Last week, Kazakhstan’s Vice Prime Minister Erbol Orynbaev told the board of the Ministry of Education and Science that the country’s schools have a vital assignment: to prevent “ideological extremism” – presumably the type of extremism that led to the criminal acts done in the name of Islam in western Kazakhstan and Taraz last year – by developing Kazakh “patriots” who think independently.  This assignment reflects the Soviet approach of some Kazakhstani government officials to criminal acts done in the name of Islam: the problem to be solved is the false consciousness of “extremists.”  Except, in this case, instead of the proletariat’s misrecognition of its class interests, it is Kazakh Muslims’ misrecognition of their true ideology: Kazakh patriotism.

While I applaud Orynbaev’s emphasis on education and independent thinking, anyone who has ever spent time in Kazakhstan knows that Kazakh patriotism in not in short supply.  The Ministry of Education and Science is already producing Kazakh patriots.  What turns “extremists,” or, to use a less judgmental term, pious Muslims (whether those who seek to purify Islam of “superstitions,” those who attempt to reclaim their ancestors’ legacy, or those interested in other types of piety) against the government in Kazakhstan is not a lack of Kazakh patriotism or independent thinking. (An ironic prescription by Orynbaev, as independent scriptural interpretation is a hallmark of Salafist exegetical practice.)   Instead, it is an environment that prevents Muslims from fulfilling the conditions of their own notions of piety that creates friction between pious Muslims and the Kazakhstani government.  Many reformist women who wear loose gowns and tight hijabs are frightened by some government officials’ rhetoric on the hijab; for example, one woman I spoke with believes she was passed over for a government position because of her dress and is now quite concerned about the future of like-minded Muslims in Kazakhstan.  Members of Ata Zholy, a neo-traditionalist group, were upset when regional prosecutors shut down their official pilgrimage corporation.  In both cases, the repression of these groups by some government officials is unnecessary: the vast majority of reformist Muslims I have spoken with in Kazakhstan support the government of Kazakhstan and, in particular, President Nazarbaev’s emphasis on economic development before political change. Members of Ata Zholy are ready to beatify Nazarbaev: his “five forefathers” are seen as saints who can help Muslims in their everyday lives, and Nazarbaev is already believed to visit Kazakhs’ dreams to foretell dangers or opportunities.  Before repressive action from regional governments, these pious Kazakhs had been Kazakh “patriots,” and many remain so today.  The Ministry of Education thus finished its assignment before it was even given – someone else just scribbled all over it.

For at least the last seven or eight years, the Prokudin-Gorskii collection of color photos of the Russian empire taken in the early 20th century, gets noticed and reported by journalists, history buffs, and photography enthusiasts. Less well known is that the Turkestan Album, a series of volumes on the people, architecture, history, and economy of Russian Turkestan commissioned by General von Kaufman, the Empire’s first Governor-General in Turkestan, was also digitized by the Library of Congress and made available several years ago. (Many thanks to Fergana News for writing about this, which reminded me that I had a draft post on this from 2007.)

The bulk of the photos in the collection were taken in 1871 and 1872, while some images in the historical volume date back to 1853. The collection contains well over 1,000 photos and is a phenomenal resource not only for a glimpse into Central Asia of the mid- to late-19th century, but also into how the Russian Empire viewed the people of these territories.

(P.S. — Fergana News also recently posted some interesting photos of clay structures in Uzbekistan taken between 1974 and 1989.)

Last week, the US Helsinki Commission held a hearing on Kazakhstan’s stability, looking at the violence in Zhanaozen and the recent parliamentary elections and questioning whether or not Kazakhstan is as stable as its government claims. The testimony, which can be found here is interesting and worth taking a look at. Included with the expert testimony are also statements from Kazakhstan’s embassy and from the Alga People’s Party and People’s Front.

Sean Roberts identifies in his testimony several changes in Kazakhstan’s economy and society to which the government has been poorly prepared to respond and which increase the possibility that recent violence in Kazakhstan is the beginning of a longer period of less stability. They are:

1. The rapid growth of Islam’s popularity in Kazakhstan’s society, an process going on since the early ’90s has recently become more apparent in public. This public religiosity, which does not suggest the threat of terrorism or a near term move toward political Islam, is poorly understood by the government and the country’s secular middle class.
2. The growth of ethnic Kazakh nationalism, also ongoing since the early ’90s, but recently taking on new characteristics that heighten tensions.
3. Rising and unmet economic expectations.

I’m paraphrasing, but on the first two items, Dr. Roberts argues that the thoroughly Soviet education and background of Kazakhstan’s leadership leaves it out of touch and unable to adequately respond to the public. The government’s response to labor strikes, including the violence in Zhanaozen, he says, show that the government was not prepared to deal with dissatisfaction over unmet economic expectations. Dr. Roberts says that these challenges are not extreme nor likely to cause widespread unrest in the near term, but that the stagnancy of the political system means that the government lacks mechanisms to deal with large socio-economic changes. [Note: Alima wrote about the crisis of unmet expectations at length recently.]

This is good, succinct analysis of the situation that puts risks to Kazakhstan’s stability in good context. The risks are there, the government is ill-prepared to deal with them at present, but it’s unlikely that it will be overwhelmed by them soon.

These risks, however, aren’t present only in Kazakhstan. They exist in similar forms and combinations throughout Central Asia. Growing segments of society throughout the region are bringing (or attempting to…) Islam into the public square, where it is responded to with shock and terror by secular officials. National economies are failing to meet the expectations, and in many areas, even the basic needs, of the public. And though nationalism is not so clearly a problem the way it is Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in the rest of Central Asia, there are small signs that society is challenging the state’s monopoly on defining what it means to be Uzbek, Tajik, Kyrgyz, etc.

In talking about risks to stability, there is often a tendency to focus on presidential succession, the specter of fundamentalism and political Islam, and a more recent tendency to talk about replication of the Arab Spring. Recent history should make it abundantly clear though, that analysts, experts, and observers are taken by surprise in the region. Game-planning what happens after Karimov dies or a resurgence of the IMU activity in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan might be worthless because they assume state and society lack the mechanisms to respond to and manage succession or terrorist groups.

The greatest risks to stability throughout the region are medium- to long-term risks arising from the three aforementioned factors and the oppositional relationship between state and society. Devising a list of indicators and warnings based on the three factors Dr. Roberts identifies — rising public religiosity, increasing nationalism, and under-performance in the economy — are more likely not only to lead to better anticipation of the trajectory of stability in Central Asia but also to provide a better idea of when serious risks to stability are likely to arise.

Photo by Tiina Oikarinen

One of the more amusing news stories to come out of Kazakhstan last week detailed the insertion of a Kazakhstani senator’s visage into a painting of the apostles greeting Jesus in a Russian Orthodox church.  While this could be viewed as a human-interest story to be placed in the same section as a waterskiing squirrel, it also reveals a basic truth about religion in Kazakhstan: patronage often drives the creation and maintenance of religious buildings, art, and literature.

This type of patronage is reviled by many Kazakhs, who share an idealized view of religion as separate from everyday life and politics.  This is one reason why many Kazakhs are often quick to condemn Muslim saints’ shrines that ask for donations from pilgrims as “businesses” and shrine caretakers as “charlatans” who are not “real Muslims.”  This notion mixes with an understanding of a paternalistic state, which should provide services, including religious buildings and texts, to citizens. (For this idea of a paternalistic state in action, see the reaction to the Zhangaozen events by the Kazakhstani government.)  Thus, to use an example I will return to shortly, if a shrine needs a new roof, the Ministry of Culture, which is in charge of shrines designated as architectural monuments, should provide the funds for a new roof.  Or, alternatively, if Kazakhs need more Islamic texts, the government-sponsored Muftiate should provide them.

However, it is rarely this simple.  In order to get government action on the local level, it is usually necessary to contact someone you know in the government, to whom you will owe a favor.  For example, while I was conducting 15 months of dissertation research in Kazakhstan, I spent some time in a small city that is also a minor pilgrimage center in southern Kazakhstan.  The roof of one of the shrines in the city needed to be repaired.  How this was actually accomplished is quite complicated and almost incomprehensible to anyone without knowledge of the town’s social relationships and patronage networks.  The chain of events was roughly as follows:

1. Mukhtar, the local head of the Ministry of Culture, requested money from his superiors for the roof’s repair.
2. Mukhtar then asked Abdulrashid, a local shrine caretaker, to find a contractor willing to work for less than the specified amount because he needed money for his granddaughter’s upcoming wedding.
3. Abdulrashid contacted a contractor who had been his former colleague.  Abdulrashid had previously been a construction worker without any formal Islamic education who had asked his father’s friend Mukhtar for a job because he had hurt his leg and become disabled.  After a trial period in which he increased the amount of donations collected at the shrine, and thus increased Mukhtar’s unofficial earnings, Abdulrashid was put in charge of a shrine.  Thus, when Mukhtar called Abdulrashid to ask him to find a cheap contractor, Abdulrashid was expected to help a friend who had helped him.
4. Abdulrashid’s contractor agreed – for reasons unbeknownst to me – to perform the work under cost.

The work on the shrine was thus finished through complex networks of patronage, corruption, and friendship, all of which was well known in the city – people recognized that Mukhtar did not simply stumble upon the money for his granddaughter’s wedding and that Abdulrashid did not get his job due to an outstanding Islamic education.  Islam is thus visibly intertwined with local figures and patronage networks.  The point of this story is not to denigrate the character of any of the men described above: Abdulrashid, for instance, had worked hard to become knowledgeable about Islam and the shrine he worked at after he was hired, and was dedicated to helping pilgrims who came to his shrine.  Rather, the point is that the social relationships that allowed for the repair of a shrine’s roof extended beyond a shared attachment to Islam into a messy realm of business and politics.

Other Islamic patronage networks hide their connection to business and politics – the messy realm outside of a somehow purely spiritual religion – more successfully.  It is not a secret that Saudi, Emirati, Egyptian, and Turkish individuals, charities, and businesses have been funding mosque construction and Islamic publishing in Kazakhstan since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.  I do not write this to bring up hoary fears of “foreign Islamic ideologies” infiltrating Kazakhstan (a trope that needs to be discarded, as, to the best of my knowledge, Islam was not revealed to the Prophet in Kazakhstan, and thus also represents a “foreign ideology”).  Instead, I want to look at how these foreign patronage networks appear less influenced by politics and business to Kazakhs than those relationships stemming from Kazakhstan’s patronage networks.

For example, when I was working with a Kazakh publisher of Islamic texts, he told me that his press got its start when a wealthy Saudi donor gave him money to publish a hadith collection and a few texts by a Saudi writer.  Rather than a complicated relationship built on local patronage networks, this was a relationship that focused exclusively on texts and bringing texts to a Kazakh public these two men saw as ignorant of Islam.  There was no favor asked or expectation of an ongoing relationship outside of a shared interest in Islam.  This purity of purpose influences how many Kazakhs see this publisher and his sponsor: as “pure” Muslims who stand virtuous outside of messy social relations. (It should be noted that other Kazakhs dislike any “foreign” Islamic influence in Kazakhstan.)

One idea that I have been toying with is that the difference in visible social relationships could account for some of the increase in popularity of reformist Islam in Kazakhstan.  Kazakhs dissatisfied with corruption or the networks of patronage that permeate life in Kazakhstan (and which President Nazarbaev has repeatedly denounced) can turn to networks of reformist Muslims whose relationships are based on a shared commitment to spreading reformist ideas – a sense of purpose that can lie outside of local patronage networks because of seemingly “clean” funding from well-meaning foreign Muslims.  Business practices in the United Arab Emirates – where Indian and Pakistani workers have their passports confiscated and are forced to work fourteen-hour days – that enrich businessmen and patrons are hidden from Muslims in Kazakhstan.  Consider the following hypothetical patronage network:

1. Ali, a businessman from Dubai, hires Indian and Pakistani workers to build a hotel and pays them next to nothing.
2. Ali earns several million dollars from the hotel.
3. Ali gives some of this money to a Kazakh publisher to print a pamphlet written by a Saudi religious scholar.

Kazakhs only see the last step in this chain, and thus many Kazakhs see Ali as a virtuous Muslim standing outside of politics, business, and corruption.  In this way, the image of reformist publishers and other Islamic endeavors supported by Emirati, Saudi, or Turkish scholars stands in stark contrast with the “corruption” of Kazakh shrine caretakers who are part of Kazakhstani patronage networks.  And, as Andre Agassi told us, image is everything.

Andrew Kramer has a report on Uncle Nazzy’s latest attempt to soothe Zhanaozen with sweet, sweet cash:

Prime Minister Karim Q. Massimov said in a telephone interview last week that the government would give oil workers raises of up to several hundred dollars a month and would invest about $300 million in the town. “I strongly believe this issue will be resolved soon and it will not spread to the foreign companies working in Kazakhstan,” he said.

He said the state oil company resisted meeting worker demands earlier in part because salaries in this town were already about 20 percent higher than those of state oil company employees elsewhere, the result of earlier, successful strikes.

We’ll see what happens. The thing with this is, it will probably work, at least in the sense of defusing the worst of the tensions that inspired protesters to be throwing rocks at the SWAT teams. So far, Nazarbayev’s advisers — who include Tony Blair’s consulting firm — seem to be giving sound advice: firing people at the top, launching investigations, and promising reforms.

That being said, the Kazakh government is still behaving unacceptably. The women who alleged abuse by the Kazakh police need to be acknowledged and the police responsible need to be punished. The award ceremony for the policy involved in the crackdown was worse than tacky: it was openly insulting to the families who lost loved ones when those warmly rewarded police shot them in the back then beat them to death. And away from Zhanaozen, the Kazakh government is still harassing and constraining its opposition movement, which is hardly the behavior of a mature, adult country (whatever its paens to democratization).

The Kazakh government has a long way to go, in other words. Kramer tries to tie this latest move to the current round of haggling over access to Kashagan, a rich oil field in the North Caspian. Last year, Shell closed its Kashagan office last year over a difference in price estimates between the Dutch company and Astana. The move led to a flurry of renegotiations with international oil firms, and led to an announced breakthrough last

ExxonMobil and ConoccoPhillips have the big U.S. stakes in Kashagan (all the oil companies involved there, which include Eni, Shell, and Total, share a 16.8% ownership). Last year, during the intrigue over Shell closing its office, there were rumors that ExxonMobil would reduce its stake in the project, but those never panned out.

The stakes at Kashagan are huge. It, along with the Tenghiz field Chevron famously got access to through disgraced broker James Giffen, was one of the largest oil fields discovered in the last 30 years. Like Tenghiz, the international wrangling over developing the field has been drawn out and halting. Still, the numbers are hard to argue. Kramer notes in his piece:

The latest conflagration exploded just as a consortium of oil companies including Exxon was completing investment decisions on a huge new field just offshore in the Caspian Sea, called Kashagan. The companies have already invested $33 billion in the project, and say they will need to invest $154 billion more over the next decade or so.

Kazakhstan represents a potential new source of significant amounts of crude oil. Critically important for the United States, that oil lies outside of the Middle East and Kazakhstan is not a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel.

Much as people gripe and moan about countries strategically developing energy sources, it is difficult to write off such eye-popping numbers. Most of the striking oil workers have accepted new jobs, going along with the same bargain Nazarbayev has promised his country the last two decades: forget about liberty or freedom or speech, and in return I’ll keep you employed. It’s kind of worked so far, but as the Zhanaozen protests (and the initial hints of terrorism) show, that bargain is clearly beginning to fray.

Nazarbayev does not have infinite time to initiate reforms and open his country’s politics and economy up like the rest of the developed world. I hope he decides to begin that transition before there’s another tragedy like Zhanaozen.

Image: the Eusebi Group’s Kashagan platform.

The background to the January 15 Kazakhstan’s parliamentary elections has been most unfavorable. The image of stability that Kazakhstan’s government had carefully cultivated over the years has been tarnished with the outbreak of violence in an oil town of Zhanaozen. In neighboring Russia, on which Kazakhstan depends both culturally and politically, dozens of thousands of people protested in December against falsifications in the Russian Duma elections held on December 4. These combined events generated warning signs that the Kazakh authorities should brace themselves for a stormy political season. However, the elections went as planned with a high turn-out (lower than in the 2011 Presidential elections but still solid 75 %) and very few instances of protest or boycott; the expected rendering of the elections as undemocratic by the OSCE and the usual accusations by the losing parties managed to gather only a few hundred protesters in the center of Almaty on January 17. The charges leveled by the OSCE were that the elections “though well administered, did not meet key democratic principles.” As the OSCE statement said, “the authorities did not provide the necessary conditions for the conduct of genuinely pluralistic elections.” The accusations of not facilitating a “genuine pluralism” and not allowing all aspiring candidates and parties to enter free competition for the parliament seats comes as no surprise. After all, in a widely-held view, the authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan has been faking democratic processes for quite a while. So, now, on top of the previous simulations, it began to fake a multi-party parliament with 83 seats in the lower chamber given to the ruling Nur Otan party, 8 seats to the “Ak Zhol” (translated as “bright path”), 7 seats to the KNPK (communist) party, and 9 seats reserved for the representatives of ethnic minorities through the Assembly of the People.

The obvious question is: why go to the trouble of faking a multi-party system if the parliament is overshadowed by the President anyway, and the most important policy decisions are made in the government and in the corridors of the Presidential Apparatus which are then just rubber-stamped in parliament? As several Kazakhstani analysts, such as Daniyar Ashimbayev and Dosym Satpayev, have noted, after many years of consolidating power in the institute of presidency, the President himself and the ruling elite now want to transform the system from the presidential to the parliamentary-presidential. Having the almost omnipotent first President in the figure of Nazarbayev is seen as an exceptional situation of the first decades of independence and it is presumed and hoped that the next President, whoever he/she is, should have far less power than President Nazarbayev had. In line with this vision for the future, the parliament has already started flexing its powers through the vote of confidence for the newly appointed “old” government of Karim Masimov. All presidential appointees have to be approved by parliament and it is possible legally (although it is difficult to imagine now) that the parliament might not always agree with the President.

The bureaucratic-procedural nature and the commitment to the letter (if not the spirit) of law of the current Kazakh presidential system should not be underestimated. The developed bureaucracy and a good grasp of bureaucratic procedure in Kazakhstan might have a positive impact for the future formalization of the presidential-parliamentarian system. Many observers from CIS countries and even OCSE observers have noted a “well-administered” conduct of the elections. For instance, in light of the plans to install video-cameras into each election booth in the coming presidential elections in Russia, Russian observers noted that the Kazakh authorities’ use of transparent polling boxes had almost the same effect of observe-ability as can be achieved by video-cameras. In Kazakhstan’s polling stations, voters first proceed to identify themselves and pick up the bulletin, then they go to the curtained voting booth where they can mark their bulletin anonymously after which they emerge from the booth and slide the bulletin in a tiny voting slot in a transparent box in front of observers and the public. Many observers of Kazakhstani elections admit that even though the voter turn-out in Kazakhstan is suspiciously high, the numbers are usually proved and well-supported with the lists of registered voters. So far, no evidence has been found to question the official figures of voter turn-out. It does indeed seem that Kazakhstani citizens do come to vote in great numbers and these numbers far exceed the number of voters in many established democracies.

So, why in an authoritarian country like Kazakhstan, do people turn up for voting in great numbers with most of them casting their votes for the ruling party? Needless to say, Nurotan is popular first and foremost because it is the party of the President. It is widely perceived as a party of the people who “know how to rule the country” and, as it stands now, not many want to change the balance of power to people who might declare themselves more democratic but are seen as disgruntled former officials and oligarchs who want to get back to “kormushka” (distribution of benefits). The broad political appeal, popularity and endurance of Nazarbayev’s regime has been a stunning success. The politics of aspirations –the alliance between the regime and aspiring middle classes lies at the core of the regime’s endurance. There also seems to be a link between the attachments to modernization (i.e. the vision that the people of Kazakhstan need to collectively improve their socio-economic conditions) and attachment to a certain degree of authoritarianism and state paternalism. The state paternalism and authoritarianism in this vision is not seen as a mechanism of repression of individual rights and autonomy but as a mechanism of enabling these rights and entitlements. In this sense, the democratic aspirations of the people unfold together with the expectations of paternalism –a wide-spread understanding that the purpose of the state is to provide for the people and find solutions to their socio-economic problems.

Pointing to this curious mixture of democratic aspirations and expectations of paternalism is, for instance, the fact that the most wide-spread form of democratic politics in Kazakhstan is writing open letters to the President. Almost all oppositional actors on Kazakhstan’s political stage have been engaged in this genre of politics and bargaining– from a self-exiled oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov who, from his golden refuge in London, has recently written an open letter (not his first) to the President saying that only he Ablyazov can turn things around at the indebted BTA bank, which he owned before it was effectively nationalized in 2008 to multiple groups of middle-class investors who privately invested with different housing projects during the construction boom and who, after the construction bust, have been demanding, through protests and appeals (including open letters) to the President and government, that the state takes it upon itself to see through to completion their unfinished or frozen housing projects. Even the recent riots in the Zhanaozen can be seen in this light as a desperate attempt to bring to the attention of the President and the government the plight and entitlement of the workers and residents in Zhanaozen to well-paid jobs in the oil industry. It is worth noting that the situation in Zhanaozen has been pacified only with the arrival of the President, amidst promises that the families of those who were killed would be paid retribution and that all the oil workers in town would be re-employed. Following the President’s directive, KazMunaiGaz national oil Company has re-employed about 1,700 workers although there are no ready jobs for them to fill and the company has yet to find ways to create new jobs through opening new productions and facilities in town.

To put it simply, Nazarbayev has usurped huge power but the majority of people in Kazakhstan continue to support him, and by association his party, precisely because they see that a concentrated power is needed to ensure order and stability and to provide solutions to the social problems of the day. The ruling elite and, perhaps, Nazarbayev himself, however, hope that this power which is now concentrated in the figure of Nazarbayev can be institutionalized and subsequently inherited not just by the next president (like as happened, for instance, in Turkmenistan) but by an institution, such as a parliament or a ruling party, which would be supported by the people in the same way that Nazarbayev himself was supported. So far, the institute of the majlis never had the same legitimacy as the President. The people have seen it for what it was – a rubber-stamping organ for the decisions of the government and the President. But a multi-party parliament with representatives of other (if not outright oppositional) parties and a new upgraded Nurotan faction, which this time around also includes well-known public figures such as, among others, the daughter of the president, Dariga Nazarbayeva and a widely published and broadcast government analyst Maulen Ashimbayev, will enliven the debate (the Majlis sessions are covered by all the major TV channels) and can bring public recognition to this underestimated and underperformed institution.

This article was first published with the Central Asia and Caucasus Analyst at http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5702

Over the last few days, there’s been an ongoing debate on my Facebook wall as to the merits of the OSCE’s criticisms that came out following Kazakhstan’s recent Majlis election. After I posted Nazarbayev’s response to the criticisms – that is, his refusal to allow future critical monitors into his nation – a series of Kazakhstani friends came out in defense of the electoral results. Or, perhaps they didn’t defend it, so much as lambast the OSCE’s decision (gall?) to stand as the lone major organization opposed to the electoral process. Which makes me wonder at a few things – media trust, New Great Game motions – but also, whether or not such a belief actually carries any merit.

Among monitors during the election, the OSCE was the only credible institution to levy critical judgment. The CIS and the SCO are composed almost entirely of autocracies, extirpating any democratic legitimacy, and while the OSCE is technically “Western-based,” the organization is not NATO: Not only are all former Soviet states members of the OSCE, but Kazakhstan, after years of vigorous and questionable lobbying, succeeded in chairing the organization in 2010. (Empirically, one could see how proud Nazarbayev was of such selection – the OSCE’s initials were plastered across billboards and placards almost as often as photos of Nazarbayev leading from the lectern.) The OSCE is, in terms of electoral verdict, the only voice that truly mattered, and the only one to carve any place in US policy.

However, such legitimacy as an observational organization seems to extend only so far. The locals with whom I’ve spoken see shades of imperialism, of a West carrot-and-stick-ing its way to cajole Kazakhstan into their ranks. (They also see the Kazakhstani political opposition as either hustlers or farce – and, without having vetted any of the opposition candidates to the same measure you’ll find States-side, perhaps they are. But whether or not they are worthy of the vote doesn’t matter in this context.) These locals refuse to believe that the OSCE didn’t carry underlying and underhanded motives, that their verdict is evidence of something altogether dishonest. And they’re entitled to those views. Still, the fact remains that the OSCE – again, the only organ of legitimacy in the monitoring – slammed these elections as a failure of progress and promise. The illegitimacy of Kazakhstani democracy perdures.

As I see it, there are two possibilities: either the OSCE honestly and openly shared what it observed, or it falsified the observations to some end. Let’s parse these choices, and see which one stands more plausible.

If the OSCE’s views are valid, then Kazakhstan has just realized another fraudulent election, the latest in a litany of democratic farces. This conclusion mirrors not only tradition, but is also supported by circumstantial evidence – namely, the cherry-picking of opposition parties and decimation of antagonistic groups and candidates. No one expects Ak Zhol or the KPNK, the new parties in Parliament, to do anything more than kowtow to Nur Otan, the ruling party. While the possibility remains that the parties could have swindled Nur Otan, entering the Majlis the only way they could, the likelihood remains that they were hand-picked in another display of half-cooked deception, another move that’s only surface-level democracy. Opposition candidates were barred through rote legalese, and, once more, a Parliament more interested in deference than debate takes the stage in Astana.

If, however, the OSCE did manufacture these results, this begs the question: why? What potential benefits would the OSCE have to forge these voting observations, while all other organizations deemed the election a resounding success? Why bother sticking out, and spend another round sticking in Nazarbayev’s craw?

There seem a few potential answers. The first would be that the OSCE, for whatever reason, feels some acrimony toward the Nazarbayev regime. Perhaps something stemmed from Nazarbayev’s time as head of the OSCE – a personal disagreement, or some sort of unpopular policy – though I couldn’t find anything outwardly controversial or condescending within Astana’s time as chair. Subsequently, were this to be the case, would the OSCE have the organizational capacity, or will, to carry forward a vendetta into disparaging Kazakhstan’s election? Would the organization put its reputation at risk solely to score a few personal points against a regime? Unless there’s a sudden upsurge in the OSCE in both temerity and unprofessionalism, I’m going to assume this isn’t the case.

A second possibility, which carries at least a little more plausibility, is that the Western organizations backing the OSCE have attempted to pressure Astana into some sort of political maneuver. It’s likely not about oil, and the NDN plays (yet) only a minor role in Kazakhstan, which leaves, as far as I can tell, pressures directed toward the still-fresh Eurasian Union. I’ve seen little critique of the EAU come from Western corridors … though it’s not as if such critique isn’t implausible. Putin’s pet project, the creation of that third pole between the West and the East, is, if nothing else, an intriguing turn in post-Soviet space. Still, while it’s easy to jump back into another Jack Ryan trope about the re-forming of the Soviet Union, there is little reason to believe that a common economic sphere is anything more than just that. (For what it’s worth, I’m willing to put tenge down that a common currency never arises under the Nazarbayev regime.)

As such, it is possible that the OSCE, through its criticisms, hoped to take a swipe at Kazakhstan’s turn toward Moscow. Perhaps the OSCE, using the only public censure it knew, wanted to prick at Kazakhstan’s well-crafted image, and convince Nazarbayev to slow his turn into Putin’s fold.

But if the OSCE did manipulate its results, hoping to pry Nazarbayev from Putin … well, did it work? Is this the most effective manner in destabilizing the EAU? I’d wager a resounding “no.” For a short-term answer, I’ll point once more to this link – as a result of the OSCE’s findings, Nazarbayev promptly limited the potential future observers, censoring the findings they could either find or manufacture. As such, Astana retains tighter control over its much-massaged message. It’s worth remembering that Nazarbayev has notoriously thin skin, and seeks international acceptance much more than his southerly neighbors. Were the OSCE to attempt to pressure Astana, wouldn’t they have been better off proffering flattery rather than derision?

And if it didn’t work in the short-term, what good does one organization’s critique craft in the long-run? The criticism is but one in a long line, and while there’s something to be said about continuing trends, what long-run gain does the OSCE stand to make if they’re the only ones criticizing? There seems little big-picture value to being the only organization to point out the fraudulence of this election. Instead, the perceived insult will likely hang with Nazarbayev, and, just as it did in the short term, push him continually toward Moscow.

Now, it is entirely possible that the OSCE did manufacture the results, and that the (short-term) result simply backfired. Perhaps they were banking on Nazarbayev’s ego to force him to jump through the OSCE’s hoops, and that some off-hand, middle-run political gain can be found after he’s calmed down. But that’s not simply risking much reputational capital – it’s also sorely misreading the situation. As seen time and again, Nazarbayev and Astana prefer (and construct) appearance over substance, and jabbing Kazakhstan’s image can only result in a tightening of Astana’s ranks.

But perhaps the OSCE is a group of imbeciles, bent on corralling Nazarbayev through methods that the lay observer know won’t work. Perhaps they misread the reality in Kazakhstan, and that they’re now paying the political price.

Or, perhaps, they faithfully reported what they saw, and that the 2012 election, just like each one preceding it, was a sham of Kazakhstani democracy. Decision’s yours.

Joshua Kucera has a very good article at EurasiaNet on the deflection of election criticism by Kazakhstani officials and a handful of DC analysts. They argue that the deficiencies in the parliamentary election are less important than overall progress toward democracy.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in particular have argued that they are on gradual, managed path to democracy. While Kazakhstan’s claims are always more plausible than Uzbekistan’s, where the strings are clearly visible, the case that democracy is being prepared low and slow is harder and harder to make on anything but faith. Like so:

Critiques of the election held Kazakhstan to an inappropriately high standard, Idrissov complained. “The OSCE … was expecting Jeffersonian democracy to fall on Kazakhstan on the 16th of January. We were not that naïve and we were telling our partners and our critics, please do not expect that situation,” Idrissov said.

“Kazakhstan is an evolving democracy, and many things are a work in progress,” the ambassador continued. “We have made a very significant step in our growth.”

Surely defenders of Kazakhstan will say it is unfair to characterize this as a faith-based argument. Yes, democracy is difficult to build and maintain. Nobody expects Kazakhstan to break out with a sudden case of pristine democracy. What, however, are the indicators that steps really are being made?

Democracy is not easy to quantify, but neither is it judged by a vague equivalent of the Miller Test, as defenders of Kazakhstan’s progress seem to be doing. Last April, Kazakhstan’s presidential election provided a good jumping off point for a discussion of backsliding throughout the region, and the more recent vote provokes some of the same reactions.

Kazakhstan has elections, true. It has a nice, new capital. It is the wealthiest and most tolerant of the Central Asian states. It does a better job of providing opportunities for its citizens than its southern neighbors. It has multiple political parties and a not-entirely-suppressed political opposition. But these tell us almost nothing about its progress toward democracy. That elections or multiple parties or dozens of newspapers exist are all meaningless if the state’s relationship to society is that of a shepherd to his flock.

The OSCE is fairly unambiguous:

Notwithstanding the government’s stated ambition to strengthen Kazakhstan’s democratic processes and conduct elections in line with international standards, yesterday’s early parliamentary vote still did not meet fundamental principles of democratic elections, the international observers concluded in a statement issued today.

This probably surprises no one, since Uncle Nazzy declined to allow most of the actual opposition parties to participate, and chose instead to grant a small, token parliamentary presence to two pro-government “opposition” parties. As the AP reports, those two parties are remarkable for how limp and unresponsive they are to the central government; while the actual opposition parties were deliberately excluded from the proceedings.

In other words, this election, like the Presidential one last year, was remarkably un-free and un-fair. Yet still, there is a weird attempt to whitewash what is happening as evidence of some sort of Kazakh Awakening or something.

For starters, our old friend Richard Weitz (remember him?) is still busy saying things about the election none of the actual observer missions support:

Richard Weitz, Independent Observer (USA)
“We haven’t found any infringements. We have got good impression of the elections, since all administrative rules and procedures are transparent. I received answers to all questions. This region does not have any problems.”

In fairness, perhaps his region didn’t experience any problems, though the OSCE reported “it was not possible for observers to determine whether voters’ choices were honestly reflected.” They also reported ballot stuffing and a non-transparent vote counting process.

Weitz, let it be recalled, is part of a small coterie of DC think tankers who do these “independent” monitoring missions through the International Tax and Investment Center, which receives money from the Nazarbayev family to coordinate western investment in Kazakhstan. In addition, most of those people worked on CSIS’ US-Kazakhstan OSCE Task Force, which was also funded by the government of Kazakhstan to create a positive impression of Kazakhstan’s recent chairmanship of the OSCE.

But that’s old news, that Kazakhstan expends money to get good PR in Washington (see above their sponsorship of the 2011-2012 Congressional Handbook). What is much more interesting is how the NYT has been covering the elections. Yesterday Andrew Kramer wrote a really weird puff piece about Kazakhstan’s “new multi-party system,” which started in the headline and continued with lots of weirdly misinterpreted, or even demonstrably false, assertions about Kazakh politics (example: “Even the modest change in Kazakhstan is remarkable because Mr. Nazarbayev, a former Soviet apparatchik, has presided for two decades over a well-established system of one-man, one-party rule,” which is not actually representative of the last 20 years, especially if one considers how often Nazarbayev has had to keep changing the constitution & parliament to keep his party in charge).

But today, Kramer keeps repeating an interesting caveat about the OSCE observation mission. Observe the lede grafs:

Kazakhstan, which in its 20 years since independence has yet to hold an election deemed fair by Western observers, failed again over the weekend.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the main Western-backed electoral monitoring group working in the former Soviet Union, issued a statement on Monday critical of authorities for deregistering parties and candidates at the last minute, depriving voters of choice.

Look, the OSCE is indeed western-backed. But the official Kazakh government line, as expressed to analysts and journalist (and, ahem, think tankers) who challenge their false propaganda about liberalization, is that they aren’t embracing “western democracy” or some variation of the term. In other words, Kramer is adopting the official Kazakh government line to call into doubt the OSCE’s credibility in monitoring elections (especially when the Shanghai Cooperation Organization distributes clear falsehoods like “The elections in Kazakhstan were legitimate, free and open.”).

This is made doubly strange when considering recent history: not only has Kazakhstan been a member of the OSCE since its independence from the Soviet Union 20 years ago, it spent 2010 chairing the OSCE! So to downplay OSCE criticism of the election as being the work of “western-backed monitors,” as Kramer does, is to directly play into Kazakh government efforts to whitewash its own horrible slide on democratic rights the last seven years.

I don’t think there’s a need to assume there’s some sort of shady deal going on with the NYT’s reporting, the way there is with people like Weitz. But it’s important to keep in mind how important language is when we try to understand something as difficult as the Kazakh election. It seems like turnout in Almaty was really low (though I’ve yet to see any confirmed numbers to back up Laubsch’s assertion), and it seems turnout was off a bit in Mangystau oblast, the region where the Zhanaozen killings took place.

As an example, here’s a weirdly prescient piece by Alima Bissenova from 2002 about the prospects for Kazakh democracy:

Political activists in Kazakhstan say a recent gathering of opposition parties, as well as the staging of a large political rally, marks a pivotal step in the country’s civil society development. The fact that authorities ultimately allowed the political events to take place as scheduled has raised hopes among opposition leaders that President Nursultan Nazarbayev is becoming open to more political give-and-take in Kazakhstan.

None of that hoped-for openness has taken hold, and that piece could have been written in 2009 for how much it predicted change (this is not a slam on Bissenova but rather the stagnant nature of Kazakh politics).

It’s too early to say what yesterday’s voter behavior means. I think we’ll learn a lot by watching what the regime backers say over the next few weeks, and how both the opposition and the Kazakh government responds.

The outbreak of violence in Zhanaozen, a small oil town in Western Kazakhstan, has caused people to sit up and notice that Kazakhstan, despite its carefully cultivated reputation as a stable modernizing state, is not immune to social upheaval (if it has ever been) and that some internal discontent is brewing within the country. However, because of the fairly peripheral position of Zhanaozen on the national stage, the real contours of the conflict have not been discernible even to those inside the country and clearly cannot be so easily explained by any of familiar scenarios which have been in the air since the velvet revolutions occurred in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan and since the eruption of the Arab spring.

The riots and subsequent clashes with police coincided with Kazakhstan’s Independence Day of December 16. For seven months prior to the disturbances, oil workers of the OzenMunaiGaz, a subsidiary of the national company KazMunaiGaz, had been engulfed in a bitter dispute with both the company and the government over regional and industrial hardship coefficients. The whole fiasco seems to have started from a simple misunderstanding.

A new jurist for the oil workers union, Nataliya Sokolova, who formerly worked as a head of the HR department with KarazhanbasMunaiGaz, a nearby oil company, jointly controlled by national Kazakh and Chinese oil companies, informed the workers that they had been underpaid the regional hardship coefficient. The workers initiated litigation during which it was found that they had, in fact, been paid the coefficient in full but had been misled by their jurist, Nataliya Sokolova, as to how this coefficient should be calculated. They were told that that their current wages in their totality should be multiplied by the coefficient, which would make them double. In a well-covered in the opposition media and highly controversial case which unfolded in the summer, Sokolova was charged with incitement to social hatred and sentenced to 6 years in prison. As a result, the majority of OzenMunaiGaz workers returned to work (OzenMunaiGaz employs about 9000 people) although a significant proportion of them – about 1300 workers – continued the strike and, after demanding reimbursement for the coefficient payments, were subsequently fired, whereupon they went to “occupy” the town’s main square now demanding re-installment to their previous positions with OzenMunaiGaz. Several negotiations and mitigations of the conflict initiated as recently as November by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security have been inconclusive.

The general mood in the oil town was gloomy throughout the fall. The December 16 riots started from the town’s main square – the site where the strikers had gathered and from where city administration had planned to organize the usual Independence Day program. From extensive footage of the opposition K+ channel (owned by self-exiled former Kazakh oligarch, Mukhtar Ablyazov) which has been stationed in the area since spring, together with official footage from the Attorney General’s office, and from amateur footage shot by onlookers, we know that the violence erupted on the square with the beating of a police major, the smashing of stage equipment, and the burning of the Christmas tree. After several administration buildings had been attacked and set on fire, including the office of OzenMunaiGaz, the municipal office (akimat), the bank, the hotel and several shops, the police re-grouped and used live bullets to disperse the protestors. 16 people were confirmed to have been killed in the clashes and ensuing violence in the town.

Police claim that they were shot at and that there was real danger – not only to themselves but also to other citizens in the vicinity. Three criminal cases have been opened to investigate possible excessive use of firearms by the police, and dozens of criminal cases have also been opened to investigate any conspiratorial elements and organization behind the rioting, arson, beating of police officers, and looting. The situation was somewhat pacified with the arrival of the President at the scene of the clashes, amidst promises that the families of those who were killed would be paid retribution to the tune of approximately 6,700 USD (1 million tenge), regardless of how and when they died, and oil workers would be re-employed.

A government commission to address grievances and to improve the living and working conditions of the Zhanaozen citizens has been created and has conducted several working meetings with residents and laid off oil workers. Towards the end of December, 1,622 workers have been re-employed, and are now getting paid even though there are, as yet, no ready jobs for them to fill. In an interview with several Kazakh bloggers, the official representative of the KazMunaiGaz, Alik Aydarbayev, said that they are planning to open a new drilling company in Zhanaozen in order to permanently employ workers. The wages of OzenMunaiGaz oil workers, including those employed in supporting services as drivers and unskilled workers, are already the highest in the country starting from about 1000 USD for the low-skilled and averaging 1700-2000 USD for highly-skilled workers.

The roots of the problem are manifold but the one with which almost all experts seem to agree is that of rising claims and entitlements to the “oil pie.” Oil revenues constitute a quarter of the Kazakh government’s budget (a part of the revenues also goes to the National Oil Fund) and people in the oil towns of the Western region are well aware that these oil revenues which, among other things, help to build Astana and fund other modernization projects around the country, come from their land. While the expectations of aspiring middle classes are being gradually fulfilled in Kazakhstan, there remain pockets of discontent. The crisis of rising expectations is spreading in Kazakh society starting from highly qualified government-sponsored students who, having graduated from prestigious American and British universities, return home expecting prestigious jobs with world compatible salaries, to that of the low-skilled oralmans (Kazakh government sponsored ethnic Kazakh repatriates) and rural migrants who flock to the oil towns in the hope of high-paid jobs available in the oil industry.

The labor dispute which led to the violence in Zhanaozen was the first case where the demands of the Kazakh oil workers for higher wages were firmly refuted and found illegal in court leading to tragic consequences. For many years, wages in the oil industry have been rising steadily; however this rise in wages has gone unmatched by the comparable rise in the quality of life for the people of the Mangystau region. One reason for this is the lack of infrastructure for the money to “stick.” While KazMunaiGaz paid high wages to its employees, social investment in the town lagged behind not in the least because of the exploding population growth. Despite the fact that oil production in Zhanaozen had already peaked in Soviet times, the population continued to increase doubling from 60,000 in 2000 to almost 120,000 today. The cost of living in the town, where everything has to be delivered, also remained high. On top of this, many Zhanaozen workers landed themselves in debt by taking home loans wherewith to buy apartments in Zhanaozen and in the regional center of Aktau. Needless to say, many rural migrants now employed in the oil industry lack cultural capital and professional skills. And the efforts at their socialization and professionalization by the government and by KazMunaiGaz remain dismal. The distortions of the oil industry are unmediated in Zhanazoen creating a culture of the oil frontier where all kinds of people come to make money –not to live. To an observer, there exists a clear gap between the white-collar and blue-collar employees of KazMunaiGaz and its subsidiaries. The white-collar employees come from the well-educated often western-educated elites who are often re-moved from the realities of the region and the people on the ground. Expectations from oil revenues distribution are very high and the public company which, unlike other companies, employs only Kazakhstani workers and pays them high wages is blamed for nepotism and flagrant mismanagement from top down.

Anger directed at the KazMunaiGaz “fat cats,” however, does not translate into wholehearted support for the oil workers in Zhanaozen. While many in the opposition camp at home and abroad are seen as being quick to jump on the bandwagon of any protest of any ideological stripe whatsoever, from proletarian solidarity to regionalist and tribal grievances, as long as it is against the current regime, it is also remarkable that quite a sizable number if not a majority of the commentators on the Kazakh web sites, while mourning the tragedy and loss of life that befell Zhanaozen, have little sympathy with the plight of the oil workers. There is vigorous debate in society as to whether their demands are justified (especially considering wages and salaries in other regions), and whether, like in the case of government-funded Kazakhstani students who graduated from Western universities, the state itself has not created the expectations it cannot fulfill. By showering money and public goodies on the rebelling town, the government, these commentators and analysts believe, is creating a moral hazard and opening a Pandora’s box of competing claims and demands impossible to fulfill. Also, investment in the wider population of Kazakhstan in stability and order should not be underestimated. Stability, peace and order is not just a matter of reputation for the regime, it is a basis of the “moral order” upon which the aspiring middle classes plan to build their lives. Many people in Kazakhstan realize that inter-ethnic and inter-regional agreement is not to be taken for granted and resent the tactics of the oil workers who, in pursuit of narrow interests are seen as ready to jeopardize the stability of the region and the whole country.