For the last 3 years the Kazakh government has been declaring to its people that the country's assumption of the chair of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2010 signals Kazakhstan's growing importance in the world. It will be the first of the post-Soviet states to do so.

Given the importance the government clearly attaches to this impending event, how has it been preparing to take the helm of an organisation whose objectives include ensuring ‘full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; to abide by the rule of law'? Have relations between the Kazakh government and the media, which have been stormy in recent years, been improving?

A review of recent developments is sobering. There was the three-year prison term served on Ramazan Yesergepov, editor-in-chief of the independent weekly Alma-Ata Info on 8 August 2009. He was arrested on 6 January 2009 by armed, masked security officers while being treated for hypertension at the Cardiology Institute in Almaty. The charge of "illegal gathering and dissemination of state secrets" stem from an article he published on 21 November 2008 entitled 'Who rules the Country - the President or the CNS?' The article is said to deal with a tax fraud allegation involving a local prosecutor and a judge. The CNS, or Committee of National Security, is Kazakhstan's KGB.

Yesergepov, who comes from the small town Taraz, was also prosecuted for the disclosure of an official letter from the head of the local CNS.  This letterincluded in article on the local wine and vodka factory and detailed actions to be taken against the management. The management claimed that these actions amounted to a hostile takeover.  Evgeny Zhovtis, director of Kazakhstan's Bureau of International Human Rights and the Rule of Law, testified that nothing in the memos supported the charge that Yesergepov had disclosed official secrets. But the testimony of the CNS proved stronger and the journalist was sent down.  The signal was clear: Yesergepov was being punished to warn others off crossing the CNS.

Next the authorities targeted Yesergepov's defender, Evgeny Zhovtis. In July Zhovtis was involved in an accident at night on a deserted road, in which a man was killed. He was given a 4-year prison sentence on 4 September. "Political considerations led the court to ignore openly the country's legislation" declared a well-known Kazakhstan journalist, Sergei Dubanov. "Evgenii Zhovtis' defence was given 40 minutes to prepare for the presentation of their case, so they refused to to present. The judge withdrew and in 30 minutes came out with a prepared verdict.  How do we know the verdict was prepared?  Because it would have been impossible to type it all up in 30 minutes". Dubanov has his own reasons for not trusting the courts. After publishing a series of articles on ‘Kazakhgate', he was himself first accused of defaming President Nursultan Nazarbayev, then of raping an underage girl.

According to Zhovtis' defence lawyer, the proceedings were so full of procedural infringements that "it's hard to see it as anything but a farce and political reprisal against a public activist well-known both inside and outside the country". For the last 20 years Zhovtis has indeed been a leading opponent of the illegal actions of the regime. He has led the chorus of those insisting that Kazakhstan must comply with the standards of the OSCE if it is going to take the chair.

Zhovtis also chairs a foundation called Bota, a post to which he was nominated because of his impeccable reputation in Kazakhstan and beyond. The foundation was entrusted with distributing $84 mln which the US government confiscated in 1999, because it suspected that it had been criminally acquired.  Only after trying unsuccessfully to get its hands on the money did the Kazakh government finally admit that its provenance was criminal. 

The foundation was about to start disbursing these funds for educational purposes and to help poor families. Conveniently, Zhovtis's imprisonment also serves to paralyse the charity just as it was due to start operating. The selection of another president will take some time.

The relationship between the newspaper Respublikaand the Kazakh government has never been an easy one.  When it opened in 2000, the staff were greeted at the door with funeral wreaths, sent by ‘admirers', plus the severed head of a dog with the note saying ‘You're next'.

Since then there has been an arsonattempt and a string of court cases. The latest was brought by the BTA Bank, which claimed that an article in Respublika had prompted customers to withdraw $40 mln from the bank. The plaintiffs could furnish no proof that the withdrawals were a response to the article, or even that they had happened after its publication.  But the paper lost the case and was ordered to pay $500,000 in compensation. On 18 September, when the court ruling took effect, the paper's print run was seized, as were the bank accounts of its owner and its publisher. 

The chair of Respublika's editorial board, Irina Petrushova, maintains that the bank brought the case at the behest of a 'higher body', in order to close the paper down.  The period for appealing the court decision ran out on 24 September and on that day the print run was seized. Hürriyet Daily News reported  Respublika  as saying:.  "Despite this technical censorship, we continue to work. The newspaper is coming out and in just the same way as before."

Since April, the independent the newspaper's internet site http://www.respublika.kz/ and another online news outlet http://www.zona.kz/ have also been repeatedly subjected to hacking and cyber attacks, some on a scale requiring tens of thousands of linked computers. No such attacks have been sustained by government-controlled websites.

On the legislative front, a new law has also been passed recently which subjects all material on the internet- from online shops to blogs - to the same constraints as the media.  Now a new media law is on the way. One of the most dangerous of the Ministry of the Interior's proposals is that journalists should be held responsible for ‘disseminating slanderous information on the private lives of individuals'.  This would effectively prevent the media from reporting anything about the amoral behaviour or abuses of power of public figures.

The closer the Kazakh government gets to assuming the chair of the OSCE, the more determined it seems to be to show that it can do without even the pretence of abiding by the rule of law.

On 4 July Russian TV aired a documentary about Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko. It was a programme that soon sent shockwaves around media and political circles. The programme itself was nothing special and the facts it revealed were hardly unfamiliar to people who follow politics. Its resonance had everything to do with timing and context, preceding as it did an agreement on Customs Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which was due to be signed in Astana, Kazakhstan the very next day.

The documentary’s title — “Krestny Batka” (“The Nation’s Godfather”) — dropped some obvious hints. Few educated readers could have failed to make the connection between “Batka” (“father of the nation”, a title Lukashenko openly enjoys) and Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic masterpiece. The documentary itself matched the opening hints, presenting the leader of Belarus (considered by many Russians to be a brotherly nation) as a tyrant and criminal. He was, according to the programme, someone who not only crushes democratic opposition, but also liquidates political rivals with the assistance of professional killers from the secret services. Anyone who watched “Krestny Batka” could only have reached one conclusion: Lukashenko’s uninterrupted position as president since 1994 was the result of a blatant and systematic infringement of democratic norms

NTV's Lukashenko documentary (trailer in Russian)

Viewers of another revelatory film about Lukashenko, shown the same evening on the English-language channel “Russia Today” (a propaganda weapon of the Kremlin) were no doubt expected to come to a similar conclusion.

By interesting contrast, the next day Russian Channel One broadcast another documentary, this time about Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbaev. Nazarbaev has been president for even longer than Lukashenko, and is just as relaxed about adjusting democratic norms in order to stay in power. Yet this programme chose to show Nazarbaev in an exclusively positive light: as a wise person, a worthy ruler and wonderful family man.

There can be no coincidence to the fact that these three films were shown at the same time, just before the summit in Astana. If we were to borrow a phrase from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”, it would seem that through its actions, the Kremlin was sending Lukashenko a “black spot”: a symbol depicting his impending death. While in our case, we can only be talking in the metaphorical sense, it would certainly appear that the Kremlin has to all extents signed off on the Belarussian president as a politician they can do business with.

To understand why, we must first look at the background to the Customs Union.

Customs Union or Customs Anschluss?

Russia has, since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, undertaken various efforts aimed at restoring cooperation between post-Soviet nations. Initially, the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) was created for this purpose. Many actually believed that this Commonwealth would go some way to replacing the USSR. In fact, it was a complete sham. The Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) did not join the CIS at all, preferring to move towards joining the European Union. Some member countries had openly hostile relations with each other, for example Armenia and Azerbaijan, later Russia and Georgia (which left the CIS following the August 2008 War).

Another attempt to restore cooperation in the post-Soviet area lay in the formation of a Union State of Russia and Belarus. No unified state was actually ever created, but for a long time Lukashenko used declarations about the intention to create one as a way of gaining economic favours from Moscow.

Unlike the CIS and the Union State, the Customs Union appears a real and potentially quite useful innovation. Removing customs barriers between the three nations could help foster competition and a regional market economy. The signing of the agreement in Astana is perhaps the first real success story of economic integration for some two decades. That does not mean we should overestimate its significance. While political leaders and the official media often talk a great deal about it, society and the independent press do not share their enthusiasm.

There are at least two reasons for this.

The first is the unequal economic weight of the members of the union. Russia’s GDP, for example, is more than 12 times higher than that of Kazakhstan (and more than 25 times higher than that of Belarus). Even by population, Russia is almost 10 times larger than Kazakhstan and more than 15 times larger than Belarus. So, for all the theoretical significance of the Customs Union, in practical terms little will change (at least not for Russia). What will happen is not so much unification of three markets, rather that the Russian market will simply become somewhat stronger.

Certainly, there is very little to compare the formation of Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan with the development of the European Economic Community, which was the foundation of the present European Union. It would seem to have more in common with the Customs Union of the 1830s, formed by Prussia in German lands. Here, one large nation signed a number of small nations into its economic orbit. In Germany at the time, there was talk of a customs “Anschluss” (annexation).  We could with some reason use same term today to describe the relations between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus (the analogy is also useful for newspaper editors since, in Russian, the word for union – “soyuz”­ – and “Anschluss” rhyme).

A second reason not to overestimate the significance of the Customs Union is in many ways the opposite point to the one we have made. The political leaders and national elites of Kazakhstan and Belarus are prepared to receive economic advantages from the unification, but they object with all their might to subordinating their countries to Russia. The political stand-off between the Kremlin and Lukashenko has, in particular, become extremely serious of late.  This forms the background to “Krestny Batka”.

The disobedient Batka

In the most part, conflicts between the Kremlin and Russia stem from the fact Russia has essentially for some time been subsidizing the Belarussian economy; and has also for some time expected certain favours in exchange for this. What exactly these favours are is difficult to say. Political bargaining between Russia and Belarus has never been carried out in the open. But we can suppose “Belarussian services” to the Kremlin might fall into one of two categories:

The first category is political services. On the one hand, Belarus is not an overly influential political force, and cannot therefore offer Russia significant support on important issues. On the other hand, Lukashenko himself claimed he had, for example, been asked to officially recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent nations. There are reasons to believe him. Russia was clearly embarrassed over the (lack of) international recognition of these two republics, supported at the time only by Venezuela, Nicaragua and Nauru (which only underlined the isolation of Moscow in world opinion). Lukashenko did not oblige the Kremlin on this occasion

Of course, we cannot be sure if Moscow really asked Lukashenko to recognise Abhazia and South Ossetia. It is also possible that Belarussian president made it all up in order to demonstrate to the West his tenacity in a supposed battle with Russia’s imperial ambitions. But we may confidently assume that, in principle, Moscow would much prefer to subsidise a country that is ready to toe the line when it comes to delicate issues of this kind.

The second category of services is economic in nature. The Russian state and dependent companies would clearly benefit greatly from privileged access to privatization tenders. Of particular interest are Belarus’ Europe-destined gas and oil pipelines, as well as Soviet-era oil-processing factories. Lukashenko has not, however, been prepared to grant Russia the conditions it seeks. Russia would particularly like to increase its influence over the Belarusian gas transit company Beltransgaz, for example (Gazprom already owns 50%).

Lukashenko is also constantly engaged in political manoeuvres. He sometimes pretends to make compromises to the Kremlin, but in reality limits himself to minimal, extracted concessions. The Belarussian president does not want to share his power with the rulers from Moscow.

It seems that, at last, the Kremlin has grown tired of such manoeuvres.

A month ago, Gazprom dramatically reduced the supply of gas to Belarus, demanding that Lukashenko pay off debts it claimed were owed. Now, with the help of a television film, a blow has been dealt not to Belarus as a whole, but to the president of this country, and very personally. Judging by the power of this blow, one could surmise that Moscow wants to bring Lukashenko to his knees. Perhaps, even, it is trying to remove him from his presidential post (the next presidential elections are due to be held in Belarus next year).

How firm is Lukashenko’s position, then?

On the one hand, Lukashenko is undoubtedly trapped in a corner. He still has no money to pay for fuel, as the Belarussian economy is in a poor state. Moscow may also turn off the gas again right before elections, and thus undermine “Batka’s” popularity. Since the “last dictator in Europe” has such a bad reputation in the West, there is little likelihood he will receive financial support from the EU.

On the other hand, the mechanisms for removing Lukashenko are not immediately clear. When the Kremlin quarreled with former president Viktor Yushchenko, for example, it simply began bankrolling the political opposition in the person of Viktor Yanukovich. In Belarus, owing to Lukashenko’s authoritarian methods of rule, there is simply no opposition outlet able to command the support of a significant section of the population.

Moreover, while it might well be possible to remove Lukashenko — he has, after all, quarreled with the entire world with the exception Hugh Chavez — creating a stable democratic regime in Belarus will surely prove more difficult. Belarus is no Kyrgyzstan, but recent events there have aptly demonstrated how the departure of an authoritarian leader combined with the absence of strong government can create serious problems.

There can’t be many places worthy of the epithet ‘former seaside town’. Indeed, Moynaq, now miles from any water, hasn’t moved an inch. What has happened is the shoreline has simply receded by 40 km. Along with Aralsk, Kazalinsk, Uchsai and Bugun, the only reminder of the sea is in the ubiquitous remains of the good old days: the beached boats, the rotting tackle and the eerie placards hailing the goodness of water and the importance of fishing to the Soviet economy.

Once a thriving seaside resort, Moynaq now only attracts tourism of a morbid nature. Photograph (cc) Giladr

Once Moynaq was more than just economically prosperous.

It was a famous holiday resort, the Crimea of Central Asia. In summer, several flights a day brought Soviet citizens to the beach. At the time, writer Viktor Vitkovich described the Aral Sea as ‘exceedingly pure, as deep and delicate as aquamarine, but without the touch of green, as intense and bright as Badakhshan azurite, and as translucent as sapphire’. The entire town lived and worked with the sea and its related industries, packing and canning. Without the sea, the town was as good as dead, and I did wonder how a town with no means of livelihood and almost 100 per cent unemployment could be anything other than that. The only vague hope for Moynaq was tourism, but even that wasn’t exactly the healthy kind.

‘May I ask,’ enquired the driver, ‘what are you doing in Moynaq?’

‘Business,’ said Bohodir.

‘Oh,’ he said, knowing full well there was no business in Moynaq.

Bohodir and I found a yellow Moskvich at the Qongirat taxi rank. The engine growled, then died. A sigh, a clatter of instruments, and soon we were gliding through cotton flats and scrub.

‘May I ask,’ enquired the driver, ‘what are you doing in Moynaq?’

‘Business,’ said Bohodir.

‘Oh,’ he said, knowing full well there was no business in Moynaq.

As we drove along the cotton petered out and the farmed flats turned to wasteland. The salt patches weren’t so prevalent here. These were cotton plantations, desperately watered, leached and watered again and the air was humid with evaporation. On the approach to Moynaq we spotted some artificial lakes, great dug-out bowls that had been filled with imported water and fish to give the fishermen something to do. It was a stab at rescuing Moynaq, but it wasn’t enough.

At last the sign came: ARAL KHOSH KELDINIZ (WELCOME TO ARAL). This was the part I’d been waiting for. We’d scarcely glanced at the town before the taxi driver had skidded off with a spray of sand. There were no customers in Moynaq. Bohodir and I stood together in the main street. As we hoisted up our bags, we noticed the deathly quiet. There was just no one around, no cars, no sound. It was like a Sunday afternoon in mid­summer, when everyone should be away – but holidays were a luxury no one could afford. Everyone was still here. So where were they? The wind swirled the sand and the odd bit of metal clacked, increasing the silence. But there was no birdsong. The road ran straight ahead between two rows of run-down housing, the tarmac obscured by drifts of sand that crept silently.

Bohodir and I started the trudge to the hotel, passing one or two bent-backed women with babies.

‘Where are the men?’ I asked him.

‘In Kazakhstan, mostly,’ he said. ‘They send money home. Keeps Moynaq alive. Same in Qongirat.’

The population of (supposedly) 9,000 had been whittled down to a few mothers and children. The only men I could see were a crowd of puffy-faced drinkers at the taxi rank.

It felt like walking through a film set: a broken tractor on its side, a train carriage rotting on the street, miles from its track, bleached skiffs parked on the pavement, their wood split and tackle rotten. I recalled that Morrissey lyric, ‘This is the coastal town. That they forgot to close down . . . Come, Armageddon! Come!’

Most astonishing were the placards. These were a fixture of Central Asia, it seemed. All of Karakalpakstan was hung with signs, messages from Karimov, pearls of wisdom on nation­hood, happiness and unity, as if only the father of the nation knew the answer. This was an enduring legacy of the Soviet era, and it was patriarchal and patronising at the best of times. But here, in the context of what had happened, it was unbelievable. Every few metres hung another placard. Bohodir translated as we passed: ‘WATER IS THE SOURCE OF LIFE’, ‘LABOUR LEADS TO JOY’, ‘MOTHER’S HAPPINESS IS PEOPLE’S HAPPINESS’, ‘FISH OUR WEALTH’. Why no one had torn them down I never understood.

The Moynaq canning factory was once a mainstay of the region’s economy. By 1986, ecological changes had taken their toll on the region and fish had to be shuttled in by desperate Soviet officials from thousands of miles away. Photo (cc) Martijn Munneke

Finally, we passed the canning factory, the city’s pride and one-time mainstay of the economy. We poked our noses through the chicken wire and saw inside a mess of rusted machinery and broken glass. The security guards shooed us away in sharp bursts of Karakalpak. But what were they protecting? The last native Aral fish had died in 1986, drowned by the noxious waves.

By 1986, 50 years of the Mengele school of ecology had taken their toll. New fish were shuttled in, but they too died. Moscow panicked. They had to keep the canners canning, whatever the cost. Fish caught in the Caspian and Baltic were hauled thousands of miles to remote Karakalpakstan just to keep the factory open. This was clearly unsustainable. Wild schemes were hatched to replenish the sea. One idea, the Sibaral Project, was as mad as it was expensive. The plan was to take the Ob and Irtysh, two massive Siberian rivers that flowed north into the Arctic, then dam, reverse and direct them south into the Aral Sea. If this were successful, cotton wealth could be enjoyed in perpetuity.

In Soviet times, wild schemes were hatched to replenish the sea. One idea was to reverse the Ob and Irtysh, two massive Siberian rivers that flowed north into the Arctic, and direct them south into the Aral Sea.

Orpheus was said to have piped so beautifully that he could change the direction of the River Styx. But by now the USSR could barely feed itself, let alone turn back nature. Even in the Forties, Viktor Vitkovich refers to the idea in his book. ‘If the plan goes ahead,’ he writes, ‘Central Asia would then have so much water that it could wipe the desert off the map for good.’ Thankfully, Siberia was spared this assault by massive popular criticism and lack of funds, so nothing was done. The canning factory closed, the fishermen hauled in their boats and the Aral Sea was sententiously proclaimed to be ‘Nature’s error’. When the damage was deemed irreversible the authorities cried, ‘Let it die a beautiful death.’

At last we arrived at the hotel. On the edge of the town, where the low buildings seemed to disappear into the scrub, stood a small, white-washed building decked in lush, trellised verdure. A tubby man in a string vest and flip-flops was splashing the greenery liberally with a hose. Heaven only knew where the water was coming from. He greeted us with a smile and led us through the lobby – walls stencilled with rowing boats and fish. Bohodir and I, both uncomfortable at this wanton display of plenty, walked up to the desk, where a pair of German travellers were waiting. They were in their mid-thirties, urban types with stylish haircuts and hemp bags. Anywhere else in the world we might have struck up a rapport, formed a temporary friendship built around our experiences. But not here. There was something each of us recognised in the other: a morbid curiosity in the disaster that was taking place. We confined ourselves to a nod.

As Bohodir and I were led upstairs, we peered from the staircase window to see a scrap-metal dump, a horizon of creeping scrub, and barefoot children making mud pies among the mess. The hotelier beckoned me to follow, loping around in his boxer shorts and vest. He was probably the richest man in Moynaq. Two or three guests a week and he was probably tied over until winter, when the place turned into a gulag.

Bohodir knocked at my door at eight.

‘You will need sunglasses, sunblock and a hat,’ he said.

I noticed he had none of the above, as we set off to the beach. The sun screamed down now and steppe winds were blowing sand in all directions.

‘Cover your eyes,’ called Bohodir, ‘don’t get the dust in your eyes.’ He was right. The yellowy soil wasn’t natural. It was infested with DDT and anthrax. We marched against the wind for a while, pushing against a flat and scrubby horizon. We weren’t far now. The sky was scraped an awesome blue by the scouring winds. A jogger panted past, with sweatbands and a visor. We stopped him, half to check if he was real, half to ask where the ‘ships’ graveyard’ was. The ships’ graveyard was the lodestar of Karakalpakstan, the point of visiting Moynaq: an eerie assemblage of beached boats on the dry seabed.

‘No more ships,’ he said, jogging on the spot. ‘They’ve taken them away. Don’t bother,’ and jogged off. I also wanted to ask him what he was doing exercising by a toxic seabed. It was like going to Chernobyl to ‘take the waters’, but he’d already vanished.

Soon, on the right, a finger of concrete appeared, an obelisk to the Karakalpak contribution to the Great Patriotic War.

And there in all its horrific majesty was the great Ok Kum, the White Sand Desert formerly known as the Aral Sea, a clumpy seabed that seemed to stretch forever. There were thickets and tough bushes that could probably survive in a post­-nuclear world. Here and there were scattered the detritus of a huge maritime industry, engine cast-offs, bolts and rowing boats like bath toys on the horizon.

The area that was once known as the Aral Sea is now called the Great Ok Kum Desert, Photo (cc) Martijn Munneke

We scrambled down the scree on to the dry bed to feel it under our feet. It felt hard and brown, pitching in small troughs, and disconcertingly moist underneath. Bohodir shoved a twig into a hard, glazed hummock. A gelatinous ooze slithered out like crème caramel.

It seemed the jogger was right, the tugs and trawlers really had been taken away. From where I stood, there were only the indentations of their hulls on the mud, as if some warm, full-bellied beasts had sloped off to die. I felt cheated of my prize. I stood on a bluff and looked into the distance. A shepherd was towing a line of cattle across the seabed. Their coats were matted and their udders deeply sagged. This toxic soil served as their daily pasture. I began to feel sick.

Far out of view, in the middle of the sea, was the island of Vozrozhdenie, or Resurrection. Karakalpaks had always been wary of it, and folklore claimed that an enchanted castle stood there, surrounded by flaming quicksand. They were half-right. The castle was a major Soviet bio-weapons plant called Aralsk 7, built in 1954 to study the dissemination patterns of biological weapons. Unluckily, the prevailing winds blew south to Karakalpakstan, carrying a cloud of toxins: anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, plague, typhus and smallpox. The plant was abandoned in 1991, leaving the live anthrax spores to fester until in 2002, when the US Pentagon, fearing the use of this anthrax-laden soil by terrorists, sent the Threat Reduction Agency to decontaminate the anthrax dumps. Which they did, leaving the rest of the site untouched. Today any visit without full body protection would be tantamount to suicide.

As Bohodir and I eased out of Moynaq that afternoon, we spotted a man by the road. He had tattoos on his thin white arms. We offered him a lift as far as Qongirat. His name was Roger and he was an American Peace Corps worker. On the ride back he told us that he’d illegally put a group together to work with schoolchildren over the summer. President Karimov wanted NGOs as far away from Moynaq as possible, said Roger. He didn’t want foreigners to see how little was being done.

‘See,’ he told us in his deep Virginia drawl, ‘the official population here is nine thousand. But the real population is more like two. A lot of people think that Karimov is just watching and waiting for the last of the Karakalpaks to die off or disappear into Kazakhstan so it can then be repopulated by “ethnic” Uzbeks who will then make use of the mineral wealth lying under the ground. This is the rumour. But it doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not, because they’re already drilling for oil on the seabed. That wealth is not for Karakalpaks.’

Roger, a doctor by training, despite his unhealthy pallor, was a passionate activist. But there was something hard in his voice, a protective shell he’d developed after staying too long out here.

‘I don’t believe the republic will survive in the long run,’ he continued. ‘Perhaps another twenty, thirty years. They’re going already. They’ll go even quicker if HIV takes off. It’s a known fact that areas of high emigration, drugs, alcoholism and hepatitis like this are just waiting for an AIDS explosion. That should just about kill off whoever’s left.’

Roger got off at Qongirat without much of a goodbye and we carried on to Nukus. I tried to think what I’d gained by seeing all this. My desire to witness a dying society had been fulfilled. I’d observed the drawn-out suffering of a people without the resources to change their fate. Bohodir, who’d understood every word Roger had told us, sat watching the horizon without expression.

The midday heat had passed now, leaving the salt flats rippling to the horizon. The knots of telephone wires thinned into a line that pitched and fell by the side of the road, the plains opened and I stared, blankly, into the distance.

Few Karakalpaks I met – not even Bohodir, who was educated – showed any nostalgia for their historic nomadic days. That time was gone, and its significance lost. Today they mourned the Aral disaster and the losses that came in its wake – their livelihoods, pensions, factory jobs, farm jobs, office jobs, all of which vanished with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But I couldn’t help feeling sadness at the end of the nomadic way of life, and the loss of the deep understanding of the natural environment once possessed by the now-settled Turkic peoples. There was a wealth of ancestral knowledge that the steppe-dwelling peoples could have taught the USSR, but they were never given the chance. ‘Only by turning to their way of living can we make our way out of the bogs in which we vainly stumble,’ said Ella Maillart. But it was already too late. Today’s Karakalpaks watched the steppe as uncomprehendingly as I did.

Taken from ‘Out of Steppe’ by Daniel Metcalfe. Published by Arrow at £8.99. Copyright © Daniel Metcalfe 2009. http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=0099524996

When Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the policy of Glasnost across all Soviet government institutions in the late 1980s, it marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet Empire. What the policy meant was that for the first time, the press would be able to disseminate uncensored information without fear of reprisal.  The details of Stalin’s purges could be published for the first time; the previously hidden detail of endemic social problems could be printed in newspapers; and debates could be had and ideas shared with the Western world – legally. Gorbachev had pulled back the Iron Curtain and, if only momentarily, the Soviet Empire got its first authorised glimpse of democracy.

But 19 years have passed since the end of Gorbachev’s short tenure as President of the Soviet Union, and unfortunately the spirit of Glasnost does not live on. Today it is estimated that nearly 80 per cent of those living in the former Soviet Union still live under authoritarian regimes that deprive them of fundamental political rights and civil liberties. Tightly controlled news media, pliant courts and brutal security forces are prevalent characteristics. The last ten years in particular, according to an extensive survey by Freedom House, have constituted “a decade of democratic regression in the former Soviet Union”.

Nowhere is this more apparent than within the borders of Kazakhstan – where dissenters, journalists and human rights activists have been frequently and consistently repressed with zeal. Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s 70-year old president, is one of only two leaders in the former USSR who also held power during the days of communist rule.  Nazarbayev presents himself as a man of democracy, often asserting his commitment to the “protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms”. In reality, however, he is a dictator committed more so than anything else to the protection and maintenance of his own power.

Glasnost, therefore, is far from the agenda in Kazakhstan. According to Human Rights Watch, independent journalists who criticize Nazarbayev’s government face threats, harassment and “antiquated” penalties for civil defamation and libel. This year alone, no fewer than two independent newspapers have been shut under Kazakh government pressure, while examples of press repression are reported almost weekly by Almaty-based media monitoring group Adil Soz, reflecting the country’s position as 162 out of 178 in Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index.

One newspaper in particular, Respublika, has faced repeated and well-documented harassment from the Kazakh government.  In 2002, after having supported an oppositional political party (Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan), reporters from Respublika turned up to work to find the corpse of a decapitated dog outside their offices. Next to the dog was a note that read, simply, “This is the last warning”. The following day, their offices were burned down.

But Republika refused to be intimidated and continued to publish, often under a different name in order to evade the authorities. Banned from the printing presses, and faced with a $400,000 fine in 2009 for publishing an opinion piece critical of the government owned bank BTA, the paper is now self-published by dedicated staff using office equipment, maintaining a circulation of 19,000. They have also adopted social media such as Facebook and Twitter to get their stories out.  But their website, which once reached approximately 33,000 people per week (a substantial figure given that approximately only 34.3% of Kazakhstanis have access to the internet), has been blocked internally by the government.

Kazakhstan's new capital Astana will show OSCE
leaders its glitz and glamour. 

“We had a high readership and people were discussing things, sharing ideas and trying to take action…that was the reason they blocked us,” said Respublika reporter Yevgeniya Plakhina.  “If our government doesn’t like the content, they just block it."

Despite continuing to employ such draconian censorship measures, Kazakhstan has over the course of 2010 chaired the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) – a 56 member intergovernmental organisation whose mandate includes a major commitment to “addressing and providing early warning on violations of freedom of expression.”

“It’s beyond ironic,” said Rachel Denber, acting Executive Director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division. “I think that there were real questions about Kazakhstan’s suitability as the chair of the organisation because of its deeply flawed human rights record. No country is perfect, but Kazakhstan really needed to do more before it had the chairmanship.”

It was felt by some, though, that giving Kazakhstan the opportunity to chair the OSCE would force the government to push through reforms. This was undoubtedly based upon a willingness to give the country’s leadership the benefit of the doubt. After all, when Kazakhstan made its initial bid for the chairmanship in 2007, then Foreign Minister Marat Tazhin had pledged at the OSCE Ministerial Council in Madrid that Kazakhstan would bring its media laws up to international standards. “We are going to incorporate various proposals into a consolidated bill to amend the Media Law,” he said at the time. Yet three years on, the pledge rings hollow.

“Tazhin promised in Madrid that we would stick to democratic laws,” said Plakhina. “But when Kazakhstan was chosen to chair the OSCE nothing actually changed. It got even worse… several newspapers were closed as a result of defamation lawsuits.”

Part of the problem, Plakhina believes, is Kazakhstan’s geographical location. The country is a corridor to Afghanistan and a key ally of coalition forces in the War on Terror. It is also home to the Caspian Sea, which contains oil estimated to be worth in the region of $12 trillion.

“We have oil, we have gas, we have other resources,” Plakhina says. “I think our rights and freedoms are traded for resources, traded for other political advantages that OSCE member countries are taking from us.  Few of the OSCE members criticise Kazakhstan. That’s what really disappoints me.”

70-year-old president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has
led the country since before independence in 1991.

Later this week, Kazakhstan will end its one year term as chair of the OSCE by hosting the annual OSCE summit, on December 1 and 2.  International security is set to form the dominant part of the programme, but human rights and media freedom issues will also feature. Human Rights Watch will present a statement at the summit that will “urge the OSCE to prevail on participating states to uphold their commitments to freedom of expression across the board,” and the British delegation – led by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg – will also raise human rights concerns.

“We continue to be concerned about freedoms of religion, expression, assembly and of the media [in Kazakhstan],” said a spokesperson for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who also praised the country for taking steps with its reform agenda. “We and international partners will continue to encourage the Kazakh authorities  both bilaterally and through key international organisations such as the EU and OSCE, to press ahead with reforms, many of which they themselves have identified as necessary."

 This will offer little reassurance for Plakhina and her colleagues at Respublika, though. For them there remains a sense of anxiety about what will happen when Kazakhstan steps back from the international scrutiny inevitably attached to the chairmanship of the OSCE. The newspaper, for instance, recently received an anonymous email informing them that after the summit they would be closed down once and for all.

“After the summit you will hear about a lot of bad things going on in Kazakhstan,“ Plakhina says. “We won’t any longer have to hide our human rights violations… things are going to take a turn for the worse. We are trying to increase awareness in European countries about what is going to happen, but there is not much hope. As long as Nazarbayev is president, nothing is going to change.”

What lessons can we learn from the presidential election recently held in Turkmenistan? Apparently none if we focus on the domestic implications, with Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov re-elected as president with a landslide 97% of the vote. The Berdymuhamedov regime has now completed the process of consolidating its power; it can now be expected to focus on re-personalising Turkmen politics, filling the void left after the death of long-time dictator Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006. Certainly the campaign to create a cult of Berdymuhamedov’s personality is well under way.

Analysing Berdymuhamedov’s re-election from a regional perspective stimulates some interesting questions about the current trajectory of Central Asia’s post-Soviet political evolution. The vote of 12 February made a mockery of the institution of elections and this is a trend that has characterised Central Asian politics in recent years. Two of the three recent presidential elections in the region – Turkmenistan’s in February and Kazakhstan’s snap election held in April 2011 – have seen incumbents re-elected as a result of machinations from within the ruling regimes rather than an expression of popular will. In both cases there has been a high degree of regime interference in the electoral campaigns and many irregularities in the voting procedures.

On the other hand, the third electoral contest held in Central Asia in the last 12 months – in Kyrgyzstan in October 2011 – constituted the first smooth presidential transition to have ever occurred in Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In an unprecedented decision, Roza Otunbaeva decided not to run for the presidential post, opening the field to ‘fresh’ candidates.

In the context of the transmission of power according to constitutional provisions, the Turkmen election represents an interesting element in Central Asian developments – obviously, for all the wrong reasons. The Turkmen vote constitutes yet another episode in the peculiar intersection between elections and authoritarianism that has so profoundly characterised the politics of Central Asia in the last 20 years. It crystallises authoritarianism as the rule to which Central Asian governance seems to conform. Finally, it consolidates the regional praxis that supports the hegemony of incumbent leaders.

Men on a mission. Presidents (L-R) Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov of Turkmenistan and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan all appear to be pursuing lifelong reigns. None has a succession plan in place.

This latter point represents a critical element in the politics of Central Asia – one that in turn raises questions about the future stability of the region. As a rule, Central Asian leaders pursue monopolistic power and tend to stay in power for long periods of time. These factors underpin the political experience of the last two decades, during which regimes have failed to put in place practices for succession.

To date, three out of the five Central Asian states have experienced top-level leadership change since the achievement of independence. Turkmenistan’s power transition of 2006-2007 was initiated by the natural death of Niyazov, which set into motion a process of intra-elite struggle that ultimately saw Berdymuhamedov as its victor. Transitions in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were somewhat more traumatic. While a civil war led to the accession to absolute power of Emomali Rahmon (Tajikistan), popular unrest was behind the fall of the two successive Kyrgyz regimes, headed by Askar Akaev (2005) and Kurmanbek Bakiev (2010). In this sense, the election of Almazbek Atambaev to the Presidency of the Kyrgyz Republic is Central Asia’s only power transition occurred in adherence to constitutional dictates. The recent Kyrgyz case is therefore the exception to the norm: elsewhere the transfer of power has been determined by overt or covert competition amongst members of the regime, relatively violent episodes of popular unrest and even direct military hostilities.

If leadership change is an indicator of regime insecurity, then Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are Central Asia’s most stable political systems: Nursultan Nazarbaev and Islam Karimov have retained power ever since 1991. Similarly Tajikistan’s president appears to be in a relatively stable position: Rahmon has been in office since 1994, while he was Prime Minister from 1992 to 94. While it is too early to make any assessment of the nature of Atambaev’s regime in Kyrgyzstan, the Turkmen election has confirmed Berdymuhamedov’s plans to establish long-term rule, continuing Niyazov’s way.

'Central Asia’s cultural tendency towards dynasticism appears to be secondary to the personalism that characterises post-Soviet power in the region.'

Interestingly, none of Central Asia’s current leaders has made plans for succession. While this understandable for the relatively young Berdymuhamedov (b.1957) and Rahmon (b.1952), it is puzzling that the older leaders – Nazarbaev (b.1940) and Karimov (b.1938) – have chosen not to publicly endorse a successor. Here Central Asia’s cultural tendency towards dynasticism appears to be secondary to the personalism that characterises post-Soviet power in the region. Paradoxicallly, therefore, in this sense the Kazakh and Uzbek regimes look perhaps the least durable, as it is not clear that they will outlast their current leader.

Indeed, Central Asian leaders appear to overstep the mark in terms of wielding power, monopolising it to an extent that militates against nurturing successors. This was certainly the case in pre-2006 Turkmenistan, where Niyazov’s options for intra-elite succession were reduced by the President’s paranoid distrust of his political associates, while dynastic succession was limited by his estrangement from his own family.

Similarly, dynasticism appears not to be an option for Nazarbaev and Karimov, as both leaders do not have a direct male heir in their current family ranks (although Karimov has a son from his first marriage). Although the presidents’ daughters – Dariga, Dinara and Aliya Nazarbaeva; Gulnara and Lola Karimova – are recognisable figures in their countries (yet not necessarily popular), it seems unlikely that they could become frontrunners in a top-level power transition. If Gulnara Karimova was once thought to be in a privileged position to succeed to her father, her chances have significantly decreased after 2010, when questions surrounding her business interests circulated.

Meanwhile succession based on family ties has been widely anticipated in Kazakhstan. At different times, Rakhat Aliyev – Dariga’s ex-husband – and Timur Kulibaev – Dinara’s current spouse – were presented by Kazakhstan-watchers as Nursultan Nazarbaev’s potential heirs. Interestingly, they have both now fallen out of favour with Nazarbaev: while former Deputy Foreign Minister Aliyev has now become a staunch (and very vocal) opponent to his former father-in-law, Kulibaev was recently dismissed from his post as head of Samruk-Qazyn, Kazakhstan’s Sovereign Fund.

In spite of their reluctance to nominate a successor, both Nazarbaev and Karimov have begun to deal more publicly with the limitations that age is inevitably imposing on their power. In an official visit to Germany in early February 2012, Nazarbaev answered several questions from German journalists about the state of his health. The president’s openness on the subject contrasts with his government’s reticence over rumours of prostatic surgery Nazarbaev reportedly underwent in July 2011.

Karimov, on the other hand, dealt indirectly but publicly with his own mortality in a major parliamentary speech in December 2010, when he outlined a new succession procedure to be applied in the event of his death of incapacitation. Presidential concerns with age are also thought to underpin the recent (December 2011) decision to shorten the Uzbek presidential term from seven to five years. This decision may bring about a presidential election as early as this year. Some observers have commented that the aim of the current, shorter term may be to identify a successor – current Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev appears to be the front runner – and negotiate an exit strategy, ensuring that Karimov and his family can step away without fear of violent or punative retribution. Another possible explanation for the shorter term is that it could simply be another subterfuge, aimed at prolonging his time at the helm.

Whatever decision Karimov reaches on the scope of his next mandate and whatever course Nazarbaev’s health takes, political succession in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is no longer a matter for another day: it now represents the impending reality of a not-so-distant future. The stability of the two major political systems therefore appears at risk, as neither leadership has made arrangements to face the tasks posed by the departure of long-term leaders. If Nazarbaev and Karimov do not reverse this trend by placing the issue of succession at the centre of their remaining time in power, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will find themselves immersed in the same uncertainty that surrounded Turkmenistan following the death of Niyazov.

Although pre-arranged succession measures do not guarantee regime security against the emergence of instability, the Central Asian experience tells us that the lack of succession arrangements can result either in widespread instability or in the perpetuation of authoritarian practices, a situation that ultimately puts the local population between a rock and a hard place. This is exactly the scenario the citizens of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan want to avoid when their leaders exit the stage.

Over most of the past twenty years Kazakhstan has been a beacon of peace and security in Central Asia. Recently, however, internal unease and unrest appear to have increased. Several incidents are symptomatic of the situation:

--   On 16th December last year, security forces fired on unarmed striking oil workers and other people in the western city of Zhanaozen, killing and wounding a large number. The workers had been on strike for nearly eight months.

--   On 18th April, after a trial behind closed doors, forty-seven men were sentenced to prison terms for alleged terrorism in the western city of Atyrau.

--   On 19th April, a courageous independent journalist in western Kazakhstan, Lukpan Akhmedyarov, was stabbed and shot with a pneumatic pistol. He had gained prominence for reporting on abuses of government power. On 27th , despite being seriously wounded, Akhmedyarov was put on trial for allegedly "wounding the dignity and honour" of an provincial official.

'These incidents suggest that politics and governance in Kazakhstan are fraying at the edges. The legitimacy of the current political system and leadership may be ebbing. Political life is insufficiently open and resilient to absorb conflicting pressures.'

--   On 28th May, fourteen border guards and a park ranger were killed at a remote outpost on the Kazakhstani-Chinese border. Officials charged a private in the border guard for the crime, although it looked more like the work of a well-armed gang than a single soldier. Suspicion that the private had been framed was heightened when a television newscaster resigned rather than report his alleged confession.

--   On 29th May, gold miners were given a 30-35% pay increase on the first day of a strike.  Earlier in May, copper workers won a rise of 100% after striking for two days. These settlements suggest that the authorities fear another extended or bitter strike, such as that in Zhanaozen. Undue wage concessions, however, could lead to overblown demands elsewhere.

--   On 30th May, Kazakhstan's leadership lashed out at the social media for ‘spreading lies and propagating violence and evil’.

--   On 4th June, thirty-three people were convicted of inciting mass disorder in Zhanaozen last December, and thirteen were sentenced to prison. Many fewer police have been convicted of crimes related to tragic events of 16th December,  even though they were the ones doing the shooting.

'Frustrations seem to be greatest in western Kazakhstan. People there may expect a greater share of the benefits from the dynamic pace of energy development in their region.'

--  On 5th June, an activist who defended the rights of coal miners and oil workers in Zhanaozen was found dead in his apartment.

--   On 15th June, in Almaty, the authorities arrested an internationally respected theatre director on charges of ‘inciting social hatred’. The director, Bolat Atabayev, had put on a play in March that made allusions to the Zhanaozen tragedy and official repression.

What do these incidents say about Kazakhstan?

Taken together, these incidents suggest that politics and governance in Kazakhstan are fraying at the edges. The legitimacy of the current political system and leadership may be ebbing. Political life is insufficiently open and resilient to absorb conflicting pressures. There are too few checks and balances to monitor and properly restrain executive power.

Frustrations seem to be greatest in western Kazakhstan.  People there may expect a greater share of the benefits from the dynamic pace of energy development in their region. Differences between actual and expected improvements in living standards might be increasing faster there than elsewhere in Kazakhstan.

The problem in this region seems to be symptomatic of a wider challenge for Kazakhstan – an increasing gap between economic and political progress.  This gap may be fermenting popular anxieties and unrest, and eroding social strengths such as interethnic harmony. 

'Two [comparators] have made more combined political and economic progress than Kazakhstan: Slovenia and Bulgaria.  Both belong to the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Two countries have made less progress: Ukraine and Uzbekistan.'

Published rankings by independent organizations, and statistics for per capita income, make possible quantitative comparisons that shed some light on the scale of Kazakhstan's democracy gap.

On the basis of these I have made a comparison between five European and Eurasian countries formerly under communist rule -- Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Slovenia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Rankings are shown for three indices of political progress and three of economic progress (see appendix below for details).

The comparators were chosen for illustrative purposes; they are not a scientific sample. Two have made more combined political and economic progress than Kazakhstan: Slovenia and Bulgaria. Both belong to the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Two countries have made less progress: Ukraine and Uzbekistan. 

Several conclusions may be drawn from these data.

First, two countries – Slovenia and Bulgaria -- have made the most democratic progress, and their economic progress correlates roughly with this.

Second, despite having benefitted from the popular Orange Revolution and several fair elections and peaceful transfers of power, Ukraine has made scarcely more democratic progress than Kazakhstan, mainly because of its high level of corruption.  On the economic side, Ukraine is held back by its low per capita income. As a consequence of these factors, Kazakhstan has made more overall progress than Ukraine, an aspirant to membership in the European Union.

Third, although Uzbekistan, the most populous Central Asian state, was once widely considered to be the most important player in Central Asia and a natural leader, the absence of significant political and economic reforms has left it weakened. Kazakhstan has overtaken Uzbekistan as the major power in Central Asia.  

Fourth, although Kazakhstan has made strong economic gains (it trails only Slovenia among the comparators), it has made less progress towards democracy. This imbalance may help explain why internal unease seems to be growing. The rising expectations of increasingly prosperous and educated Kazakhstanis for more participation in political life are not being met.

The lack of balance in Kazakhstan’s economic and political progress may lead to more serious tensions in the future, and a higher risk of unstable political transitions.  The issue is not whether reforms meet with Western approbation, but whether they satisfy the growing aspirations of Kazakhstanis. The problem is not that democratic reforms are too rapid, but that they are too modest.

Appendix

Comparative Political and Economic Indices for Kazakhstan

Rankings are shown by raw score, and normalized as a percentage of 100. The latter are in brackets.

1. Political Indices

1.  Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2011.  Ranks countries and territories according to their perceived levels of public sector corruption.  183 countries.  Slovenia, 35 (19); Bulgaria, 86 (47); Kazakhstan, 120 (63); Ukraine, 152 (80); Uzbekistan, 177 (94).

2.  Vision of Humanity, Global Peace Index 2012.  Ranks countries by their absence of violence, using metrics that combine both internal and external factors.  158 countries.  Slovenia, 8(5); Bulgaria, 40 (25); Ukraine, 72 (46); Kazakhstan, 106 (67); Uzbekistan, 111 (70).

3.  Foreign Policy and Fund for Peace, Failed States 2012.  Ranks countries according to indices of state failure.  177 countries. Slovenia, 16 (9); Bulgaria, 47 (27); Ukraine, 64 (36); Kazakhstan, 70 (40); Uzbekistan, 138 (78).

2. Economic Indices

World Economic Forum, Global Competitiveness Index 2011-12. Measures business operating environments and competitiveness. 142 countries.  Slovenia, 57 (40); Kazakhstan, 72 (51); Bulgaria, 74 (52); Ukraine, 82 (58); Uzbekistan, not ranked.

2. World Bank, Doing Business 2012: Doing Business in a More Transparent World.  Assesses regulations affecting domestic firms and ranks economies on business regulation, using such indices as starting a business, resolving insolvency and trading across borders.   183 countries.  Slovenia, 37 (20); Kazakhstan, 47 (26); Bulgaria, 59 (32); Ukraine, 152 (83); Uzbekistan, 166 (91).

3. World Bank, Gross National Income Per Capita 2011, Atlas Method.  215 countries. Slovenia ($23,860), 47 (22); Kazakhstan ($7,440), 90 (42); Bulgaria ($6,240),97 (45); Ukraine ($3,010), 135 (63); Uzbekistan ($1,280), 163 (76).

Averages of Indices Using Normalized Values

                     Political    Economic      Combined

                                         Average

Slovenia             11             27              19

Bulgaria             33             43              38

Kazakhstan        57             40              48

Ukraine              54             68              61

Uzbekistan         81             84              82

Kazakhstan’s resource-fuelled economic boom and thriving market economy have turned it into the economic powerhouse of Central Asia, setting it even farther apart from the poorer, less developed and reform-resistant economies of the region. Now the second most dynamic economy in the post-Soviet space after Russia, its Gross Domestic Product ($186.27 billion in 2011) is three times the combined GDP of neighbouring Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.[1]

Rising economic growth and prosperity have transformed Kazakhstan from an emigration country of the 1990s to a flourishing migrant-receiving state. The void left by the departure of 1.8 million Russians-speakers in its first decade of independence is being filled by the return of ethnic Kazakh diaspora (referred to as oralman) under the state-sponsored repatriation programme.

'Rising economic growth and prosperity have transformed Kazakhstan from an emigration country of the 1990s to a flourishing migrant-receiving state.'

By 2010 about 800,000 had relocated to Kazakhstan, placing Kazakhstan among top ten migrant-receiving states.  But what is less known abroad and little discussed within Kazakhstan is the fact that, after Russia, it is the next regular destination for earning livelihoods, albeit without a legal work permit or a formal status, for a growing number of Central Asians.

Legal status and jobs

Migrant workers from other states of Central Asia remain uncounted and invisible to the state authorities due to the lack of an appropriate legal framework and labour policies, which dooms them to an ‘illegal’ or ‘irregular’ status. These are Kazakhstan’s ‘gastarbaitery’ (the Russianized plural of German Gastarbeiter), a term that is widely used to designate the sizable pool of unskilled or semi-skilled foreign migrant workers from Central Asia. Though no longer widely used in Germany, the term has arrived through the Russian media into Kazakhstan along with its negative baggage and racial stereotype.

Despite the lower wages, many migrant workers from Central Asia choose Kazakhstan to look for jobs. It is closer to their home countries, and it is easier for them to adapt to local cultural norms and values (photo: Fergana News Agency, all rights reserved)

In the absence of reliable government statistics, the International Organization of Migration (IOM) estimated that in 2010 migrant workers in Kazakhstan number from 500,000 to a million people, with almost two thirds of them from Uzbekistan, some 25% from Kyrgyzstan and the rest from Tajikistan and other CIS states. Others suggest that the number of foreign workers in Kazakhstan is likely to reach 3 million within the next years and only 200,000-300,000 of these are likely to be working legally.

At least half of them work in construction, performing what are considered 3-D jobs (‘dirty, dangerous, and degrading’) shunned by the locals. Several others work in the expanding service sector – catering, transportation, delivery, retail and sales; and the remaining work as seasonal labourers in agriculture – in tobacco, cotton fields, foodstuff packing and processing.

'Migrant workers from other states of Central Asia remain uncounted and invisible to the state authorities due to the lack of an appropriate legal framework and labour policies, which dooms them to an ‘illegal’ or ‘irregular’ status.'

The ready availability of cheap semi-skilled and short-term migrant labour is contributing significantly to spurring rapid growth in construction and service sectors in the prominent cities Astana, Almaty, Shymkent, Atyrau, and Aktau. However, no authoritative official data, statistics or studies on the role of migrant workers in the labour force or in the informal economy exist. It is becoming increasingly apparent that although the state authorities continue to combat ‘illegal’ migration, regarding it as a security threat or as promoting criminal activities, they covertly allow the influential recruiters or employers to hire the gastarbaitery.

Cultural affinity, legal barriers

How do these ‘guest-workers’ find work, negotiate the risks involved and find a niche for themselves in Kazakhstan? With its widespread reputation for ethnic stability and tolerance, Kazakhstan is seen as a more hospitable place than Russia for fellow Central Asian migrants, particularly the young, first time migrants. For Bakhtiyor and Raushan, two young Uzbek men in their early 20s from Fergana, Kazakhstan’s new capital, Astana, is modern, vibrant,  easy to get around and full of opportunities. They left home for the first time to look for work for in construction so that they could earn money for their own marriages and those of their sisters.

For more experienced migrant workers such as Babamurad and several of his extended kin who were working together as a 26-men construction brigade, the pay in Kazakhstan is lower than in Russia but its proximity makes it more convenient. All are ethnic Tajiks from the same mahalla in Bukhara, hired by a sub-contractor through their connections in Russia to build a mosque in Karaganda and cottages for Astana’s wealthy. Several of them have been working in various cities in Russia over the past 7 years, where ‘work is plentiful, but so are the racists and skinheads.’ The absence of overt racism and the relative ease of forming connections with the locals on the basis of shared Islamic practices and linguistic affinity are appealing to the initiates as well as to the veteran migrants.

Notwithstanding these positives and its assiduously cultivated image as a peaceful and tolerant multiethnic state with a long tradition of hospitality, Kazakhstan is neither a migrant-welcoming nor a migrant-seeking state. The term ‘migrant’ or ‘migration’, as used in law, official statements and media reports refers to ethnic Kazakh returnees - oralman - and to the internal rural migrants to the major cities. Even the oralman, who are assured of Kazakhstani citizenship and settlement assistance, face innumerable problems in negotiating the legal-institutional and bureaucratic obstacles in formalizing their status.

While the ruling establishment, policy experts and academics pay scant attention to the growing number of labour migrants, the urban residents as well as the media tend to lump together all categories of migrants: the oralman who don’t speak Russian well, the migrants from rural areas living in the city without registration (propiska), and the gastarbeitery, clustered around construction sites or bazaars.

'With its widespread reputation for ethnic stability and tolerance, Kazakhstan is seen as a more hospitable place than Russia for fellow Central Asian migrants, particularly the young, first time migrants.'

But unlike the oralman and the internal migrants, who at least have formal legal rights and entitlements as citizens, the Central Asian migrant workers lack a legal status, rights or social protection which renders them most vulnerable to exploitation, extortion by officials, arbitrary fines and deportations. Here’s how an article in a local media describes them, with the aim of highlighting their vulnerability:

‘Gastarbaiter - an ill-shaven person with a pale look, and smell of cheap deodorant. [This] labour migrant is shabbily-dressed with a scared look. He’s afraid of everything: cold, police, dark streets on which well-fed lads walk with hands tucked in their pockets, ever-so watchful babushki [Rn. grannies] in the bazaars who suspect a thief or a terrorist in the face of a foreign nationality. He’s vulnerable from all corners because he has no rights, is cut off from his homeland and doesn’t know the laws of a foreign land.’

Modern architecture in Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan, is the best evidence of the country’s economic boom. The local construction industry there relies heavily on the migrant work force (photo: www.flickr.com, peretzp's photostream).

In contrast to the juridical category of Gastarbeiter in Germany, who were brought in legally as contract workers for a fixed term and offered legal and economic protection, these migrants have no job contract or work permit. The typical Turkish Gastarbeiter, on the other hand, was alone, facing socio-cultural isolation and lacking any proficiency in German, whereas most migrants from the near abroad either have some personal connections or quickly form these, and are able to mingle with the locals on the basis of cultural-linguistic and religious affinity.

The migrants who agreed to meet me were evidently those who had networks or ‘friends’, and thus more protected than the vast majority of the more vulnerable migrants who work in near complete isolation from the locals, shun any contact with strangers and strive to remain invisible to the state. They acknowledged the help and goodwill extended by the locals – be it the employer, intermediary or a business partner – and mentioned how they together had to find ways of dealing with the stringent regulations preventing them from working and avoid the gaze of the police and officials.

Legal and bureaucratic hurdles

Kazakhstan adopted a new Migration Law in August 2011, after considerable delay but without adequate public discussion. It identifies three key directions and objectives of migration: 1] facilitating repatriation, settlement, and integration of the oralman, denoting an ethno-national vision; 2] maintenance of national security and prevention of illegal migration, reflecting a ‘securitization’ perspective; 3] management of internal migratory processes from rural to urban areas, particularly resettlement of citizens residing in ecologically depressed regions to other regions, which addresses issues of social welfare and equal distribution. The law also contains quota provisions for highly-skilled foreign workers. But the quota set is miniscule: it was set at 66,300 in 2009, then reduced by a third in 2011; it avoids any reference to the shortages in various other sectors; and the mechanisms and implementation remain deficient.

The law is also silent about the status of the CIS labour migrants who enter the country legally under the visa-free regime, indicating the purpose of their visit as ‘personal’ on the migration card when evidently looking for paid work for the duration of their stay. Such migrants are required to register within 5 days, may remain only for the authorized period of stay (reduced from 90 to 30 days after political instability in Kyrgyzstan in April 2010) and cannot work.

The apparently simple task of visiting the local Migration Department, filling out the registration form and supplying the address of a temporary residence with the name of the property owner may take a few hours or a few days. Most migrants are deterred from going in person to register by the fear that the authorities will deliberately look for mistakes on the form, demand further documents, question them about their intent to visit Kazakhstan or use the information they provide to monitor them. They often fail to grant the registration within the time limit so that they can demand bribes. ‘It is much easier to pay the required 3000-5000 tenge ($20-$33) to an intermediary or a friend than to spend the precious work time in the queue and to risk not being able to register in time,’ said a migrant from Bishkek, highlighting what is a widespread practice.

'The migrants working in the bazaars as traders, shopkeepers, in catering or cleaning jobs tend to be protected by their employers.'

The migrants working in the bazaars as traders, shopkeepers, in catering or cleaning jobs tend to be protected by their employers. A majority of those working in the multiethnic mosaic of Kazakhstan’s bazaars are of non-Kazakh nationality. Alia, an oralman who came to Almaty from Tashkent in the late 1990s, sells tea and pirozhki [Rn. pies] in Almaty’s barakholka [Rn. flea market] bazaar. She agreed to be my interlocutor and introduced me to other migrants.

I asked her why other nationalities and migrants, and not Kazakhs, are so visible. Her response: ‘Of course all these stalls are owned by Kazakhs [Kazakhstani citizens] who rent them out to others. Legally, only a Kazakhstani national may own the stalls and work there. So all those [migrants] selling goods are neither the official owners nor employees. And virtually all the police, migration officials, those in charge of migrants’ registration, tax collection, health and safety inspection, compliance with hygiene and sanitary standards, and those organizing raids and checks are Kazakhs.’

Typically, the legal owner of a stall in the bazaar, who can only be a Kazakhstani national or permanent resident, leases it to migrants or non-citizens. He or she arranges registration and other relevant documentation for a set fee of 3000-5000 tenge (depending on citizenship and other factors), helps with obtaining housing and offers overall protection from the police.

Gulnara, whose husband is a policeman, owns three retail outlets in the barakholka. One is leased to a Kyrgyz woman who, together with members of her extended family (shuttling back and forth between Almaty and Bishkek to manage their legal status), sells garments made in Bishkek. Her husband drives a ‘taxi’ between Almaty and Bishkek and also carries passports of fellow Kyrgyz migrants to secure a new migration card. The other two are leased to Kyrgyz and Uzbek migrants selling fruit and vegetables. Gulnara is a ‘fixer’ who recognises that her business interests and the well-being of migrants are interlinked: she also ran a marriage agency that helped migrants to obtain citizenship or residency in Kazakhstan through marriage.

Alisher, an Uzbek from Andijan, is a contractor with permanent residency in Kazakhstan (through marriage to a Kazakhstani citizen) and has opted to retain his Uzbek passport. He frequently travels to Andijan to recruit construction workers. ‘These are my family,’ he said as he introduced me to the young Uzbek men on the construction site. ‘Are there no Kazakh workers?’ I asked him. He laughed and said, ‘Kazakhs don’t know how to work!’ Connections with the police enable him to bring workers from Uzbekistan and protect them. ‘Work keeps them away from Islam and narcotics,’ he averred.

Avoiding ‘illegality’

Kazakhstan’s Migration Law defines an ‘illegal migrant’ simply as a person who has ‘violated the laws of the Republic of Kazakhstan pertaining to migration,’ offering no further elaboration. Migrants are routinely charged for violating terms of stay under Article 394, Part 1 of the Code ‘On Violations by foreign citizens or stateless people of rules of stay in Kazakhstan’ and deported for repeated violations under Part II of the same code. They negotiate the one-month limit by leaving the country to re-enter on a new migration card with a new one-month permit.

'An entire informal industry of acquiring documentation has emerged: train conductors facilitate the acquisition of new migration cards for those who have overstayed their authorised term, bus and taxi drivers or other intermediaries carry documents back and forth with the necessary stamp or to facilitate the safe passage home of a person who has overstayed his registration period.'  

Sharof, from Tajikistan, goes to Bishkek every month together with many Kyrgyz in order to obtain a new entry stamp. Many now find it is easier and cheaper to pay someone to take their passport to the border for a new entry stamp. An entire informal industry of acquiring documentation has emerged: train conductors facilitate the acquisition of new migration cards for those who have overstayed their authorised term, bus and taxi drivers or other intermediaries carry documents back and forth with the necessary stamp or to facilitate the safe passage home of a person who has overstayed his registration period.

Many simply overstay – the construction job needs to be completed in order to collect the payment, the documents are in possession of the employer or middlemen, they may lose their job and pay for the work completed so far if they leave. Migrants who overstay can now pay an ‘administrative fine’ of about 15,000 tenge ($100), giving them a 12 day grace period within which to leave the country. Failing this, a deportation order is issued. Some choose to pay the fine in order to maximise the term of their stay and enjoy some provisional immunity from deportation. Others simply risk it in the hope of reaching a ‘settlement’ at the border.

The Department of Migration Police organises frequent inspections and raids to track down ‘illegal’ migrants and releases the data to the press. Anuar, a Dungan from Bishkek noted, ‘We know very well that they are given orders from above, need to impress their superiors on how well they’re doing their job, and that they need to earn extra money,’ adding ‘they especially come before festival times or some big event such as this summit [reference to the OSCE summit in Astana in December 2010], when they deported some 500 from the bazaars. But they weren’t really deported – just sent to Karaganda for the weekend – and all came back the next week.’

Rasul, a Tajik migrant who has now regularised his status by marrying a Kazakh, reported how raids are carried out: ‘They either come as a band when an official raid is organised or come in a group of two to four to inspect..…they always target the most vulnerable ones. those who are ignorant, inexperienced or simply not very smart.’

What next?

Almost all the people I interviewed in Almaty and Astana claimed that their documents were ‘in order.’ Further conversations revealed that virtually everyone had procured an official status through ‘friends’, intermediaries or employers by paying a fee or making other informal deals. These reveal how a complex web of personal connections, strategies and informal arrangements enable the migrants to acquire the relevant documentation to maintain their status as a ‘visitor’ and keep their real status invisible to the law. Every lacuna in the law, as well as every restriction imposed by the law, is dealt with by relying on informal connections and personal networks and resorting to quasi-legal practices.

'Migrants have a very clear understanding of their niche in the labour market and the jobs that Kazakhstani citizens are unwilling or unable to perform.' 

The state remains trapped in a self-limiting discourse within the framework of ethno-nationalism and the ‘securitization’ of cross border mobility. This prevents it from addressing the complexities of a rapidly growing economy and adopting appropriate labour and migration policies. The likely result will be the further erosion of its ability to regulate or manage migration flows and the informal labour market. In this way the state has covertly opted to let migrant workers remain invisible and illegible while utilizing the ‘cheap’ labour they provide. To acknowledge the scale of undocumented or informal labour migration would require an obligation to enact appropriate legislation and regulatory measures.

Migrants have a very clear understanding of their niche in the labour market and the jobs that Kazakhstani citizens are unwilling or unable to perform. ‘There’s so much yet to build, so much work to finish…if only they let us stay for 6 months rather than making us go here and there,’…. ‘who will feed the Astanites if we don’t work here.…?’ is what some of the Uzbeks working in Astana said.

As urban Kazakhstani citizens increasingly rely on the migrants to perform so many of their housekeeping functions, it may not be too soon to conclude that many of them will establish at least a temporary abode for themselves in Kazakhstan and subvert the very notion of being gastarbaitery.

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[1] The GDP for 2011 for Tajikistan was $6.52 billion, Uzbekistan $45.36 billion, and Kyrgyzstan $6.4 billion. Migrant remittances constitute 48% of Tajikistan’s GDP, at least a third of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP and an estimated 30% of Uzbekistan’s GDP.

Since the collapse of the USSR, various attempts have been made to (re)integrate the newly independent republics, but they have proved largely ineffective. These initiatives have been seen as vehicles for Russia’s traditional dominance of the region, expressed in a mix of crude power and institutional weakness, and wrapped up in historical discourses.

The formation of the Eurasian Customs Union (ECU) would appear to change this. While its economic rationale remains debatable, the ECU has been set up as a rule-based organization conforming to World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations and modern international norms. At the same time, it is clearly seen by Russia as a vehicle for reintegrating the post-Soviet space and offering a modernizing alternative to the EU.

‘Eurasian Customs Union …. is clearly seen by Russia as a vehicle for reintegrating the post-Soviet space and offering a modernizing alternative to the EU.’

This is particularly significant for Ukraine, where Russia has been actively promoting the ECU as an alternative to the EU integration mechanism, the Association Agreement. Given the apparent viability of the ECU, this rivalry is likely to grow and will require other international organisations, such as the EU, to adjust their strategies.

The Eurasian Customs Union: continuity or change?

The main significance of the ECU is its departure from previous initiatives for integration in the post-Soviet space.

The first and best-known of these was the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which proved a mere vehicle for channelling the orderly disintegration of the Soviet Union, rather than the re-integration of its former republics. By the mid-1990s Russia’s focus shifted to investing in smaller groupings and the origins of the ECU date back to 1995, when Russia signed a treaty for the formation of a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan (Kyrgyzstan joined in 1996 and Tajikistan in 1997). This initiative retained the ineffective CIS institutional formula. Putin’s accession to the presidency, however, added a new impetus to the project and in 2000 the grouping was transformed into a fully-fledged international organization, the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), although many of the old problems persisted, putting its effectiveness in question.

However, the middle of the 2000s saw the emergence of a vanguard group of states. The leaders of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan decided to set up a customs union in 2006, and swiftly established a Customs Union Commission as a permanent executive body. The group launched a common customs tariff in January 2010; in July 2010, the common customs territory was declared and the Customs Union Code, the key regulatory document, adopted. In July 2011, internal physical border controls were eliminated between the member states.

‘…the member states aim to progress towards an economic union with a common market of goods, capital and labour, and the operation of common macroeconomic, competition, financial and other regulation, including the harmonization of policies such as energy and transport.’

Their ambitions did not stop there: the member states aim to progress towards an economic union with a common market of goods, capital and labour, and the operation of common macroeconomic, competition, financial and other regulation, including the harmonization of policies such as energy and transport. This Eurasian Economic Union is due to be launched in January 2015.

Integration with a difference?

While we need to retain a degree of healthy scepticism about the transition to the Eurasian Economic Union, developments so far signal a pivotal change in integration patterns. The ECU offers a forward looking integration model that is a clear improvement on previous initiatives in terms of both design and implementation. The Union operates in the context of Russia’s accession to the WTO: while Belarus and Kazakhstan remain outside it, Russia’s accession protocol is designed to become an integral part of the legal framework of the ECU. So the Union represents a modernized economic regime, very different from previous attempts at regional integration within the post-Soviet space.

Undoubtedly the question remains whether Russia will be bound by this multilateral regime. Previous regional groupings were very asymmetric, allowing Russia to use its superior bargaining power and avoid being bound by potentially costly decisions. Yet there are indications that Russia may be prepared to move towards greater multilateralism and, at least in theory, it can be outvoted by its partners on certain types of decision.

It is clear that much of the progress so far has been dependent on the personalities of the leaders in the three countries (Putin, Nazarbayev and Lukashenko), making the union vulnerable to any leadership changes. But despite the reliance on personalities, the ECU is different from its predecessors not only in terms of the political will that is driving it forward, but also, crucially, in terms of its institutional effectiveness. The removal of internal borders, despite transitional periods in relation to the Russia–Kazakhstan border, symbolizes this. This means that the ECU cannot be reversed without cost. It is likely to stay.

This ambitious deepening of the ECU has coincided with a drive to widen it by making it a ‘centre of attraction’. Russia has viewed the ECU as a core for the wider integration of its ‘near abroad’, and in Kyrgyzstan, for example, accession to the ECU is high on the political agenda. But the most important battleground is Ukraine.

'This ambitious deepening of the ECU has coincided with a drive to widen it by making it a ‘centre of attraction’. Russia has viewed the ECU as a core for the wider integration of its ‘near abroad’, and in Kyrgyzstan, for example, accession to the ECU is high on the political agenda. But the most important battleground is Ukraine.'

This is not the first time Russia has sought to include Ukraine in a regional integration initiative. But it is the approach to Ukraine that illustrates the shift in Russian policy most clearly, because it is presenting the ECU as a ‘governance-based’ vehicle in direct competition with the EU.

Russia’s export of governance in the ‘shared neighbourhood’

The ECU is the vehicle through which Russia is increasingly engaging in ‘normative rivalry’ with the EU in the so-called ‘shared neighbourhood’ (i.e. Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia). Russia has begun to compete in a domain where until now the EU has exercised a monopoly.

The European Union, which launched the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the Eastern Partnership in the 2000s, has been seen (and regards itself) as the primary source of modernization and improved governance in the post-Soviet space. It promotes a rule-based, future-orientated economic integration regime designed in accordance with its own governance model via an offer of Association Agreements, Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTA), Visa Facilitation Agreements and full visa liberalization in the long term – but not membership.

The DCFTA goes beyond a ‘standard’ free trade agreement, entailing major changes in the regulatory framework of the country associated with the EU in a wide range of areas. The expected benefits of such an agreement are capabilities so far lacking in most of the eastern neighbours: the ability to sustain reforms or a degree of confidence in the economy thanks to improved domestic institutions and system of economic governance. The EU has offered Association Agreements, with the DCFTA, to all post-Soviet countries in Europe which are also members of the WTO (i.e. Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia).

Ukraine

Russia has endeavoured to undermine the rationale for Ukraine’s political association and free trade agreement with the EU. Ukraine was the first country to conclude negotiations on an Association Agreement (although it is yet to be signed and ratified). In 2011 Russia came up with its own offer, presenting a forceful economic counterargument.

'The EU has offered Association Agreements, with the DCFTA, to all post-Soviet countries in Europe which are also members of the WTO (i.e. Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia).'

Joining the ECU would apparently benefit Ukraine to the extent of $219 billion of increased GDP between 2011 and 2030 (i.e. $12.2 billion per annum at 2010 prices). Joining the ECU would allow Ukraine to retain access to the Russian market, particularly for its agricultural products. As Putin put it, ‘No one is letting Ukraine in; we are.’

So far the EU has not responded in any concerted way to the anti-DCFTA campaign in Ukraine. It is no doubt relying on its own ‘power of attraction’ and Ukraine’s long-standing ‘European choice’. Recurring fatigue and disillusionment with the country mean that the EU has largely failed to promote this flagship and pioneering agreement effectively in Ukraine.

Russia, meanwhile, is not relying solely on promised economic gains for Ukraine, and is backing up its invitation with a traditional ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach. The incentive comes in the form of a reduced price for gas, benefiting Ukraine by up to $8 billion per annum. The penalty, on the other hand, would consist of economic sanctions against Ukraine, which would be primarily justified in terms of the negative implications for Russia of the EU–Ukraine DCFTA. Russia is hinting at deploying a range of mechanisms to ‘persuade’ Ukraine of the ‘benefits’ of the ECU. This reinforces the perception of the initiative as a vehicle for projecting Russian power, particularly as the Russian approach also makes it more difficult to resist the ‘offer’.

What punitive measures could Russia introduce? These could range from applying anti-dumping tariffs and limiting imports of Ukrainian food products through the application of phytosanitary standards for plant and plant products, to lowering the quotas for steel pipes – a key export for Ukraine. Selective, targeted sanctions have already been repeatedly deployed by Russia against states such as Moldova, Ukraine or Georgia, which are deemed to be pursuing unfriendly policies.

But how far could Russia go in ‘punishing’ Ukraine? Russia’s membership of the WTO precludes it from using certain punitive trade measures, and Ukraine, as an existing member, could resort to WTO mechanisms to address politically-motivated trade sanctions. However, Russia may take extra-legal measures, in contravention of WTO rules. Ultimately, it is difficult for Ukraine to make a choice based on a prediction of Russia’s propensity to break the rules of the organization to which it has just acceded.

This campaign complicates Ukraine’s already difficult relations with the EU. The signing of the Association Agreement has been put on ice owing to the deterioration of democratic standards in Ukraine, as evidenced above all by the political prosecution of opposition figures such as former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. These prosecutions have been loudly condemned by EU institutions and member states as a clear breach of democratic standards and the rule of law.

By contrast, the ECU does not require its current and prospective member states to conform to any democratic standards. Ukraine is being invited to join with no political conditions attached, and given that Russia’s offer comes at a sensitive moment in Ukrainian–EU relations, it represents a significant counterweight to the EU’s democratic demands.

The campaign to persuade Ukraine to abandon the Association Agreement with the EU could be seen as a short-lived attempt to attract the country at a time when the authorities have declared their interest in concluding the Agreement rather than opting for the ECU. However, this is not just a matter of short-term choice but also a longer-term conflict of interests. Even if and when the Association Agreement is concluded, its implementation will be prolonged, costly and highly sensitive for Ukraine in both political and economic terms. Ukraine’s dependence on the Russian market means that the country has to adapt simultaneously to two competitive integration regimes, the EU and the ECU.

'Ukraine’s dependence on the Russian market means that the country has to adapt simultaneously to two competitive integration regimes, the EU and the ECU.'

This context gives Russia plenty of opportunities to offer incentives and disincentives to slow down or jeopardize the implementation of the Association Agreement. Integration with the EU is certainly premised on the lengthening of the time horizons of Ukraine’s political class, essential if the country is to embark on the political and economic reforms that would generate benefits in the medium to long term (5–10 years). Russia is well positioned to offer beneficial mutual conditions, changing the stakes and shortening the time frame.  

Conclusion

While EU–Russian relations have remained static in the last decade, the same cannot be said of their respective relations with the countries in the ‘shared neighbourhood’. Recently, Russia has been putting a premium on rule-based economic integration with robust institutional regimes. It is, however,  highly uncertain whether such a rapid pace of integration can be maintained, to allow the  projected creation of the Eurasian Economic Union by 2015.

Yet what has been achieved so far provides a firm institutional basis for economic integration. As such it means that a viable form of advanced economic integration has emerged in the post-Soviet space, in direct competition to that offered by the EU, and has, moreover, moved Russia into rivalry with the EU in a domain in which the EU has not yet been challenged on the European continent.

For more detailed analysis see R. Dragneva and K. Wolczuk, 'Russia, the Eurasian Customs Union and the EU: Cooperation, Stagnation or Rivalry?' (August 6, 2012). Chatham House Briefing Paper REP BP 2012/01 available at http://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/papers/view/185165

Since independence in 1991, Kazakhstan’s ‘southern capital’, Almaty, has engaged in fairly extensive efforts at ‘Kazakhising’ local toponyms. Now the central arteries of the city, once part of the old Soviet planimetry, display ‘genuinely’ Kazakh names. Streets once bearing the names of Bolshevik icons like Kalinin and Kirov are now named after legendary heroes (Kabanbai Batyr) or other figures from Kazakhstan’s nomadic past (Bogenbai Batyr).

'The local rumour is that the ‘Kazakhization’ of Furmanova ulitsa has been put on hold until the passing of Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, when this leafy street in Almaty will be renamed after the first President of post-Soviet Kazakhstan.'

Surprisingly, however, the street named after Bolshevik writer Dmitry Furmanov has retained its original Soviet name. The local rumour is that the ‘Kazakhization’ of Furmanova ulitsa has been put on hold until the passing of Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, when this leafy street in Almaty will be renamed after the first President of post-Soviet Kazakhstan.

Political speculation

The example of Furmanova ulitsa offers a fitting metaphor to describe the sense of political stagnation that pervades today’s Kazakhstan. A sense that much-needed change has been postponed until the inevitable, though not yet imminent, leadership change.

Externally, the Kazakhstani government continues to promote its image of internal dynamism and international leadership. Success in obtaining the rotating chairmanships of prestigious multinational organisations such as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and OSCE is treated as an indicator of Kazakhstan’s international vitality.Data on GDP growth and economic vigour are often offered in support of this narrative.

However, when the situation is observed internally, it seems that Kazakhstan’s politico-economic evolution has definitely entered an intermediate stage, in which the (authoritarian) impetus of the 1990s and the 2000s has been replaced by the immobility typical of the end of an era.

The makings of a political cul-de-sac

Virtually every political conversation going on in the country touches sooner or later on the critical issue of what will happen when Nazarbayev leaves power. And debates on the President’s (political and biological) longevity are usually accompanied by speculations on the existence of potential arrangements for a pre-determined succession.

It was through this very prism that commentators analysed the reshuffle of late September 2012, when outgoing Prime Minister Karim Masimov was appointed to run the Presidential Administration. Similarly, in December 2011, the dismissal of Timur Kulibayev (one of Nazarbayev’s sons-in-law) from the chairmanship of Samruk-Kazyna, Kazakhstan’s sovereign fund, stimulated much debate about the importance of family connections for the presidential succession.

'In Kazakhstan, as in the rest of post-Soviet Central Asia, power can be considered as the function of one’s proximity to the President.'

In Kazakhstan, as in the rest of post-Soviet Central Asia, power can be considered as the function of one’s proximity to the President. Masimov’s career trajectory can thus be regarded as a significant promotion, and Kulibayev’s marginalisation as a weakening of his power position.

The country remains locked in all kinds of speculation, periodically reinforced by news of Nazarbayev’s failing health. All the while, political, economic and social decisions still have to be taken. and Kazakhstan’s foreign policy machinery still has to identify new ways to increase the regime’s international legitimacy. The junction that the Kazakhstani regime has entered is thus, in effect, a political cul-de-sac. For the moment, high oil prices continue to support the Kazakhstani economy and sustain record GDP growth, though there are no guarantees that will continue.

It is possible to identify the precise moment at which Kazakhstan entered this phase of possibly irreversible decline, and that is Nazarbayev’s decision to run in the snap presidential election of early 2011. By entering his third decade at the helm, Nazarbayev, who turned 72 last July, manifested his intention of remaining in power indefinitely.

'Kazakhstan’s decision-making mechanisms appear to have lost much of their momentum, leaving the country stagnating in both political and social terms'

He thus established an invisible link between his mortality and the power position of the elite that supported him throughout the post-Soviet era.

Dealing with opposition

Two things mark the post-election landscape: the appearance of a more stable regime and the neutralisation of every form of internal opposition. The neutralisation happened quickly, and targeted both discontent within the elite, as with the radicalisation of society, which in the recent months had come to be viewed as even more dangerous.

The ongoing struggle for labour rights in the Mangystau oblast [region]obviously represents the most visible aspect of the radicalisation of Kazakhstani politics. At the same time, a substantive part of the dissent has been channelled through more violent outbursts, which have been presented as conclusive evidence of Islamist resurgence in Kazakhstan. The country, in recent times, experienced its very first suicide bombing (Aktobe, July 2011), another deadly attack was carried out in Atyrau in late October 2011, while, on 12 November 2011, a more brutal attack claimed several lives in the southern city of Taraz.

The Nazarbayev regime’s response was implacable: repression was adopted as the uniform reaction to these very different expressions of discontent. The state’s brutal response to the demonstrations of oil workers in Zhanaozen, and the draconian law on religious rights introduced in the aftermath of the 2011 attacks are hence two sides of the same coin. They reveal the struggling outlook of a stagnating regime that is no longer capable of effective policy-making and has resorted to classic authoritarian methods in its dealing with the wider population. This sense of decline is perfectly captured by the images coming from Zhanaozen, where, on the day in which the country was celebrating the 20th anniversary of independence (16 December 2011), Kazakhstani armed forces opened fire on citizens demonstrating in the street.

An Islamist threat?

There is, however, more than brutal repression and punishing legislation to the confrontational tendencies that have emerged in Kazakhstani politics. The 2011 wave of terrorist attacks allowed the government to capitalise increasingly on the population’s sense of insecurity. This consideration became crucially important in the stagnating panorama of post-2011 Kazakhstan, with the regime flagging up an ‘Islamist threat’ while outlining its plans for tighter security.

This is a very different reaction from that of Uzbek President Islam Karimov to the events of 9/11: he embarked upon a similar campaign to increase the country’s international prestige. In Kazakhstan, however, the alleged resurgence of radical Islam has served Nazarbayev and his associates in their efforts to recuperate some of the internal legitimacy lost in Zhanaozen. As a consequence, more than half of the Kazakhstani mosques are now monitored through CCTV systems, the regime continues to show unease at foreign-trained religious leaders, and a fully-fledged scare campaign is underway (with media, especially radio, increasingly denouncing the oddities of Wahhabism and other extreme interpretations of the Islamic credo).

'The regime’s systematic refusal to engage in political dialogue and its deliberate plans to marginalise any unsanctioned manifestation of Islamic sentiment have emerged as two pillars of the leadership’s domestic position.'

While there is no conclusive evidence regarding the genuine radicalisation of Kazakhstani Islam, there can be virtually no doubt about the existence of a concerted scare campaign against Islam. An example might be useful here: immediately after the discovery of the bodies of 14 Kazakhstani border guards and one ranger in the Almaty oblast (May 2012), local sources attributed responsibility for the murder to a cell of Saudi Salafis aiming to sabotage the Kazakhstan-China relationship. Although the killing was later attributed to the homicidal outburst of another border guard, an aura of mystery still shrouds public perception of the event, which continues occasionally to be described as a manifestation of Islamic violence in Kazakhstan.

The regime’s systematic refusal to engage in political dialogue with the opposition and its deliberate plans to marginalise any unsanctioned manifestation of Islamic sentiment have hence emerged as two pillars of the leadership’s domestic position. This intransigence, in all likelihood, will continue to characterise Kazakhstani governance until the end of the Nazarbayev era.

Kazakhstan’s future outlook, in this sense, does not appear bright, as the rapid deterioration of whatever little internal dialogue had survived 20 years of fictitious liberalisation is now exacerbating the socio-political stagnation into which the regime slid in 2011. As in the case of Furmanovaulitsa, change for Kazakhstan is postponed to a later date.

When Peter the Great built St Petersburg, Russia looked firmly towards the West. Conversely, Russia’s eastern provinces – often considered peripheral – stay connected with China and Asia. Geography is one thing, but strategic choice is quite another. During the Cold War,  strategic trenches were dug between the US and Russia’s predecessor, the Soviet Union. In this scenario, China was the minor third partner pivoting between the USSR and the US. Now the question has moved on to instead how Russia in the years to come will orient itself, towards East or West, in the growing power game focussed on China.  

Strategic alliances

Russia will choose from any number of different and opposing visions for Russia. In his book Strategic Vision, American geo-strategistBrzezinski argues that Russia should form part of a more ‘vigorous West’, suggesting that long-term strategic planners in the US and the EU should seek to enlarge the West by including Russia. He is of the opinion that Russian thinkers and leaders need to understand that their country is much closer to the EU and the US than to China. 

‘Russian ‘nostalgia for a leading global role’ leads it to conclude that the relative decline of the US would be to its advantage.

Yet it is Russian ‘nostalgia for a leading global role’ that makes it incapable of seeing long-term on this and leads it to conclude that the relative decline of the US would be to its advantage.  In such a strategic reading, the partnership with China will probably be temporary because, in the long run, China will overshadow Russia. Thus, Russia should not be satisfied with siding with China in their ‘coalition of the unwilling’.  

In the same vein, a European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) report argued that Russia was ‘post-BRIC’, meaning that it was not attaining the booming economic standards of the other emerging powers, particularly China. Others have taken the argument further: right-wing US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher suggests forging an alliance with Russia, Japan and India for the purpose of containing the Chinese threat. 

Brzezinski’s thinking is far-sighted. Yet official US policy doesn’t necessarily reflect it and the earlier ‘reset’ with Russia and the later ‘pivot’ towards Asia were thought up in their own self-contained strategic bubbles.  In the EU, this type of thinking is quite absent from policy: Russia is narrowly viewed through a bilateral lens and there is no calibrating of policy towards the position of either Russia or the EU in the Pacific Century.  

Might superpower hubris lead Russia on a one-way track to becoming China's junior partner? Photo: (c) RIA Novosti/Sergei Guneev

On the other side of the coin (and the world), Yan Xuetong, one of China’s geo-strategic hawks, proposes in the ECFR debate book, China 3.0, that China and Russia should form a strategic alliance. There is already a large overlap in their world view, as can be detected in China and Russia’s ‘veto entente’ with its joint track record of vetoes in the Security Council (Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and Syria). Like Brzezinski in the US, Yan Xuetong doesn’t represent the official government line, which is more cautious. This move would be a big change for the Chinese because official policy on relations with Russia is informed by the principle of non-alignment. What could bring official policy closer to Yan’s viewpoint would be a move towards a containment strategy and China would need increase its number of allies. Actually, Yan Xuetong thinks the current Chinese policy has already failed to yield results and argues for the necessity of forming this alliance to ‘shift the world from unipolarity to bipolarity’, in short as a means to bring down the US faster  

Russia and China

The subtlety in Yan’s wording deserves our attention. He writes that the Russia-China alliance will bring about bipolarity, not multipolarity. Does he mean that an alliance with Russia would help elevate China to equal position with the US, rather than make Russia and other powers into equal poles in a more multipolar system?  If Yan’s use of bipolarity is to be interpreted that way, it would mean an instrumental alliance that helps China take the last step into the G-2 or bipolar order, leaving Russia behind in the second tier. 

‘Russia’s major strategic focus is still towards its Western partners, which still make up half its trade, but there is a growing realisation of the need to turn towards the Asian economic power house.’ 

This possible outcome of a strong Russia-China relationship worries some people in Russia. Sergey Karaganov reflects in an op-ed that Russia could become ‘an appendage of China – a warehouse of resources’. To avoid that fate, the country needs a larger-scale Asia strategy, which Karaganov coins as ‘project Siberia.’ This would ensure that investments filter into Russia’s remote Asian regions, not just from China but more broad-based, so that economic development simultaneously guarantees Russian sovereignty. 

These two extremes show the pull factor from West and East on Russia. Actual policy tends to end up in the middle ground, described by some as lack of strategic choice and others as necessary strategic flexibility 

Russia’s major strategic focus is still towards its Western partners, which still make up half its trade, but there is a growing realisation of the need to turn towards the Asian economic power house. Russia has joined the main multilateral institutions from the East Asia Summit, Six Party Talks on North Korea to Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), but the Russian impact in strategic Asian affairs is still limited. For example, SCO, set up by China and Russia jointly with Central Asia, reflects the gradual power erosion in China’s favour, as analyst Pavel Salin notes.  This was evident in 2008 when Russia called for the organisation to anoint its incursion into Georgia and for the establishment of two new autonomous republics (Abkhazia and South Ossetia). China, seeing repercussions for its own Taiwan-situation, blocked this by clever back-door diplomacy with Central Asian states.

Still, official policy is much more anti-Western than China-sceptic, as political scientist Igor Zevelev points out. For Russia, joining up with China to put a spoke in the wheels of the US seems more important.  China’s military growth and more muscular policy with its neighbours have not had a profound effect on Russia. In opinion polls on potential adversaries, the US outpaces China by 20%, so China can’t spook the public in Russia as it can in the US. ‘Russia continues to view China as an Asian neighbour and key economic partner, but not as a new global power’ says Zevelev. 

Russian thinking isn’t without its concerns about an uncertain future with China. Editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs JournalFyodor Lukyanov, for example, highlighted the risks for Russia ‘in the growth of China’s economic potential and international status’. In a similar spirit of hedging bets, the Russian Navy participated for the first time in the US-hosted Pacific Rim Exercise 2012 (RIMPAC). 

In the end, Russia might not pivot anywhere, thus making neither American nor Chinese geostrategic dreams come true. Russia could remain in a strategic ostrich position between East and West in the years ahead. If this strategic flexibility is well orchestrated, it could turn out to give Russia short-term leverage both in the East and the West. Yet there is also a danger that when, and if, it looks up and East, it will see that its Asian neighbour China is a global power in a league of its own, a realisation which will have serious implications for Russia.       

Astana, December 2010. The OSCE summit is approaching an inconclusive end. In preparing the meeting’s final document, the parties seem incapable of reaching consensus on any of the several drafts, leaving the Kazakhstani government – the summit’s host – facing one of its worst nightmares: failure on the international stage. Just as the proceedings are drawing to a close, Silvio Berlusconi – then Italy’s Prime Minister – intervenes to negotiate a last-minute communiqué on ‘security in Eurasia.’ Pushing his colleagues to endorse the declaration, the Italian PM remarks that the document has the preliminary approval of the elder statesmen in both the West and the East – Berlusconi himself and Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan. Rather quickly, the plenary assembly approves the Astana Declaration; Berlusconi returns home to face his many political troubles; and Kazakhstan can chalk up another achievement in its long-term search for international legitimacy.

The Shalabayeva affair

Until recently, the Astana summit represented a rare public manifestation of one of the worst kept secrets in international affairs: the dangerous liaison between Berlusconi and Nazarbayev. In the last six weeks, however, the leaders’ personal ties have become the subject of public debate, when the Italian government facilitated the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of family members of Nazarbayev’s principal opponent, Mukhtar Ablyazov.

On 29 May, Ablyazov’s wife, Alma Shalabayeva, and her six-year old daughter, were asleep in a villa in Rome; they were woken up in the middle of the night by a group of masked and armed men – variously said to be Italian intelligence agents or forces from the Ministry of the Interior – who said that they were looking for Mukhtar Ablyazov. Not finding him, they forcibly removed his wife and daughter from the house at gunpoint; and held them in custody pending deportation. Following a remarkably speedy expulsion process, on 31 May mother and daughter were forced by the Italian police onto a private jet and deported to Kazakhstan, on a special flight provided by the Kazakhstani government, with the Kazakhstani ambassador to Italy on board. The Italian authorities claimed there were irregularities in Shalabayeva’s documents. However, Shalabeyeva’s lawyers have since provided evidence that her documents were legitimate; Mrs Shalabayeva and her daughter were living in Italy under an EU residence permit issued by the government of Latvia. They are currently being held in precautionary custody in Almaty.

The arrest of the family of a Kazakhstani opposition politician in the middle of Rome - and subsequent expatriation - raise serious concerns about how the EU deals with Central Asian dictatorships. Photo: ablyazov.org

On July 12th,  the Italian government retroactively rescinded the expulsion order, in belated recognition that the forced return had violated Italian law.

A foreign policy disaster

Courtesy of the Italian government – or the Italian Police, if you believe Angelino Alfano, Italy’s Deputy PM, Minister of Interior Affairs and political secretary of Berlusconi’s party – Nazarbayev now holds a very valuable trump card in his political fight against Mukhtar Ablyazov. The Italian press, is demanding Alfano’s resignation, and has quickly identified Silvio Berlusconi as the political mastermind of the Shalabayeva affair, a foreign policy disaster that is now threatening the already shaky foundations of the government headed by Enrico Letta.

Cosy relationships

The Shalabayeva affair, however, represents only the tip of the iceberg in the murky connections between Nazarbayev and Berlusconi, who share a fondness for conducting state business on the basis of long-standing friendships and personal associations with foreign leaders.

These personal political relationships have determined Kazakhstan’s approach to Central Asian politics throughout the period in which first-generation leaders ruled the other regional states. The long-standing friendship between Nazarbayev and the late Saparmurat Niyazov dominated Kazakhstani-Turkmenistani relations; and Nazarbayev’s personal ties to Askar Akaev similarly dominated the interaction between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, until the regime change in Bishkek (2005). With the notable exception of Berlusconi, however, Nazarbayev never managed to establish personal relations with his Western counterparts; he had to content himself with staged photo-calls; flattering enough for a leader obsessed with his international image.

L’amico

Berlusconi’s foreign policy was similarly personal. He has often explained Italy’s involvement in the 2003 occupation of Iraq as the result of his personal support for the policies of l’amico George (former US President George W. Bush) and l’amico Tony (former British PM Tony Blair). The former Italian PM rarely failed to extend the hand of friendship to less presentable heads of state: the rapprochement between Italy and Libya was sealed by the very personal relationship that Berlusconi established with Muammar al-Gaddafi, who was always granted special treatment when travelling to Rome.

In dealing with Central Asian dictators, Berlusconi tried hard to keep his friendships out of sight, although not always successfully. The embarrassment of the Berlusconi government was particularly visible in 2009, when Turkmenistani president Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov travelled to Italy. The Palazzo Chigi repeatedly denied that the visit was actually happening, and endeavoured to conceal Berdymuhamedov’s official schedule to Italian news outlets.

Obfuscation was never a part of Italian-Kazakhstani relations because, In Berlusconi’s view of geopolitics, the energy ties between Rome and Astana were too critical to be sacrificed on the altar of international respectability. Kazakhstan – the European Union’s fifth largest partner in the oil sector – is Italy’s main commercial partner in post-Soviet Central Asia, and the recipient of significant FDI in the otherwise struggling Italian industrial sector.

Quid pro quo

ENI, the Italian energy conglomerate (and, some would say, the economic arm of berlusconismo)in particular, has substantial economic interests in Kazakhstan, including direct involvement in the onshore Karachaganak field, and the offshore Kashagan project, both located in Western Kazakhstan. ENI’s involvement in Kazakhstan did not come without controversy: Paolo Scaroni, the long-term CEO of ENI, has been accused of paying bribes to family associates of Nazarbayev, to facilitate the granting of concessions to operate in the Kashagan project.

A photo of smiling 'amici', proudly displayed on Nazarbayev's personal website. Photo: akorda.kz

Friendly ties with Nazarbayev have so far served the economic purposes of Berlusconi and his associates; and helped improve Nazarbayev’s international standing. The two leaders are known to enjoy each other’s company, giving rise to much press speculation about what they get up to: the Italian press is rife with rumours surrounding Berlusconi’s stay in Nazarbayev’s dacha; and Kazakhstan’s independent media outlet Respublika has been reporting on a July 2013 informal ‘summit’ held in Sardinia, where Nazarbayev was holidaying in a villa belonging to one of Berlusconi’s cronies.

A cover-up

The Shalabayeva affair is unpleasant, but so is the attempt at a cover-up. Berlusconi and Nazarbayev have both adopted a similarly condescending posture when publicly commenting on the event in question. Berlusconi flatly denied his personal association with Nazarbayev, remarking that, in ten years as head of government, he had only visited Kazakhstan on one occasion. Nazarbayev has so far refused to comment on the affair: beyond criticism, as he sees it, he directed the Kazakhstani Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy in Rome to address the many media requests concerning the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of Mukhtar Ablyazov’s wife and daughter.

Silvio Berlusconi himself has nothing to lose from the forced extradition of Ablyazov’s family. His own party has no choice but to cover up his responsibility in the affair, as criticism of Berlusconi’s political decisions is not an option for members of the Popolo della Libertà. Berlusconi’s principal ally in the current government, the bitterly divided Partito Democratico, has no interest in prompting a government crisis; and has so far channelled its anger towards Angelino Alfano. Italy’s international reputation, on the other hand, has certainly been compromised by the Shalabayeva affair: the political and personal friendship of one Italian politician, for a foreign dictator with a record of human rights abuses, has allowed a democratic European state to engage in an act of illegal rendition.

The Italian Government colluded with a Central Asian dictator to remove his political opponent

One would not wish to paint Mukhtar Ablyazov as a man whiter than white – a warrant for his arrest on fraud charges, has been issued by the UK authorities - but, nevertheless, the Italian Government colluded with a Central Asian dictator to remove his political opponent. Even as Ablyazov is becoming less influential in Kazakstani politics, the Nazarbayev government is visibly obsessed with persecuting him, his family, and his political associates. The international pursuit of Ablyazov and his circle – besides Mrs Shalabayeva and her daughter, the Kazakhstani government has also requested extraditions of Ablyazov’s associates from Spain and Poland – is a further indication of the fragility of the Kazakhstani power system. The president’s age, his frail health and unwillingness to nominate a successor have fanned speculation about Nazarbayev’s political succession. Clearly, in hounding Albyazov, the aim of the regime is to prevent his involvement in the political process of a post-Nazarbayev era.

The Shalabayeva affair is nothing new in Central Asian politics; CIS governments have been regularly complying with each other’s requests for the extradition of opponents, and kidnapping and violence have often been used. The governments of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have had great success with such methods. What is new, is the more unsettling fact that extraordinary rendition is now becoming common practice well beyond the CIS, with European states much less inclined to resist the extradition requests formulated by Central Asian republics, and post-Soviet states); thereby demonstrating scant regard for individuals likely to be tortured or persecuted post-extradition..

Realpolitik is dictating the protection of Western energy interests

The Shalabayeva affair highlights the inherent contradiction underpinning the uncritical relations that Western European democracies, and the wider European Union, have established with Central Asia’s dictatorships: paying lip service to human rights, while posing for photo-calls. Realpolitik is dictating the protection of Western energy interests, and simultaneously protecting the interests of dictators.

Kazakhstan has won kudos from international investors, for having successfully exploited its oil and gas reserves, ensuring GDP growth of 5% a year and annual GDP of over £120 billion, with a population of less than 17 million; and a landmass covering an area greater than continental Europe. The country is bidding to join the world’s top 20 economies by 2050. The building of a modern capital city, Astana, in 1997, at very considerable expense, is another facet to this modernisation.

Compared with the neighbouring ‘stans’ – old fashioned if not dubious and utterly corrupt  – Kazakhstan has a stable and pragmatic government. The appointment by President Nazarbayev of a cadre of young ministers, when the country gained its independence, at the expense of the old Communist elite, has ensured continuity of administration and, if some observers are to be believed, an improving corruption picture. One local commentator observed, ‘these men have stayed in place for the last fifteen years. They are no longer buyable. They are quite well off, and are less interested in the money than in the legacy of their retirement. They don’t want that blotted by a failed project.’

The other story

The opponents of Nazarbayev say that the President’s legitimacy and methods are far from modern.

That is the modernising PR story that Kazakhstan would like to present to the world, helped by any number of pensioned-off western politicians, led by one Tony Blair. However, the opponents of Nazarbayev say that the President’s legitimacy and methods are far from modern. A long line of fatal accidents and feuds has led to the claim that the President, who recently had the Kazakh parliament vote him a lifetime Presidency (only revocable by parliament itself), is the enemy of democracy. Kazakhstan has just one significant political party, Nur Otan (‘Fatherland Ray of Light’), and all elections (and a referendum) since 1991, when Nazarbayev took the reins of power in the then newly independent country, have given him a statistically unlikely 90% of the vote.

Nursultan Nazarbayev's presidential palace in central Astana. Photo CC Jirka DI

Most opponents have kept their head beneath the parapet but some have put their head above it, and paid the price. These include Zamanbek Nurkadilov, a leading opposition politician and former major of Almaty, who died in 2005 in mysterious circumstances, purportedly as a result of suicide. Another was Altynbek Sarsenbayev, who was murdered, (according to an FBI investigation), by security service agents, at the instigation of the President’s son-in-law Rakhat Aliyev. Sarsenbayev had been co-chairman of the opposition Naghyz Ak Zhol (True Bright Path) party.

Aliyev himself, at one time a head of the tax and internal security investigation offices, subsequently quit the country in 2007 after apparently challenging the President. Greatly enriched, but divorced from his wife at the President’s instigation, he currently lives in Malta, and has made many allegations of corruption against the President. Aliyez has supported the campaign of Mukhtar Ablyazov, the former head of BTA Bank, who allegedly stole billions from the company, while claiming that the prosecution was a fabricated response to his anti-Nazarbayev political opinions.

ENRC

The controversy that surrounded one of Kazakhstan’s leading companies adds fuel to the fire. The City of London, the UK media and many regulators will not forget quickly the scandal sparked by Eurasian Natural Resources Company (ENRC) when it took advantage of liberal listing policies in the mid-2000s to get a listing in London. Six years later, with much blood spilled on the carpet, the company pulled out of the London Stock Exchange. This has greatly embarrassed Nazarbayev, and tarnished his modernising image.

ENRC’s control of Kazakhstan’s abundant bauxite reserves and aluminium smelting facilities had enriched a succession of entrepreneurs active in the former Soviet Union, and afterwards, including Marc Rich, the commodities broker, the Russian Chernoy brothers, and the Reuben brothers. Next to elbow in on the aluminium resources was a trio of Central Asian businessmen: Aleksandr Maskevich, a Kyrgyz who took Israeli citizenship, Alijan Ibragimov also a Kyrgyz, and Fattokh Shodiev, an Uzbek. Shodiev, a suave and talented former diplomat, is thought to have close ties to Nazarbayev and his family, in particular to Timur Kulibayev, a wealthy and well-connected Kazakh businessman.

Landlocked with dysfunctional neighbours, Kazakhstan has become an economic success under Nazarbayev. Image via CIA Factbook

Assessments of the three men’s stake in ENRC range between 35% and 44% of the business, alongside other Kazakh investors, including Kazakhmys with 26% and the Kazakh Government with 12%. Kazakhmys is a copper company – reportedly part owned by the President himself – also listed on the London Stock Exchange; run by Vladimir Kim, it has remained relatively free of controversy.

When the move to gain outside investors for ENRC was first mooted by Mashkevich, Ibragimov and Shodiev – the ‘Trio’ – the Exchange was so enthusiastic it allowed them to bypass its rules requiring 25% of stock to be made available to local investors. That raised eyebrows but nothing more. Once listed on the exchange, the stock raced quickly into the FT100.

Within two years, the Trio had decided to invest in natural resource assets in Africa, in a bid to diversify away from Kazakhstan, and thus protect themselves against the risk of political change (or threat to their powerbase) at home. They moved into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This brought them into contact with a shadowy Israeli commodities trader, Dan Gertler.

DRC

Deals between the Trio and Gertler took place between 2009 and 2011, and, as details appeared in the press, a spotlight was turned on the Trio’s approach to business. Gertler, purportedly a friend of the DRC’s President Joseph Kabila, had persuaded influential Congolese around the President to sell him licences to mining assets, that had formerly been owned by, among others, the Canadian mining company, First Quantum. The opportunity to change ownership occurred when the country was reviewing licences obtained during its recently ended civil war. Gertler ‘flipped’ assets – including the massive Kolwezi copper business and a number of DRC mines – at a handsome profit, with ENRC an eager buyer. Indeed, in some cases, ENRC is said to have paid Gertler before Gertler had even paid the seller in DRC. It was subsequently claimed by NGOs and others, including the Africa Progress Panel, an NGO chaired by Kofi Annan, that the people of DRC had lost £435 million as a result of Gertler and ENRC’s asset trading.

The great and the good

The shadowy nature of these deals, coupled with the bad publicity, caused concern inside the ENRC Board of Directors, many of whose members had chosen not to push the main shareholders (who were not on the board) for too much detail about the deals. These were the ‘Great and the Good’ of the UK corporate establishment, selected for their reputation rather than any mining or commodities expertise, to give this unusual company the patina of respectability. Some members of the Board, notably Johannes Sittard, an academic metallurgist and former executive with Mittal steel group, were closer to the Trio than others.

ENRC was ‘more Soviet than City.’

The Board’s response to the media blitz was belated and ineffectual. One member said, ‘this was the most dysfunctional and divided board on which I have ever served.’ Ken Olisa, a former independent director, ousted in June 2011 at the instigation of the Trio on the day before the AGM would have voted him a further term, said the three businessmen were scheming behind the backs of the Board. He memorably observed that ENRC was  ‘more Soviet than City.’ That soundbite touched a raw nerve both in the City of London and in Kazakhstan.

Bountiful reserves of oil and gas have allowed Kazakhstan a relatively high standard of living. Photo RIA Novosti/Boris Babanov

Speculation about the company’s activities in Africa focused on possible payments to presidents of African countries. The law firm Dechert (hired by the company to investigate whistleblower allegations in Kazakhstan) wrote to ENRC’s General Counsel, specifically alleging 'cash payments to African presidents.' The letter said that the 'payment(s) had been sanctioned by a senior executive.' When Dechert later resigned, not having been able to conduct its investigations as thoroughly as it would have wished, the resignation letter was leaked to the UK media, in April 2013.

The African activities of ENRC had already come to the attention of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, and it had engaged in an extended private discussion with the company’s directors hoping that an agreed deal – coupled with an admission and payment – could be reached. This was strongly resisted by the Trio, who appeared intent on brazening out the interest of law enforcement. But when the Dechert resignation letter was leaked to the media, the SFO announced a formal investigation into ‘fraud, bribery and corruption relating to the activities of the company or its subsidiaries in Kazakhstan and Africa.’

The shareholders in ENRC are the losers: they paid 540p for their shares in 2007 and received 218p in October 2013.

An investigation of this severity was the final nail in the coffin for the company’s UK stock exchange listing, and the company took steps to leave the City. The company would be returned to its Kazakh owners, although the Trio still appears to be clinging on to the control and ownership of their stake. It is too early to speculate on the implications for the Trio of events in London, and the President’s response, with some speculating that the President wants ENRC to return to its Kazakh rump, and sell the African assets. Others have suggested that the President may pressurise the Trio to sell their stake back to the country, perhaps to the sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna.

Whoever wins out in the end, the shareholders in ENRC are the losers: they paid 540p for their shares in 2007 and received 218p in October 2013.   

What the President knew

The ENRC debacle not only casts a cloud over the carefully crafted PR image that Kazkahstan wishes to show to the world, it also rebounds on a President who works closely with the business elite, and has stakes in its companies. ‘Nothing happens in Kazakhstan without the President’s knowledge and permission,’ observed one observer. Global Witness, for example, has produced compelling evidence showing that companies close to the President have a large stake in Kazakhmys. Disclosures during the trial of James Giffen, a US citizen accused of bribery under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, showed payments to President Nazarbayev of £53 million. Giffen, a middleman for oil companies seeking concessions in the country, was a close associate of the President. At his subsequent trial, he argued he was representing the US Central Intelligence Agency and, in making undisputed payments to the President of Kazakhstan, was acting for his country.

‘Nothing happens in Kazakhstan without the President’s knowledge and permission.’

The issue for foreign investors, however, is less about the wealth of the President than the political risk he has created; and here, succession is the key. President Nazarbayev has failed to grasp this nettle, regarding the nomination of a successor as tantamount to empowering a rival to replace him before his life’s work is done. Those seeking to assert a claim have quickly been shown who is boss.

The succession

Nazarbayev is 73, and has long been rumoured to have health problems; talk about a succession is inevitable. Possible successors to the President fall into two distinct groups: those who are part of the current political and corporate establishment, and those who have fallen foul of the incumbent. It is a moot point as to whether the next holder of power in Kazakhstan will benefit from having been associated with Nazarbayev, or having a record of opposition.

Kazakh oligarch Timur Kulibayev, helpfully bought Prince Andrew’s former home, Sunninghill Park, for £15m. Photo CC Dee Early

Among the candidates from the current establishment are:

Timur Kulibayev: the country’s third richest man and the President’s son-in-law, is a former Chairman of the Management Board of Samruk-Kazyna sovereign wealth fund and a member of the Board of Directors of Gazprom. He fell temporarily out of favour for his mismanagement of the riots at Zhanaozen, in December 2011, which resulted in the deaths of twelve miners. He is now thought to have returned to favour. He is the man who famously bought Sunninghill Park from the Duke of York, Britain's roving business ambassador, who maintains close links with Kazakhstan.

Imangali Tasmagambetov: the Mayor of Astana, and former Kazakh Prime Minister. He has the political skills.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev: another former Prime Minister and head of the UN office in Geneva. He is the chairman of the Senate, and, according to the constitution, is next in line to succeed the President.

Sauat Mukhametbayevich Mynbayev: theChairman of Kazmunaigaz is another highly respected member of the local business and political elite, who is in the running. 

The opponents

Leading contenders of those who have either left the country – by force or by choice – and those currently in jail, include:

Akezhan Kazhegeldin: a former Finance Minister and Prime Minister, who today lives in London. He is well respected by the expatriate Kazakh community but scorned by the elite inside the country, who (according to a local businessman) ‘resent an outsider telling them what to do.’ Sources close to Kazhegeldin say that Nazarbayev has nevertheless consulted him on economic issues at discreet overseas locations.

Mukhtar Djakishev: a former executive at Kazatomprom and Deputy Minister for Mineral Resources. His conviction for corruption, leading to a prison sentence, has been widely criticised. 

Aron Atabek:a dissident poet who was jailed in 2010 for eighteen years after being accused of orchestrating mass disorders, in protest against the demolition of a shanty-town, a charge he vehemently denies.

Vladimir Kozlov: the leader of the Alga! political party, was a defendant in the first political trial in Kazakhstan, in 2012. He was accused of inciting workers at Zhanaozen. The US commented that Kazakhstan was using its criminal-justice system 'to silence a leading opposition voice.' Kozlov was found guilty, and is currently serving a prison sentence; Amnesty International classifies him as a 'prisoner of conscience.'

'Après moi, le déluge'

Is Kazakhstan another Ukraine, one more post-Soviet country with deep-down corruption, but no deeply embedded institutions?

Nazarbayev can only go on for so long. The international community needs to decide to what extent his top-down regime undermines the prospects for building sound economic and political stability. Are the President’s economic achievements and his rebranding built on sand? Is Kazakhstan another Ukraine, one more post-soviet country with deep-down corruption, but no deeply embedded institutions? Is Kazakhstan another Egypt – a strongman’s castle that could collapse at a moment’s notice? Or is there something more solid to this country, which leads the region in terms of its current wealth and apparent stability.

The succession to his all-powerful presidency will be Nazarbayev’s greatest test. Ironically, it will occur when he is (most likely) no longer with us. 

Tashkent, early 1993. The leaders of the newly independent states of post-Soviet Central Asia have just concluded yet another regional summit. Amongst the many deliberations made on the occasion, the presidents singled out one that came to be presented as an historical step in the development of an integrated Central Asia. From then on, the region was to be known as a unifying community of independent states, defined by the Russian name of Tsentral’naya Aziya, in departure from the Soviet praxis that distinguished between the four southern republics (Srednyaya Aziya) and the Kazakh SSR. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Kazakh president, praised the initiative and warmly welcomed Kazakhstan’s formal reincorporation into the Central Asian fold.

Nazarbayev has based his foreign policy on reaching out to Russia and the US, not the other 'stans.' Photo via kremlin.ru

Qazaq Eli

Fast-forward 21 years. A cold winter’s day in Atyrau, a city in western Kazakhstan. While delivering what was expected to be a routine speech, Nazarbayev, now an elderly ‘statesman’ in his fourth term in office, advocated a change of name for his republic. He suggested that Kazakhstan come to be known as Qazaq Eli (Nation of the Kazakhs), with the deliberate intention of setting ‘his’ republic apart from the other ‘stans.’ The implication being that the ‘stan’ suffix has become so associated with the socio-economic instability that, in Nazarbayev’s view, has characterised the recent history of the (other) Central Asian republics, that it is to be dropped like a hot potato.

The ‘stan’ suffix is to be dropped like a hot potato.

For the record, this is not the first occasion in which authoritarian regimes have tampered with the name of the country they rule. While Mobutu’s Zaire now seems like an echo from a distant past, the junta’s Myanmar is a current reminder of the lengths to which authoritarian leaderships are ready to go in order to modify the political geography of their states. Mobutu Sese Koko officially introduced the name Zaire six years after his accession to power; the country’s new name signalled in this sense the dawn of a new era, carrying out the (illusory) promises of change of the emerging regime. Plans to rename Kazakhstan have been in turn deployed at a time in which the Nazarbayev regime is experiencing a slow, yet inexorable, decline. Burma’s renaming, in a parallel with the Kazakh situation, was sealed almost 30 years after the establishment of the regime. The junta’s collective structure ensured policy continuity as well as regime longevity, while the personalistic nature of Kazakh authoritarianism raises many questions on the relevance that current policies – including the recently auspicated name change – will hold in the post-Nazarbayev era. 

Rather than merely representing another idiosyncratic declaration issued by one of Central Asia’s eccentric leaders, the Qazaq Eli rhetoric carries very substantive implications for Kazakhstan’s domestic politics and, equally, its international outlook. 

PR and the discourse of danger

Domestically, Nazarbayev is trying to sell the citizens of Kazakhstan the image of a country that, due to the regime’s major politico-economic achievements, represents a unique success story in Central Asia, and is therefore to be dis-associated from those very states that, not even a decade ago, were presented as Kazakhstan’s sister republics. More than one shadow, however, has been recently cast on the narratives that portray Kazakhstan as a successful example of socio-economic development.

Only a few short days after Nazarbayev’s speech in Atyrau, the National Bank of Kazakhstan devaluated the tenge by 19%, dealing a serious hit to the savings of virtually every Kazakh family. As prices of domestically produced goods spiked overnight, the authority of the National Bank came to be questioned by a growing segment of the population. Popular discontent became more vocal, and anti-devaluation demonstrations were organised in both Almaty and Astana on 15-16 February. The regime quickly went into damage control, and suppressed public dissent through mass arrests. In a significant move, Nazarbayev committed to draw resources from Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund to mitigate the negative effects of the devaluation. A failing economic landscape, incidentally, might complicate the regime’s commitment to renaming, which will inevitably shape up as a very expensive endeavour. 

Police arrest a woman at an unsanctioned protest of Kazakhstan's currency devaluation. 15 February. Photo via YouTube

Qazaq Eli, in this sense, appears as a fantasy that is ultimately based on a discourse of danger: within Kazakhstan’s borders there is a stable, affluent and safe society, which, ultimately, cannot live in a ‘stan’, because ‘stans’ are by definition unstable, poor and dangerous. In a perhaps even more surprising twist, Nazarbayev’s Atyrau speech identified Mongolia as the archetypically stable Central Asian state which Qazaq Eli is to emulate. Unveiling the fundamental incongruence of the Qazaq Eli rhetoric, Mongolia’s stability, and its attractiveness to foreign investors, are explained on the basis of the country’s name (Mongolia is not a ‘stan’, hence it must be a stable place to invest) and not as the function of the quality of local governance, which is, in fact, considerably higher than the regional average. The association with Mongolia is indeed a dangerous narrative for a future Qazaq Eli, which perhaps will not be a ‘stan’ but is certainly not designed to be a democratic state.

The association with Mongolia is indeed a dangerous narrative for a future Qazaq Eli.

Renaming might also impact on the country’s ethnic ‘harmony,’ which the regime often lists amongst its most significant achievements. Using a Turkic term (el) to express an idea so far channelled through an Iranic suffix (-stan) might bring back to the surface a series of discourses on the attempted ‘Orientalisation’ of Kazakhstan. It is not clear how Kazakhstan’s non-Kazakh population – and particularly the members of the Russian minority – will respond to the idea of Qazaq Eli. The country’s deteriorating economy, as confirmed by recent unrest in Kazakhstan’s major cities, seems to hold more destabilising potential, yet economic grievances might also trigger discontent in those sectors of the population sharing no ethno-national association with a newly baptised Qazaq Eli. 

Snubbing the ‘stans’

At foreign policy level, the implications of the prospected renaming are somewhat clearer. Kazakhstan’s foreign policy is mostly defined by the regime’s Eurasian strategy, which does not list relations with the Central Asian states amongst its top priorities. In this strategy, the newly independent Kazakhstan at first opted for stronger relations with Russia, and more recently with Western partners and organisations. Kazakhstan has been progressively loosening its ties with the Central Asian republics, and ceased to act as a regional integrator in 2005, when the Organisation of Central Asian Cooperation merged with the EvrAzEs, one of Nazarbayev’s pet projects. 

Kazakhstan’s Eurasian strategy is designed to propagate the image of a state (and indirectly of a regime) that is well integrated within the international community, and enjoys such global respectability that it can be trusted with positions of international leadership. It is through this lens that we have to analyse Kazakhstan’s 2010 OSCE Chairmanship or the bid for a UN Security Council seat, for which the regime is currently preparing. This narrative has been used to shape the regime’s image-making strategies at home and abroad.

There are no image-making points to be scored by forging closer ties with the Central Asian states

There are no image-making points to be scored by forging closer ties with the Central Asian states, which Astana regards as potentially damaging (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) or, at best, inconsequential (Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan) partners. Qazaq Eli will drop Central Asia from its priority list and re-orientate its foreign policy beyond its immediate neighbourhood, to acquire what the regime will certainly label a more ‘Eurasian’ outlook. Renaming will reset the region’s current alignments, while obliterating the idea of a community of Central Asian states envisaged in Tashkent in 1993. The clock of regional politics will be ultimately brought back to the pre-independence era. Nazarbayev, as leader of a hypothetical Qazaq Eli, has enough clout to face this challenging scenario with confidence. The same cannot be said for his eventual successor, who will have to deal with an uneasy, if not altogether hostile, neighbourhood, while facing the numerous domestic challenges that leadership change and a faltering economy will inevitably bring to the fore.

Troubles brewing for the EEU

These are tough times for regional integration. The European Union is facing the prospect of electing a volatile Parliament, with Euro-sceptic parties and movements leading the polls in many parts of the continent. The gulf between EU institutions and the European public appears to be as wide as it has ever been. Surprisingly (or perhaps not), a similar scenario is rapidly consolidating in ‘post-Soviet’ Eurasia.

The annexation of Crimea and the ongoing Ukrainian crisis is complicating the progress of integration within the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) – the geopolitical project that emerged as the cornerstone of the second Putin presidency. May 2014 was expected to be the key month for the signing of the landmark EEU treaty. The Union’s founding fathers – Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus, Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan, and Vladimir Putin – met in Minsk on 29 April to lay down a blueprint document for integration. The summit, however, proved inconclusive, with the junior partners of Belarus and Kazakhstan expressing diplomatic diffidence vis-à-vis the post-Crimea geopolitical implications of the treaty, as well as noting the disadvantageous economic circumstances arising from deeper integration with the Russian Federation. With the decision on the official signing postponed until the not-so-distant future, the EEU project seems to have entered a cul-de-sac.

'We are for a sovereign Kazakhstan. We will halt the imperial Eurasian virus.' Photo: facebook

The Minsk summit, in this sense, has come to represent a watershed for Eurasian integration, but for all the wrong reasons. While Lukashenka has continued to display a characteristically Machiavellian attitude towards Moscow’s offers of cooperation, his Kazakhstani counterpart expressed a relatively unprecedented unease towards the acceleration of Eurasian integration.

A change in attitude

Nazarbaev’s attitude in Minsk constituted both an instance of continuity and a signal of change in Kazakhstani foreign policymaking. On the one hand, enthusiastically joining a Moscow-led project of integration would have represented a rather paradoxical policy posture for Kazakhstan’s president, who has established much of his Eurasian credibility by orienting ‘post-Soviet’ integration away from Moscow. A profoundly anti-imperial connotation permeated the many initiatives of Eurasian integration that Nazarbaev has periodically sponsored since late March 1994, when a seminal speech he delivered at Moscow State University identified the twin principles of dobrovol’nosti (free will of association, in this case) and ravnopraviya (equality of rights) as the fundamental elements of Eurasian integration.

The annexation of Crimea is complicating the progress of integration within the EEU.

On the other hand, Astana’s post-Crimea external policies have taken a decidedly pro-Russian turn. Kazakhstan’s abstention at the UN vote on Crimea represented the culmination of this policy trend, which was ultimately sanctioned by the speech delivered by Nazarbaev at Moscow State University in the lead-up to the Minsk summit. In his speech, Nazarbaev ostensibly re-evaluated 20 years of Eurasian integration by highlighting the continuity that the EEU supposedly shares with prior initiatives of Eurasian integration, including the Eurasian Union and the EvrAzEs (Eurasian Economic Community). In this context, however, Nazarbaev had to dilute his characteristically anti-imperial rhetoric: while listing the fundamental values of Eurasian integration, the 2014 Moscow speech offered only one brief mention of suvernitet (sovereignty). 

So how does one reconcile the fundamental tension in the Kazakstani position, between this markedly pro-Russian outlook and an increasingly visible Eurasian scepticism? The pro-Russian trend is a specific power calculation advanced by the Kazakhstani elite, who have opted to get closer to an ever-more isolated Kremlin. Nazarbaev’s EEU-scepticism, on the other hand, is also responding to a particular power play, insofar as it addresses the regime’s needs to maintain healthily distant relations with Moscow.

The Anti-Eurasian Forum

It is precisely at this juncture that the elite’s power considerations surprisingly intersect with the profoundly anti-Eurasian agenda advanced by Kazakhstan’s emerging opposition. Despite introducing new laws that strictly regulate criticism of government policies, the leadership has allowed a rather lively debate on the pros and cons of the EEU partnership. It is in this environment that the Anti-Eurasian Forum was organised in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s ‘southern capital’.

‘With the union between Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan we are witnessing an “axis of dictators.”’

Serikzhan Mambetalin, a particularly vocal opponent of the EEU, has been spreading the message via social media. Photo: facebookOn 12 April 2014, around 250 people gathered in the tiny conference room of a central Almaty hotel to voice their opposition to Kazakhstan’s deeper union with Russia and Belarus. Their argument is somewhat linear: by joining the EEU, which is often referred to throughout Kazakhstan as the ‘unbalanced marriage’ (nerovnyi brak), Astana will accrue costs more than reap benefits. Kazakhstan, on the basis of its fragile domestic industrial sector, is generally considered the weakest link amongst the three EEU partners. In this context, political expert Dastan Kadyrzhanov described the choice to sign as ‘Kazakhstan’s Rubicon.’ Berlibek Alimov, editor of the opposition newspaper Tribuna, explained: ‘People demand a popular consultation, a referendum. Why are we signing up to something we don’t know?’.

In the lead-up to the forum, we spoke with Serikzhan Mambetalin – a particularly vocal opponent of the EEU, who has articulated his views by way of a massive presence on social media networks including Twitter and Facebook. ‘The day the treaty will be signed will be the darkest day for our country’, said Mambetalin, who headed the Rukhanyat party until only a few weeks before the 2012 elections, when it was banned and literally crossed off the ballot papers. ‘With the new union between Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan we are witnessing an “axis of dictators.” This brings us back to the USSR: Eurasianism is a new form of colonisation by Russia.’

The resolution endorsed at the forum called for the publication of the entire documentation to be included in the agreement, while resisting further integration with Russia, ‘a country that is defying international law with its intervention in Ukraine,’ and ultimately inviting the ‘authoritarian regime to finally listen to the opinion of the people.’ 

An anti-Russian direction

Mukhtar Taizhan's anti-EEU agenda was evolving into a more overtly anti-Russian direction until he quit politics in March 2014. The Anti-Eurasian Forum merely represents the tip of the iceberg that is Kazakhstan’s anti-Eurasian movement. Since the earliest Maidan events in Ukraine in the autumn of 2013, Mukhtar Taizhan, one of Kazakhstan’s most prominent social media activists, has been involved in frantic Facebook activity. The precipitation of the events in Kyiv saw Taizhan’s agenda evolving into a more overtly anti-Russian direction. His campaigns against Russia’s presence in the Baikonur cosmodrome, and in support of a more widespread use of the Kazakh language in Kazakhstan became more outspoken as the confrontation in Kyiv’s squares became ever more violent. Interestingly, Taizhan went as far as offering more visibility to the agenda of ‘anti-geptil’ activists [heptyl, a by-product of rocket launches, is a highly pollutant chemical compound] especially as this movement added to the anti-Eurasian and anti-Russian climate brewing in Astana. As signs that read ‘today anti-heptil, tomorrow Maidan’ started to appear in the capital, the leadership, cautious of this potentially destabilising association, began  tightening the screws on the anti-geptil movement.

‘Eurasianism is a new form of colonisation by Russia.’

As the initial date of the EEU treaty signing approached, Taizhan came to equate Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine with the revival of Moscow’s imperialist desires. It was not uncommon to see on the profile pages of National Patriots (NatsPatrioty) multiple references to the similarities between Kazakhstan’s Zheltoksan(the 1986 protest against the appointment of a Russian national, Gennadi Kolbin, to head the Kazakh SSR) and Ukraine’s Maidan in 2014. These two historical moments are seen by the NatsPatrioty as reactions by Almaty and Kyiv to Moscow’s attempts to limit their sovereignty. 

Taizhan’s political career, however, did not witness the materialisation of a ‘Kazakh Maidan.’ On 18 March 2014, he unexpectedly – and prematurely, given his relatively young age – announced his decision to quit politics: Taizhan’s frantic social media activity has slowed down dramatically, and it focuses now almost exclusively on cultural events.

Two oppositions

Rampant anti-Eurasianism represents a key factor in understanding the cleavage between the two main political alternatives to Kazakhstan’s current establishment. The first constituent of the Kazakhstani opposition appears to be favouring western models of political participation, seeing as it incarnates values and visions strongly influenced by US and European traditions. Close monitoring of its activities – as well as brutal repression – have ensured that the forces of this opposition have never become strong enough to have a sizeable impact on Kazakhstan’s political landscape. Pro-government media and political organisations have systematically discredited these actors and portrayed them as ‘foreign agents,’ working to facilitate the capitalist exploitation of Kazakhstan.

The other main opposition grouping – which can be roughly presented under the umbrella of the NatsPatrioty– is fuelled by nationalist sentiments, sits at the right of Kazakhstan’s political spectrum, and tends to manifest its views by advocating the promotion of the Kazakh language and the preservation of Kazakh culture. This group is important to the leadership in Astana, as it includes a sector of its supporters that have become increasingly uneasy with some of the government’s policies. For this reason, Nazarbaev and his associates have largely tolerated the agenda of the NatsPatrioty. The leadership has seemed unwilling to challenge their points of view and has even been known to espouse some of the NatsPatrioty’s arguments, in order to shape legislation introduced to the detriment of Kazakhstan’s main domestic minorities (Russians, Koreans, Germans, and others) or its key international partners (Russia, China, the US). Rumours that the regime has artfully fomented this strand of opposition may remain unfounded but it is undoubtedly true that some of the NatsPatrioty arguments have promoted a divisive nationalism, which is widening the gap between the different components of Kazakhstan’s multi-national fabric and, interestingly, is being used to put more distance between Astana and its neighbours.

A depiction of the 1986 Zheltoksan events in Republic Square, Almaty. Photo cc: Otebig

In this context, the NatsPatrioty anti-EEU discourse encapsulates their duplicity vis-à-vis the establishment: the same opponents of the new framework, in fact, are defending the original idea that Nazarbaev presented 20 years ago in Moscow. Their criticism is targeted at Russia, as the NatsPatrioty see Kazakhstan as just a partner being deceitfully driven into the arms of the greedy bear. This discourse facilitates the airing of various opposition grievances, and it ultimately causes the juxtaposition of domestic issues – the country’s economic situation, a suffering job market and industries, its many environmental disasters – with international and geopolitical questions of sovereignty, respect for international law, and prestige in the global arena; a set of foreign policy concerns very dear to the leadership in Astana.

Kazakhstan’s emerging Eurasian-scepticism does perhaps hold the potential to reconcile the elite’s post-Crimea outlook with the views of a segment of the population. For an establishment that is experiencing a slow yet inexorable decline, this appears like rather good news. Yet again – as has often been the case in the European Union – state attitudes towards developing regionalism have become a political card to be played domestically; in this respect, the new Eurasia has been quick to catch up with Old Europe.

Kazakh banking is in a state of disarray, as banks assimilate the consequences of a recent 20% devaluation of the tenge, a surprise bid by the Central Bank to maintain export competitiveness with Russia, the country’s largest market. As a result, and notwithstanding Kazakhstan’s membership of the Customs Union, which includes Russia and Belarus, companies and individuals have had to pay a high price in terms of more expensive imports from Russia and the Russian bloc. The government, moreover, wants to deal with the consequences of its economic crisis of 2008, and is looking hard at the banking sector. Some restructured state banks are set to be sold to the private sector, with owners promising to initiate a much-needed banking consolidation in Kazakhstan.

Kenges Rakishev - one of the well-connected businessmen vying for control of BTA Bank. CC Kenges RakishevKazakhstan has 38 banks, but this number could be substantially reduced if some mergers go through. The catalysts in the process of banking consolidation are: local oligarch Bulat Utemuratov, who is currently seeking to push together Alliance and Temir banks; and Kazkomertzbank, with its partner Kenges Rakishev, who is seeking to acquire BTA. Both deals are currently under negotiation with Samruk-Kazyna, the sovereign wealth fund, which owns the stakes.

Both Utemuratov and Rakishev are well-connected confidants of the president. Utemuratov is married to the president’s daughter Dinara, while Rakishev is married to the daughter of Imangali Tasmagambetov, the mayor of Astana, and a former prime minister in the early 2000s. Rakishev, who is 34, owns the SAT conglomerate, and is regarded as a young turk in the business establishment.

Background

Banks in Kazakhstan can broadly be divided into four groups. Some Kazakh banks suffered badly post-2008, and were taken over either by Samruk-Kazyna or the government directly; these banks are routinely described as ‘restructured banks,’ and they are under close watch. Their balance sheets need to be cleaned up, with some three-quarters of their loans non-performing.

Even those first-tier banks that experienced difficulties in the crisis but managed to ride it out without support have NPLs (Non Performing Loans) of between 15% and 40% of their balance sheets.

The third tier of some 15 banks has found market opportunities in the carnage that was the crisis; and they have started growing their business. Eurasia is one such bank, with between 5% and 15% of NPLs.

The final group of banks entered the country after the crisis, and they have remained relatively unscathed from the economic downturn. Their NPLs stand at less than 5%. 

Market growth

Corporates are proving a rich source of revenue for banks; and the oil and gas, mining and infrastructure sectors have all expanded with the economy. However, banking for small- and medium-sized enterprises, on the other hand, has seen little growth, and is experiencing marginal stagnation, a result of regulatory hurdles and poor credit worthiness.

The highlight for Kazakh banking has been the retail sector, which has grown considerably as GDP has increased and the general population has started consuming again. The rate of growth over the last four years has been impressive, and this has resulted in a boom in car loans, credit cards, and mortgage business.

‘The marketplace and the banking population show that Kazakhstan is over-banked.’

Over-banked

Looking at this mixed picture, Alexander Kottmann, PWC’s financial services director in Kazakhstan, thinks consolidation is a given: 'We will see some consolidation happening. The marketplace and the banking population show that Kazakhstan is over-banked.’ The introduction of Basel Three capital ratios will push smaller banks into the arms of the larger, he says. ‘If you look at the proposed capital increases, this is quite significant, and by full introduction in 2019 it will require many banks to go to the market to look for additional equity funding, which is quite difficult given the overall state of the Kazakh banking sector. They compete for equity not only against other banks but also other industries, which is obviously difficult if there's a more promising return for investors.’

Potential buyers have deep pockets. Bulat Utemuratov, for example, who has bought an 80% stake in state-owned Temir Bank, as a prelude to buying Alliance Bank and merging the two, is one of Kazakhstan’s long-standing banking oligarchs. He not only controls Forte Bank and Kassa Nova Bank, but is also involved with Verny Capital, a well financed private equity fund, which owns a 1.33% stake in Glencore Xstrata, the massive commodities and natural resources trader and operator. Verny has bank management skills – the senior partner is Timur Isatayev, former managing director of ATF Bank – and these will be harnessed to manage the merger of Temir and Alliance.

Wheeler-dealing

Verny, which has assets in a wide range of local sectors including hotels, is funded by the proceeds of what has been termed the Kazakh ‘banking deal of the century,’ when Utemuratov sold ATF Bank, the fifth largest lender by assets, to the Italian UniCredito for £1.25 billion at the height of the credit boom, in 2007. In late 2012, UniCredito offloaded ATF, which had been founded by Utemuratov, for no more than the size of its equity, valued at less than £300m, to KazNitrogenGaz, the vehicle of Galimzhan Yesenov, the son-in-law of Akhmetzhan Yesimov, the influential mayor of Almaty.

BTA Headquarters in Kazakhstan. Though widely known as a retail bank, BTA Bank is suffering from a mass of bad loans. CC Esetok

New money is also set to enter the banking market with the sale to Kenges Rakishev of 46.5% of BTA Bank. Rakishev’s interests, through his SAT conglomerate, are spread around engineering, technology and natural resources, rather than financial services. Rakishev has formed a partnership with KazKommertsBank (KKB), where KKB has an interest in a 4% stake held by Samruk-Kazyna, to give it overall control. Local analysts say the deal cost the two parties between £120m and £268m.

Bad loans

The process of consolidation, however, is unlikely to be straightforward for two reasons. First, the outstanding bad loan picture is still far from clear, with daily surprises making the prospect of improving the loan book, everywhere more arduous. Bad loans are a feature of every Kazakh bank loan book – a legacy of an unresolved pre-crisis property boom -– with an average of 30% of bad loans. Second, an organisational restructuring is required for both Temir and Alliance banks, involving staff and IT systems.

‘This minefield hasn’t been cleared yet and mines keep exploding.’

The rapid deterioration of the bad loan portfolio was outlined by Timur Issatayev, who explained to a group of analysts that, ‘This minefield hasn’t been cleared yet and mines keep exploding.’ Two of the banks’ major state borrowers in the agricultural sector, he said, were ‘about to declare bankruptcy,’ leading to a non-payment of £60m worth of loans. The combined Alliance and Temir banks will also have an extensive property portfolio, ranging from prime real estate to countryside greenfield investments. Issatayev, however, warned that one property, which was on the books at 30m tenge, could be sold for no more than 7m tenge, while another that was on the books at 100m tenge could be sold for just 50m tenge. He said, ‘There are huge holdings of real estate which all banks have on their balance sheets. We realise the challenges; we will only depress the market by putting up for sale half of each bank. No one has ever done something of this magnitude before in Kazakhstan.’

‘No one has ever done something of this magnitude before in Kazakhstan.’

Incompatible IT systems

Overstaffing and incompatible IT systems also confront the managers of Verny, tasked with pushing together Temir and Alliance. The greater strategic challenge is building a unified IT system says Guram Andronikashvili, CEO of Forte Bank (Kazakhstan): ‘It is a two-step process. Alliance runs two systems, one for retail and one for corporate. Temir runs an outdated system. The first challenge will be to move all the business of Alliance into a new expanded banking system, then put the Temir business into the Alliance platform. The IT platform at Alliance also needs to be improved to accept Temir.’ Alliance managers are driving a process that will result in Temir’s absorption, says Andronikashvili. ‘The size of tasks Alliance is facing is much bigger. The IT expertise required for Alliance is much greater, so that is the focus.’

Moreover, the planned job-cuts threaten to create a storm in the country say the bank’s leaders. Verny is planning to dispense with 3,500 staff out of a combined total of 6,100. Andronikashvili says, ‘A huge challenge is disposing of staff. This would be an unprecedented shedding of labour.’

BTA Bank, whose assets were put at £6.2 billion in October 2013, continues to track down the loans made by former CEO Mukhtar Ablyazov.

BTA and KKB

The likely structure of the merger between BTA and KKB remains mired in concerns about the scale of the bad loans portfolio. BTA bank, whose assets were put at £6.2 billion in October 2013, continues to track down the loans made by former CEO Mukhtar Ablyazov, who is a fugitive currently in jail in France, and facing extradition to Russia. He is charged with perpetrating a massive fraud on the bank. Pavel Prosyankin, the BTA board consultant (and former managing director) who has been pursuing the loans over the last four years, says that ‘there is no exact value placed on what can be recovered.’  He says that ‘no more than a few hundred million dollars’ worth of loans have been turned into liquid cash. Chris Hardman, the lawyer at Hogan Lovells, the London lawyers hired to pursue Ablyazov, says that the former CEO made £8.9 billion worth of fraudulent loans.

Mukhtar Ablyazov, currently in prison in France, may have made up to £8.9bn in fraudulent loads. CC 1612TV

One local banker speculated that Ablyazov-related loans may be amalgamated with other BTA bad loans and placed into a ‘bad bank’ inside BTA. KKB would put BTA’s performing loan portfolio into a ‘good bank’ based round KKB. Prosyankin says, ‘they may function as two separate banks for some time. It doesn’t affect the asset recovery. The new shareholders have to decide whether the experts at KKB should examine the bad loan book at BTA that is not Ablyazov-related. KKB has a great deal of experience, as the largest bank, in dealing with bad loans in Kazakhstan.’

Merger costs will be saved if BTA is retained as a retail-facing brand, and KKB focused on corporates, says Anton Soroko, an analyst from FINAM Investment Holding: ‘The most likely scenario of this deal would be to divide the business between the two owners into retail and corporate ones. This way there will be no need to spend money on a re-branding, since BTA bank is well known in Kazakhstan, and the new owners should build on the brand's visibility.’

NPLs present a particular problem to Kazakh banks because tax rules make it particularly difficult to allow banks to wipe off bad loans.

A write off

NPLs present a particular problem to Kazakh banks because esoteric tax rules make it particularly difficult for banks to wipe off bad loans. According to one Kazakh banker, ‘In most jurisdictions, banks say, ‘We are never going to get back the money we lent so we’ll write it off; this is the difference between a provision and a write off… when you write it off, that’s it. In most countries, when you write it off, eventually your NPL rate comes down. But in Kazakhstan, if you take a write off, under current rules, they make you pay back the 20% of the tax benefit; in short it costs you money to do a write off.’  As a result of this rule, he says, ‘No one in Kazakhstan writes anything off; they just sit there forever with this NPL. When our competitors deem something unrecoverable, they write it off and move on. Now, if a Kazakh bank has a 30% NPL rate and a Russian bank has a 8% NPL rate, some would say on that basis that the problem in Kazakhstan is four times worse than in Russia. But Russian banks are able to include write-offs over time. Kazakh banks are being unfairly penalised against their peers because the statistics look worse than they are on a relative basis.’

The broader picture

The growing consumer market remains of keen interest to all banks. Eurasian Bank, for example, which focuses on the retail consumer, has seen considerable growth in mortgages, personal and car loans, says Michael Eggleton, the CEO. This rate of general consumer growth, however, causes concerns for Charles Seville at Fitch Ratings, ‘household debt to GDP is very low compared to the developed world, but the level of household debt is rising, and the share of debt to disposable income is rising to high levels. It is not frightening yet, but we could see problems in the banks’ loan books if this growth in consumer lending continues.’

Visual map of Kazakhstan's economy by sector. Oil and Gas continue to predominate. CC Haussmann, Cesar Hidalgo, et.al.

How will Kazakhstan’s banks handle the recent 20% in the devaluation of the tenge? Pavel Prosyankin says, ‘Banks that are in compliance with their regulatory requirements for currency exposure, shouldn’t be affected. But longer term, it may affect their largest clients and it will squeeze their liquidity positions. Clients may then turn to the banks for additional lending, but the banks may not have the resources to lend. The devaluation may have a knock-on effect on their deposit base, and that could cause a run on a weak bank.’

‘We don’t understand why anyone would risk money in this way.’

While the underlying Kazakh economy remains strong, with annual 5% GDP growth, based on a high oil price, scepticism about current banking sector manoeuvres pervades the local market. Almas Chukin, a former executive with Kazyna Capital Management, says ‘We are puzzled. We don’t understand why anyone would risk money in this way. The banks the government is selling are all in very bad shape. Why are people prepared to risk so much money trying to make money? Most of us are very doubtful. We don’t know what their motives are.’ 

Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the deployment of up to 40 000 troops on Ukraine’s border to support the actions of pro-Russian separatist forces, has been widely identified as a turning point in the ‘post-Cold War’ European security system. But Russia’s militarised policy towards Ukraine should not be seen as a spontaneous response to the crisis – it has only been possible thanks to a long-term programme by Moscow to build up its military capabilities. 

A 21st century Russian military

To be a ‘great power’ – which is the status that Moscow’s political elite claim for Russia – is to have both an international reach and regional spheres of influence. To achieve this, Moscow understands that it must be able to project military force, and so the modernisation of Russia’s armed forces has become a key element of its 'great power' ambitions. For this reason, seven years ago, a politically painful and expensive military modernisation programme was launched to provide Russia with new capabilities. One of the key aims of this modernisation has been to move the Russian military away from a mass mobilisation army designed to fight a large-scale war (presumably against NATO) to the creation of smaller and more mobile combat-ready forces designed for local and regional conflicts.  

The modernisation of Russia’s armed forces has become a key element of its 'great power' ambitions.

The size of Russia’s armed forces is being cut from 1.2m to around 1m, the officer corps is being slimmed by almost 50%, and a cadre of well-trained NCOs is being created. Conscription will remain, but better pay and conditions are intended to create a more professional army. The reforms have replaced the old four-tier command system of military districts, armies, divisions, and regiments with a two-tier structure of strategic commands and leaner, more mobile combat brigades.

Russia's military modernisation programme is designed to create a more professional, 21st century armed forces.Photo cc:hohum

Increased defence budgets

But reorganisation has not been the only priority. Buoyed by the wealth pouring into the state coffers from oil and gas sales, Russia has sought to upgrade its ageing Soviet equipment. In 2010, Russia launched an ambitious ten-year weapons modernisation programme at a total estimated cost of $720 billion. The aim is to go from a situation in the last decade when only 10% of equipment was classed as ‘modern,’ to a level of 70% by 2020. 

As a result of these commitments, the Russian defence budget has increased dramatically. Over the past year alone, Russia’s military spending is estimated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) to have increased by 4.8 %, and Russia is now spending a larger share of its GDP on the military than America. The Russian Government's published 2014 military budget is reported as 2.49 trillion rubles (approximately US$69.3 billion) – the third largest in the world, following America and China. The official budget is set to rise to 3.03 trillion rubles (approximately US$83.7 billion) in 2015, and 3.36 trillion rubles (approximately US$93.9 billion) in 2016.

While Russia’s leadership has long harboured plans for military modernisation, the major catalyst for reform came with the 2008 war in Georgia. The Russian military victory confirmed the Kremlin’s belief that military power could be used in Russia’s neighbourhood, but it also demonstrated the serious shortcomings in the modernisation programme. Subsequently, the Kremlin has succeeded in pushing past the opposition of the conservative military bureaucracy to implement change.

All three South Caucasus countries and Kazakhstan have doubled their military spending since 2004.

The 2008 conflict in Georgia, and developments today in Ukraine, point to a wider process of militarisation underway in the countries of Eurasia, one driven primarily by local security concerns. Russia’s defence modernisation has been directed at these concerns as much as at a potential threat from NATO. At the core of these security challenges is a growing military competition focused on the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and the Caucasus region. 

Russia's victory over Georgia in 2008 convinced the Kremlin that it could use military power in its neighbourhood.With this competition in mind, all three South Caucasus countries and Kazakhstan have doubled their military spending since 2004, according to a recent report by SIPRI. Azerbaijan is the region's big spender, with defence expenditure reaching $3.44 billion in 2013, up 493% since 2004. At the same time, Armenia spent $427 million in 2013, up 115% since 2004, while Georgia spent $443 million in 2013, up 230% since 2004; and Kazakhstan $2.8 billion, up 248% since 2004.

Regional conflict

The key drivers of the region’s galloping militarisation are, firstly, the various protracted Caucasian conflicts – Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, whose status is disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the North Caucasus, which has experienced near continuous conflict since the mid-1990s; and secondly, the rising geopolitical competition over the Caspian Sea and its enormous hydrocarbon resources.

The unresolved conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh is a particular source of tension.  Following its defeat in the conflict over the disputed region in the early 1990s, and currently awash with its new-found hydrocarbon wealth, Azerbaijan has embarked on a military spending spree designed to break Armenia’s economy through an arms race. For its part, Armenia has sought to retain strategic parity with Azerbaijan via Russian military aid, and a long-term security relationship with Moscow, which includes the presence of a substantial Russian military base. In the summer of 2013, Russia announced plans to upgrade and modernise its military forces in Armenia.

Alongside the arms race over Nagorno-Karabakh, there is a growing naval build up in the hydrocarbon-rich but yet to be territorially delimited Caspian Sea. Here, not only have Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan announced plans to strengthen their navies, but Iran has also raised its defence spending in the region. In recent years, Iran has launched new ships, and Tehran has announced it will build the first submarine to operate in the Caspian Sea.

With the annexation of Crimea, Russia has gained full control over Sevastopol, the most important port on the Black Sea.

The growing militarisation of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea is gradually spreading into neighbouring areas. While gaining influence over Kyiv has undoubtedly been a primary motivation behind Moscow’s actions towards Ukraine in recent months, asserting control over the Black Sea – and thereby over the Georgian seacoast and its hinterland across the South Caucasus – has also been a driving factor.

With the annexation of Crimea, Russia has gained full control over Sevastopol, the most important port on the Black Sea, as well as ensuring the virtual disappearance of the Ukrainian navy. Following the annexation, Admiral Viktor Chirkov, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, announced that the Russian Black Sea Fleet will be bolstered by the arrival of 30 new warships over the next six years, including a French-built Mistral amphibious assault ship; and that the port will be fully modernised.

A militarised diplomacy

A military approach is also taking a much more prominent role in Russia’s regional diplomacy as the Kremlin seeks to consolidate its dominance in Eurasia.  This is being pursued within the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), through large-scale military equipment transfers – more than $1 billion in weapons were allocated to Kyrgyzstan in 2013, and $200 million to Tajikistan – and the securing of overseas basing rights.

Arms deals have been linked to plans by Russia to strengthen its presence at the military base in Kant in Kyrgyzstan, following the recent departure of the US military from the nearby Manas airbase, from where they had been supporting operations in Afghanistan for a decade. Russia’s military basing agreement with Tajikistan was renewed at the end of 2013 – more than 7000 Russian troops will be stationed there up to 2042; underpinned by transfers of military equipment. This, together with the annexation of Crimea and the upgrading of the Russian base in Armenia, points to a new security dynamic in the region, one in which Russia’s military and security forces have positioned themselves as key factors influencing the stability (or otherwise) of its neighbours across much of the territory of the former Soviet Union.

Militarised societies

But the rise of military responses to regional challenges is not the only aspect of militarisation underway in Eurasia. The civil societies that have emerged in the region over the past 25 years, and which have played a central role in moving the countries of the region away from the rigid state-society relations of the Soviet era, are under assault as never before, as the region’s ruling elites seek to strengthen their control.

The Kremlin has found a new way to advance its domestic agenda of re-militarising society.

During President Putin’s first term, an effort was made to rebuild some of the practices that served to militarise Soviet society. For example, military training was reintroduced into Russian schools and there was a rising stress on patriotic education. But efforts to promote a re-militarisation of society did not resonate with the population. Dislike of the draft and a rising awareness of the systematic and often fatal hazing (dedovshchina) in the Russian military – often highlighted by civil society organisations such as the Committee of Soldiers Mothers– ensured that the Kremlin’s initiatives found little popular support.

Today, the Kremlin has found a new way to advance its domestic agenda of re-militarising society, namely by generating enormous domestic support for actions taken to enhance Russia’s external strength, and by creating a new social contract based upon the government’s promise to return Russia to the status of a ‘great power.’

The large scale popular support for policies to rebuild Russia’s central role in Eurasia – notably Russia’s right to use force externally, an expansionist view of Russian territory, and support for the annexation of Crimea – has been charted by the Levada Center, the Russian polling organisation; and there are record high levels of support for President Putin whenever he advances such goals. A key tool to help build support for such direct action is a carefully orchestrated media campaign designed to expose the Russian population to stark black and white narratives of military and extremist threats against Russia and ethnic Russians at home and abroad – nowhere more than Ukraine. 

In this febrile climate, the Kremlin is free to pursue its foreign policy goals.

In this febrile climate, the Kremlin is free to pursue its foreign policy goals, and domestically it is able to clamp down on annoying dissenting voices. Russian authorities are able to move against civil society groups and opposition organisations under the guise of strengthening national security against ‘foreign agents.’

But such developments are not limited to Russia. Azerbaijan’s massive defence build-up is underpinned by similar domestic policies. Armenia and Armenians are continually portrayed in the state media as an almost existential threat to the country, a message also hammered home in the nation’s schools. At the same time, the Azeri Government has moved against independent journalists, human rights activists and NGOs, which might challenge the official security narrative justifying the need for this military build-up. A similar situation prevails in Armenia. In the Caucasus, whole generations are being raised to view neighbouring countries and societies as military threats that can only be countered through military responses.

A comprehensive regional approach

Nearly 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new, highly militarised climate is being created that threatens peace amongst the Eurasian countries, and is substantially changing societies there. At its simplest, the change can be seen in the rising defence expenditures and the modernisation of armed forces across the region. But behind these trends are deep-seated political and social developments. Building on the popular support for security approaches to resolving issues with neighbouring countries, the states of the region are looking to roll back the liberal reforms of the past two decades, and to re-militarise state-society relations.

Armenia's defence spending is up 115% since 2004. Photo cc: Khustup

In these conditions, a wholly security-focused response to the Ukraine crisis by the ‘transatlantic community’ risks further entrenching hardliners in Moscow, and reinforcing the dangerous trends towards militarisation. At the same time, a narrow diplomatic approach focused only on Ukraine will not address the broader drift towards militarism in the region. In seeking a response to the Ukraine conflict and to Eurasia’s growing instability, the ‘Western community’ needs to craft a comprehensive regional approach that looks to address the sources of militarism. This will involve increased efforts to find peaceful solutions to Eurasia’s protracted conflicts, and the enmity that has built up around them. It will also require the establishment of a renewed security dialogue between Russia, its allies and the ‘transatlantic community’ to counter perceptions of insecurity and threats in the region, notably in the Caucasus and Caspian regions. Moreover, countries such as Britain might like to reconsider their arms deals with countries such as Russia, which can only further exacerbate instability. Such measures just might help slow down the galloping militarisation of Euraisa.

Image 2: cc: Magbus Manske

Image 3: cc via RIA

As the cycle of economic retaliation between Russia and the West seems to spiral ever more out of control, anxiety is increasing about the possible spillover effects, in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana. Already facing homegrown problems, the largest Central Asia country is now taking reactive and preventive measures. But its alignment with Russia is threatening ambitious growth plans.

Slowdown

The intensified antagonism between the EU and Russia could not have happened at a worse time for Kazakhstan. Central Asia’s biggest economy is already experiencing a slowdown following disruptions in the oil industry, and pressure on the national currency. In October 2013, operations at the country’s largest oilfield, Kashagan, were suspended after only having commenced one month before. It is thus questionable if oil production can be kept at the 2013 level of 81.7m tones. Then, after emerging market indices showed signs of volatility in early 2014, Kazakhstan’s Central Bank devalued the tenge currency by 19% in an attempt to support commodity exports. As recently announced, the state oil company KazMunaiGas was indeed able to raise profits but consumer product prices also experienced a strong hike. Originally, President Nazarbayev had set a GDP growth target of 6% to 7% for this year but the first two quarters only yielded an expansion of the domestic economy of 3.8% in Q1, and 4.8 in Q2 year-on-year.

Most recently, President Nazarbayev decided to shake up Kazakhstan’s executive structure. On 6 August, he declared a far-reaching reorganisation of the country’s ministerial landscape, decreasing the total number of ministries from 17 to 12, and creating a powerful energy ministry, which absorbs the functions and powers of the Ministry of Oil and Gas, Ministry of Industry and New Technologies, and the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources. But what looks like a welcome effort to increase governmental efficiency and to streamline bureaucratic processes can rather be regarded as a way of indicating change to the outside world while in reality preserving the status quo. Heads of the abolished ministries were either moved into similar positions or offered leadership roles in state companies; and some officials were even instructed to maintain their responsibilities.

Astana is unable to launch reforms powerful enough to generate even short-term effects.

The Russian connection

It thus appears that Astana is unable to launch reforms powerful enough to generate even short-term effects. To make matters worse, the linking of the tenge with the rouble puts pressure on Kazakhstan’s policy-makers to think about additional devaluations in the light of Russia tightening its monetary policy. Morepver, disturbances in Russia’s financial sector, with banks like VTB and Bank of Moscow having restricted access to funding, are likely to have knock-on effects on Kazakhstan’s financial institutions as well; and a hike of inflation and interest rates in Russia, one of Kazakhstan’s largest trade partners, would again challenge price stability. Even though the Kazakhstani government has declared that it is working on a plan to protect the economy against external effects, there is little to be done should the Russian economy show serious signs of stagnation.

There is little to be done should the Russian economy show serious signs of stagnation.

Despite the potential financial instability, Kazakhstan can yet hope to benefit from the declared import ban of food products from the US, Europe and others into Russia. The steppe of Kazakhstan is ideal for cattle growing, and could thus compensate for the reduced supply of Western dairy products. The Central Asian country is already a net exporter of prepared foods, and could seize the momentum of reduced competition from Europe. Export possibilities to Russia are further facilitated by the treaty framework of the Customs Union, now transformed into the Eurasian Economic Union, which sets standard external tariffs between the three members, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

However, it is precisely Astana’s close alignment with Moscow, which prohibits a more extensive exploitation of opportunistic trade prospects. In theory, banned goods from Europe could be shipped to Russia via Kazakhstan. The onward export of Western products could expand economic activity in the Central Asian country, supporting the long-needed diversification of its so far energy-centric trade structure. But that causes its own problems: while there is officially no indication yet that Kazakhstan is or will be supporting Russia’s import ban, President Putin conducted talks with President Lukashenka of Belarus, and President Nazarbayev shortly after the embargo was announced. It can certainly be assumed that he requested the Kazakhstani government to at least closely monitor the influx of banned products into its market. The potential to profit from the on-going trade skirmish between Russia and the West remains therefore rather limited; and with Kazakhstan having committed to Putin’s project of Eurasian Integration, there is little room for the country’s leadership to create its own independent economic policy.

Given Kazakhstan’s current healthy GDP development, the imminent possibility of an economic recession seems as yet ungrounded; and provided that geopolitical tensions around Ukraine diminish, market confidence could quickly be restored. But the current crisis has already severely compromised President Nazarbayev’s ambitious long-term vision entitled ‘Kazakhstan 2050,’ which demands annual economic growth of not less than 4% and a stable inflation rate of 3-4% in order to significantly improve living standards. His decision to reorganise the country’s ministries was therefore above all a message intended to demonstrate authority and determination to his domestic audience. Given the apparent lack of influence on Putin’s geopolitical manoeuvres, limiting the damage at home might currently be all that Nazarbayev can do.      

Large infrastructure projects are often pushed through despite local concerns and grievances. This was certainly the case with projects such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which runs from Canada all the way across the United States; and the Turin-Lyon high-speed railway. Local communities fight against megaprojects that harm environments and destroy landscapes even while authorities bring in drills and erect cranes for the sake of ‘the greater good.’ Something of the sort is happening in Kazakhstan right now, where the so-called ‘Silk Highway,’ an ambitious project that seeks to connect Western Europe with China, is in the process of being constructed.

While protest is neither strong nor organised, opposition to the road is beginning to grow throughout the scattered villages of Kazakhstan, where the effects of the project can really be felt. But with the country’s ruling elite completely committed to the highway, this opposition is unlikely to have much impact.

Cutting journey times

Just a few hundred years ago, animals were used to transport goods along the Silk Road, the artery of commerce between East and West – the Silk Road was recently inscribed in the World Heritage List by UNESCO. Things have changed dramatically since then. Today, cargo is transported from one end of the Eurasian continent to the other primarily by ship, and some by truck. But it is still a time consuming endeavour. Soon, however, cargo journey times could be reduced dramatically thanks to a World-Bank-sponsored highway project that will connect the Chinese city of Lianyungang with St Petersburg.

The World-Bank-sponsored highway project will connect the Chinese city of Lianyungang with St Petersburg.

The new Silk Highway could cut the shipping time of products between China and Europe by more than 50%. By sea, Chinese goods take up to 45 days to reach Germany; by rail they can get there in as little as 18 days; and on roads potentially even faster. Currently, 95% of cargo between China and Europe is transported on ships so the more that is transferred onto the road, the more time, and hence costs, can be saved. Moreover, in passing through the territory of the Customs Union (comprising Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus), ‘Made in China’ goods will be subject to just one border control before entering the European Union. 

Camels travelling the old silk road. Photo CC: fdeconomite

Kazakhstan is vital to the success of the highway; the entire route will stretch 8,445 km, 2,787km of which will be laid in the territory of Kazakhstan, from Khorgos in the south-west to Martuk in the north-east. Of this 2787km, only 300 km are designed to run outside of the existing roadways, for the remaining sections, works of reconstruction and upgrade are being carried out.

Money talks

International organisations are rushing in from far and wide to help finance the construction of this mega project. The World Bank, for example, is betting high stakes on the highway and has lent $2.125 billion through its IBRD branch, making it the largest investment project in the history of the organisation. Other key contributors include the Asian Development Bank, with $700m; the Inter-American Development Bank, with $414m; and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is investing a further $197m. Together, these ‘development’ banks have invested some $3 billion, in order to help bring the project to life. Total estimated costs will likely run up to $5.6 billion.

While the world’s leading ‘development’ organisations are clearly throwing their full weight behind the project, locally, the road is creating some tensions with rural populations. Earlier in June, for example, a court case sanctioned the demolition of a newly-built house that was considered to stand too close to the path of the highway. The Almaganbetovs, a family of nine, protested that the authorities had not once asked them to suspend work on the house while it was under construction, thus giving them hope to think that their home would be spared. The court ordered the Almaganbetov’s to be compensated, and set the sum at 400,000 tenge (roughly equivalent to $2,000), but the family claims to have spent at least 11m tenge (around $60,000) on their home. A number of other houses along the highway are similarly lying in the path of the wrecking ball, and, if the Almaganbetov court case is any precedent, families can expect to be compensated as little as 3% or 4% of the total capital they invested into their homes.

A number of other houses along the highway are similarly lying in the path of the wrecking ball.

There have been other irregularities. According to the Prosecutors Office in Almaty, the contracts with which the city administration managed to seize the farm land to build the road were flawed. Last May, the official court statement called for the repayment of the compensations collected by the farmers. The court had discovered that the amount paid to private citizens was 20 to 30% higher than the market price; and the prosecutor alleged that the difference was pocketed by public officials involved in the deal. Citizens are, of course, upset about the decision, because the request of the court does not entail the return of the land to the previous owners, who will be stuck in a no-win situation.

In the vicinity of Almaty, a strike recently halted the works of Doğuş Gülsan, a Turkish firm involved in the construction of the road. Three hundred workers were protesting about overdue payments and poor working conditions: ‘we are constantly denied access to 30% to 40% of our salaries, but we work 13 hours every day. This is a farce. Our families don't have enough money to survive at this point,’ said construction worker Yerlan Akylzhan to a local TV reporter last May. Recurrent disputes between local workers and foreign companies are compromising the schedule for the completion of this massive project.

Mixed reactions

In a southern region of Kazakhstan, not far from Shymkent, tumbleweeds roll across the new asphalt, which stands tall in the middle of pasture fields, but is neither elevated nor fenced off enough to keep cattle from wandering among the cars, on some sections of roadway. In other sections there are tunnels, especially devised to allow the migration of cows and sheep grazing right by the side of the highway. In the distance, it is easy to discern small concrete manufacturing plants, with Chinese labelling. These mobile production facilities are protected by private security guards; and it is extremely difficult to approach the staff working inside. Local companies, however, are more open – though still wary of strangers – and they provide a small glimpse into the system of tendering for contracts. The head of construction at AKM-Planum, one of the construction companies that have been assigned to the project, explained the situation as follows: ‘the centralised tender system as it exists today is less corrupt, but it is still easy to find loopholes and to pay under the table. Despite the enormous international participation in the construction of the road, the government is trying to allocate some sections to local companies, that's how we are able to feed our families.’ Among the other workers, some were wearing masks for fear of being recognised. A younger one, however, seemed hopeful: ‘with the help of my family, we bought several trucks, hoping that the road business will pay back our investment.’ Some locals, it seems, are betting on the project. The local population, however, does not seem as excited as the contractors. Last year, villagers of the Kazhimukhan aul, not far from Shymkent, protested against the heavy traffic that crowded the fragile roads of the small settlement. Trucks loaded with concrete and steel were in fact ruining the asphalt, and inflicting environmental damage.

The 'Silk Highway' should cut the cost of transporting 'made in China' goods. Photo CC: Kostmo

Companies, however, are optimistic. At the (temporary) headquarters of AKM-Planum, in the village of Temirlan, project director Myrzagaly Baimbetov noted some interesting issues: ‘By the end of 2014, the road should be working at full capacity, that is, it should be ready to withstand the flow of 10,000 cars per day, which is unprecedented in Kazakhstan.’ He noted, however, that ‘delays in the supply of concrete from the local plant in Shymkent will push back completion.’ (The interview was conducted in March, now the rumours are that the delay could be anywhere from six months to one year). 

Another interesting feature is the framework for audits of the companies' work: ‘Inspections can only be performed if an infraction is reported, in order to minimise the harassment of the companies by public officials. Only after the completion of the works, is each section examined, and the outcome seals the success or the failure of the compliance with the contract.’ This mechanism is the new trend in Kazakhstan's system of checks and scrutinies; due to the striking volume of bribes that are connected with public audits, the government is trying to establish a system of reactive inspections. According to Baimbetov, the road will be profitable: ‘Most likely, the project will return profits to the companies that will gain from toll booths; and also us, as we will have priority over repair works in our sections.'

The 20% rule

Interviewed in the Todini S.p.A. headquarters in Almaty, Fabio Fogli, country manager, explained that for the main section of the highway, the construction lots are assigned directly by the World Bank: ‘their tenders are straightforward: the lowest offer wins. Of course, we all have to respect their basic requirements, but big companies are already used to high standards.’ When asked about the existence of possible loopholes for the proliferation of corruption cases, Fogli was resolute: ‘we only deal with the World Bank, the tender system is very simple and transparent. Sure, then we have to deal with local workers and suppliers, but it's not in the philosophy of our company to engage in 'under the table' transactions.’

‘In Kazakhstan the informal rule is 20%. That's the minimum percentage you have to pay in bribes.’

Turning to the opinion of experts, the picture seems quite different from the one depicted by official sources. A local specialist who wished to remain anonymous observed: ‘in Kazakhstan, the informal rule is 20%. That's the minimum percentage you have to pay in bribes for each tender, auction or project. Nobody can escape this mechanism because it's ingrained in the business environment. When companies tell you that they're corruption-free, then take a look at their subsidiaries, at the companies that provide workers, materials, and logistics. Corruption is hard to beat because it can happen at several different levels.’

Tolganai Umbetalieva, head of the Central Asian Foundation for the Development of Democracy, was also sceptical about the transparency of the local tender system; in an interview in Almaty he said that the size of the shadow economy has not diminished, on the contrary, ‘the reason that there hasn't been much ado about the delay of the completion of the construction of the road is because those who have control over its consturction, the local governments, have already received bribes, given at the assignment of the tender. With money already in their pockets, they don't care about the development of the project and don't want to attract attention to the issue.’ Indeed, the Prosecutor's Office of the Almaty region is currently investigating possible inflated compensations for land confiscation related to the construction of the road. Through a well-oiled scheme, allegedly, public officials would hike up the invoice to the government only to return a portion of the payout to the affected citizens.

Aside from local issues, Umbetalieva argues that the road is an instrument for Kazakhstan's leap into the league of developed nations: ‘the World Bank doesn't account for the political consequences of the project. For them, the Western Europe – Western China road is driven by economic reasons. It should be evident instead that the whole project plays a big role in the image-building strategy of the government.’ 

The ‘bridge policy’

Analysts argue that the new road also fits perfectly into the multi-vector discourse pioneered by Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbayev, ever since independence in 1991. Opening up fresh vectors and strengthening old ones is still the priority for Astana. Stéphanie Koole from the University of Glasgow argues that ‘the Western Europe – Western China project is also pertinent to the Eurasianist discourse that aims to integrate different regions.’ It also represents the backbone of the recently developed ‘bridge policy,’ with which Kazakhstan aims to become the link between East and West.

Chinese machinery at work on the 'Silk Highway'. Photo via Demotix. David Vilder. All rights reserved

The huge territory of Kazakhstan extends over an area eleven times larger than the United Kingdom, and yet has little more than 17 m inhabitants. Connecting its population with modern means of transport is an ambitious challenge for the leadership, due to the great distances between the larger cities. However, the implementation of the Silk Highway seems to be driven more by business interests than by a genuine attempt to link the different – and diverse – regions of the country. Apart from the local workers who have been contracted to build sections of the road, little is expected in terms of growth for the local economy. 

Infrastructure projects are merely instruments, a means to an end. Regarding the Silk Highway, two conflicting goals are evident. On the one hand, the government aims to connect regions, facilitate trade, and open up the country's horizons. On the other hand, the elite seems to ‘practice the art of showing off,’ by taking part in all possible international agreements, treaties, and projects, for the sake of increasing Kazakhstan's popularity in the eyes of global investors. That liking for PR can be seen in many image-building projects, starting from the OSCE summit in 2010 to the EXPO in 2017. Only time will tell if the Silk Highway is the right project to position Kazakhstan as the key node between East and West, or a road to nowhere. One is reminded of the Chinese proverb that says, 'If you want to get rich, you build roads first; but if you want to get rich faster, you build faster roads.'

Although Kazakhstan attracts an estimated 700,000 to 1.2m short-term migrant workers annually – 85% of these from the neighbouring states of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – its migration law has traditionally lacked provisions allowing them to work legally. Widely, though mistakenly referred to as gastarbaitery, (the Russianised plural of Gastarbeiter), migrants enter as ‘visitors’ or ‘guests’ under the CIS visa-free regime, but lapse into an illegal or quasi-legal status upon taking up employment. Constrained by the 30-day term limit (citizens of Kyrgyzstan can now stay up to 90 days but not those of Uzbekistan or Tajikistan) they work by engaging in shuttle or circular migration.

The patent

Kazakhstan’s parliament finally passed a law in December 2013, which allows citizens of these three neighbouring states to work legally for a period of up to one year by obtaining a work permit, known as a patent. They will no longer have to depend on their employer for their legal status and registration. Earlier, migrants could work legally only if the employer was able to obtain the permission from the local akimat (administration) for hiring them. The complex, time-consuming and expensive procedure for obtaining this permit on the one hand, and the ease of hiring migrants ‘off the street’ on the other, had made it more usual for individual employers and small business to bypass the legal procedures.

Kazakhstan’s parliament finally passed a law which allows citizens of these three neighbouring states to work legally.

The growing volume of migrants’ remittances and the realisation that bribes and payoffs to officials and middlemen had been siphoning off potential budgetary revenues, have finally spurred the authorities to take steps to legalise working migrants, hence the patent. The Ministry of Economy and Budget Planning calculates that if 100,000 migrants buy a patent in the first year, then Kazakhstan will earn about $30m in tax payments, and up to 10 billion tenge (almost $55m) within a couple of years. Minister Dosaev put the number of illegal migrants at 300,000, an underestimate, while intimating that the possibility of legalisation through the patent system could benefit up to a million workers, bringing in revenues of about 50-80 billion tenge ($280-$500m) a year subsequently. But is this patent system one that actually works for Kazakhstan’s guest workers?

Obtaining the patent

The patent is limited to up to one year, and requires its holder to pay about 3700 tenge (about $24) a month, in advance by bank transfer or at the migration office. In effect, the monthly payment is a form of tax, calculated as being 10% of 37,000 tenge ($200) – the minimum amount which migrants are estimated to earn in a month. Migrants earning above this amount will pay a further tax, which will be calculated at the end of their term, although the mechanism for calculating the tax has not yet been made clear.

Migrants in Kazakhstan from the Fergana Valley, which spans Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. via Fergananews

Migrants are responsible for finding an employer, negotiating the pay, signing a work contract, and completing the paperwork. The wages payable to migrants are determined on the basis of mutual negotiation between the migrant and employer because the government in Kazakhstan has not set a minimum wage. Employers are absolved from paying employment taxes, but fines ranging from $360-600 are to be levied on those who violate these laws. They are also prohibited from hiring more than five migrant workers – a measure intended to combat the widespread practice of individual builders and property developers hiring several workers for construction as well as sub-contractors; and brigadiry doing the same.

Similar to the patent law in Russia, migrants can work only for an individual entity and not for a juridical one. This means that they are essentially confined to work in the domestic sphere where they can take on jobs such as gardening, construction or renovation of private homes and dachas, childcare, and cooking.

Kazakhstani authorities say that the procedure for obtaining a patent is both simple and efficient. After registering with the regional migration office within five days of their arrival, migrants seeking a patent have to: obtain an Individual Tax Number; conclude a formal agreement with the employer; pay the monthly fee; present these papers along with the passport, migration card, and a police clearance certificate to the migration office where they are registered; and then finally have their fingerprints scanned.

Kazakhstani authorities say that the procedure for obtaining a patent is both simple and efficient.

But, as is so often the case the world over, bureaucratic procedures are not always as simple and efficient on the ground as officials would have one believe. A correspondent of the newspaper Liter who accompanied migrants to see how they acquire the Individual Taxpayer Number and other documents necessary for obtaining the patent, reported that the actual process takes 1-2 weeks, and not 3 days as stated in official announcements. This causes tremendous problems for migrants who cannot work until they have obtained the patent. Since most migrants borrow money from relatives or friends in order to go abroad to work, they are under serious pressure to begin working immediately – with or without a patent. Moreover, many migrants may simply not know that they are not permitted to work until thepatent has been issued.

These delays and this confusion may well just be signs of teething problems but it is migrants who are set to suffer because of them, not bureaucrats or politicians. ‘You can be sure that the migration officials, and regional district heads that keep tabs on migrants, and supply information to the police, will target migrants for inspection during this period, and find reasons to extract bribes and payoffs,’ said Damir, an Astana-based journalist, adding, ‘they deliberately leave these loopholes in the law.’ In other words, the conditions are rife for the emergence of intermediaries and brokers who already facilitate the informal employment of migrants in Kazakhstan.

Avoiding Big Brother

Conditions are rife for the emergence of intermediaries and brokers.

A further problem involving the patent is that it requires migrants to identify themselves to the state, and that is not as straightforward as one might imagine. Forced to remain illegal for so long in their working lives, migrants’ entire life experience has taught them to distrust state institutions, and their functionaries. They try to be as invisible as they can, and prefer verbal agreements to written contracts so as to leave no imprint behind. ‘They’re mortified by the written word’ said Mominova, a Senior Police Commissioner in Shymkent, whose section collaborates with a local NGO, Sana Sezim, on combating domestic violence and non-consensual bride kidnapping. Herself an ethnic Uzbek, she said that she tries to help out ‘her boys’ who come here to earn a livelihood but do not know the laws, and avoid all contact with officials.

Gastarbaitery are vulnerable to abuse by employers. Bekzod Ikramov from Uzbekistan was kept as a slave. via FergananewsIt is not surprising that migrants react with fear and apprehension to the requirement to provide a mandatory police clearance certificate and fingerprinting. Kazakhstani authorities are yet to carry out a campaign which reassures migrants that they are not being targeted for additional surveillance and criminalisation. Migrants fear contacts with any authority – be it officials or NGOs. No more than 2-3% of migrants approach NGOs or international organisations for advice, support or help solving problems. Anna Ryl’, director of the NGO, Korgau, in Astana mentioned that, ‘if migrants come to us and launch a complaint, then we can represent their case to the Migration Police and demand a response. But they just don’t bother – it is easier for them to pay bribes than bother to fight.’

Migrants fear contacts with any authority – be it officials or NGOs.

Migrants make the best of having to engage in circular or shuttle migration by working out flexible and informal job arrangements. Several cafés and restaurants especially in the southern cities of Shymkent, Turkestan, and Taraz have a succession of cooks, caterers and cleaners, often from the same mahalla or extended family in Uzbekistan, who rotate jobs amidst their networks. At one chaikhana in Shymkent, the waiter apologised to me for the absence of some of the dishes listed on the menu by saying that the cook had had to rush back to Uzbekistan.

Gulya, who has a small letting agency in Almaty managing about two dozen apartments, employs a number of Uzbek women from the same extended household who work as cleaners by taking turns. The women enjoy the security of job retention by working every alternative month in Almaty while also being able to look after the children and household in Uzbekistan. If these workers were to legalise themselves by buying a patent, they would be required to pay about $24 monthly tax. Migrants in cleaning and catering jobs earning $250-300 a month on average would be forced to spend an additional 8-10% of their wages in taxes. Alikhan, who hires Uzbek workers for his construction brigade, contrasted their frugal habits and cost-conscious behaviour with the impulsive ways of the wilful nomads (Kazakhs like himself) who lavishly spend the money at hand and do not worry about tomorrow: ‘They save every penny to take it home: they bring all the ingredients with them for plov: rice, oil, meat, dry fruits, and refrain from buying any fresh produce here,’ he noted.

Undocumented migrants

While the patent is designed to help new migrant workers to work legally, it does not address the difficulties faced by those who are already working in Kazakhstan but lack legal status. An unspecified number of ‘undocumented’ migrants or persons without a regulated status –many from Uzbekistan – are living in the regions adjacent to the border without valid documents. They remain in Kazakhstan with the support of family networks, earn a living, and use illegal checkpoints to cross the border to visit relatives. 

Nadira, from Andizhan, who was introduced to me by my local contact as the person ‘who makes the best naans(bread) in the locality,’ has been living in Shymkent for almost a decade now. She was one of those who benefited from the migrant regularisation programme or amnesty carried out by Kazakhstan in 2006. The hastily conducted measure, which resembled a ‘one day act’ rather than a programme, resulted in legalising about 164,000 migrants who had overstayed their term, a much smaller number than anticipated. Like many, Nadira had mistakenly assumed the amnesty to be an authorisation to work and remained in Kazakhstan. But it was not, and so she remains a quasi-legal limbo. The local Uzbek from whom she rents a room and her work place handles all practicalities for her. She has good relations with the local district officials who keep her safe. She has not been back to Uzbekistan, at least not officially, though she later admitted to using illegal checkpoints to visit her ailing mother. In the past decade all three of her brothers have left for Russia, and she was contemplating joining them there. Migrants such as Nadira manage their lack of documentation and ‘illegality’ through a reliance on networks and informal, quasi-legal methods while also keeping an eye for better work options elsewhere.

A patent for informal employment

While the patent system has allowed migrants in Russia to free themselves from depending on an employer, and acquire a legal status, numerous other laws and regulations work to keep them in a state of quasi-legality, maintaining their vulnerability and deportability.

Instead of reducing the informal economy of labour migration… patent has only revitalised it.

The experience of Russia also shows that instead of reducing the informal economy of labour migration, which hinges on keeping migration semi-legal, the patent system has only revitalised it. By offering legal status and economic security to migrants who are employed in the domestic sector, the patent has opened up more avenues for migrants to work illegally for juridical entities. More and more migrant workers in Russia are buying a patent in order to be able to remain in the country for up to a year. In other words, after legalizing themselves through a patent, many go on to work for a juridical entity obviously without a legal contract. Some work part time on a patent, and the remaining time in unauthorised employment. There is a distinct likelihood of this pattern being replicated in Kazakhstan. 

But only time will tell if the patent system has delivered the desired aims. At best, it is a partial measure, limited in scope and adopted too late to be able to limit the deeply entrenched shadow economy of labour migration.

Several weeks ago ISIS (also known as ISIL and Islamic State) forces reached Turkey’s borders, destroying all ‘infidels’ in their path, by which they mean both Christians and Muslims belonging to other branches of Islam. Support for ISIS has also extended beyond its region: Afghan and Pakistani members of the Taliban have already begun to swear allegiance to this new radical Islamist movement.

Recently, representatives of ISIS have stated that one of the organisation’s tasks is to destabilise the situation in Muslim countries in Central Asia, as well as in Russia. Meanwhile, repeated reports have surfaced about citizens of former Soviet republics engaged in combat alongside ISIS fighters.

Specialists in politics and international relations, regional specialists, politicians and informed observers were asked what they think about the subject. The following questions were put to them:

- How real are ISIS’s threats to destabilise the situation in Central Asia and Russia?

- How real is the possibility of ISIS recruiting Muslim citizens from Central Asia and Russia?

- If these threats are a reality, are Central Asian countries capable of independently tackling this threat or do they need help? If the latter, then from where – Russia, the US or other countries? What might Russia and the US demand in exchange for their help?

- Given the threat of ISIS, if this movement can be considered a threat, is Russia prepared to cooperate with the US in destroying ISIS to the extent of engaging their armed forces? If not, how are they prepared to help?

Aleksei Malashenko chairman of the ‘Religion, Society and Security’ programme in the Carnegie Moscow Centre, co-chair of the ‘Interethnic relations in Russia and the CIS’ programme, and one of the leading Russian specialists on Islam.

I don’t think ISIS will drastically affect the situation in the Central Asian countries, and especially in Russia. They don’t have the guts for it. This movement has already compromised itself by chopping off people’s heads: the media are full of reports of executions. And members of both government and the opposition in the countries of Central Asia are of course distancing themselves from this movement; their position is roughly: ‘we are not the Middle East and it won’t happen here.’ But in terms of influencing the domestic situation or provoking some public reaction or social movement, it is possible.

With regards to ISIS recruiting Muslims, I think this issue is being exaggerated. We have no clue how many fighters from Central Asia and Russia are there at the moment: I don’t think there are many. In any case, there are no ‘Uzbek battalions’ there. We knew that fighters from Russia – from Makhachkala (Dagestan) and Tatarstan – took part in the Syrian war. But the exact number is, again, unknown. We might be talking about dozens, but definitely not thousands.

Russia has already taken a de facto part in the war against ISIS.

Russia has already taken a de facto part in the war against ISIS, by sending billions of dollars’ worth of supplies to the movement’s opponents. There are also Russian advisers in the Middle East. But it is difficult to say how the situation will develop. It’s a long term development. We are a part of the Islamic world and, of course, we will take part in all these processes.

If we are actually talking about the Central Asian countries, then I don’t think that they seriously need to be worried about ISIS. That’s not what we need to think about or fear. They have enough internal problems of their own, which need resolving: the transition of power and cross-border, economic and political issues.’

 * * *

 Stanislav Belkovsky, political scientist and commentator, former director of Russia’s National Strategy Institute.

All the threats from ISIS are quite real. It’s already clear that the movement can boast of military success. But authoritarian regimes of the kind that exist in Russia and in the countries of Central Asia, are, in fact, fruit that can fall into carefully outstretched hands. It only requires the right conditions.

The recruitment of young people to join the ISIS fighters is also quite real, all the more so in an atmosphere of unemployment in the Central Asian countries and the Muslim republics of the Russian Caucasus.

In an atmosphere of unemployment in Central Asia and the Caucasus, ISIS recruitment of young Muslims is quite real.

The Central Asian countries will not be able to counter ISIS threats by themselves. Their armies are not capable of resisting experienced militants. They don’t have the military capabilities or indeed the national unity necessary for a war, and so they will ask for help from everyone and anyone possible, and in the first place from Russia and the US.

On the other hand, Vladimir Putin wants to sell the services of Russia to the US to help destroy ISIS. But his ‘sale’ is conditional on the removal of international sanctions against Russia and a pledge of non-interference in Russian policies in the post-Soviet space, and also on a change of the US’s position on the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. But the US is not ready to go there. Clearly, they don’t think this exchange is fair.

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Yadgor Norbutaev, military specialist, blogger, international observer at Fergana.ru.

First of all, it should be noted that the danger lies less in ISIS as a state or a military force, than in the ideology advocated by its followers. This ideology is spreading like a dangerous virus, and people have not yet fully understood the extent of the threat it presents. In other words, the symptoms of the illness are known but nobody knows how to fight it. They’re trying to cure it with occasional ‘poultices’ (bombing attacks), but evidently without any real faith in a full recovery.

ISIS ideology (the virus), like any disease, mainly strikes ‘weak’ governments (organisms): economically underdeveloped, poverty-stricken places where the population is oppressed by their own governments, and so on. Note that it is mainly Muslim countries or countries with large Muslim enclaves that are susceptible to this disease. ISIS cannot threaten Japan, for example, and other countries with controlled immigration of migrant workers, immigrants, refugees etc, are also under less of a threat.

As with any ideology, ISIS’ principles are typically spread independent of the geographical position of the object of conquest.

One more characteristic trait is that it is already clear that ISIS will, in the near future, base its campaign less on its armed forces than on more unconventional methods of warfare, so that national frontiers alone will not be able to stop them. Their emissaries will penetrate Muslim countries like rats carrying plagues across continents.

It follows that Central Asian governments to a larger extent, and some republics of the Russian Federation to a lesser, are tempting ‘honeypots’ to followers of ISIS ideology. And I consider it erroneous to claim that these peoples have long since become ‘atheist.’

ISIS ideology does seem extremely attractive to the ‘forces of evil’ in the world. Remember how members of the Uzbek opposition reached out to the Afghan Taliban and how young bloods from all over the Middle East flocked to fight in Chechnya. In the same way, many dispossessed men from Central Asia will soon be faced with a choice: to go to work in Russia for next to nothing or fight for the Great Idea, and for good money.

Dispossessed men from Central Asia have the choice either to go to work in Russia for next to nothing or fight for the Great Idea.

Since ways of fighting ISIS and its ideology have not yet been found and tested, talk of some sort of ‘aid’ is premature. The Central Asian countries themselves are, in this sense, totally defenceless and reminiscent of a small flock of sheep tethered at the edge of a forest in which a wolf prowls. Once again we need to stress the fact that nobody is likely to be able to defeat ISIS through traditional military means, let alone the extremely weak armies of petty Asian autocrats.

Russia will not be ready to cooperate with the US in the foreseeable future, and America, too, under its current president, is hardly likely to enter into a large-scale military operation, and will probably limit itself to occasional bomb strikes. We also need to take into account bad experiences in the past: arming regional opponents of ISIS might just produce even more bloodthirsty monsters.

* * *

 Dr Andrei Grozin, political scientist, head of the Central Asia Department of the CIS Institute and senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

At the moment we can only guess how serious a threat ISIS represents. There have been many recent publications discussing the fact that the number of immigrants from Central Asia and Russia joining the movement is growing. However, it is important to understand that in the Central Asian region today you can pin anything you like on ISIS. For example, some ISIS flags were recently put up in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), but many people believe that this was an act of provocation on the part of the NSS (the National Security Service of Uzbekistan), because it’s become very difficult to hang any sort of flag there just like that, without the permission of the authorities.

In the Central Asian region today you can pin anything you like on ISIS.

Yes, there are recruits from that region in ISIS. Some of them will remain in the Middle East but some will return, and these returning recruits might destabilise the situation.

Information has also surfaced, that the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan has sworn allegiance to ISIS, but this information also comes from the NSS. It is possible that the special services of the countries concerned have their own informants in this movement, but they do not work effectively in the territories occupied by ISIS. Otherwise, missiles would not have missed their targets. This means that potential intelligence sources have already been exhausted.

Recently Evgeny Satanovsky, the president of Russia’s Middle East Institute, published an article in the journal ‘Voennoye obozrenie’ (‘Military Review’) predicting an ISIS spring offensive in Turkmenistan. It is unknown whether this will happen or not because we do not have a complete knowledge of its plans. All our media reports on this topic can only be called ‘conjectural’ analyses.

However, we can say for certain that young Muslims from the Russian North Caucasus and the Volga region, as well as from Central Asian regions, are involved in ISIS, but only as foot soldiers or junior officers.

The threats as such, I think, are more a question of sabre-rattling, at least in the short term: ISIS has enough to think about without Central Asia. But in the long term, anything is possible.

If we are talking about the ability of the Central Asian countries to counter the threat of ISIS by themselves – they cannot do it. In Russia, many say that Uzbekistan has the most powerful army in the region. But nobody has ever tested its combat effectiveness. Uzbekistan fought against a few dozen militants in 1999-2000, but this is hardly a test of strength. The same can be said of the Tajik military, even though they have experienced civil war. I think that these states do not have the resources to counter such threats. They can deal with light challenges, but they are unlikely to withstand systematic terrorist attacks such as those we see today in the Middle East.

Consequently, all they can hope for is help from the US and Russia. The US, however, is unlikely to provide any real help. This war is also not in Russia’s interests, as it will then face a second Afghan war, only with a more serious, better equipped enemy. Russia really doesn’t need this. It might be able to limit itself to air strikes, but definitely not a troop contingent. And as for payment in exchange for the help, Russia will continue to take advantage of the foreign and economic policies in these countries, which are essential to its own survival. As always.

It is also difficult to say to what extent cooperation between Russia and the US in the fight against ISIS may develop. We have supplied and continue to supply equipment to Iraq and Syria, and I think Moscow regards this current level of aid as quite sufficient.

Some sort of closer cooperation is hardly necessary. What does ISIS mean exactly to the US? Firstly, the fight against ISIS is an American PR project for the next election campaign. Secondly, it is an attempt to stop Islamists ‘at long range’ and, primarily, to protect its Middle Eastern allies. Thirdly, it is really a fight against terrorism. And finally, the US wants to maintain its influence in the area, which, if ISIS wins, will crumble.

The fight against ISIS is an American PR project for the next election campaign.

So why would Russia help the US to achieve purely American goals? It would be strange, in this situation, for Vladimir Putin to offer help to the US.

 * * *

Geidar Djemal, political scientist, chair of Russia’s Islamic Committee.

All the ISIS threats are quite real. As for Central Asia, the governments of those countries will find it difficult to defend themselves against any problems from ISIS after inciting their own peoples against their regimes. This is something that ISIS can exploit.

As far as Russia is concerned, I see a certain element of disinformation in reports of destabilisation of the situation there. ISIS has no intention of entering into conflict with Moscow; current tensions between Russia and the US only work to its advantage. At the centre of ISIS are former members of Saddam Hussein’s political intelligence service who received their training in the Soviet KGB, so they understand the logic of the political game and are not going to push Moscow into the welcoming arms of Washington. But Central Asia is another matter – ISIS considers it part of its zone of interest. So the recruitment of young Muslims to ISIS, including those from Central Asia, was, is and will become still more active. After all, ISIS is the symbol of political Islam.

Of course, Central Asia will not be able to cope with such a threat. They have already run to Russia for help, as was clear at the recent meeting of CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) heads of state in Minsk. Since the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) swore allegiance to ISIS, the Uzbek president Islam Karimov has been crazed with fear. He is ready to do anything and accept any conditions in order to remain in power. Today, Karimov is one of the most hated dictators in the world. More than 10m Uzbeks have been forced to leave their homeland and all of them oppose Karimov. So he should be afraid. If ISIS wanted to enter Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, it wouldn’t need a ‘wide front’. It could simply blow up the situation in these countries from the inside.

Russia is unlikely to intervene in a war between the US and ISIS as it would gain no advantage from it. Many factors here indicate that this is not Russia’s war. The US will have to deal with this problem on its own.

 * * *

Aleksandr Konovalov, political scientist, expert on security issues, president of Russia’s Strategic Studies Institute.

All of ISIS’ threats are more than serious. It is the main military threat to Russia today. Not NATO, not the US, not anyone else, just ISIS. Clearly their goal is to create a worldwide caliphate over a huge territory that would include both Central Asia and some of the Russian regions. So fighters from these areas are constantly being recruited. For ISIS, state borders don’t exist where the recruitment of new fighters is concerned, and besides, they don’t have any lack of resources for it. For example, they seized several oil wells in Iraq and have been very successful in selling this oil. They are the richest terrorist organisation in the world.

ISIS is the main military threat to Russia today. Not NATO, not the US, not anyone else, just ISIS.

There is no way the countries of Central Asia can counter these Islamists without the support of Russia or the US. But the US is far away, and they are limiting themselves to missile and targeted strikes, without any involvement of troops. But without ground operations, they are not going to win the war with only a few bomb attacks. On the other hand, Russia is closer to Central Asia both geographically and psychologically, since for many decades they lived together in the USSR. Therefore Russia will certainly help, at least to ensure a kind of buffer between itself and ISIS, and so that the war will not spread to Russian territory.

As regards some sort of cooperative effort between the US and Russia against ISIS, then nothing is certain. The US is, in this respect, in dire straits. Russia’s military technology is less developed; what could it put on the table? Some military bases? Possibly. I think that the two countries should cooperate more closely in this area. But unfortunately, I don’t expect such cooperation from them – their relations have deteriorated too far, primarily because of Crimea and Ukraine.

* * *

Alisher Ilkhamov, historian, sociologist, associate research fellow at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

The probability of a repeat in Central Asia of ISIS’ Iraqi-Syrian scenario is, I think, next to zero. The ISIS phenomenon is largely associated with the movement and concentration of global Sunni Jihadist forces within one or another region. These forces move around the world and concentrate in places with a sufficient number of irritants, and also where favourable conditions and an environment for success can also arise. In Iraq and Syria, it is mainly a fight against Shiites, who control the central governments of those countries, where there is a significant Sunni population and where Sunnis feel their rights are being infringed. Neither one nor the other (that is, neither sufficiently powerful irritants nor favourable conditions for military action) are available in Central Asia. The fact that the Taliban and IMU both swore allegiance to ISIS means very little at the moment from an operational standpoint,

The fact that the Taliban and IMU swore allegiance to ISIS means very little at the moment from an operational standpoint.

At the same time there is a threat of internal instability in the region. This is particularly acute in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, where the suppression of dissent and the corruption of the authorities have reached unprecedented dimensions and have consequently weakened the legitimacy of these authorities in the eyes of the population. The Islamists have always been able to take advantage of the dissatisfaction of the masses and offer an alternative to the existing autocratic regimes ( we’re talking here mainly about home-grown Islamists, not ISIS missionaries). However, we musn’t disregard the process of internationalisation of the jihadist movement that has been going on. This process is more likely to serve as a backdrop to internal conflict in the countries in this region, than as a deciding factor in determining the course of events. Therefore it is unnecessary to talk about the need for direct military support from external forces. There simply is no such need. It is enough to carry out internal reforms to ensure economic growth and to eliminate (or at least reduce) the rift that has formed between the people and the government. This would defuse the situation, thereby weakening the stimulus for people to join Islamist and jihadist movements. Any external intervention would only exacerbate the situation, bringing a nationalist element into play.

* * *

Arkady Dubnov, journalist, specialist in Central Asian affairs.

The main issues that threaten to destabilise the countries of Central Asia are to be found within the countries themselves: corruption, poverty, unemployment, poor governance, nepotism, environmental degradation… And if ISIS ideologues are able to offer or, if you want, impose the alternative of Islamic happiness in the form of a world Caliphate on the uneducated Muslim population in the region, and also create a collective image of a terrifying enemy in the shape of a Kafir (Infidel) West working together with Russia, then anything can happen. In terms of threats to Russia, they’re mostly in the form of isolated terrorist attacks along the lines of what happened recently in Chechnya.

The main threats to stability in Central Asia are internal ones.

The recruitment of citizens from Central Asia and Russia as ISIS fighters has long been a reality. Hundreds of fighters, members of ethnic groups from Central Asia and the Russian North Caucasus are fighting in the ranks of ISIS, and their number is likely to increase. In August this year two groups of ISIS militants, a total of 120 people, among whom were Arabs and natives of the North Caucasus, were sent, one after the other, across Pakistan and into the Afghan province of Kunduz, which borders Tajikistan. Their attempt to establish Sharia Law was met with fierce resistance from the local Mujahideen, who defeated the foreigners and forced the survivors to flee Kunduz.

Needless to say, the Central Asian countries will need assistance – mainly from Russia. And some of them, if not asking directly, are certainly hinting at it. At the last CIS summit in Minsk, for example, President Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan stated that the military potential of the CIS is essential to the maintenance of regional security. Ashgabat has already faced threats on its Afghan borders, and an intensive programme of border reinforcement is now under way. And it may well be that Tajikistan, which has the longest border with Afghanistan, will also need additional aid.

The US, unlike Russia, is unlikely to want to involve itself directly in providing additional military support to Central Asia. This would provoke a strong reaction from Russia – that’s the way things are, unfortunately, in today’s world – so the governments of Central Asia will try to avoid such a scenario. Russia doesn’t need anything from Central Asia in exchange for its support; even the possible return of a Russian military presence in the region will be payment enough for Moscow.

Russia is prepared to use its armed forces in the fight against ISIS only within its area of national interests as it understands them, i.e. in the post-Soviet space, or, in an extreme case, in the Balkans, if Slavic countries like Serbia ask for help against an Islamist threat. But this is too unlikely for us to talk about seriously. It also seems unlikely at the moment, at any rate while Barack Obama is in the White House, that there will be real Russian-American cooperation in the fight against ISIS – unless of course Moscow, under certain conditions, will give up its veto power in the UN Security Council, which would open up the possibility of military action by an anti-ISIS coalition.

This article first appeared on Fergana News.