President Bush’s decision to host Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev could prove to be a long-term mistake. To be sure, the United States has legitimate strategic needs in Central Asia, including counterterrorism cooperation and the development of the region’s substantial oil and gas reserves. But like too many visitors to the White House these days, Nazarbayev is an autocrat. He is not democratically elected, he allows little leeway for his opponents, and he is working to keep political power centralized in the hands of his own family. For Nazarbayev, who visited the Clinton White House twice but has not met Bush in Washington, D.C. since December 2001, the invitation is a victory. He will use the Bush White House to confirm that his autocracy has substantial U.S. support. This couldn’t come at a worse time, as a predominately Muslim Kazakhstan teeters on the brink of turning into another Saudi Arabia: corrupt at the top, with ample cause for discontent at the bottom.
Kazakhstan is a façade state with sham elections, a powerless parliament, and often empty institutions. Kazakhstan’s parliament contains multiple parties — all of them supporting President Nazarbayev. The strategically located country is just under a third of the size of the United States and has about a twentieth of the United States’ population — but likely with larger oil reserves. It has been ruled by one man since the collapse of Communism — Nazarbayev. Appointed head of the local Communist Party in 1989, he has faced just two contested presidential elections. Credible Nazarbayev opponents, such as the exiled former prime minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin, have been prevented from running.
But plenty of countries operate as bogus democracies. What makes Kazakhstan different, and carries worrying echoes of the Middle East, is the mixture of elite self-enrichment and growing political violence.
More and more, key political struggles are being played out between Nazarbayev’s sons-in-law, his likely successors. In one corner is Rahat Aliyev, the current first deputy foreign minister, who is married to Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter Dariga. In a country where the opposition is increasingly silenced, the couple has numerous media holdings, including television stations and a newspaper, as well as a bank. The couple’s political ambitions are not hidden. Dariga until recently operated her own political party, — until her father decided to merge it with his ruling party. Aliyev, her husband, is a former deputy head of the Committee on National Security (the local KGB successor) who recently suggested that Kazakhstan become a monarchy.
In the other corner is Timur Kulibayev, husband of the president’s second daughter Dinara. Kulibayev is well known to Western oil executives in Kazakhstan. He has advanced steadily through Kazakhstan’s growing oil industry. In June, he was named as chairman of the board of Kazakhstan’s national oil company. He also is the deputy head of a new state-owned corporation that manages key state assets.
State-owned companies tend to pay poorly. Yet Kulibayev and Dinara had post-tax income in 2005 of $120 million, according to the published accounts of their holding company, Almex. In addition, Kulibayev owns Kazakhstan’s second largest bank.
As if the accumulation of wealth and the power struggle between the president’s sons-in-law were not enough to cast a shadow over Kazakh politics, opposition politicians have recently been dying in strange ways. Zamanbek Nurkadilov, a leading opposition activist, reportedly shot himself dead in November 2005, just three weeks before the presidential election — with two shots to the chest and one to the head.
Then, in February 2006, Altynbek Sarsenbayev, an opposition-party leader, was kidnapped with his chauffeur and bodyguard. Their bodies were discovered two days later. A leading official in Kazakhstan’s parliament and members of an elite Committee on National Security unit soon afterwards confessed to responsibility for the Sarsenbayev murders. Despite recanting their confessions in court, the men were convicted and received long prison sentences.
There will be plenty of voices calling for President Bush to ignore these abuses because the United States already deals with leaders who are worse but more useful, such as Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. Yet Nazarbayev, who has remained steadfastly close to Russia, has little extra to offer the United States beyond his country’s limited counterterrorism capabilities and already-agreed oil-and-gas projects. Nazarbayev will burnish his image with a White House reception, but the United States could pay the price in the long run for reverting to the Cold War habit of embracing a temporarily useful local thug.
– Andrew Apostolou has been writing on Kazakhstan for over 14 years.