in Zhanaozen is the least surprising turn of

events. To a degree which Mr Tokayev only now acknowledges, the
wealth from Kazakhstan’s vast reserves of oil, coal and metal ores,
and the development that was expected to flow from them, has been
spread unequally. That has bred resentment among oil-workers, as
well as low-earners in the countryside and smaller cities. The greatest
beneficiaries have been well-connected oligarchs. Just 162 people
hold half of the country’s wealth, according to KPMG, an accounting
firm. The oil industry has made several of Mr Nazarbayev’s relatives
enormously rich.

The government explained the phasing out of subsidies for liquefied

petroleum gas, used in many vehicles, as a market reform, but many
Kazakhstanis saw it as a sop to oligarchs at the expense of their
much poorer compatriots. Unwilling to risk a repeat of events in
Zhanaozen a decade ago, when striking oil workers were gunned
down by trigger-happy security goons, the government was quick to
offer concessions, notably reintroducing the subsidies. But it also
warned that the protests would not be allowed to continue.

The carrot-and-stick approach was straight from the authorities’ well-

thumbed game plan. But events then departed from the script. Many
in Kazakhstan find it odd that the protesters suddenly turned violent,
seizing weapons from state arsenals and occupying the airport,
instead of singing and chanting in squares. No one popped up to
claim leadership of the demonstrations or to articulate demands.
Perhaps the state’s systematic suppression over decades of all but a
manufactured opposition goes some way to explain this. But it does
not explain the attacks on strategic sites such as Almaty’s main
telecoms tower and the airport, which suggest a co-ordinated
movement seeking to challenge those in power. Nor does it explain
the sudden vanishing of the security forces supposed to protect the
airport. The violence does not seem to have stemmed from a mass,
Western-backed “colour revolution”, whatever Mr Putin’s loud claims
to the contrary.

The most plausible explanation is that popular, leaderless protests

were hijacked by members of the elite with mafia thugs at their
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disposal, either to protect their economic interests or, more

ambitiously still, to oust Mr Tokayev in favour of their own people. An
incentive to move now, says Nargis Kassenova of Harvard University,
is Mr Nazarbayev’s worsening health. He caught covid-19 in 2020,
and looked visibly frailer when meeting Mr Putin in St Petersburg in
December.

At any rate, Mr Tokayev’s allies privately blame relatives of Mr

Nazarbayev for instigating the insurrection. The president himself has
not publicly accused his predecessor or his family. Indeed, officials
have denied rumours that one of the former president’s nephews,
Samat Abish, the deputy head of intelligence, has been dismissed
from his post or arrested like his boss. It may be that Mr Tokayev has
struck some kind of deal with the Nazarbayevs, whereby the clan gets
some kind of immunity in return for a promise for them all to step
back, the old man included. The opacity and ambiguity of the current
situation is one reason to think the saga is not over.

Other Central Asian governments are looking on appalled.

Kazakhstan was long considered the strongest, most stable and
most successful state in Central Asia. Yet the region’s five countries
all face huge economic problems and share brittle regimes that
respond to political challenges mainly with harshness.

These common features are a product of the region’s shared history.

At the time of Russia’s imperial expansion in the second half of the
19th century, Central Asia was a congeries of clans and khanates.
Many were proud of their descent from the armies of Genghis Khan
and Tamerlane. Russian and subsequently Soviet rule brought
development, but little in the way of nation-building. Indeed, though
the Soviet Union theoretically divided the region into ethnically
defined republics, in practice boundaries were quite arbitrary. It
remains a jumble of ethnicities, including 500,000 descendants of
Koreans forcibly deported from the Russian far east in the 1930s
owing to suspected sympathies with Japan. Kazakhstan boasts a big
Russian minority, of nearly 20% of the population, plus Koreans, Jews,
Uzbeks, Dungans and more.

The raw, landlocked states that arose out of the Soviet Union’s
wreckage inherited a great deal of Soviet baggage. This includes
traditions of autocratic rule, environmental damage—the
disappearance of the Aral Sea after water from the rivers that feed it
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was diverted for cotton-growing is only the most notorious instance—

and state-dominated economies. Soviet habits die hard. Forced
labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields ended only a couple of years ago.
Only last year did Kazakhstan do away with over 200 categories of
jobs from which women were barred, among them driving heavy-
goods vehicles. The bans were supposedly to ensure “the protection
of maternity and women’s reproductive health”—in effect, preserving
women as good breeding machines.

Strongmen are the norm in Central Asia. Emomali Rahmon has ruled
Tajikistan since 1994, when civil war raged in the newly independent
republic. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are on only their
second presidents since independence. Glossy-coated steeds feature
prominently in the personality cult of Turkmenistan’s current ruler,
Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, “The Protector”, just as they do in
Kim Jong Un’s North Korea. Tiny Kyrgyzstan is the exception, a
nominal democracy. But even there, power has only once passed
smoothly from one president to the next after an election, rather than
in mini-revolutions played out on the streets. What is more, the new
president soon fell out with the old one, and had him arrested.

The region’s autocrats seek to justify cracking down on all opposition

by talking about stability and growth. Yet, for all the glitzy new
buildings in their capitals, rarely are the leaders as visionary as they
claim. Economic models have not changed fast enough. Economies
suffer from the resource curse. Kazakhstan depends on oil and gas,
and is the world’s biggest producer of uranium. Although it has tried
to diversify, it has been largely into energy-hungry fields: bitcoin-
mining is a new fad. Turkmenistan has the world’s fourth-biggest
reserves of natural gas. Cotton and gas dominate Uzbekistan’s
economy. A single gold mine, just nationalised, accounts for a tenth
of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP and is the biggest contributor to the government
budget. As for Tajikistan, next door to Afghanistan’s poppy fields, it
bears the hallmarks of a narco-state.

All across Central Asia, bribery and corruption are not incidental to
the business model but intrinsic to it. A predatory state discourages
investment. In Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, a young IT
entrepreneur bemoans how greedy customs officers demanded such
high fees to allow imported servers into the country that his backer in
Dubai gave up on his venture. Others turn to well-connected

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smuggling mafias. Some Nazarbayev family members are believed to

have import-export rackets as well as control of the bazaars around
Almaty. In Kyrgyzstan, Raimbek Matraimov, a former deputy customs
chief, is a smuggling kingpin. In his southern base around Osh, he
buys popularity by building mosques and hospitals. In Bishkek,
politicians say, he buys governments.

Internal weaknesses spill into inter-ethnic conflicts. Bloody pogroms

of ethnic Uzbeks took place in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh in
2010. And they hold back cross-border co-operation. Central Asian
countries trade less with one another as a share of total imports and
exports than do the countries of sub-Saharan Africa (see chart). The
region’s arbitrary borders spawn disputes over water-sharing or
delineation of frontiers. Last year, to distract attention from problems
at home, Tajikistan provoked a spat with Kyrgyzstan that left dozens
of civilians dead.

Still, there are notable points of light. When Islam Karimov died in
2016, ending a brutal 27-year reign over Uzbekistan, his successor,
Shavkat Mirziyoyev, admitted the dead-end into which Uzbekistan had
been driven. He lifted restrictions on converting currency and
streamlined customs procedures. He made it plain that apparatchiks
were not to shake down local businesses. At the same time he closed

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the country’s most notorious prison, encouraged a degree of

monitoring and criticism of the government, and abolished rules
limiting where people could live or travel. The change, even in
everyday interactions with Uzbekistanis, now largely freed from fear,
is palpable to anyone who has not visited the country for a while. In
government, the desire for advice from Western-led firms and
multilateral institutions remains enthusiastic.

Yet deeper changes, including the privatisation of state banks and

other businesses, and the reform of land, where the state squats, are
proving trickier. The band of committed reformists in government is
stretched thin. The obstacles come from oligarchs with entrenched
interests; from below, where many bureaucrats with Karimov-era
mindsets remain; and even from above, where, as across all of
Central Asia, the imperious summons of the great man at any time of
day or night means wasted hours in the presidential antechamber.

The obstacles to economic and especially political change across the

region are one reason why Kazakhstan is being so closely watched.
To senior modernisers in Uzbekistan, reform is already on a knife-
edge. These people fear that events in Kazakhstan will lead
neighbouring regimes, Uzbekistan’s included, to conclude that the
risks of the state relaxing its grip are too great. In recent months,
after all, Mr Tokayev had introduced what, by his regime’s standards,
were serious changes. He had encouraged a degree of
decentralisation, including by allowing a little political competition in
local elections. He had released a few political prisoners and
abolished the death penalty. Some see the recent violence as the
result.

Russia’s return to Kazakhstan is another reason why the region is

following events there closely. In truth, Russia never left. Russian
operatives remain in Kazakhstan’s successor to the KGB. Russia
controls a space-launch site, the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Through Mr
Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union (which, among Central Asian states,
also includes Kyrgyzstan), Russia in effect controls Kazakhstan’s
customs policies. And the many ethnic Russians in the north of the
country provide Mr Putin with an excuse to meddle.

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From Russia with strings

To a lesser (Uzbekistan) or greater (Kyrgyzstan) extent, Russia enjoys

similar influence across Central Asia. The influence is reinforced by
the millions of Central Asians who have migrated to Russia in search
of work. Their existence, says one Kyrgyz analyst, gives Mr Putin yet
more leverage in Central Asia’s domestic politics when it suits him.

Sending in the troops will give him much more. It was only a couple of
years ago that Central Asia’s five leaders met in Nur-Sultan, their first
collective summit without Russia’s involvement. Now, Russia is
propping up the government that hosted them. Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan also contributed troops to the CSTO’s mission. That
suggests that they, too, will more readily call in Russia if their regimes
are threatened by internal foes.

Silk Road scrum

Others outside the region are also watching. China’s influence in

Central Asia has grown markedly as it has built continent-girdling
roads and railways intended to link China with Europe (see map). For
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all the protestations of Sino-Russian friendship, defined in part by a

shared animosity towards the West, the speed of Russia’s
deployment to Kazakhstan, which also underscored the demise of the
Nazarbayev era, appears to have taken China by surprise. Its
supportive rhetoric since suggests that China quickly concluded that
its interests are best served by Russia’s intervention. Stability is all,
and China is never averse to piggybacking commercially off others’
security.

Another country that thinks of itself as a former Silk Road power,

Turkey, has been caught flat-footed. It harbours ambitions to lead the
Turkic world, including Central Asia. The attraction of Turkey’s soft
power is undeniable. Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Uzbek are all
Turkic languages. Turkey is a Muslim country, but also a modern,
relatively prosperous one. Culturally, the lights of Istanbul shine more
brightly for many young Central Asians than do those of Moscow or
Beijing. In Almaty and Tashkent many of the fashionable malls are
Turkish-built. Yet now Turkish dreams bump up against a new
Russian reality.

The West’s influence in Central Asia is also at stake. Perhaps to a

surprising degree Western counsel has been welcome in Nur-Sultan,
Bishkek and Tashkent. Mr Tokayev, who spent years in Geneva and is
comfortable in the West, sought Western opinion before delivering his
speech on January 11th, in which he was at pains to show his
concern over joblessness, poor living standards, inflation and
corruption. As he surely knows, the answer to the challenges facing
Kazakhstan and the region is more modernisation, not less. Yet
despite the promising talk, such modernisation is far from a given. ■

This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under
the headline "Steppe in the dark"

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