Kazakhs look warily at their hot-headed neighbor.
Nur-Sultan, Thursday,
As we know, the war in Ukraine is not going so well, so what could a frustrated dictator like Vladimir Putin do? Make nice and pull out the troops - or start another war somewhere else? If, all over Europe, countries are looking warily at their nuclear-armed neighbour, its possible new target might not be in Europe at all - but in Central Asia.
Poor old Kazakhstan, a vast country that has repeatedly been crushed under one or other empire, seems to today be in the Kremlin's cross-wires. In January this year, it already experienced a mini-invasion when Putin sent paratroopers in to protect Russian interests after anti-government protesters ransacked and torched public buildings. Hundreds if not thousands are believed to have been hurt in clashes between security forces and demonstrators in cities across the country.
Russia's swift deployment was followed by an equally swift withdrawal which nonetheless left the Kazakhs in no doubt about the Kremlin's readiness to use force to safeguard its influence.
Kazakhstan today is a country of 18 million people, with an economy reliant on oil, gas and uranium. It is flat and dry, making it very invasion-prone. But to really understand why Russia might be tempted to attack, you need to know a bit of the vexed history of the two countries.
In the fourth century AD, it was the Huns who overran the region, in the process uniting the various peoples into a single state. The Huns were originally Russians, but they established a short-lived empire in Europe conquering the Goths and many other Germanic peoples. (It's for this reason that during the First and Second World Wars, the British used to call their German opponents, "Huns".)
Over the next thousand years, a series of independent 'Kazakhstans' followed but then the country was conquered by the bloodthirsty Golden Horde of the Mongol Empire. Later, the Golden Horde itself was riven by a religious divide between traditional Mongol rituals and ‘new’ creeds like Buddhism and Islam.
The early 15th century saw the golden age of Kazakhstan! It became the preeminent state in Central Asia, ruling over much of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and even parts of southern Russia. Despots in Moscow think of Kazakhstan as a rural appendage of European Russia, but historically, Kazakhstan was once the dominant partner!
It was in the 17th century that Russian traders and soldiers appeared on the northwestern edge of Kazakh territory, with Cossacks (Christian warriors originally from Ukraine) building forts that soon developed into small towns. The Russians found it particularly easy to grab bits of Kazakhstan as around this time the Mongols had decided to attack the country from the west. The Kazakh Khanate started to fall apart with its peoples divided into three warring tribes. It was in this divided state that the country was absorbed into the Russian empire in 1731.
Even so, as late as the end of the 19th century, the Kazakhs were rather more educated and numerate than the invaders. Putin would be surprised. Many Kazakhs rebelled against the Tsar, and in particular against Russian conscription in the First World War, leading Russian forces to embark on a bloody and vicious armed suppression that killed many and drove tens of thousands more to flee towards China and even today's Mongolia.
It looked like things could only get better, but sure enough, no, they got a lot worse. The Kazakh famine of 1919–1922, was a period of mass starvation and drought made much worse by Stalin's disastrous plans to destroy "bourgeois" farmers by taking all the land into state ownership. One million peasants died. The Soviet response? To build Gulags - forced labour camps. The most notorious being called the Akmolinsk Camp of Wives of Traitors to the Motherland. Over 18,000 women were imprisoned here, living in often unbearable conditions.
Given such a history, you might think the Russians would show a little humility towards what used to be the second largest republic in the Soviet Union. But if so, you would be mistaken! In June this year, MP Konstantin Zatulin issued thinly veiled threats against Kazakhstan's territorial integrity, saying menacingly:
The Kremlin knows that after the annexation of Crimea, Putin's approval rating skyrocketed - from 61% to 85% - with the invasion signalling to voters that their sacrifices were producing genuine results. That same year, the Russian strongman also commented significantly about Kazakhstan, that its statehood only really started in 1991 when President Nursultan Nazarbayev:
"They know too well that a whole range of regions and settlements with a predominantly Russian population have had a weak relationship with what has been called Kazakhstan… We say always and everywhere, including in relation to Ukraine: If we have friendship, cooperation and partnership, then no territory. No territorial questions are raised. But if that does not exist, anything is possible. As in the case of Ukraine."
The Kremlin knows that after the annexation of Crimea, Putin's approval rating skyrocketed - from 61% to 85% - with the invasion signalling to voters that their sacrifices were producing genuine results. That same year, the Russian strongman also commented significantly about Kazakhstan, that its statehood only really started in 1991 when President Nursultan Nazarbayev:
It is language that appears alarmingly similar to what the Kremlin says about Ukraine these days…
"Created a state on a territory where there had never been a state…"
With an election in 2024 on the horizon, some in Russia may be wondering if the seizure of Kazakh territory might yield similar results.
One belt, One road, Two competitors…
Russia's role in Kazakhstan is today being looked at very cooly by the Chinese, and some analysts think they may have insisted on a quick end to Russia's intervention this year.
The Chinese concern is for their "Belt and Road" initiative, an ambitious trading network stretching from China to Western Europe that has Kazakhstan right at its centre.
Today, China is providing Kazakhstan economic relief that the Russians simply cannot match. The capital city of Kazakhstan, Nur-Sultan, previously known as Astana (meaning "Capital-city" in Kazakh), for example, receives generous Chinese investment to modernise transport networks and develop infrastructure.
And although Russia controls the pipelines needed to export gas and oil, China today controls 30% of the country's energy reserves.
Was Russia listening, when earlier this year the Chinese strongman Xi warned against any forces that wished to "undermine Sino-Kazakh friendship and interfere with cooperation between the two countries"?
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