Various experts’ readings of Kazakhstan’s President Tokayev turning to Russian President Putin and the Cooperative Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), emphasize the complex considerations in restructuring and stabilizing Central Asia—especially after the abandonment of Afghanistan last summer.
Izvestia cited two “military experts” in its coverage following the CSTO conference on Kazakhstan on Monday. One, Viktor Murakhovsky, explained that the CSTO peacekeepers’ first task was to protect fuel, nuclear energy, military, and aerospace facilities—and they accomplished this. “Their other task is to prevent the formation of a terrorist pseudo-state mirroring the IS [Islamic State] in Kazakhstan. There are quite a few radical Muslim terrorists in Kazakhstan who gained experience in Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan.” They are believed to be a core part of the attempt last week to destroy Kazakhstan.
A second expert, Vladislav Shurygin, said that international terrorist groups know how to exploit protest attitudes, by using sleeper cells and extremist religious propaganda among the youth and the poorer segments of the population. When the police and military were slow in Syria and Iraq, it allowed a rapid consolidation of well-armed gangs of terrorists and extremists. He highlighted the planned CSTO intervention, pre-empting the creation of yet another failed state. “Without the CSTO’s swift reaction, the consequences would have been much grimmer.”
Russia-watcher John Helmer cited “an engaged Kazkh source” to the effect that, after August’s Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, “plans and preparations for changes in the regional balance of security threat and of counter-force should occur. So they did.” The planned destabilization and the planned response were in place. The future now depends upon how Russian and Chinese monies are deployed, which affects the ownership of Kazakhstan’s uranium, metals, fertilizers, oil, gas, grain, etc. He spelled out the corollary, that U.S. and, in particular, British ownership and/or control could suffer.
Helmer went on to offer a translation of the article, “What lessons follow from the crisis in Kazakhstan,” by Rafael Fakhrutdinov and Elena Leksina (put out Monday in the online Vzglyad, or “Viewpoint"). Tokayev made clear that the synchronized attacks on “buildings of the regional authorities, law enforcement agencies, pre-trial detention centers, strategic facilities, banks, a TV tower and TV channels” testified to the undeniable and extensive planning of the coup. He had said: “Airports were seized, roads and railways were blocked, the work of ambulances and firefighters was blocked. Bandits also attacked morgues, took the bodies of militants directly from the battlefield. This is the practice of international terrorists of known origin. This is how they cover their tracks.” It underlined the focus upon the IS-related operations as the core of the violent actions of Thursday-Sunday.
Finally, the Director General of the Institute of the EurAsian Economic Community, Vladimir Lepekhin, highlighted the possibility of a newly-created closer relationship of Putin and Tokayev: Besides terrorism, there’s “a fierce power struggle between different [Kazakh] clans. But the difference is that Tokayev used a maneuver—he turned to the CSTO, with the help of which he outplayed his competitors. So this is a tricky game in which different zhuzi ("unions of clans") have shown themselves.”
Admittedly, he noted, there is more than Islamic terrorism and internal power struggles at work. There are also games from the UK, the U.S., and Turkey. “So this is a very difficult picture.” After Afghanistan, Islamist extremists were going to pop up someplace. “Kazakhstan has become such a country, while the threat is also felt in Uzbekistan.” However, now the Nazarbayev clan no longer has a special role. In this complicated picture, Russia must a) keep Baikonur, the site of the vital Cosmodrome; b) keep corporate business in Russian hands; and c) “make sure that the uranium deposits do not fall into the hands of anti-Russian structures.”
