Kazakhstan’s First Family

Apparently you have to be a blood relative to Uncle Nazzy to escape investigation and arrest warrants.

Mr. [Rakhat] Aliyev, who married Mr. Nazarbayev’s daughter before the Soviet Union’s collapse, had been near the center of power since the country became independent in 1991. He held senior posts in the Foreign Ministry, amassed a media and banking empire and led part of the country’s intelligence service.

His fortunes appeared to change abruptly early this year when he was accused of having two bank managers kidnapped and then of beating them and demanding that they sign over their families’ interests in the bank.

In what had appeared to be an effort to defuse the accusations, in February the government sent him to Vienna as ambassador to Austria.

But the intrigue continued. Palace tensions reached open conflict last week when Mr. Aliyev publicly criticized his father-in-law after a change to the Kazakh Constitution cleared the way for Mr. Nazarbayev to become president for life.

The government dismissed Mr. Aliyev as ambassador late last week, indicating that any residual support from the president had evaporated. The charges and arrest warrant soon followed.

Tisk, tisk. The bank abduction, if you recall, was a surreal affair, with competing groups of state agents offering different accounts of what happened, who was kidnapped, who was involved, and whether or not there was any political motivation behind it. Assuming Aliyev was serious in his desire to become the next Kazakh Emperor, his decision to try to force several bank managers to give him their share might make sense: after all, deposing an entrenched dictator is an expensive affair.

Aliyev is no stranger to violent scandal, however, and was accused in 2001 of trying to overthrow Nazarbayev. He was later caught up in a rolling series of murder scandals and political corruption. So it’s not that unusual to see the arrest warrants; what is a bit different this time around is that, rather than allowing him to remain in exile for a while, or giving him an ambassadorship to keep him out of Astana, it now appears that Uncle Nazzy has run out of patience with all the shenanigans.

Via Bonnie (who provides excellent backgrounders and many more links for reading, including the strange news of an employee quarantine at Aliyev’s businesses), I found news that Astana has actually sent a team of prosecutors to Vienna to secure Aliyev’s arrest.

Here’s my question: since there is a political element to all this, in that the warrant appears to stem from Aliyev’s criticism of the new constitutional amendments and his desire to run against his father-in-law should there ever be another election, will Aliyev seek asylum? More interestingly, given the deplorable treatment he is likely to face in prison, might Austria grant it?

Update: I so called it!

This post was written by...

Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.

Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust

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