Decoding the Protests in Kazakhstan

 Protests erupted in the city of Zhanaozen that lies in the Mangistau Province of Western Kazakhstan on 2^nd January 2022 and quickly spread to almost all major cities of Kazakhstan. Things took a violent turn in Almaty, the largest city of Kazakhstan on 5^th January 2022 when protesters stormed several government buildings, supermarkets, mayor's office, regional police headquarters and the Almaty headquarter of National Security Committee locally known as KNB that is the successor organization of the soviet era KGB.

 Protestors torched the Mayor's office, the Presidential residence in Almaty, and several other buildings including the Almaty headquarters of ruling party Nur Otan that was until recently led by former President Nursultan Nazarbayev. So, far the protests are without a clearly identifiable leader and many political analysts are considering them quite similar to the protests that rocked the Arab world in the Arab Spring of early 2010s.

Main reasons behind the protests

The immediate reason behind the protests was the sharp rise in prices of LPG gas that is used as vehicle fuel by majority of poor citizens of Kazakhstan in the western region of the country. LPG gas was being sold at around 50 tenge or around 12 cents per liter until 31^st December 2021 and the authorities have already said in advance that the prices will rise from 1^st January as the government has decided to stop subsidizing the price of lpg gas from 1^st January 2022.

LPG gas prices rose dramatically to 120 tenge on 1^st January 2022 or around 27 cents, a steep rise of around 140% and this sparked the protests by common citizens who saw this as another act of oppression in a long list of complaints against the government. Kazakhstan is a natural resource-rich country that primarily relies on exports of Oil, Gas, Metals, and Minerals such as Zinc, Chromium, Copper, Lead, and Uranium.

Oil and Gas along with mining account for almost 70% of the GDP of Kazakhstan and hydrocarbons along with minerals are the major exports of the country. Kazatomprom, the state-owned uranium mining company accounts for almost 40% of all the uranium mined globally and has ensured Kazakhstan's position as the largest uranium mining nation in the world since at least 2009.

Kazakhstan has the 10^th or 11^th largest oil reserves in the world and has attracted billions of dollars in FDI since the dissolution of Soviet Union in its hydrocarbon extraction sector. Some of the major oil companies such as BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, CNPC, Gazprom, Eni, and Rosneft have significant presence in the oil extraction sector of Kazakhstan.

The Kazakh economy performed quite well until 2014 when the price of crude oil crashed from a high of $147 per barrel to a low of around $30 per barrel in less than a year. At that time alone, an estimated 200,000 people who were employed in the oil and gas sector lost their jobs due to the reduced production of crude oil.

Poor economic conditions have made life of common citizens quite difficult, and the high rate of inflation over the past few years has further reduced the purchasing power of Kazakhstan's citizens. This when coupled with high levels of corruption, and lack of economic reforms has provided the perfect conditions for discontent in general population who are often paid quite low wages.

Discontent against former President Nazarbayev

Former President Nursultan Nazarbayev has tightly controlled Kazakhstan since its Independence from Soviet Union in 1991. The long reign of Nazarbayev who resigned in 2019 has ensured that people from his immediate family such as his daughters, sons-in-law, brothers, and nephews have been able to monopolize whole sectors of the economy of Kazakhstan.

Nazarbayev's son-in-law Timur Kulibayev is ranked as the richest person in Kazakhstan by Forbes as he controls the leading bank in the country, along with several other companies. Nazarbayev's daughter Dariga Nazarbayeva was named in both Panama Papers, and Pandora Papers and is accused of amassing a huge fortune that runs in billions of dollars.

The huge wealth of Nazarbayev family is in stark contrast to the poor living conditions faced by an average Kazakh citizen who often has to work for a nominal wage of $300-$400. Wages for experienced teachers, doctors, managers, engineers, and other professionals in Kazakhstan are often less than $500 a month which comes as a shock to many as a country that earns billions of dollars in natural resource exports is unable to provide decent living wages to most of its citizens.

It's been an open secret that people close to former President Nazarbayev controls huge swaths of the entire economy of the country and this concentration of wealth in few hands has been the main reason of discontent in the population of Kazakhstan.

Kazakh population was content and overlooked the excesses of Nazarbayev's regime until the economy was doing well. But as economy took a noticeable downturn in the aftermath of the crude oil price crash of 2014, people could simply no longer turn an eye away from the huge mismatch in income and wealth.

Nursultan Nazarbayev officially resigned in 2019 from the post of President, but not before creating other structures that allow him to run the show from behind the curtains. Constitutional amendments ensure that Nazarbayev will remain as the Chairman of the powerful Security Council of Kazakhstan that controls the armed forces, police forces, and foreign policy of the country.

Nazarbayev enjoys the title of Elbasy that means leader of the nation and this status ensures that he cannot be tried in any court of law during his life and thus enjoys immunity from any criminal or civil court of law for any actions that he took during his long reign.

President Nazarbayev also built a cult of personality around him that has led to a museum named after him known as the museum of first President, a university that was constructed at a cost of more than $2 billion known as Nazarbayev University. This cult of personality reached its highest levels at the end of Nazarbayev's career when the capital of Kazakhstan Astana was renamed as Nursultan in the honor of Nazarbayev in 2019.

Nazarbayev has ensured that he controls the politics of the country despite leaving the post of President by appointing people close to him to major posts in the country. Karim Massimov who served as Prime Minister of Kazakhstan and was until 5^th January 2022 the head of National Security Committee is a Nazarbayev loyalist. The deputy head of National Security Committee was Samat Abishev who is the nephew of Nazarbayev.

Indeed, the main demand of protestors in Kazakhstan over the last few days has been the removal of all people close to former President Nazarbayev from influential posts in the country. The mood and slogans of the protestors suggest that they want a complete overhaul of the political system with the cries of "Shal Ket" meaning "old man go away" in Kazakh dominating the main squares and protest sites in the country. It must be noted that this is the same slogan that was used by protestors in Kazakhstan in the protests of 2016 when the people were protesting against a law that allowed foreigners to buy agricultural land in the country with many suspecting that this new law will allow Chinese companies and investors to acquire substantial landholdings in the country.

How peaceful protests turned violent

Most protests were peaceful until Monday evening and Tuesday morning when the protests turned violent with the protestors storming the main buildings of the government across several cities of Kazakhstan. Protestors stormed Mayor's office, Presidential residence, local police headquarters, and the main building of the feared intelligence agency known by its Russian acronym KNB.

Almaty Mayor Office Burning
Photograph: Valery Sharifulin TASS

At present there is no clear information as what went wrong and why peaceful protestors suddenly turned violent. Some believe that as police and intelligence agencies in the country have stayed neutral in the preceding days and haven't done much to stop the protestors, so this has emboldened the protestors.

Riot police patrol a street in Almaty
Photograph: EPA

While another group of commentators that includes Mukhtar Ablyazov, and Akezhan Kazhegeldin both former ministers in the government of Kazakhstan and current opposition leaders who live in exile believe that the events of 5^th January were orchestrated by supporters of Nazarbayev who wanted to cause damage to public buildings, supermarkets, and public property to discredit the protestors.

Whatever may be the reason behind the events of 5^th January, these events have allowed the President Tokayev of Kazakhstan to label protestors as "armed group of terrorists and bandits" who are intent on destabilizing the country.

Actions taken by President Tokayev

President Kassym Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan initially adopted a conciliatory tone towards protestors and asked them to negotiate with the government so that a solution to their problems could be found. On 4^th January, President Tokayev dismissed the government led by Prime Minister Askar Mamin holding them accountable for the protests and poor economy of the country.

Tokayev also took other actions to calm down the protestors such as removing both the head and deputy head of KNB who both were appointed by his predecessor Nazarbayev and were largely seen as Nazarbayev loyalists by the population of Kazakhstan. He also announced that he is assuming the role of Chairman of the Security Council of Kazakhstan and has removed Nursultan Nazarbayev from the post of Chairman of the Security Council of Kazakhstan with the immediate effect. This removal of Nazarbayev from Security Council of Kazakhstan was one of the main demands of the protestors.

Tokayev also issued a decree that effectively put a moratorium on price of LPG, petrol, and diesel in the whole country for the next 6 months. But none of the actions taken by President Tokayev succeeded in calming the protestors as huge groups of protestors stormed government buildings, supermarkets, banks, and business centers on 5^th January.

After the protests took a violent turn on 5^th January, Tokayev held discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. After these discussions, Kazakh government officially requested CSTO or Collective Security Treaty Organization to send peacekeepers to the country to restore law and order.

Response of the neighboring countries

Kazakhstan participates in several regional organizations that include its neighbors who along with it were a part of the former Soviet Union. One such organization is CSTO, a collective defense organization that was intended to be a forum that would allow post-soviet states to coordinate their defense policies against external aggression.

Article 4 of the CSTO treaty allows member states to send peacekeeping forces to a member under attack. Current CSTO chairman Armenia has positively responded to the request of Kazakh government for peacekeeping forces and the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that the organization will be sending an unspecified number of peacekeeping forces to the country to help its government.

Earlier on 6^th January, videos surfaced on social media that purportedly showed Russian troops being airlifted to Kazakhstan. It remains to be seen how these protests will end and whether foreign help in the form of peacekeeping forces will be sufficient for the government of Kazakhstan to overcome this challenge of protests that seems to have a backing of a large section of population of the country.

Author: Hamza

Hamza has done his graduation in International Law from Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty and has worked with local government departments and courts as a Russian language interpreter. He also worked with the Indian Consulate in Almaty as a Russian language translator/interpreter.