ALMATY, Kazakhstan. At first glance, Almaty, the former capital of this once Soviet republic in Central Asia, offers the typical drab of Soviet-style graying buildings, some badly in need of a new coat of paint. The city’s wide avenues, initially designed to allow official Communist Party Zil limousines to race through the city unhindered, are now filled with shining new European and Japanese luxury cars, all vying for space. The Zils, along with their center lanes reserved for high-ranking party apparatchiks are long gone – though the system from those darker days still lingers.
It’s a big step from the Soviet days, yet Kazakhstan’s political system is not exactly Jeffersonian democracy. Call it democracy-lite, if you will. At least that is the view adopted by the Bush administration, which wants to keep Kazakhstan as a friend in a part of the world where making, and keeping friends, is not easy.
A “clannish regime”
As Washington continues to call for democracy and political reform in the greater Middle East, it partially closes its eyes to what critics of President Nursultan Nazarbayev – a leftover from the Soviet era – call the “zombification” of Kazakhstan.
Of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Kazakhstan is the largest as well as the most stable. The country is doing well financially thanks to oil revenues, and sits on 20% of the world’s known uranium deposits. It’s roughly four times the size of Texas, and its population of 15 million is evenly made up of Muslims and Russian Orthodox Christians.
At a time when pro-Islamist sentiments are making headway in neighboring Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan has allowed the US rights to military bases and officials are not afraid of voicing their support of their new ally, a move sure to irritate Moscow. “The United States is a really great nation,” said Dariga Nazarbayeva, the President’s daughter, during her closing statement at the end of a three-day Eurasian Media Forum in Almaty last April. In contrast to Iran’s attempts to enter the “nuclear club,” Kazakhstan agreed to give up its nuclear weapons shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Under the Threat Reduction program the United States spent $240 million to assist Kazakhstan in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.
Since independence from Moscow in December 1991, the country has been governed by Nazarbayev, whom opposition leaders accuse of installing a “clannish regime.” They say they government is conducting a campaign of political assassinations, and accuse Dariga of “monopolizing the media.”
Assassinations and media monopoly
Rysbek Sarsenbayev, the brother of assassinated politician Altynbek Sarsenbayev told a group of visiting observers last April that the government was using its secret service “to suppress the citizens,” and asserts that officers of an elite unit of the KNB (the former KGB), were involved in his brother’s death on 11 February of this year. There were others: Ashkat Sharipzhanov, a well-known journalist, Oxana Nikitina, the daughter of an opposition activist, and Zamanbek Nurkadilov. The latter was said to have committed “suicide,” in spite of the fact that he was found with two bullet wounds in his chest and one in his head.
“In Kazakhstan it is common for an innocent man to be thrown in jail. When they cannot make you obey, they simply kill you. The regime uses medieval methods in governing the country,” said Sergey Duvanov, an opposition journalist.
Foreign diplomats suspect that Dariga was being groomed to replace her father. Recent indications, however, hint at disagreements mounting between the two. The president, for example, failed to show up at the Media Forum’s opening session.
While no one knows the reasons behind the rift, some observers say it could be due to Dariga pushing for greater freedom. One example was the row over Sacha Baron Cohen, a British comedian better known as Ali G, who portrays a Kazakh character named Borat as a crude, lecherous drunk. The comedian has angered many Kazakhs. Government officials threatened to sue him.
Dariga defended Borat in her closing remarks Saturday: “We should not be afraid of humor and we shouldn’t try to control everything. Those who felt offended by his humor suffer from a concealed complex of inferiority.” Many say this was a direct jab at her father.
Opposition members, however, accuse her of monopolizing the country’s media and closing opposition newspapers and television stations. They claim that Dariga’s 21-year-old son was recently given the management of a television station.
Opposition leaders say that one family controls practically all the media in Kazakhstan, where any criticism of the president is excluded. “It is the zombification of Kazakhstan.”
They could be describing the situation in a number of countries.
