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The isolation of Kazakhstan
By
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.
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