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Kazakhstan’s President Says Security Forces Can ‘Fire Without Warning’ to Quell Unrest In Kazakhstan’s Street Battles, Signs of Elites Fighting Each Other
(about 8 hours later)
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — The authoritarian leader of Kazakhstan said Friday that he had authorized the nation’s security forces to “fire without warning” as the government moved to bring an end to two days of chaos and violence after peaceful protests descended into scenes of anarchy. BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — It came as no big surprise when a crumbling oil town in western Kazakhstan stirred in protest last Sunday, 10 years after security forces there killed more than a dozen workers who had gone on strike over pay and poor conditions.
“We hear calls from abroad for the parties to negotiate to find a peaceful solution to the problems,” President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said in an address to the nation. “This is just nonsense.” But it remains a mystery how peaceful protests over a rise in fuel prices last weekend in Zhanaozen, a grimy, Soviet-era settlement near the Caspian Sea, suddenly spread more than a thousand miles across the full length of Central Asia’s largest country, turning the biggest and most prosperous Kazakh city into a war zone littered with dead bodies, burned buildings and incinerated cars.
“What negotiations can there be with criminals and murderers,” he said. “They need to be destroyed and this will be done.” The violence this week in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital and still its business and cultural hub, shocked just about everyone — not only its leader, who, fortified by Russian troops, on Friday ordered security forces to “fire without warning” to restore order, but also government critics who have long bridled at repression and rampant corruption in the oil-rich nation.
The government said that order had been “mainly restored” across the country as Russian troops joined with the country’s security forces to quell widespread unrest. The crisis coincided with a power struggle within the government, fueling talk that the people fighting in the streets were proxies for feuding factions of the political elite. There is also feverish speculation about Kremlin meddling and a host of other murky possible causes. About the only thing that is clear is that the country’s convulsions involve more than a straightforward clash between protesters expressing discontent and the heavy-handed security apparatus of an authoritarian regime.
Mr. Tokayev also offered a special thanks to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. With Kazakhstan now largely sealed off from the outside world — its main airports are closed or commandeered by Russian troops, while internet services and phone lines are mostly down — information is scarce.
“He responded to my appeal very promptly and, most importantly, warmly, in a friendly way,” he said. Echoing the refrain of repressive leaders around the world confronted with protests, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Friday lashed out at liberals and human rights defenders, lamenting that the authorities had been too lax.
Since the protests turned violent, it has been difficult to assess the events unfolding in Kazakhstan. Internet and telephone service have been sporadic, and there are few reliable independent news outlets in the country. People reached by phone have been largely confined to their homes, hunkering down as explosions rattle the walls. Not many people are buying that, particularly as it is a message endorsed by Russia, which on Thursday sent in troops to help Mr. Tokayev regain control and has a long record of construing all expressions of discontent at home and in other former Soviet territory as the work of disgruntled liberal troublemakers.
Mr. Tokayev’s menacing speech seemed to portend a protracted crackdown on anti-government activists as well as human rights advocates and independent journalists. But there is growing evidence that the mayhem in Almaty, the epicenter of this week’s turmoil, was more than just people power run amok.
He accused the groups of acting like they were above the law and believing they “can say whatever they want.” President Tokayev, in an address to the nation on Friday, alluded to that, claiming that the violence was the work of some 20,000 “bandits” who he said were organized from “a single command post.” Calls for negotiations with such people, he added, were “nonsense” because “they need to be destroyed and this will be done.”
And he accused the “supposedly free media outlets” in the country and outlets based abroad for fanning the flames of unrest. Danil Kislov, a Russian expert on Central Asia who runs Fergana, a news portal focused on the region, speculated that the chaos was the result of “a desperate struggle for power” between feuding political clans, namely people loyal to President Tokayev, 68, and those beholden to his 81-year-old predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
The violence, Mr. Tokayev said, was organized from “a single command post,” with directions given to a group of some 20,000 “bandits.” At the height of the tumult on Wednesday, the president announced that he had taken over as head of the security council, a job held until then by Mr. Nazarbayev, who stepped down as president in 2019 but retained wide powers and was given the honorary title of Elbasy, or leader of the nation. President Tokayev also fired Mr. Nazarbayev’s nephew Samat Abish as deputy head of the main security service and purged several others close to the former president.
While offering no evidence to support his claim, Mr. Tokayev said the group had been actively trained and managed. The riots in Almaty, Mr. Kislov said, appeared to be an attempt by members of Mr. Nazarbeyev’s political clan to reverse their eclipse.
“Their acts showed the presence of a clear plan of attacks on military, administrative and social facilities in all areas, well-organized coordination of actions, high combat readiness and bestial cruelty,” he said. “This was all artificially organized by people who really had power in their hands,” he said, adding that Mr. Nazarbayev’s ousted nephew seems to have played a major role in organizing the unrest.
Russian troops, operating alongside Kazakh law enforcement agencies, said on Friday they had regained full control of the airport in Almaty, the country’s largest city, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Galym Ageleulov, a human-rights activist in Almaty who took part in what began as a peaceful demonstration on Wednesday, said police officers monitoring the protest suddenly vanished around lunchtime. And “then this crowd came,” he said, an unruly mob of what seemed more like thugs than the kind of people — students, bookish dissidents and middle-class malcontents — who usually turn out for protests in Kazakhstan.
“The security of the Consulate General of the Russian Federation located in the city and other important facilities is being ensured,” a spokesman for the ministry, Igor Konashenkov, said in televised remarks. He said the mob was “clearly organized by crime group marauders” and surged down main streets toward Akimat, the City Hall, setting cars on fire and storming government offices.
The ferocity of the unrest caught many observers by surprise. The oil-rich Central Asian nation perched on Russia’s southern steppe had been widely viewed as perhaps the most stable country in a volatile region. Among those who urged the crowd on was Arman Dzhumageldiev, known as “Arman the Wild,” by reputation one of the country’s most powerful gangsters, who witnesses said provoked much of the violence. He gave frantic speeches on Almaty’s central square as government buildings blazed behind him, calling for people to press the government to make concessions and mocking as a “coward” Mukhtar Ablyazov, an exiled tycoon who is a bitter personal enemy of Kazakhstan’s longtime former president, Mr. Nazarbayev.
For most of the time since it gained independence three decades ago, Kazakhstan was ruled by one man: Nursultan Nazarbayev. Even after he formally stepped down as president, he retained the title “leader of the nation” and was widely viewed as keeping control over the state through his role as chairman of the national security council. On Friday, the interior ministry said that its special forces unit had arrested Mr. Dzhumageldiev, together with five accomplices. Mr. Dzhumageldiev was the leader of an organized criminal gang, the ministry said.
Amid the unrest, Mr. Tokayev publicly assumed control of the security forces and sidelined Mr. Nazarbayev, 81. Mr. Tokayev also reached out to Moscow for help as the protests spiraled out of control. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters in Washington on Friday that the United States still has questions about Mr. Tokayev’s request for military reinforcements from a Russian-led alliance. “It’s not clear why they feel the need for any outside assistance, so we’re trying to learn more about it,” he said.
The Russia-led effort to quell the unrest, described as a temporary peacekeeping mission by a military alliance that is Russia’s equivalent of NATO, will be limited in time and will aim at protecting government buildings and military facilities, Kazakh officials said. “One lesson in recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave,” Mr. Blinken added.
The alliance, called the Collective Security Treaty Organization, has dispatched about 2,500 troops to Kazakhstan, and that figure could rise, according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. That a possible power struggle could have morphed so quickly into mayhem on the streets is a measure of how brittle Kazakhstan is beneath the shiny surface of wealthy, cosmopolitan cities like Almaty.
This is the first time in the history of the alliance that its protection clause has been invoked. Discontent, even if exploited by political elites, is very real. The country is less repressive than most in a region dominated by brutal strongmen — the former dictator of neighboring Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, was accused of boiling his critics in vats of oil and having hundreds of protesters massacred in the town of Andijan in 2005.
Even as Russian paratroopers from the elite 45th Guards Spetsnaz Brigade landed in Almaty, gunbattles raged in the streets late into the night, according to video from a BBC correspondent on the scene. But whatever the relative tolerance of their leaders, many Kazakhs still resent a kleptocratic elite that has poured billions into showcase projects like the construction of a new capital, named Nursultan in honor of the former president, while neglecting the well-being of many ordinary people.
The Biden administration said it was closely watching Moscow’s military intervention in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic that Washington has cultivated as a friendly partner. The roots of that discontent are in places like Zhanaozen, the western oil town where this week’s protests began — and where security forces in December 2011 opened fire on a group of striking workers. Unlike protests in Almaty, those in Zhanaozen and other western towns along the Caspian Sea, the center of the Kazakh oil industry, have been peaceful throughout the week.
That bond has formed in large part because of the major energy investments by American corporations and the cooperation of the former Kazakh president, Mr. Nazarbayev, with the United States on nuclear nonproliferation. Mr. Nazarbayev also supported the American military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The region’s senior official, Zhanarbek Baktybaev, said on Friday that there had been no violence, lamenting that “as you know, in some region of our country there have been riots and looting by terrorist elements.” Vital services, he said, were all working normally.
American officials see Mr. Putin’s response to the crisis as a test of his ability and determination to maintain a Russian sphere of influence in neighboring countries. Mukhtar Umbetov, a lawyer for the independent trade union in Aktau, next to Zhanaozen, said by telephone that protests had continued with no violence in the west of the country, and expressed the anger of ordinary workers over rising inflation and stagnant salaries.
“The United States and, frankly, the world will be watching for any violations of human rights,” said Ned Price, a State Department spokesman. “We will also be watching for any actions that may lay the predicate for the seizure of Kazakh institutions.” “Kazakhstan is a rich country,” Mr. Umbetov said, “but these resources do not work in the interests of the people, they work in the interests of the elites. There is a huge stratification of society.”
Meanwhile, China expressed full support for the Kazakh leader. Shocked by violence a decade ago in western Kazakhstan, a country that Washington regarded as a stable and dependable partner, the Senate and House held a joint hearing attended by experts on the country, including a former U.S. ambassador there, William B. Courtney.
“You decisively took effective measures at critical moments to quickly calm the situation, which embodies your responsibility as a politician,” China’s authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, said in a message to Mr. Tokayev, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency. Mr. Courtney described the December 2011 bloodshed “as an aberration” but “symptomatic of the wide gap between rulers and ruled, between reality and expectations, between those who live honestly and those who do not.” Kazakhstan’s political development, he added, “is stunted by 20 years of authoritarian rule.”
Kazakhstan has been expanding its ties with China in recent years. The country plays a central role in Mr. Xi’s signature infrastructure program, known as “One Belt, One Road,” which aims to revive the ancient Silk Road and build up other trading routes between Asia and Europe to pump Chinese products into foreign markets. The title of the hearing: “Kazakhstan: As Stable as its Government Claims?” If nothing else, the events of the past week have at least answered that question.
In his message, Mr. Xi condemned any efforts to undermine Kazakhstan’s stability and peace, as well as its relationship with China. He told Mr. Tokayev that Beijing “resolutely opposes external forces deliberately creating turmoil and instigating a ‘color revolution’ in Kazakhstan,” the news agency said. Ivan Nechepurenko reported from Bishkek, and Andrew Higgins from Warsaw. Reporting was contributed by Valerie Hopkins in Moscow, Marc Santora in London and Michael Crowley in Washington.
The Xinhua report did not elaborate on what Mr. Xi was referring to, but the Chinese Communist Party has often invoked the theme of foreign meddling to explain unrest, including in Hong Kong.
The protests in Kazakhstan started on Sunday with what appeared to be a genuine outpouring of public anger over an increase in fuel prices and a broader frustration over a government widely viewed as corrupt — with vast oil riches benefiting an elite few at the expense of the masses.
In a concession, the government on Thursday announced a price cap on vehicle fuel and a halt to increases in utility bills.
However, as the protests swelled, both the government and even some supporters of the protests said they had been co-opted by criminal gangs looking to exploit the situation.
Over the past two days, oil prices have risen 4 percent, partly driven by worries over Kazakhstan, a major petroleum producer. Futures in Brent crude, the international benchmark, were trading at $82.95 a barrel on Friday, close to seven-year highs that were reached in October.
Chevron, the second largest U.S. oil company, said there has been some disruption to oil production at their key Tengiz field in Kazakhstan. The issue appears to be difficulty in loading some petroleum products from the field onto rail cars.
The market is also responding to geopolitical tensions, including over Ukraine, and to production problems in Nigeria, Angola, Libya and elsewhere.
The huge destruction of public property in Kazakhstan — including the torching of Almaty’s City Hall and the burning and looting of scores of other government buildings — has been met with a strong show of force by security personnel.
The Interior Ministry said in a statement on Friday that 26 “armed criminals” had been “liquidated” and 18 security officers killed in the unrest.
Ivan Nechepurenko reported from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Valerie Hopkins from Moscow, and Marc Santora from Chatel, France. Michael Crowley contributed reporting from Washington, Stanley Reed from London, and Gillian Wong from Seoul.