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Young people, without leaders and disorderly, rallied to protest he made a storm The entire government building in Kazakhstan was torn down by the statue of its first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, which burned down its former headquarters and clashed with police.
What united them was their singing: “Shal, ket!” (Old man, get away!)
He referred to 81-year-old Nazarbayev, who had ruled Kazakhstan after five controversial elections since the 1991 Soviet collapse. He continued to be a loyal ally of Russia by joining Moscow-dominated security and economic blocs.
In 2019, he resigned Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was chosen by hand as a charismatic successor, but retained power as head of the Security Council.
Tokayev initially tried to calm the protesters down.
On Wednesday, himself he disbanded the government, Nazarbayev was ousted from the Security Council and on January 2, fuel prices in a western town sparked unrest.
But it seemed that the disoriented law enforcement could not stop the rallies, violence and looting, and Tokayev called on a Russian-dominated security bloc to help “calm the terrorist threat.”
Civilians and police were killed in the clashes, and officers were reportedly beheaded. There are no details on the number of protesters in the country under strict control, where a blackout on the internet on Wednesday made it even more difficult to obtain reliable information.
For some observers, the Tokayev movement represents a possibility for Moscow to regain power in Kazakhstan, whose vast hydrocarbon resources have become the economic power of Central Asia.
“For some it is a popular uprising, and for some – a great opportunity to restore the USSR to save their country from their skin and to save what is left of power at the expense of feared dictators,” said regional expert Nikolay Mitrokhin. and a researcher at the University of Bremen in Germany, told Al Jazeera.
Moscow has partly moved away from chaos.
The Kremlin has said that Kazakhstan can “solve its internal problems independently” and has warned against foreign interference.
At the same time, a Russian-led military alliance of former Soviet states is heading to Kazakhstan to restore order.
The bloc is known as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and consists of Russia and five Soviet nations. Armenian President Nikol Pashinyan made the announcement on Wednesday night that he was ready to jump.
“This sentence is on a completely different scale”
While Kazakhstan officials call the protesters “extremists,” the majority of young Kazakhs are uncoordinated, have no apparent leaders, and do not reject Kazakhstan’s opposition and support for the rupture.
“There is no toilet [organisational] structures and obvious leaders, so far it is the protest of the workers of the major resource industries, apparently small and young employers, ”Mitrokhin said.
The protests are also completely different from any post-Soviet unrest in Kazakhstan, which was easily located and suppressed, another observer said.
“This phrase is on a completely different scale – it covers the whole country – and shows how superficial the previous stability was and the distribution of the prey of a small, reckless elite,” said Kevork, a professor at Oskanian University. Exeter from the United Kingdom told Al Jazeera.
The protests express a broader desire for political change and also across the region.
Four of the five former Soviet nations in Central Asia, a strategically rich region of more than 65 million people rich in Russia, China and Afghanistan, are mostly Muslims, ruled by old leaders who cut their teeth in politics as communists.
In the surrounding Kyrgyzstan, the region’s youngest president, Sadyr Japarov, a 53-year-old member of the Young Communist movement, said Leonid Brezhnev was one of the longest-serving Soviet leaders.
Three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, secular leaders in Central Asia used the alleged threat of “religious radicalism” to stifle dissent and opposition, and to extend their rule through controversial elections, deadlines and popular “referendums” criticized by the West.
The protests in Kazakhstan are not just a warning to the Nazarbayev clan, which created a “bossy hydrocarbon-based dictatorship,” according to Oskani analysts.
“Other dictators across the region will see other dictators with similar patronage systems with caution, at least not [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, “he said.
Even Moscow’s own strong tendencies ended with the “cancellation” of Putin’s presidency last year, which allowed him to do so. remain in power until 2036, The Kremlin did not particularly train powerful men in Central Asia.
He expanded his relations with Kyrgyzstan and persuaded the expulsion of a U.S. military base after three popular uprisings in 2005, 2010 and 2020 that ousted three presidents.
Islam’s relations with Uzbek President Karimov were mild until his death in 2016 and improved under the reformist successor Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
“Russia sets almost no specific targets for anything in the region except its physical and institutional presence,” Pavel Luzin, a Russian-based Jamestown Foundation analyst at the Washington DC think tank, told Al Jazeera.
His presence on the military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, in a Soviet-era cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, in an oil-rich navy flotilla in the Caspian Sea navy, and in Moscow’s role in the Afghan peace process, borders three of the five former Soviets. “Luzin said.
As for the Kazakh media, they saw that protests were coming – and they were afraid.
“It’s a mixture of hope and fear,” said a resident of Almaty, who asked Al Jazeera to give up his name because of the uncertain situation.
He is concerned about the participation of right-wing nationalists who see Kazakhstan’s secular neighbors and multiple ethnic minorities as a threat.
The patriotic nation “will be the worst,” he said, citing fear of his wife, who is ethnic Korean.
Moscow and Beijing, another growing power in the region, prefer to support these leaders, but political or financial protection means little to a post-Soviet generation that sees few career opportunities in politics and needs to express its displeasure.
An international observer said President Tokayev could “slow down protests” for now by combining police repression and concessions.
“But the protests have been deeply angered by the people because of the much bigger problems than gas prices,” said Al Jazeera Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser at the Helsinki Commission in Norway.
Dale lived in Kazakhstan for several years and visited the town of Zhanaoz, where protests began on January 2, and in 2011, police killed 16 protesting oil workers and a range of punitive measures nationwide.
“It is no coincidence that this started in Zhanaozen, where the authorities were forced to cover up the disagreement 10 years ago. Corruption around Kazakhstan’s elite is obvious to everyone, and cannot be hidden by constantly blocking news sites or shutting down independent newspapers. Something more basic needs to be changed, ”he said.
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