By Pepe ESCOBAR

The year 2022 started with Kazakhstan on fire, a serious attack against one of the key hubs of Eurasian integration. We are only beginning to understand what and how it happened.

On Monday morning, leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) held an extraordinary session to discuss Kazakhstan.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev framed it succinctly. Riots were “hidden behind unplanned protests.” The goal was “to seize power” – a coup attempt. Actions were “coordinated from a single center.” And “foreign militants were involved in the riots.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin went further: during the riots, “Maidan technologies were used,” a reference to the Ukrainian square where 2013 protests unseated a NATO-unfriendly government.

Defending the prompt intervention of CSTO peacekeeping forces in Kazakhstan, Putin said, “it was necessary to react without delay.” The CSTO will be on the ground “as long as necessary,” but after the mission is accomplished, “of course, the entire contingent will be withdrawn from the country.” Forces are expected to exit later this week.

But here’s the clincher: “CSTO countries have shown that they will not allow chaos and ‘color revolutions’ to be implemented inside their borders.”

Putin was in synch with Kazakh State Secretary Erlan Karin, who was the first, on the record, to apply the correct terminology to events in his country: What happened was a “hybrid terrorist attack,” by both internal and external forces, aimed at overthrowing the government.

The tangled hybrid web

Virtually no one knows about it. But last December, another coup was discreetly thwarted in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Kyrgyz intel sources attribute the engineering to a rash of NGOs linked with Britain and Turkey.

That introduces an absolutely key facet of The Big Picture: NATO-linked intel and their assets may have been preparing a simultaneous color revolution offensive across Central Asia.

On my Central Asia travels in late 2019, pre-Covid, it was plain to see how western NGOs – Hybrid War fronts – remained extremely powerful in both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

Yet, they are just one nexus in a western nebulae of Hybrid War fog deployed across Central Asia, and West Asia for that matter. Here we see the CIA and the US Deep State crisscrossing MI6 and different strands of Turkish intel.

When President Tokayev was referring in code to a “single center,” he meant a so far ‘secret’ US-Turk-Israeli military-intel operations room based in the southern business hub of Almaty, according to a highly placed Central Asia intel source.

In this “center,” there were 22 Americans, 16 Turks and 6 Israelis coordinating sabotage gangs – trained in West Asia by the Turks – and then rat-lined to Almaty.

The op started to unravel for good when Kazakh forces – with the help of Russian/CSTO intel – retook control of the vandalized Almaty airport, which was supposed to be turned into a hub for receiving foreign military supplies.

The Hybrid War west had to be stunned and livid at how the CSTO intercepted the Kazakh operation at such lightning speed. The key element is that the secretary of Russian National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, saw the Big Picture eons ago.

So, it’s no mystery why Russia’s aerospace and aero-transported forces, plus the massive necessary support infrastructure, were virtually ready to go.

Back in November, Patrushev’s laser was already focused on the degrading security situation in Afghanistan. Tajik political scientist Parviz Mullojanov was among the very few who were stressing that there were as many as 8,000 imperial machine Salafi-jihadi assets, shipped by a rat line from Syria and Iraq, loitering in the wilds of northern Afghanistan.

That’s the bulk of ISIS-Khorasan – or ISIS reconstituted near the borders of Turkmenistan. Some of them were duly transported to Kyrgyzstan. From there, it was very easy to cross the border from Bishek and show up in Almaty.

It took no time for Patrushev and his team to figure out, after the imperial retreat from Kabul, how this jihadi reserve army would be used: along the 7,500 km-long border between Russia and the Central Asian ‘stans’.

That explains, among other things, a record number of preparation drills conducted in late 2021 at the 210th Russian military base in Tajikistan.

James Bond speaks Turkish

The breakdown of the messy Kazakh op necessarily starts with the usual suspects: the US Deep State, which all but “sang” its strategy in a 2019 RAND corporation report, Extending Russia. Chapter 4, on “geopolitical measures”, details everything from “providing lethal aid to Ukraine”, “promoting regime change in Belarus”, and “increasing support for Syrian rebels” – all major fails – to “reducing Russian influence in Central Asia.”

That was the master concept. Implementation fell to the MI6-Turk connection.

The CIA and MI6 had been investing in dodgy outfits in Central Asia since at least 2005, when they encouraged the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), then close to the Taliban, to wreak havoc in southern Kyrgyzstan. Nothing happened.

It was a completely different story by May 2021, when the MI6’s Jonathan Powell met the leadership of Jabhat al-Nusra – which harbors a lot of Central Asian jihadis – somewhere in the Turkish-Syrian border near Idlib.

The deal was that these ‘moderate rebels’ – in US terminology – would cease to be branded ‘terrorists’ as long as they followed the anti-Russia NATO agenda.

That was one of the key prep moves ahead of the jihadist ratline to Afghanistan – complete with Central Asia branching out.

The genesis of the offensive should be found in June 2020, when former ambassador to Turkey from 2014 to 2018, Richard Moore, was appointed head of MI6.

Moore may not have an inch of Kim Philby’s competence, but he does fit the profile: rabid Russophobe, and a cheerleader of the Great Turania fantasy, which promotes a pan-Turk confederation of Turkic-speaking peoples from West Asia and the Caucasus to Central Asia and even Russian republics in the Volga.

MI6 is deeply entrenched in all the ‘stans’ except autarchic Turkmenistan – cleverly riding the pan-Turkist offensive as the ideal vehicle to counter Russia and China.

Erdogan himself has been invested on a hardcore Great Turania offensive, especially after the creation of the Turkic Council in 2009.

Crucially, next March, the summit of the Confederation Council of Turkic-speaking States – the new Turkic Council denomination – will take place in Kazakhstan. The city of Turkestan, in southern Kazakhstan, is expected to be named as the spiritual capital of the Turkic world.

And here, the ‘Turkic world’ enters into a frontal clash with the integrating Russian concept of Greater Eurasia Partnership, and even with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that, crucially, does not count Turkey as a member.

Erdogan’s short term ambition seems at first to be only commercial: after Azerbaijan won the Karabakh war, he expects to use Baku to get access to Central Asia via the Caspian Sea, complete with Turkey’s industrial-military complex sales of military technology to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Turkish companies are already investing heavily in real estate and infrastructure. And in parallel, Ankara’s soft power is on overdrive, finally collecting the fruits of exercising a lot of pressure, for instance, to speed up the transition in Kazakhstan from Cyrillic script to the Latin alphabet, starting in 2023.

Yet both Russia and China are very much aware that Turkey essentially represents NATO entering Central Asia. The organization of Turkic states are cryptically called the Kazakh operation ‘fuel protests’.

It’s all very murky. Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanism – which comes with massive cheerleading by his Muslim Brotherhood base – essentially has nothing to do with the pan-Turanic drive, which is a racialist movement predicating domination by relatively ‘pure’ Turks.

The problem is that they are converging while becoming more extreme, with Turkey’s right-wing Grey Wolves deeply implicated. That explains why Ankara intel is a sponsor and, in many cases, a weaponizer of both the ISIS-Khorasan franchise and those Turan racists, from Bosnia to Xinjiang via Central Asia.

The Empire handsomely profits from this toxic association, in Armenia, for instance. And the same would happen in Kazakhstan if the operation is successful.

Bring on the Trojan Horses

Every color revolution needs a ‘Maximum’ Trojan Horse. In our case, that seems to be the role of former head of KNB (National Security Committee) Karim Massimov, now held in prison and charged with treason.

Hugely ambitious, Massimov is half-Uyghur, and that, in theory, obstructed what he saw as his pre-ordained rise to power. His connections with Turkish intel are not yet fully detailed, unlike his cozy relationship with Joe Biden and son.

A former Minister of Internal Affairs and State Security, Lt Gen Felix Kulov, has weaved a fascinating tangled web explaining the possible internal dynamics of the ‘coup’ built into the color revolution.

According to Kulov, Massimov and Samir Abish, the nephew of recently ousted Kazakh Security Council Chairman Nursultan Nazarbayev, were up to their necks in supervising ‘secret’ units of ‘bearded men’ during the riots. The KNB was directly subordinated to Nazarbayev, who until last week was the chairman of the Security Council.

When Tokayev understood the mechanics of the coup, he demoted both Massimov and Samat Abish. Then Nazarbayev ‘voluntarily’ resigned from his life-long chairmanship of the Security Council. Abish then got this post, promising to stop the ‘bearded men,’ and then to resign.

So that would point directly to a Nazarbayev-Tokayev clash. It makes sense as, during his 29-year rule, Nazarbayev played a multi-vector game that was too westernized and which did not necessarily benefit Kazakhstan. He adopted British laws, played the pan-Turkic card with Erdogan, and allowed a tsunami of NGOs to promote an Atlanticist agenda.

Tokayev is a very smart operator. Trained by the foreign service of the former USSR, fluent in Russian and Chinese, he is totally aligned with Russia-China – which means fully in sync with the masterplan of the BRI, the Eurasia Economic Union, and the SCO.

Tokayev, much like Putin and Xi, understands how this BRI/EAEU/SCO triad represents the ultimate imperial nightmare, and how destabilizing Kazakhstan – a key actor in the triad – would be a mortal coup against Eurasian integration.

Kazakhstan, after all, represents 60 percent of Central Asia’s GDP, massive oil/gas and mineral resources, cutting-edge high tech industries: a secular, unitary, constitutional republic bearing a rich cultural heritage.

It didn’t take long for Tokayev to understand the merits of immediately calling the CSTO to the rescue: Kazakhstan signed the treaty way back in 1994. After all, Tokayev was fighting a foreign-led coup against his government.

Putin, among others, has stressed how an official Kazakh investigation is the only one entitled to get to the heart of the matter.

It’s still unclear exactly who – and to what extent – sponsored the rioting mobs. Motives abound: to sabotage a pro-Russia/China government, to provoke Russia, to sabotage BRI, to plunder mineral resources, to turbo-charge a House of Saud-style ‘Islamization’.

Rushed to only a few days before the start of the Russia-US ‘security guarantees’ in Geneva, this color revolution represented a sort of counter-ultimatum – in desperation – by the NATO establishment.

Central Asia, West Asia, and the overwhelming majority of the Global South have witnessed the lightning fast Eurasian response by the CSTO troops – who, having now done their job, are set to leave Kazakhstan in a couple of days – and how this color revolution has failed, miserably.

It might as well be the last. Beware the rage of a humiliated Empire.

thecradle.co

The short-lived attempt at a colour revolution in Kazakhstan has brought into focus the geo-political game being waged by the West in Central Asia. This clumsy attempt to once again destablise the region was quickly squashed thanks to the response of Kazakhstan’s fellow members of the CTSO, led by Russia. As all colour revolutions do, it tapped into genuine anger among the populace about rising fuel costs and other legitimate grievances. However any pretence that this was an organic, leaderless uprising was soon exposed, the beheadings were the giveaway.

The Central Asian region encompassing all the “Stans” has been largely at the periphery of world affairs until comparatively recently. Remote in the extreme, even during its time as a part on the USSR, it received little attention due to its strategic irrelevance. The emergence of China and Russia has changed that. Kazakhstan, sandwiched between them, along with its Central Asian neighbours, is now a battleground for the “great power politics” being played out. Kazakhstan is an essential component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and as such is a target of the Western powers, who are intent on doing all possible to stop it.

A cursory look at a map will show that China shares borders with 14 countries, seven of which are Islamic nations. It enjoys good relations with all of them. China itself has a large Muslim population, not concentrated in Xinjiang. They are to be found everywhere in China, along with the mosques at which they worship. Not alone as a minority group, China has five different ethnic groups inside its borders. All are free and encouraged to practice and celebrate their individual cultures and languages. In Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, there are at least eight separate Muslim sects with their own mosques. Muslims are not forced to send their children to Chinese schools, and during the almost 40 years of China’s one child policy, the Muslims were the only group who were permitted to have more than one child. The suggestion that China persecutes Muslims is just a Western concoction.

Xinjiang is in the extreme N.W. of China, it borders six of the other central Asian Islamic countries. Once remote and undeveloped, it has in recent years received huge investment from the central government to help it modernise and develop a real economy for the first time. Parents there overwhelmingly want their children to go to Chinese schools, learn the language and have the prospect of a better life than the Islamic schools can offer. The enemy of the majority of the people there, is the same as it is in their neighbouring moderate Islamic countries, radical Islam.

Many Uyghurs have already been radicalised, they comprise a large part of the terrorist factions that have been present in Syria, Iraq, Libya and many more once stable countries that have been reduced to ashes. They are heavily armed and paid a $50 daily stipend, but by whom you may ask? That is not a question that need detain us for long. The Turkic Islamic army is one such faction that sprouted from Central Asia. The U.S. Government took them off the “terrorist” watchlist a year ago. They are just moderate terrorists apparently.

So, does China persecute Muslims? No. But it does have a genuine Western-backed radicalised Islamic faction looking to infect the youth of Xinjiang. It is a problem it shares with all the moderate, peaceful Central Asian countries. If China does indeed have re-education camps as the West claims, most Uyghur parents would prefer their children were there rather than waving an AK47 from the back of a Toyota pickup in a country they don’t belong.

As America continues to bleat on about human rights in China, it supports and promotes the head-choppers to whom it has granted a franchise. Many of the participants of the Kazakhstan violence were killed and many more were captured. In the coming days and weeks we can expect more revelations as to who the “instigators behind it were. It should make for interesting reading.

By Anatol LIEVEN

Despite Russian hints, there is no evidence that the United States was involved in the latest violent protests in Kazakhstan. However, there now exists a strong temptation for America to get involved — and it is a temptation that must be firmly resisted by the Biden administration.

Aspects of the latest unrest remain unclear. It has been suggested that it was partly caused by struggles within the Kazakh elites between supporters and opponents of former President Nur-Sultan Nazarbayev, who until this week retained considerable power over the government.

The most important underlying reason for the unrest however is entirely clear. It lies in the gross mismatch between Kazakhstan’s huge revenues from energy exports (more than $30 billion in 2021), the vast wealth of its elites and the poverty of the mass of its population, with an average household income last year of only $3,200. As a Kazakh trades unionist told The New York Times:

“Kazakhstan is a rich country, but these resources do not work in the interests of the people, they work in the interests of the elites. There is a huge stratification of society.”

Regional factors also played a part: the hugely expensive move of the capital from the biggest city, Alma Aty, to a new capital, Astana, then renamed — to add insult to injury as far as Alma Aty is concerned — Nur-Sultan after Nazarbayev. The failure to distribute the benefits of energy revenues to the western region of Menghystau where most of the oil and gas is produced is also a factor. The government decision (now suspended) to lift the cap on domestic fuel prices was only the last straw for many ordinary Kazakhs.

The temptation for the United States to become involved in backing unrest in Kazakhstan stems from two sources (apart from the innate tendency of the democratism industry in the West to idealize any protest against an authoritarian regime as “democratic” and to lend it unthinking support). First of course is the desire to make trouble for Russia. Already, while U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has criticized Russia’s dispatch of troops to Kazakhstan, sections of the Western media and commentariat are celebrating the diversion of Russian military force and attention from Ukraine.

July 27, 2015: President Nursultan Nazarbayev, center front, visiting the Kazakh room at the Palais des Nations, Geneva. (UN Geneva, Violaine Martin)

Kazakhstan borders on Chinese Sinkiang, and a large part of Sinkiang’s population is ethnic Kazakh. Over the past year, the Kazakh government has had to make intensive efforts to prevent anger within Kazakhstan at China’s repression in Sinkiang from boiling over into mass protests.

If the Kazakh government collapses or is gravely weakened, it would be very surprising if hard line elements in Washington did not see this as an opportunity to use Kazakhstan as a base to undermine Chinese rule in Sinkiang — even if (as in Syria) this led them into de facto alliance with Islamist extremist forces.

Crime & Blunder

For America to use Kazakhstan in this way would be both a crime and a blunder, that would recall the worst aspects of U.S. policy in Africa, Asi, and Central America during the Cold War. It would in fact cast America in the role in which American commentators like to cast Russia — that of a cynical troublemaker, absolutely indifferent to the consequences of its actions for unfortunate populations on the ground.

Kazakhstan’s permanent and inescapable geopolitical position was well summed up for me by a Kazakh official back in 1995, when America was seeking expanded influence in Central Asia. He said that of course the Kazakh government wanted U.S. investment and good relations with the United States but:

“You have to understand that every sensible Kazakh has a map in his head. What that map shows is that Russia is there, and China is there, and Kazakhstan is in the middle. And America does not appear anywhere on that map.”

An even more morally and politically serious reason why Washington should not seek to weaponize unrest in Kazakhstan against Russia and China relates to Kazakh ethnic nationalism. The greatest achievement of the Kazakh regime since independence has been to consolidate Kazakh independence and national identity without inspiring ethnic chauvinism against the country’s Russian minority. Moscow in turn has never sought to encourage that minority to revolt.

The potential for ethnic conflict however remains enormous. In August of 2021, criticism from Russia led the Kazakh government to take action against “language patrols” of Kazakh nationalists forcing shops to use the Kazakh language and humiliating Russians in public for not speaking Kazakh.

Protesters setting up a yurt in Aktobe, Kazakhstan, Jan. 4. (Esetok, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Under both Russian imperial and Soviet rule Kazakhstan was exposed to repeated waves of Russian and Ukrainian settlement and state repression, until by the 1960s ethnic Kazakhs were a minority. During the famine of the early 1930s caused by Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture, Kazakhs suffered proportionately more deaths than any other Soviet nationality. Since the 1980s, the decline in the Russian birth rate and Russian and other European migration from Kazakhstan has reduced the European minorities to just over 20 percent; but Russians still form the majority in the far north of the country.

The absence to date of ethnic conflict in Kazakhstan reflects two other, crucially important patterns in post-Soviet history. The first is that Vladimir Putin is a Russian state nationalist in the old Russian imperial and Soviet tradition, dedicated to Russian power (naturally, as embodied in the person of Vladimir Putin) but he is not a Russian ethnic nationalist. This is evident both from his own writings and the thoroughly multi-ethnic character of his regime. The second is that rather remarkably, among all the instances of mass ethnic violence that followed the fall of the U.S.S.R., none were directed against ethnic Russians outside Russia.

The United States has backed anti-Russian ethnic nationalism in the Baltic States, Ukraine and elsewhere, but this has never taken the form of ethnic pogroms. Given the violent events of the past week in Kazakhstan, there can be no confidence at all that further protests in Kazakhstan may not take the form of ethnic chauvinism and attacks on ethnic Russians.

Small-scale violence and the threat of it against Russians did occur in Kazakhstan and elsewhere. Thus in 1992, I interviewed a Russian engineer who had fled that year from a town in southern Kazakhstan (where Russians were already a small minority). He said that every evening when he walked home from work, Kazakh youths would fall in step with him and tell him that if he and his family did not leave, they would rape his daughters.

“I did not know if they really would have. As far as I know, I was not unpopular,” he said. “But the risk was there. And above all, I knew that if that happened, the Kazakh police would have done nothing. So we left.”

The deployment of Russian troops to Kazakhstan to support the government is likely to increase anti-Russian feelings; and if, God forbid, ethnic violence does erupt in Kazakhstan, it could help to produce a future Russian government far more chauvinist than that of Putin. This would be a disaster for Russia, Russia’s neighbor, and above all Russia’s own ethnic minorities. And if Washington were seen to be supporting violence against ordinary Russians, then America will be faced in future with a danger far more formidable than that of Putin: an infuriated Russian nation.

consortiumnews.com

Various commentators have suggested that I write something about recent events in Kazakhstan. I’ve been loath to do so since my knowledge of the country is very limited, but there are some interesting things to say about what others have been writing on the topic, particularly concerning how it all relates to Russia. Notably, a certain part of the online commentariat has been keen to express indignation that Russia has “invaded” Kazakhstan to suppress a “democratic revolution”.

The rapid spread of violence in Kazakhstan generated hopes in some circles that the mob would topple the “regime” and install a new government that would somehow or other distance the country from Russia. Alternatively, the hope was that “democracy” would arrive in Kazakhstan. With this, another brick in the wall of authoritarianism would collapse, bringing closer the day when it would collapse in Russia too.

All this was somewhat unspoken, but once the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes Russia, announced that it would send troops to help restore order in Kazakhstan, and once Kazakh forces took the offensive and began clearing away anti-government protestors, all these hopes were dashed. The Kazakh government isn’t out of the woods yet. Protests continue in several cities, and things could still go horribly wrong. But at the moment it’s looking like the regime will survive. The internet’s keyboard warriors and online regime changers are seriously annoyed and looking for someone to blame. The guilty party is obvious – Russia.

However, despite the headlines in today’s newspapers about Russia sending troops to “quell” the uprising, the Kazakh state’s survial has little to do with the Russians or the CSTO. It seems as if the CSTO contingent in Kazakhstan will amount to no more than about 2,500 troops, which for a country that size is a tiny quantity. The role of the CSTO is largely symbolic – it sends a message to protestors and Kazakh security forces alike that the government isn’t backing down and has powerful external support. That should deter some of the former while putting a bit of steel in the spines of the latter. Perceptions of strength matter in situations like this, and thus the CSTO’s support perhaps makes a slight difference. But the hard work of restoring order belongs largely to the Kazakhs themselves. Whatever the press tells you, “Russia” isn’t “putting down” the uprising.

Nor can it be said that Russia has “invaded” Kazakhstan, as so many have liked to claim this past week on Twitter. Take for instance all these Tweets from the likes of one-time US Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul and former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Various themes repeat themselves in all these: invasion, occupation, the “crushing” of democracy, and comparisons of Russia with Nazi Germany. It is, to be frank, more than a little over the top. You can’t invade, let alone occupy, a country the size of Kazakhstan with only 2,500 troops. Furthermore, the troops are there at the invitation of the internationally recognized government – recognized by us in the West as well as by everybody else. That’s hardly an invasion.

Maybe it’s because I’m a total reactionary, but I’m not too fond of the mob, and I’ve never understood why street protest (accompanied by looting and burning) is associated with democracy. The thing is that all those complaining about the efforts to restore order in Kazakhstan aren’t too fond of the mob either, at least when it starts attacking things that they like. A year ago, McFaul and others were complaining loudly about the crowd that assaulted the Capitol building in Washington DC. And none of those whose Tweets I copied above were to be seen complaining when the Ukrainian military responded to protests in Donbass by firing rockets from aircraft and shells from multiple launch rocket systems.

Somehow, though, people are rather inclined to like the mob when it attacks somebody or something they don’t like. If it’s anti-American, that’s bad. But if rioting and looting damages Russian interests – they’re all for it.

But here’s what really gets me. Do the McFauls and Ilveses truly believe that it would be better for Kazakhstan if the Russians and CSTO didn’t help restore order and the state collapsed? There’s a very real danger of at best anarchy and at worst civil war. How would that help anybody? We’ve seen this scenario before. In Ukraine, revolution led to counter-revolution and bloody violence. In Syria, likewise. And so on. It tends not to turn out well.

But it seems like people don’t care. The attitude appears to be “The worse the better”, as long as the chaos is not at home but on Russia’s borders. Let Kazakhstan descend into anarchy – that’s to be preferred to an order backed by the Russians. Suffice it to say, I don’t agree.

irrussianality.wordpress.com

Washington denies that the West played an active role in the massive protests that have engulfed the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. Yet the overall orchestration of the strife, in addition to the curious timing, points to some level of foreign intrigue.

“In politics, nothing happens by accident,” former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt once remarked on the question of coincidences in political life. “If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

And nowhere are coincidences running more amok than in Kazakhstan, the Central Asia steppe country that became engulfed in civil strife virtually overnight after the government imposed a price hike on liquefied gas, which many Kazakh motorists use to fuel their vehicles. With shocking alacrity, bands of protesters managed to breach government buildings in major cities, including the Almaty mayor’s office, a towering post-modern structure that was gutted by fire. Such rapid success on the part of a supposedly leaderless street mob against heavily armed military and police units took experts by surprise.

Dr. Erika Madat, who specializes in security structures and the former Soviet space, told the UN Dispatch that “what we saw in Kazakhstan was both surprising at the scale and intensity that the events and mobilization unfolded…”

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev quickly conceded to the demands of the protesters, returning gas to its former price, while sidelining Nursultan Nazarbayev, 81, who, despite vacating the presidency in 2019 after 29 years in power, continued to exert heavy influence as head of the Security Council. Despite these concessions, the mob smelled weakness and demanded more.

Almaty was founded in the imperial times as fort Verny, which means “loyal” in Russian. Grew into a million-strong megalopolis during the Soviet times and then doubled in size in the three decades of independence. pic.twitter.com/jJL6hfG56H

— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) January 7, 2022

The relative sophistication shown by some of the protesters, however, possessed as they were of firearms (strange considering that the Kazakh authorities placed tough restrictions on gun ownership following terrorist attacks in the city of Aktobe in 2016), urban camouflage and brazen street tactics, made Tokayev conclude that he was not merely dealing with outraged motorists, but rather “foreign-trained terrorists” seeking to overthrow his government.

The loss of internet service throughout the country makes confirming such allegations difficult to prove, yet intriguing nonetheless, especially coming as they did from the highest levels. Thus, when Tokayev pleaded for assistance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), comprised of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, did not hesitate to send in the peacekeepers.

Successful urban fighting tactics aside, there are other things to consider, not least of all the uncanny timing of this latest anti-government outbreak smack on Russia’s border, which occurred just days before U.S., NATO and Russian officials are scheduled to hold security talks. Following meetings between U.S. and Russian officials on January 10th in Geneva, a delegation from Russian and NATO will convene on January 12th.

US ThinkTank land shows their hand:

“The volatile situation in Kazakhstan could limit Moscow’s options for an escalation or intervention in Ukraine (…) as the Kremlin could conclude that simultaneously increased tensions on two of its large land borders would be imprudent.”

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) January 6, 2022

The planned meetings were organized in response to Moscow’s proposal for a security agreement that aim to halt NATO expansion into the former Soviet countries, including Ukraine, which has been actively seeking membership in the 30-nation bloc, a clear red line for Moscow. It would be difficult to imagine a more effective method for disrupting these talks than by conjuring up yet another mess on Russia’s border.

“I find it interesting that the unrest seemed somewhat coordinated across the country occurring during the Orthodox Christmas period and just before the U.S.-Russia security dialogue,” Executive Vice President of Eurasia Group Earl Rasmussen told Sputnik. “Coincidence? One needs to wonder,” he added.

Another oddity worth mentioning is that the U.S. Embassy in Nur-Sultan just happened to issue a ‘demonstration alert’ for several Kazakh cities on Saturday, December 16, 2021, more than two weeks before the real fireworks began in earnest. Yes, probably just more coincidence theory, but such diplomatic ‘warnings’ have come under criticism before, notably by Moscow; under the pretense of providing travel warnings to U.S. citizens, these social media messages arguably serve to promote anti-government events more than anything.

In August 2019, Russia summoned a high-ranking U.S. diplomat after accusing the State Department of meddling in the country’s internal affairs by publishing a map on the internet showing the route of an unsanctioned protest in the Russian capital.

Meanwhile, any discussion on the possibility of a foreign-hatched Color Revolution would not be complete without mentioning the premier financier, philanthropist and regime-change artist himself, George Soros; the Soros Foundation has a hand so deep in Kazakhstan’s pockets it almost reaches Almaty’s ankles. Perusing the list of activities and institutions by this one foundation (incidentally, the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law estimates there are some 38,000 NGOs operating in Kazakhstan, with much of their funding coming from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and others), leaves one struggling to understand how any country could tolerate this level of influence from a ‘foreign agent,’ who has already been politely shown the door in a number of countries, including Uzbekistan, Belarus and Russia.

The Soros Foundation, which opened its doors in Kazakhstan back in 1995, has a heavy footprint in all areas of Kazakh life – from art, to education, to the world of media and politics; all bases are covered. Such a profound influence has not gone unnoticed by political observers.

The Kazakhstani media have repeatedly covered the activities of the Soros Foundation. In 2010, the Pavlodar newspaper “Our Life” wrote:

“In 2010, Soros-Kazakhstan Foundation announced its new role as an intermediary between the state, business and civil society in shaping public policy. And this is despite the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan ‘On the activities of international and foreign non-profit organizations in the Republic of Kazakhstan’, which says: ‘In the Republic of Kazakhstan, the activities of international and foreign non-profit organizations, the goals or actions of which are aimed at interfering in the internal affairs of the state, are prohibited…’”

On this and similar questions, Nikita Danyuk, Deputy Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasts of the RUDN University, penned a prophetic article back in 2016 entitled, ‘Kazakhstan under the gun of destructive political technologies.’

Danyuk writes: “The region of Central Asia, in particular Kazakhstan is an important geostrategic node, control over which makes it possible to influence the political and economic integration processes of the entire Eurasian space. Following Ukraine and Armenia, Kazakhstan over the past month has become another testing ground for the implementation of … destructive political technologies.”

Examining protests in Kazakhstan in the summer of 2016, which were focused on land reform, Danyuk reported that the “direct organizer of the protests was the Adil Soz International Foundation for the Defense of Freedom of Expression, whose donors include the U.S. and British embassies, George Soros’ Open Society Institute, Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).”

While there is no doubt that Kazakhstan is plagued by a host of social and political problems – not least of all economic underdevelopment, inequality, corruption and kleptocracy – that does not mean there are no foreign players on the ground in the country eager to take advantage of these issues for strategic gain. All things considered, that will be Nur-Sultan’s greatest challenge moving forward – removing those self-interested foreign elements that are agitating on behalf of regional chaos at the earliest opportunity.

The timing of violent protests rocking Russia’s southern neighbor Kazakhstan inevitably raises questions. Russian officials are due to meet American and NATO counterparts within days to discuss far-reaching security proposals in unprecedented geopolitical negotiations.

In a surprise development, however, Russian troops are this week being deployed along with other forces from the six Central Asian states belonging to the Collective Security Treaty Organization to help restore order in Kazakhstan at the request of its president. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has accused “foreign-trained terrorist gangs” of being responsible for the dramatic unrest in the former Soviet Republic.

It seems that events this week in Kazakhstan are aimed at distracting Moscow or, worse, undermining Russia’s international standing in scheduled talks with the United States and its NATO allies concerning the bigger picture of security and peace in Europe.

Key security proposals were put forward by Moscow three weeks ago to reduce mounting tensions between Russia and the United States and its NATO allies over Ukraine. Moscow has called for a rollback in U.S. and NATO forces near its borders. This came after weeks-long Western media reports claiming that Russia was plotting to militarily invade Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly rejected those claims as baseless and hysterical. Meanwhile, there are real concerns that the NATO-backed regime in Kiev may be planning a provocation against Russia by launching an offensive on Ukraine’s breakaway southeastern region and its ethnic Russian population. The Kiev regime has been waging a civil war against the region since the NATO-backed coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014.

The U.S.-Russia security discussions are scheduled to take place on January 10 in Geneva. They will be followed by further meetings between Russian and NATO officials. A phone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden at the end of last month gave the forthcoming talks a preeminence, and rightly so too. Moscow has warned that if its “red line” security demands are not responded to then it will use other military-technical methods to safeguard national security. Moscow has put a narrow timeframe on the discussions to yield satisfactory results.

Washington and its NATO allies were evidently taken aback by Moscow’s determination to draw an inviolable line on years of military expansion towards Russia’s borders, the culmination of which has precipitated the latest tensions caused by Ukraine. The gravity of Moscow’s position appears to have been registered by the Western allies who promptly scheduled the security discussions for next week.

Then along comes the upheaval sweeping Kazakhstan this week. The protests erupted on January 2 ostensibly over a hike in transport fuel prices.

Significantly, the speed with which the protests spread across this giant Central Asian country – four times the size of France – and the rapid escalation of deadly violence would indicate an extraordinary orchestration of events. Dozens of police officers have been reportedly killed by armed demonstrators. Security forces have also shot dead allegedly armed protesters. Government buildings and the international airport in the most populous city Almaty have been attacked. All this tumult in the space of two days resulted in a state of emergency being declared on January 5 and the request for security assistance from the CSTO bloc. The bloc comprises Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.

The events have an unerring similarity to U.S.-sponsored regime-change operations that have taken place in other nations, most notably Ukraine, Syria and Belarus, among other countries. Tellingly, the White House issued an immediate denial of involvement before that possibility was even publicly suggested. Now there’s a guilty conscience at work! The American embassy in Kazakhstan had also warned of public protests over the anticipated fuel price increases.

It has been noted by astute observers that the CIA-linked Rand Corporation earlier endorsed this kind of disruption in Kazakhstan as a means for distracting Moscow with regional security apprehensions.

In the next few days, we will see if the security situation in Kazakhstan can be stabilized with support from the CSTO members and political concessions granted by President Tokayev. The fuel hikes have been revoked and the government has been sacked. Thousands of demonstrators have been arrested. Still, there are reports of ongoing armed clashes.

The timing and the who-gains question inescapably point the finger of suspicion at foreign incitement. Washington and its NATO allies are calling for the Kazakh authorities to allow “the right to peaceful protest”. Western media will no doubt crank up reports that portray restoring public order as repression by a “Russian-backed regime”. CTSO troops’ presence can be twisted into a distorted image of Kremlin-instigated “foreign occupation”. No doubt, too, the NATO-backed Kiev regime will cry foul over another “Russian invasion”.

The all-too-easy geopolitical convenience suggests there is no mere coincidence with the watershed negotiations about to get underway between Russia and the United States over Ukraine and the general encroachment of NATO on Russia’s borders.

Those negotiations were set to begin with Moscow having a moral authority to make legitimate security demands on Washington and the U.S.-led NATO alliance. It is right that the historical trend of ramping up military threats against Russia has to end. The turmoil that has suddenly blown up in Kazakhstan seems like an opportune way to undermine Russia’s resolve to challenge the U.S. and NATO over their by-now habitual aggressive policy.

That is the bigger picture that should not be lost amid the chaos unfolding in Kazakhstan.

It seems that a very typical Color Revolution scenario is starting to play out in Kazakhstan just as it did in many former Soviet Republics. The big issue for those who are actually concerned with Human Rights is whether this will degenerate into a Ukrainian Maidan type of scenario leading to oppression, war and brutal poverty for the masses. So where is this all going and why is it happening now at this moment in history?

Picture: Augustus Bailey

Why does the chaos in Kazakhstan look like a Color Revolution?

Usually, it is something like elections or a new unpopular policy that gets people out onto the streets. The failed White Ribbon movement of 2010-2011 in Russia was in response to “electoral falsification” that seems to have been falsified itself. The Turkish Gezi Park protests of 2013 vastly overblew issues related to demonstrations for the good said park.

Screenshot: Video of a local Kazakh man saying the people want to live like in “Sweden or Norway” has gone viral on Russian social media. Vague plans with big promises and assertions of Western superiority are textbook Color Revolution strategies.

In the case of Kazakhstan it is the price of natural gas which has (ironically) sparked massive highly organized protests that seem to come out of nowhere. The demands of the disgruntled during a Color Revolution are always either abstract or impossible. Abstract demands are things like “we want Democracy even if we cannot define it” and impossible ones like “the entire government must step down because of feelings” are perfect examples. In Kazakhstan right now the protestors are demanding the latter, that the government should just go quietly off into the night of their own volition.

Since no government in history has unilaterally stepped down because of protestors’ fancy signs and pointing while sputtering we know that this demand cannot be met and thus is used as a justification for revolution and further action.

The Mainstream Media is also critical for any Color Revolution because they are the ones who can convince the public that the actual overthrow of the government has been completed. If every publication in the MSM tomorrow unilaterally said that the dollar is worthless, it would be. Thus, if all media shrieks that a revolution has taken place, then it essentially has. CNN is already on the case weaving their narrative but at least they were fair enough to point out that the government has already buckled to the gas price issue, giving the protestors in theory what they initially wanted, but that is not going to stop their organizers who have a whole laundry list of impossible to meet demands.

Will the scenario in Kazakhstan turn into Ukraine 2.0?

In many ways Ukraine and Kazakhstan are similar but they are far from being the same. Although the territory of Kazakhstan has been a part of Russia for hundreds of years and the majority of the population still prefers to speak Russian, the Ukraine is the inalienable cradle of Russian Civilization while Kazakhstan is a lovely later addition. You simply cannot trace the Tsars all the way back to ancient Almaty. Although the Russian-speaking population of the Eastern Steppe is big they are mostly non-ethnic Russians which can divide feelings in contrast to Russian-speakers in Ukraine, who mostly consider themselves Russian.

Screenshot: Color Revolutions take their toll on monuments – history and reality are the enemy.

As someone who lived in Kazakhstan for two years you could really feel the paradox of Kazakhstan being newly nationalistic yet favorable to the Russian language. The interpretation of historical events like the Russian Revolution and WWII were being quickly rewritten. At the time, even way back then, you could also see (that just like in Ukraine) Kazakhstan was trying hard to squeeze out Russian culture while making sure every child learned top-level English with Hollywood movies galore on TV. Both Kiev and Astana/Nur-Sultan have for years (even before the Maidan) tried to put governmental pressure onto the Russian language. This is an actual example of the “Institutional Racism” that our rainbow-haired friends always talk about, but because it happens to the Evil Russians it never counts.

Kazakhstan was able to drive out about half of its Russian population through various forms of intimidation and racist hiring practices in the government and big business. Non-Kazakhs especially Russians have complained to me that they simply had no choice but to leave or eternally be at the bottom economic rung of society.

This exodus means that only about one in four citizens of Kazakhstan are now Russians and they are mostly in the north. There were many rumors that in the early 90s the upper half of the nation could have broken away as it is far more industrial, Soviet-built, ethnically diverse, Russian-speaking and secular than the south. With far fewer Russians remaining and moving the capital from the extreme far southeast in Almaty, this potentially explosive issue seems to have been resolved, but if Kazakh nationalists start to put together their own Azov Battalions then a break-away people’s republic is sure to form in the north somewhere.

Screenshot: Protestors attack an ambulance. What an odd target.

In short, Kazakhstan’s government has acted much like the one in Ukraine pre-Maidan and there are some similar demographic, linguistic and cultural issues between the two, however they are less extreme as the Ukrainian situation, which almost looks like a nation designed to fail from the start that should break into two more logical pieces. Kazakhstan is potentially a watered down version of the Ukrainian Crisis.

The Russo-American factor is always at play

Coincidences are not proof of conspiracy, but it is certainly interesting that a new Color Revolution on Russia’s former territory that could lead to a Maidan scenario has flared up just days before the potentially historic big negotiation session between Putin and Biden.

Screenshot: Government buildings ablaze – very similar to the Maidan Revolution.

Although it is unclear of what exact positions have been unofficially agreed upon going into the meeting, starting a Color Revolution in Kazakhstan will not sit well with Moscow. However, the necessity to resolve the Ukrainian Crisis and make a final deal about how NATO’s troops and Washington’s nukes will be distributed in Europe is of such great importance to the Russians that anarchy in Kazakhstan can be ignored at least for now and the negotiations will go forward mostly unaffected.

We cannot forget that the U.S. and Russia were on the brink of nuclear war at least twice due to the Maidan Revolution: once over the absorption of the Crimea, and once due to the potential “big one” attack that was supposed to have been launched by an emboldened Kiev when Biden took office. You can only roll the dice so many times before eventually snake eyes come up, and anything happening in the heart of Central Asia cannot be allowed to force the great powers to keep rollin’ them bones.

So will Kazakhstan turn into post-Maidan Ukraine?

This is simply a matter of waiting a year to see if the Russians have really finally mastered the process of deflating Color Revolutions. They lost in Ukraine, won in Belarus and Kazakhstan will be the deciding “best of three” for their hopes of restoring their former glory and sovereign foreign policy.

Time and again when destabilizing events happen on the world stage, hegemon USA’s dirty hands are involved.

On January 2, violence erupted in Kazakh cities — including the country’s largest, Almaty, and its capital, Nur-Sultan.

Allegedly over high fuel prices,  Kazakh President, Kassym-Jomart Tokaev, promised to lower gas prices.

On Wednesday, he accepted Prime Minister Askar Mamin’s resignation while saying the following:

“Calls to attack civilian and military offices are completely illegal.”

It’s “a crime! Power will not fall! We do not need conflict, but mutual trust and dialogue.”

According to Kazakh media, heads of the country’s Mangystau gas processing plant and electronic trading platform were detained over the issue of high prices.

On Wednesday, a state of emergency was declared — first in areas where protests began, then extended nationwide, 200 or more detained, according to Kazakhstan’s interior ministry.

A statement by Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the following:

“We are closely following the events in the fraternal neighboring state.”

“We are calling for a peaceful solution to all problems in the framework of the Constitution and the law, and dialogue, and not through street riots and the violation of laws.”

“(S)teps taken by the Kazakh President Tokayev seek to stabilize the situation, promptly solving existing problems.”

“We hope that the situation in the country, which has relations of strategic partnership and alliance, fraternal, human contacts with Russia, will stabilize as soon as possible,” adding:

“The situation near the buildings of our diplomatic and consular missions remains calm.”

“According to the latest data, no casualties on the Russian side were recorded.”

Both countries share a 4,750 mile-long border.

Kazakhstan is central Asia’s largest country territorially, the world 9th largest with a population of about 19 million.

A statement by head of the country’s law enforcement agencies said extremist elements are behind days of violence.

According to political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky, “(h)ardly anyone will dispute the fact that (violence in Kazakhstan came at a time of) escalation between Russia and the West.”

What’s happening is “advantageous (to the Biden regime for) at least three reasons.”

It “distract(s) attention” from endless Kiev aggression on Donbass.

It could possibly negatively affect Sino/Russian relations (sic).

It could “provoke Moscow to participate in suppressing protests with quite predictable consequences…”

It’s “impossible to believe that the Kazakh protests erupted spontaneously,” Pogrebinsky added.

On Thursday, a statement by the current head of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) countries — Armenian PM Pashinyan — said the following:

“In view of the address of President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and considering the threat to national security and sovereignty of the Republic of Kazakhstan, caused in particular by interference from the outside, the CSTO…in accordance with Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty made the decision to send CSTO Collective Peacekeeping Forces to the Republic of Kazakhstan for a limited period with the aim of stabilization and normalization of the situation in this country.”

CSTO member states include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.

At this time, Russian peacekeepers comprised of its aerospace forces arrived in Kazakhstan to “beg(in) performing their (assigned) tasks.”

According to the CSTO, peacekeepers from Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajilistan are involved in the operation — in response to a Kazakh request for help.

Russian media reported that a counter-terrorist operation is underway in Almaty where several hundred elements are occupying central areas of the city.

On Wednesday, Kazakh President Tokayev said the following:

“As the head of state and from now on as the chief of the Security Council, I intend to act as tough as possible” to restore law and order.

Blaming violence since January 2 on “financially motivated plotters,” he added:

“(H)ighly organized…hooligans” stormed administrative buildings — causing at least one death and numerous injuries so far.

According to head of Moscow’s Eurasian Analytical Club, Nikita Mendkovich:

Pro-Western elements in the country are trying to lead and use protests to further their own interests.

Over the past five days, violence has been larger in scale than anything earlier in what was known as a stable post-Soviet republic.

A Final Comment

Biden regime spokeswoman Psaki dismissed accusations of US involvement in Kazakhstan’s violence as “crazy Russian claims (sic).”

Since the 19th century — especially post-WW II — US dirty hands have been behind numerous destabilizing/disruptive actions worldwide.

It won’t surprise if Kazakh and Russian intelligence discover hard evidence to show that violence in the central Asian country was made-in-the USA.

stephenlendman.org

So is that much fear and loathing all about gas? Not really.

Kazakhstan was rocked into chaos virtually overnight, in principle, because of the doubling of prices for liquefied gas, which reached the (Russian) equivalent of 20 rubles per liter (compare it to an average of 30 rubles in Russia itself).

That was the spark for nationwide protests spanning every latitude from top business hub Almaty to the Caspian Sea ports of Aktau and Atyrau and even the capital Nur-Sultan, formerly Astana.

The central government was forced to roll back the gas price to the equivalent of 8 rubles a liter. Yet that only prompted the next stage of the protests, demanding lower food prices, an end of the vaccination campaign, a lower retirement age for mothers with many children and – last but not least – regime change, complete with its own slogan: Shal, ket! (“Down with the old man.”)

The “old man” is none other than national leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, 81, who even as he stepped down from the presidency after 29 years in power, in 2019, for all practical purposes remains the Kazakh gray eminence as head of the Security Council and the arbiter of domestic and foreign policy.

The prospect of yet another color revolution inevitably comes to mind: perhaps Turquoise-Yellow – reflecting the colors of the Kazakh national flag. Especially because right on cue, sharp observers found out that the usual suspects – the American embassy – was already “warning” about mass protests as early as in December 16, 2021.

Maidan in Almaty? Oh yeah. But it’s complicated.

Almaty in chaos

For the outside world, it’s hard to understand why a major energy exporting power such as Kazakhstan needs to increase gas prices for its own population.

The reason is – what else – unbridled neoliberalism and the proverbial free market shenanigans. Since 2019 liquefied gas is electronically traded in Kazakhstan. So keeping price caps – a decades-long custom – soon became impossible, as producers were constantly faced with selling their product below cost as consumption skyrocketed.

Everybody in Kazakhstan was expecting a price hike, as much as everybody in Kazakhstan uses liquefied gas, especially in their converted cars. And everybody in Kazakhstan has a car, as I was told, ruefully, during my last visit to Almaty, in late 2019, when I was trying in vain to find a taxi to head downtown.

It’s quite telling that the protests started in the city of Zhanaozen, smack into the oil/gas hub of Mangystau. And it’s also telling that Unrest Central immediately turned to car-addicted Almaty, the nation’s real business hub, and not the isolated, government infrastructure-heavy capital in the middle of the steppes.

At first President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev seemed to have been caught in a deer facing the headlights situation. He promised the return of price caps, installed a state of emergency/curfew both in Almaty and Mangystau (then nationwide) while accepting the current government’s resignation en masse and appointing a faceless Deputy Prime Minister, Alikhan Smailov, as interim PM until the formation of a new cabinet.

Yet that could not possibly contain the unrest. In lightning fast succession, we had the storming of the Almaty Akimat (mayor’s office); protesters shooting at the Army; a Nazarbayev monument demolished in Taldykorgan; his former residence in Almaty taken over; Kazakhtelecom disconnecting the whole country from the internet; several members of the National Guard – armored vehicles included – joining the protesters in Aktau; ATMs gone dead.

And then Almaty, plunged into complete chaos, was virtually seized by the protesters, including its international airport, which on Wednesday morning was under extra security, and in the evening had become occupied territory.

Kazakh airspace, meanwhile, had to contend with an extended traffic jam of private jets leaving to Moscow and Western Europe. Even though the Kremlin noted that Nur-Sultan had not asked for any Russian help, a “special delegation” was soon flying out of Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov cautiously stressed, “we are convinced that our Kazakh friends can independently solve their internal problems”, adding, “it is important that no one interferes from the outside.”

Geostrategy talks

How could it all derail so fast?

Up to now, the succession game in Kazakhstan had been seen mostly as a hit across Northern Eurasia. Local honchos, oligarchs and the comprador elites all kept their fiefdoms and sources of income. And yet, off the record, I was told in Nur-Sultan in late 2019 there would be serious problems ahead when some regional clans would come to collect – as in confronting “the old man” Nazarbayev and the system he put in place.

Tokayev did issue the proverbial call “not to succumb to internal and external provocations” – which makes sense – yet also assured that the government “will not fall”. Well, it was already falling, even after an emergency meeting trying to address the tangled web of socioeconomic problems with a promise that all “legitimate demands” by the protesters will be met.

This did not play out as a classic regime change scenario – at least initially. The configuration was of a fluid, amorphous state of chaos, as the – fragile – Kazakh institutions of power were simply incapable of comprehending the wider social malaise. A competent political opposition is non-existent: there’s no political exchange. Civil society has no channels to express itself.

So yes: there’s a riot goin’ on – to quote American rhythm’n blues. And everyone is a loser. What is still not exactly clear is which conflicting clans are flaming the protests – and what is their agenda in case they’d have a shot at power. After all, no “spontaneous” protests can pop up simultaneously all over this vast nation virtually overnight.

Kazakhstan was the last republic to leave the collapsing USSR over three decades ago, in December 1991. Under Nazarbayev, it immediately engaged in a self-described “multi-vector” foreign policy. Up to now, Nur-Sultan was skillfully positioning itself as a prime diplomatic mediator – from discussions on the Iranian nuclear program as early as 2013 to the war in/on Syria from 2016. The target: to solidify itself as the quintessential bridge between Europe and Asia.

The Chinese-driven New Silk Roads, or BRI, were officially launched by Xi Jinping at Nazarbayev University in September 2013. That happened to swiftly dovetail with the Kazakh concept of Eurasian economic integration, crafted after Nazarbayev’s own government spending project, Nurly Zhol (“Bright Path”), designed to turbo-charge the economy after the 2008-9 financial crisis.

In September 2015, in Beijing, Nazarbayev aligned Nurly Zhol with BRI, de facto propelling Kazakhstan to the heart of the new Eurasian integration order. Geostrategically, the largest landlocked nation on the planet became the prime interplay territory of the Chinese and Russian visions, BRI and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).

A diversionary tactic

For Russia, Kazakhstan is even more strategic than for China. Nur-Sultan signed the CSTO treaty in 2003. It’s a key member of the EAEU. Both nations have massive military-technical ties and conduct strategic space cooperation in Baikonur. Russian has the status of an official language, spoken by 51% of the republic’s citizens.

At least 3.5 million Russians live in Kazakhstan. It’s still early to speculate about a possible “revolution” tinged with national liberation colors were the old system to eventually collapse. And even if that happened, Moscow will never lose all of its considerable political influence.

So the immediate problem is to assure Kazakhstan’s stability. The protests must be dispersed. There will be plenty of economic concessions. Permanent destabilizing chaos simply cannot be tolerated – and Moscow knows it by heart. Another – rolling – Maidan is out of the question.

The Belarus equation has shown how a strong hand can operate miracles. Still, the CSTO agreements do not cover assistance in case of internal political crises – and Tokayev did not seem to be inclined to make such a request.

Until he did. He called for the CSTO to intervene to restore order. There will be a military enforced curfew. And Nur-Sultan may even confiscate the assets of US and UK companies which are allegedly sponsoring the protests.

This is how Nikol Pashinyan, chairman of the CSTO Collective Security Council and Prime Minister of Armenia, framed it: Tokayev invoked a “threat to national security” and the “sovereignty” of Kazakhstan, “caused, inter alia, by outside interference.” So the CSTO “decided to send peacekeeping forces” to normalize the situation, “for a limited period of time”.

The usual destabilizing suspects are well known. They may not have the reach, the political influence, and the necessary amount of Trojan horses to keep Kazakhstan on fire indefinitely.

At least the Trojan horses themselves are being very explicit. They want an immediate release of all political prisoners; regime change; a provisional government of “reputable” citizens; and – what else – “withdrawal of all alliances with Russia.”

And then it all gets down to the level of ridiculous farce, as the EU starts calling on Kazakh authorities to “respect the right to peaceful protests.” As in allowing total anarchy, robbery, looting, hundreds of vehicles destroyed, attacks with assault rifles, ATMs and even the Duty Free at Almaty airport completely plundered.

This analysis (in Russian) covers some key points, mentioning, “the internet is full of pre-arranged propaganda posters and memos to the rebels” and the fact that “the authorities are not cleaning up the mess, as Lukashenko did in Belarus.”

Slogans so far seem to originate from plenty of sources – extolling everything from a “western path” to Kazakhstan to polygamy and Sharia law: “There is no single goal yet, it has not been identified. The result will come later. It is usually the same. The elimination of sovereignty, external management and, finally, as a rule, the formation of an anti-Russian political party.”

Putin, Lukashenko and Tokayev spent a long time over the phone, at the initiative of Lukashenko. The leaders of all CSTO members are in close contact. A master game plan – as in a massive “anti-terrorist operation” – has already been hatched. Gen. Gerasimov will personally supervise it.

Now compare it to what I learned from two different, high-ranking intel sources.

The first source was explicit: the whole Kazakh adventure is being sponsored by MI6 to create a new Maidan right before the Russia/US-NATO talks in Geneva and Brussels next week, to prevent any kind of agreement. Significantly, the “rebels” maintained their national coordination even after the internet was disconnected.

The second source is more nuanced: the usual suspects are trying to force Russia to back down against the collective West by creating a major distraction in their Eastern front, as part of a rolling strategy of chaos all along Russia’s borders. That may be a clever diversionary tactic, but Russian military intel is watching. Closely. And for the sake of the usual suspects, this better may not be interpreted – ominously – was a war provocation.