Written through Valerie Hopkins
The embattled president of Kazakhstan has the pedigree of a world technocrat. The son of distinguished intellectuals, he studied in Moscow at a premier academy for diplomats and later labored within the Soviet Embassy in Beijing. He served as a key adviser to the strongman who dominated the oil-rich Central Asian nation as a fief for just about 3 a long time — after which, in 2019, turned into his inheritor.
The upward thrust of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to the presidency used to be checked out as a imaginable fashion through different authoritarian regimes on easy methods to behavior a management transition with out shedding their grip on energy. As a substitute, Kazakhstan erupted in violence this week and Tokayev has overseen a ruthless crackdown on protesters whilst ousting his former benefactor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, 81, from his ultimate foothold of authority, as head of the country’s tough Safety Council.
For fortify, Tokayev has became to every other autocrat: President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
It’s too quickly to grasp for sure whether or not Kazakhstan’s second of disaster will probably be a victory for Putin, who temporarily spoke back to Tokayev’s request for assist through sending troops as a part of a Russia-led effort to quell the rebellion. Moscow has a historical past of sending “peacekeeping” forces to international locations that by no means go away. And Putin is intent on keeping up a sphere of Russian affect that incorporates former Soviet republics similar to Kazakhstan.
However analysts and professionals on Central Asia say that after his govt used to be beneath siege and his place used to be teetering, Tokayev, 68, used to be neither tough nor impartial sufficient to move it on my own. And his swift alignment with Moscow portends doubtlessly transformative adjustments in a area that has noticed fierce jockeying for affect some of the United States, Russia and China.
In impact, analysts mentioned, towards a backdrop of chaos and violence, Tokayev selected Russia to verify his political survival.
Tokayev “traded his nation’s sovereignty to Russia for his personal energy and the pursuits of kleptocratic elites,” mentioned Erica Marat, a professor at Nationwide Protection College, an army college in Washington.
This transfer “is actually about making Kazakhstan a extra submissive, extra dependable spouse,” she mentioned, including that Kazakhstan would “must be extra aligned with Russia towards the West in geopolitical and world issues.”
In a menacing speech Friday, wherein he warned that govt safety forces may just shoot to kill to suppress protests, Tokayev displayed deference to Putin, providing particular due to the Russian chief for offering help “very promptly and, most significantly, warmly, in a pleasant approach.” He once more expressed “particular gratitude” to Russia in a telephone name with Putin on Saturday, the Kremlin mentioned.
However the courting between the 2 leaders includes a important imbalance in stature: At a information convention ultimate month in Moscow, Putin gave the impression not able to bear in mind Tokayev’s title.
Tokayev took place of job, hand-picked through Nazarbayev, pledging to show the autocracy right into a “listening state” that used to be “overcoming the concern of other opinion.”
His transformation nearly 3 years later to a pace-setter promising this week to “fireplace with out caution” on the protesters, is a drastic one, mentioned Luca Anceschi, a professor of Eurasian Research on the College of Glasgow. “He has grow to be a in point of fact authoritarian chief, projecting energy which he doesn’t actually have,” Anceschi mentioned.
“If you must depend on energy from Russia, are you tough?” he added.
When protests became violent this week, Tokayev spoke back through pushing aside his Cupboard and ousting Nazarbayev, who had retained nice affect because the “chief of the country,” chair of the ruling Nur Otan birthday party and head of the country’s Safety Council.
Tokayev additionally fired Nazarbayev’s key allies from distinguished roles within the nation’s huge safety equipment. Then pitched battles broke out.
The timing of the shift from the preliminary, non violent protests within the nation’s West to the violence and looting in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s greatest town and financial heart — which intensified after Nazarbayev and his dependable head of the rustic’s tough intelligence company, Karim Masimov, have been fired — has given upward push to fashionable hypothesis that the rioters have been arranged through proxies for feuding factions of the political elite, pitting Nazarbayev and his allies towards Tokayev.
Into the protection vacuum, at Tokayev’s request, got here elite troops — most commonly Russian — from a Kremlin-sponsored alliance referred to as the Collective Safety Treaty Group, Russia’s model of NATO.
Internally, Tokayev’s choice to welcome the warriors, tanks and airplanes from the alliance may just additional erode public agree with within the president.
Many working-class Kazakhs have lengthy been livid on the corruption that funnels the wealth from Central Asia’s greatest economic system to an elite few. Seeing a pace-setter who supported and benefited from that device, and now chooses to be propped up through Moscow as an alternative of being attentive to authentic grievances, will infuriate atypical Kazakhstanis, Marat mentioned.
“Other people didn’t come at the streets to invite for Russian interference of their day by day lives,” she mentioned.
For Putin, dispatching troops to Kazakhstan represents “a cheap engagement with prime returns,” Marat mentioned.
For many years, Tokayev constructed a name as an efficient technocrat adept at serving to Nazarbayev steadiness Kazakhstan’s international coverage between its more and more assertive neighbors, China and Russia, and its tough financial investor, the US.
And for 28 years, he used to be successfully Nazarbayev’s understudy.
Since taking place of job, Tokayev has no longer needed to take care of actual political festival. Underneath his management, there was an important crackdown on opposition events, human rights teams say. And authentic opposition figures are “persistently marginalized,” in line with the watchdog Freedom Space, whilst “freedoms of speech and meeting stay limited.”
However now, Tokayev has to take care of obvious opponents throughout the most sensible echelons of presidency — one of the crucial other folks closest to Nazarbayev, a number of analysts mentioned.
Days after the protests started on Jan. 2 over ballooning inflation and emerging gas costs, Tokayev mentioned he would rescind the associated fee will increase. However demonstrators had already begun not easy the tip of the kleptocratic political device that Nazarbayev had constructed and maintained for the reason that nation declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Via midweek, protesters have been shouting, “Shal ket!” — or “Previous guy out!” — in connection with Nazarbayev. However then Tokayev fired the previous president and the intelligence company leader, Masimov, at the side of Nazarbayev’s nephew, who used to be the company’s 2nd in command.
Masimov used to be detained on suspicion of “prime treason” Thursday, the company — referred to as the Nationwide Safety Committee — mentioned in a commentary Saturday.
Rioters quickly broke into no less than one govt guns depot, the place they met little resistance, in line with native information experiences. They raced to take over govt constructions and the airport in Almaty, the place many of the unrest happened. (In different places within the nation, particularly the West, protests remained non violent.)
Akezhan Kazhegeldin, who served as high minister of Kazakhstan from 1994 to 1997 however resigned over considerations about corruption, mentioned it used to be most likely that Tokayev decided that he had “misplaced regulate over the army and legislation enforcement our bodies,” main him to disregard Nazarbayev, Masimov and the federal government.
Kazhegeldin, who has been in exile for many years, mentioned he used to be nonetheless preserving out hope that Tokayev, who served as his leader of Cupboard when he used to be high minister, may just flip issues round.
However he warned that it will be a mistake for Tokayev to proceed looking for assist from Russia, with whom Kazakhstan stocks a 4,750-mile land border. Kazakhstan maintains shut family members with Russia, and is a member of the single-market Eurasian Financial Union. Putin, even though, has now and then performed down Kazakh independence, using messaging very similar to his fresh statements on Ukraine.
