[A-List] Kazakhstan: imperialism calls

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Here's a familiar tale: an unsavoury despot is tolerated, even feted, for as
long as he is useful. But when he starts to ask for, even expect, a bigger
slice of the action, his human rights violations and corrupt practices (to
use Stanley Fischer's phrase) demand intervention...


The isolation of Kazakhstan
By Mark Berniker
Asia Times, December 5 2002

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.