Power play in Kazakhstan
Fuel prices may have sparked off the recent outbreak of unrest but domestic political rivalry and regional contests for influence are now part of the interplay of factors determining the country’s future.
"The constitutional order has been largely restored," said Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a week after his country was shaken by the largest wave of political unrest since its independence from the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.
But the fact that Mr Tokayev had to rely on a 3,000-strong Russian-led military contingent in order to restore order may have long-term consequences for political dynamics throughout Central Asia.
The story of what happened in Kazakhstan last week remains incomplete, partly because a ban on Internet communications inside the country means that few eyewitness reports are available, and partly because such eruptions of "people's power" are invariably murky affairs, in which a spontaneous popular revolt inspires more organised and darker forces eager to seize power in the confusion.
Two rules should be observed in analysing such domestic turmoil: the knowledge that what we see now is unlikely to be the full story, and the virtual certainty that a year from now our opinions about what has happened in Kazakhstan will be quite different from what they are today.
At first sight, Kazakhstan's plight is neither surprising nor unusual. The country is rich in natural resources: oil, natural gas, and various other significant raw materials such as uranium. Oil and gas alone make up half of Kazakhstan's exports; together with other raw materials, the proportion is around 90 per cent.
Organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have been advising Kazakhstan for years to press ahead with the privatisation of the many state-owned enterprises, particularly in the energy and transport sectors, and the government of President Tokayev recently sent out signals of its intention to move down this path.
The fuel for unrest
The elimination of subsidies on energy prices - and particularly on liquefied gas used to fuel cars in Kazakhstan as well as other parts of Central Asia - is part of this economic reform. And for good reasons: The subsidies are not only expensive, costing Kazakhstan around US$2 billion (S$2.7 billion) a year, equivalent to around 2.5 per cent of the country's gross domestic product, but also utterly wasteful. Since subsidised liquefied gas used to be about 50 per cent cheaper in Kazakhstan than in neighbouring countries, much of it was smuggled across borders to Russia and Kyrgyzstan, thereby fuelling the growth of criminal gangs. So, getting rid of them made sense.
But with minimum Kazakh wages now standing at just $150 a month for unskilled workers, the doubling of liquefied gas prices was bound to be seen as a heavy blow and prompt a national outcry.
Yet again, Kazakhstan's experience is hardly unusual. To use just a few examples from around the world, in 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron had to backtrack on plans to increase fuel taxes when faced by a massive revolt of the so-called Yellow Vests, and in 2019, the entire constitutional arrangement of Chile - hitherto one of Latin America's most stable countries - melted down in the face of widespread national protests against a tiny change in public transport subsidies.
President Tokayev and his ministers would have been well-advised to remember these precedents.
And they should have been more prudent by planning to eliminate subsidies when global energy prices were low - as they have been for much of the past two years of the pandemic - rather than now when they are sky-high.
However, and just as it happened in countries such as France and Chile, anger with rising fuel prices was merely the final straw in Kazakhstan's much broader political and economic malaise.
Kazakh politics
The country was run for 29 years by Mr Nursultan Nazarbayev, a former steel worker from a poor family who served as the last Kazakh communist leader in the days of the Soviet Union and remained in power uninterrupted after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) disintegrated.
Shrewd and eminently malleable, Mr Nazarbayev skilfully increased his country's room for manoeuvre by balancing his relations with Russia with those of China, and by welcoming Western investment. Glitzy skyscrapers in Astana, the new capital city Mr Nazarbayev created - now called Nur-Sultan after him - gave the country an air of modernity.
And large amounts of cash guaranteed the services of Western advisers and influencers - including people like former British prime minister Tony Blair - who could always be relied upon to respond to any negative political or corruption story emerging from Kazakhstan with the explanation that a developing country makes some mistakes, and that in any case, Kazakhstan was far better than all its Central Asian neighbours.
The reality was grimmer. Mr Nazarbayev ran the country as a family corporation, with his three daughters, their partners and a few other family members controlling most of the lucrative or significant enterprises. And all were sustained by a network of around 100 other families which, between them, own most of Kazakhstan's economy.
Corruption was and is rampant. In the first decade of the country's independence, up to a quarter of the national wealth simply disappeared, and since then, the methods deployed to siphon money have only got more sophisticated.
Kazakh companies would list on Western stock markets just to be able to transfer funds to Western bank accounts but delist from these markets the moment financial regulators started investigating. Palatial residences in Switzerland, the south of France and, of course, London, were bought by Kazakhs often eager to pay more than the going rate. According to a 2020 estimate, the closest members of Mr Nazarbayev's family alone control a real estate portfolio worth around US$800 million in Europe and the United States and command around eight to nine times more in other assets such as gold, cash and shares.
The octogenarian Mr Nazarbayev decided to retire from public life in 2019, but his system remained intact: current President Tokayev is his creation, and until last week Mr Nazarbayev still controlled the important levers of power, including the military and the security services.
It is obvious that, on the back of the popular protests that erupted in dozens of cities early last week, gangs of armed men suddenly appeared, with an entirely different agenda. And it is possible that the extreme violence which ensued - including attacks on military and police stations - represented a struggle for power between President Tokayev's administration and the loyalists of Mr Nazarbayev.
The announcement of the arrest on suspicion of "treason" of Karim Massimov, the former head of the Committee for National Security - Kazakhstan's domestic intelligence service, may serve as an indication that a battle is being waged between Kazakhstan's most powerful officials. Massimov, who served twice as prime minister and headed Mr Nazarbayev's presidential administration, was clearly one of the critical lynchpins of the old regime.
Role of foreign 'peacekeepers'
It will take some time before we get a clearer picture of whether last week's troubles have resulted in the complete marginalisation of Mr Nazarbayev, or whether the old ruler has deliberately removed himself from the picture in order to avoid blame for what has happened.
It is clear, however, that President Tokayev felt the need to call on Russian troops because he was losing control over his military and security services. The estimated 3,000 Russian-led contingents of foreign "peacekeepers" currently deployed are clearly not enough to quell violence in a country as vast as Kazakhstan, whose territory is as big as that of western Europe. And there is no evidence that foreign troops actively put down demonstrations.
But that was hardly their chief objective; they were there in order to steady the nerves of Kazakhstan's own military and security chiefs, by reassuring them that they could open fire on demonstrators without the risk of standing trial in the future because the Tokayev regime will not be allowed to fall. Popular protests of this kind succeed in overthrowing regimes when top military officers begin to fear their own safety and abandon the ruler; the Russian-led deployment was designed to avert this and seems to have served the purpose.
But although he survived, the options facing Mr Tokayev are hardly very rosy. He can opt to ignore popular dissatisfaction by throwing a few concessions to the population while keeping the system intact, and risk future uprisings as dissatisfaction grows again. Or he can embark on root-and-branch political change and quickly confront that old truism that the most dangerous time for a regime is when it attempts to reform.
Either way, Mr Tokayev's legitimacy has been seriously damaged by the fact that he had to call in foreign troops to cling to power. Although he does not have to face an organised political opposition and he controls those who do the counting in any election, the reality is that even for authoritarian leaders, national legitimacy matters and he enjoys far less of it at the moment.
Russia, China and Turkey
For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the episode offers a number of welcome opportunities, as well as some significant pitfalls. Over the past decade, China has overtaken Russia as the main trading partner throughout Central Asia, a fact that clearly irked Mr Putin who views the region as within Russia's sphere of influence. But the crisis in Kazakhstan has now functioned as a reminder that, when it comes to the provision of security in Central Asia, the leaders of the region still look to Russia and not to China for salvation.
The side-lining of China is particularly evident if one recalls that Mr Tokayev previously served as a Kazakh diplomat in Beijing, apparently speaks Mandarin fluently and has been regarded as close to China. Yet when he faced an existential crisis, the first phone number he dialled was Mr Putin's, rather than President Xi Jinping's.
China's reaction to the Kazakh crisis, by first keeping a studious silence as Russian troops went in and then touting the virtues of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation - a Central Asian organisation in which China is a member - as a potential future "peacekeeper", is also an indication that Beijing feels a bit marginalised.
But although Mr Putin is the main beneficiary for the moment, there are also risks in his latest military adventure. The longer Russian troops are on the ground in Kazakhstan, the higher the danger that they will attract the ire of the locals. Up to 20 per cent of Kazakhstan's 18.5 million people are ethnic Russians, many concentrated in the northern part of the country, and ethnic Kazakhs have always feared that their country may be carved up to Russia's benefit just like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova - other former Soviet republics - were. Few people in Kazakhstan have forgotten that Mr Putin once claimed that Kazakhstan "never constituted a state" in history and that the country was merely a "generous gift of the Russian people".
Russia's troops will have to manage themselves with great sensitivity and get out quickly, not the sort of qualities Russia is famous for.
And, once he regains his bearings, President Tokayev is likely to try and rekindle links with Beijing and may also turn to Turkey for support to counterbalance Russia's looming presence.
Turkey has been working to develop the Organisation of Turkic States, aiming to bring together countries such as Kazakhstan that have substantial linguistic and cultural proximity with Turkey. Mr Tokayev is an enthusiastic supporter and is also interested in purchasing Turkish-made weapons.
In short, although the riots in Kazakhstan may now be over, a new tussle for influence in the region is about to be unleashed. Quite a surprising outcome for a chain of events that began with a price rise of liquefied gas, an energy source used by only 3 per cent of the world's cars.
Join ST's Telegram channel here and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.