Kazakhstan

The isolation of Kazakhstan

Mark Berniker

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the kingpin and president of Kazakhstan, has spent the past year digging a deep hole for his country. A government crackdown on the Kazakh media coupled with the suppression of political opposition has contributed at least partly to a recent and troubling decline in business conditions - all of which have put the desperately poor Central Asian nation at risk of ever-increasing international isolation.

Sharing borders with Russia, China and the Central Asia states, Kazakhstan is situated squarely at the center of the war Eurasia's place in the war on terrorism between the Middle East and Afghanistan’s frontiers. The European Commission head Romano Prodi on November 29 expressed serious concerns to reporters about "Kazakhstan’s commitment to shared values in the field of democracy, human rights and the rule of law".

Several disturbing developments are casting a dark shadow over Nazarbayev, especially the bizarre detention of Kazakh journalist Sergei Duvanov. Twenty US Congressmen recently sent a letter to President George W Bush speaking out against the controversial arrest of Duvanov, a widely respected critic of Nazarbayev.

Then the prominent Kazakh journalist Nuri Muftakh, the editor-in-chief of Altyn Ghasyr (Golden Century) was hit by a vehicle, and died from his injuries. Muftakh wrote several articles describing the alleged corruption of the Kazakh government and its alleged movement of millions of dollars in oil money to Swiss bank accounts. Also, earlier this year, the daughter of Lira Baysetova, a co-founder of "Respublika 2000" was found dead under mysterious circumstances. These developments have stirred a chorus of outrage, and concern that a ruthless dictator could be connected to the slaughter of several outspoken, and innocent voices of the Kazakh media.

Nazarbayev has gotten away with his alleged blatant human rights violations, but the question is whether the world will stand by and let him continue his crackdown of the Kazakh media and political opposition. And it's not just about the freedom of the media, which is notoriously squelched throughout Central Asia, but importantly the rule of law in Kazakhstan, and the country's credibility as a key geostrategic partner and emerging player in global oil markets.

Just as Nazarbayev is feeling some heat from the international community, the former Communist Party boss is emerging as a key strategic regional ally in the US-led war on terrorism from Afghanistan to Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. US aid to the five Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan is nearly US$600 million, twice its pre-September 11 level. The US knew that it was taking a risk when it decided to engage Kazakhstan, but decided its strategic importance not only in military operations in Afghanistan, but in the future global petroleum landscape, made it a risk worth taking. Those decisions may prove to be a catastrophic policy misstep by the Bush administration.

And while the Bush administration is engaged, and apparently not outraged with Nazarbayev, it is essentially propping up a morally bankrupt and dangerously repressive regime at an important geopolitical crossroads. The media crackdown and suppression of political dissent is also having its effect on multibillion dollar energy investment projects in Kazakhstan. Several Western firms have scaled back or put on hold future development on oil projects in Kazakhstan.

While the Kazakh government doesn't seem to be softening in its treatment of journalists, or for that matter oil companies, it does derive the bulk of its export revenues from oil. If its failed partnerships with multinational oil firms worsen, there will be a profound impact on the Kazakh economy, and sow the seeds of a domestic political opposition. Perhaps that will harden Nazarbayev’s rule, but it also could isolate Kazakhstan both economically and politically. There are reports that Kazakhstan may be preparing a new law on the mass media, which could drive the Nazarbayev government in an even more repressive direction.

The opposition movement in Kazakhstan is gaining international attention with the case of Sergei Duvanov. The journalist and human rights advocate was detained on October 28, and formally charged on November 7 with raping a 14-year-old girl, an allegation he says that Kazak government security agents trumped up against him. Duvanov’s detention came on the eve of his planned departure to the US to accept an award for his writing and to speak on press freedom at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Duvanov then went on a hunger strike, only to be force-fed after 10 days. Weak and in detention, he wrote on November 6 to thank all of his supporters and to point out other political atrocities by the Kazakh government.

Denissa Duvanova, Sergei’s daughter and a doctoral student at Ohio State University, told the Washington Times on November 15, "This is part of a pattern by the Kazakh government to silence him for what he has written." Duvanov remains in custody and this is not the first run-in with Kazakh authorities. He was also the victim of a still unresolved beating on August 28, just before he was to travel to Warsaw for a meeting on press freedom in Kazakhstan, sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE).

The Bush administration has not officially condemned the Duvanov detention, but US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher recently said that the latest charges against Duvanov were "very serious" and he said that this was not the first time of reports of Nazarbayev’s harassment of journalists. In the November 15 letter to Bush, 20 Congressmen said that the Duvanov case was "the latest manifestation of President Nazarbayev's campaign to silence inconvenient voices in Kazakhstan. Members of the European Parliament, the representative of the media of the OSCE, the International League for Human Rights and the Committee to Protect Journalists all have come out against Kazakhstan's detention of Duvanov."

And it's not just individual journalists who are under siege in Kazakhstan, television stations, magazines and newspapers have been shut down for minor media license infractions. Nazarbayev himself has been under scrutiny since 1996 for alleged corruption and misallocation of funds surrounding the multibillion dollar deal with ChevronTexaco and its partners for development of the Tengiz oil fields. Kazakh Prime Minister Imangali Tasmagambetov told the country’s parliament that a national oil fund sheltered in Swiss bank accounts worth more than $1 billion was controlled by Nazarbayev and was created to stabilize the Kazakh economy in a time of crisis. A Manhattan federal judge, Denny Chin, in September ruled that more than "300,000 pages of documents" were being handed over to a federal grand jury in its investigation of alleged links between New York-based Mercator Corp consultant James Giffen and the reported transfer of $60 million from multinational oil companies to the Swiss bank accounts supposedly connected to Nursultan Nazarbayev and other Kazakh government officials. Nuri Muftakh, the journalist killed by a bus on his way from Shymkent to Almaty, is reported to have been en route to deliver explosive allegations of Kazakh government official involvement in Kazakhgate, the case of misallocated funds to Swiss bank accounts.

Details of the case are "under seal", with no public information available, according to documents and lawyers close to the case. However, Judge Chin did write "a foreign government that is alleged to be the recipient of bribes from an American corporation cannot be permitted to bring a grand jury investigation to a halt". Thus, the international corruption investigation of Mercator and the government of Kazakhstan continues.

US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was a consultant to Chevron's oil dealings in Kazakhstan, and sources say that US Attorney General John Ashcroft has been criticized for the slow movement in the case forward.

Reporters Without Borders has said it is protesting to the Kazakh embassy in Paris for the detention of Duvanov. The Kazakhstani Forum of Democratic Forces, uniting several Kazakh opposition parties and political movements, has sent a letter to the Dutch Embassy in Almaty, Kazakhstan, urging Dutch officials to not allow Nazarbayev to visit Holland in late November. In the letter its authors say, "Nursultan Nazarbayev has launched a campaign to physically eliminate the democratic opposition".

In addition to the detention and recent deaths of prominent Kazakh journalists, there are reports of mysterious deaths of two employees of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights: Dulat Tulegenov and Aleksei Pugaev. There are also allegations that both Dudanov and the leader of the Kazakhstan Community Party, Serikbolsyn Abdildin, were poisoned, or drugged by a drink given to them.

If Kazakhstan has any intention of some day joining NATO, or being included in the greater global community, Nursultan Nazarbayev is going to have to modify his Draconian strategies, and be more open to the rule of law, respecting media freedom and creating a stable business environment to encourage foreign investment to capitalize on its wealth of black gold.

Western governments and multinational oil companies have already said that the Kazakh government has overstepped its bounds, now what are they going to do? What they shouldn't allow is Nazarbayev to get away with his raft of excesses, or allow him to ruin the potential future prosperity of Kazakhstan.

Mark Berniker is a freelance journalist who specializes in Eurasian affairs.

atimes.com

Asia Times Online, December 6, 2002