The country best known in the West as the land of Borat, the fictional reporter created by British humorist Sacha Baron Cohen, is experiencing an unprecedented upheaval that threatens the stability of Central Asia and opens a new crisis front for Russian President Vladimir Putin .
On Wednesday (5), protesters attacked public buildings and protested in Kazakhstan’s main cities, including the largest of them, Almati, and the capital, Nur-Sultan. The official residence of the country’s president, Kassim-Jomar Tokaiev, was raided. The country is in a state of emergency, and the prime minister has resigned from his cabinet.
The complaint in the streets is against the price of fuel, but everything indicates that the wave of protests got out of control — the famous “it’s not just R$ 0.20” of the acts of July 2013 in Brazil.
The Cabinet resignation, orchestrated by Tokayev, does not seem to have had much effect, although it is difficult to gauge the news emerging on social networks and in media heavily controlled by the dictatorial government of the former Soviet republic.
The acts began on Sunday (2), in the region of Mangistau, where LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) is the main fuel for vehicles. On Tuesday (4), they spread to the biggest city, Almati, and across all areas of the country — crashing into Nur-Sultan.
There was police repression, on a scale that is still uncertain as there has been some relief in the sector in recent years, according to international agencies. In Almati, there are reports that public buildings were set on fire, disclosed by bloggers on the internet. There were, according to the city hall, 190 people were injured and at least 200 were arrested.
It all started because the government released LPG prices earlier this year, catching drivers who had converted their cars to run on fuel due to its low cost compared to gasoline and diesel.
Now, Tokayev has said he will reverse the measure, although the effect of any speech he makes remains unknown. That’s when the problem spills over the borders of the great country, which with a territory equivalent to 1/3 of Brazil’s dominates Central Asia.
The first table on which the pineapple is placed is that of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president, grappling with the serious crisis in which he has deployed troops to pressure NATO to accept a deal preventing Ukraine from joining the western military club, now sees his ally in trouble.
It’s not unusual. In 2020, Putin came to the rescue of the allied government of another former Soviet nation in the region, remote Kyrgyzstan, which has faced protests. It did the same for the more important Belarus, in effect subordinating Aleksandr Lukachenko’s dictatorship to its political command, and brokered a fragile peace agreement that ended the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Finally, it faced a pro-Western government in Moldova, where it has interests and troops in a neighboring autonomous territory, Transnistria.
Looking on the map, these are all transition points between Russian borders and opponents, which were once part of Moscow’s control, whether under the tsars or under the Communist Party. This explains Putin’s obsession with maintaining stability and influence in these places, lost to the 1991 Soviet disintegration.
The Kremlin has come out, saying it expects a quick resolution of the crisis by Tokayev. The autocrat is a recent ally and seen as a puppet of the dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled Kazakhstan for nearly 30 years.
In 2019, worn down by street protests, the dictator passed the job to the protégé, but retained the post of “father of the nation” and head of the influential Security Council, with far-reaching powers. At 81 years old, he still hasn’t talked about the crisis.
His succession was even seen as a model for Putin when the Russian decided to change the constitution in 2020, but he preferred to leave open the possibility of running for terms that could last until 2036.
Putin’s relationship with Kazakhstan, however, is not entirely rosy. In 2014, the president suggested that the country existed for a “gift from the Russian people”. Moscow has its main space rocket launching base in the country, in Baikonur.
And there is the Chinese question. The giant to the east is the biggest regional economic power, and has made expansion moves towards Kazakhstan that the Kremlin disliked, integrating the country into its infrastructure integration project, the Belt and Route Initiative.
For his part, Nur-Sultan took advantage of this dispute to try to maintain a position of relative independence, balancing himself between both powers and still courting the United States, rivals of both.
American companies are leaders among foreigners in exploring the country’s oil and gas-rich subsoil, accounting for 30% of extraction in 2019 — compared to 17% for Chinese firms and just 3% for Russian firms. Since 2003, much to the Kremlin’s dismay, the country has held annual military exercises not just with Moscow but with NATO.
Despite this, the flow of trade with the Americans is still unparalleled, ten times less than the roughly US$19 billion registered between the Kazakhs and Russia and the US$21 billion registered with China.
From a Chinese perspective, instability is undesirable for another reason. Kazakhstan borders the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region to the east, where the Chinese are accused of genocide by the US.
Here, the diplomatic game is evident. The Kazakh government does not accept the Western accusations, but neither does it sign letters of support for China as Russia does. Indeed, Nur-Sultan is critical of US and European sanctions against Putin for annexing Crimea in 2014, but does not recognize the territory as Russian.
“Tokayev is the embodiment of this course of action: he is a sinologist who studied at the prestigious MGIMO (Russia’s Rio Branco Institute) and forged his diplomatic career at the UN,” wrote Uzbek analyst Temur Umarov, an analyst at the Carnegie Center in Moscow.
As with all crises in the former Soviet periphery, there are factors of external influence being considered by Moscow. But so is the reality: inflation is at 9%, the highest in five years, and interest rates have recently risen to 9.75%. And the internet has increased the leeway to the state press, boosting communication among young activists.
For the rest of the world, instability may have some effect on the already complex composition of oil prices (the country has the 15th reserve on the planet) and gas (12th reserve), but the main implication is now geopolitical.
With last year’s botched American withdrawal from Afghanistan, Central Asia is experiencing an uncertain time — radical Islamist elements exist throughout the region. Neither Putin nor Xi, now in close stride to face the West, should let the situation explode without some kind of political intervention. By 2021, they have already operated around the Afghan crisis that saw the Taliban return to power.
By disposition and temperament, the task should fall to the Russian, which will be celebrated at the negotiating table between the Kremlin and NATO on the crisis in Ukraine, next week.
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