Paging Borat!

[pecksniff]

Revolution in Kazakhstan!

MOSCOW (AP) — Protesters in Kazakhstan’s largest city stormed the presidential residence and the mayor’s office Wednesday and set both on fire, according to news reports, as demonstrations sparked by a rise in fuel prices escalated sharply in the Central Asian nation.

Police reportedly fired on some protesters at the residence in Almaty before fleeing. They have clashed repeatedly with demonstrators in recent days, deploying water cannons in the freezing weather, and firing tear gas and concussion grenades.

The Kazakh Interior Ministry said eight police officers and national guard members were killed in the unrest and more than 300 were injured. No figures on civilian casualties were released.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev vowed to take harsh measures to quell the unrest and declared a two-week state of emergency for the whole country, expanding one that had been announced for both the capital of Nur-Sultan and the largest city of Almaty that imposed an overnight curfew and restricted movement into and around the urban areas.

The government resigned in response to the unrest. Kazakh news sites became inaccessible late in the day, and the global watchdog organization Netblocks said the country was experiencing a pervasive internet blackout, but the Russian news agency Tass reported that internet access was restored in Almaty by early Thursday.

Although the protests began over a near-doubling of prices for a type of liquefied petroleum gas that is widely used as vehicle fuel, their size and rapid spread suggested they reflect wider discontent in the country that has been under the rule of the same party since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Of course, the interesting question is, will this have any repercussions next door in Russia?

 

[pecksniff]

Well, Russia's going to get involved.

A six-nation Russia-led military alliance has agreed to send peacekeeping troops to Kazakhstan at the request of the country's embattled leader as he declared a nationwide state of emergency and accepted his government's resignation amid protests.

Speaking on state television Wednesday, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev blamed "terrorists" with international backing for a rare wave of violent protests that rocked the Central Asian state in response to a hike in gas prices, and said he had "appealed to the heads of CSTO states," members of the post-Soviet Collective Security Treaty Organization, "to assist Kazakhstan in overcoming this terrorist threat."

In addition to Kazakhstan and Russia, the CSTO includes Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Moscow has provided security assurances to all five other members of the alliance, including contributions to a combined Collective Rapid Reaction Force and Collective Rapid Deployment Force to tackle drug trafficking and terrorism, as well as a Peacekeeping Force that numbers about 3,600 personnel made up of troops, police and civilians.

I wonder whether there is anything to his assertion of "international backing" of the protesters?

 

[pecksniff]

Meanwhile:

Meanwhile, Kremlin’s state TV channels—wary of the fact that the protests are a living nightmare for President Vladimir Putin—failed to translate the demonstrators’ chants. The Kazakh protestors may have been all too direct in their message to Nazarbayev for Russian airwaves, as they demanded he “Shal ket!”(Get out, old man!).

Moscow descends into a panic every time such protests threaten to end old regimes, and has done so ever since Hilary Clinton called for the U.S. to “figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent” Putin’s efforts to re-Sovietize former USSR territories like Kazakhstan. After Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev dismissed Nazarbayev from the top position at the National Security Council on Wednesday, there was no doubt left that the old regime, including Putin’s closest ally in the country, had fallen.

“This is the last day of the Soviet Union; today is the day when the USSR has finally died,” a pro-Kremlin expert on Central Asia, Yuriy Krupnov, told The Daily Beast.

Nazarbayev’s cult of personality seemed untouchable even last week, when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But social issues, including unemployment, poverty and an abrupt increase in fuel prices seem to have marked a breaking point for the people of Kazakhstan, who engaged in violent clashes with police across the country this week.

 

[pecksniff]

OK, now it's serious!

Kazakhstan’s deadly protests hit bitcoin, as the world’s second-biggest mining hub shuts down.

 

[jomar]

Where’s Giuliani when you need him?

 

[LupusDei]

It is serious, or can become. Price of uranium jumped too.

And you guys in America are much too busy with navel gazing to notice it as a colossal victory in the strategy your enemies prescribe to you.

For Kremlin and friends it's immediate obvious US is responsible for the trouble with couldn't have happened in worse moment for Putin. Putin is not becoming Stalin, yet, at least according to Rogozin, who even before this mess said:

Putin’s regime regards 20th-century totalitarian ideologies as fashion brands – visually attractive, but rather meaningless in terms of modern politics. All it cares about is the loyalty of their adherents.

Meanwhile, it's possible -- albeit extremely unlikely -- we're witnessing the opening accords of Kazakh independence war, thirty years late. On a side note, at least some Kazakh nazi are hardline muslims... some try to trade derelict spaceship for an ancestor's skull.
So, there's plenty of ways it can get ugly for everyone extremely quickly.

On unrelated ancient history note, in Tsarist Russia, Cossacks (Kazaki) was a militarized horseback riding police special force... not directly related to the nationality whose name it appropriated.

So yes, the ties are old, and Russians sent to restore order in Kazakhstan has a bit historical irony.

Indeed, the Soviet Union still lives in Kazakhstan, in a twisted way, while it was basically a private kingdom of that "old man" Nursultan Nazarbayev (yes, he named the purpose built capital city after himself). The current president is his selection, in an attempt to retire after over thirty years in power (yes, since before dissolution of USSR, he's 81), but his personal role as "leader of the nation" is written in the constitution.

Ah, and his son-in-law administrate the local oil monopoly. Almost the whole country literally belongs to a small close knit elite group, while people live rather poorly and political parties are banned in practice.

It was the tightest controlled and most stable, superficially, of the neighborhood -stans, all governed somewhat similarly and similarly still living as fiefdoms of Moscow to a large extent. Although, Kazakhs switched to Latin alphabet from Russian, and ethnic Russians there's now only about 20% of 16 million total population (it's one of most sparsely populated countries in the world, and one of the largest, ninth or so by territory).

 

[pecksniff]

For Kremlin and friends it's immediate obvious US is responsible for the trouble . . .

What did the U.S. have to do with this? I've never even heard a POTUS mention Kazakhstan.

 

[pecksniff]

You know, I've always wondered why, since the fall of the USSR, no Pan-Turkic political movement has emerged to unite the several Turkic stans of Central Asia.

Such a federation might well be strong enough to wrest Xinjiang from China and liberate the Turkic Uighurs from the ongoing genocide there.

 

[LupusDei]

What did the U.S. have to do with this? I've never even heard a POTUS mention Kazakhstan.

Nothing in reality, most likely. It's the fear and adversarial legitimizing of the regime by easy lies.

But by the apparently spontaneous events hurting Russia and potentially China simultaneously US seems to be the benefactor. Thus being accused of interfering.

 

[LupusDei]

You know, I've always wondered why, since the fall of the USSR, no Pan-Turkic political movement has emerged to unite the several Turkic stans of Central Asia.

Such a federation might well be strong enough to wrest Xinjiang from China and liberate the Turkic Uighurs from the ongoing genocide there.

Erdogan is working on that.

 

[pecksniff]

Erdogan is working on that.

Well, it's hard to imagine a Turkic Union that includes Anatolia. There's too much non-Turkish territory -- the whole Caucasus -- separating Asia Minor from Central Asia. Anyway, I thought Erdogan was an Islamist, not a Pan-Turkish nationalist.

 

[pecksniff]

Kazakhstan, greatest country in the world
All other countries are run by little girls
Kazakhstan, number one exporter of potassium
All other countries have inferior potassium

Kazakhstan, home of Tinshein swimming pool
Its length thirty meter, width six meter
Filtration system a marvel to behold
It remove 80% of solid human waste

Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, you very nice place
From plains of Tarashek to northern fence of Jewtown
Kazakhstan friend of all except Uzbekistan
They very nosy people, with bone in their brain

Kazakhstan, industry best in the world
We invented toffee and trouser belt
Kazakhstan's prostitutes, cleanest in the region
Except of course for Turkmenistan's

Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, you very nice place
From plains of Tarashek to northern fence of Jewtown
Come grasp mighty penis of our leader
From junction with testes to the tip of its face!

 

[pecksniff]

Putin claims victory in defending Kazakhstan from revolt.

NUR-SULTAN, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory on Monday in defending Kazakhstan from what he described as a foreign-backed terrorist uprising, and promised leaders of other ex-Soviet states that a Moscow-led alliance would protect them too.

Kazakhstan's biggest city Almaty returned to near-normal on Monday after nearly a week of unrest, by far the worst violence in the 30-year independent history of what had been the most stable former Soviet state in Central Asia.

Cleaners were removing debris from streets still littered with burnt-out cars. Most shops reopened, public transport and regular traffic returned, and the internet was switched back on for several hours in the city, for the first time since last Wednesday.

The square near the mayor's office, burnt out during the uprising, was firmly held by the security forces and closed to the public. Police searched cars at checkpoints.

"Foreign-backed terrorist uprising"?! What foreign country would be involved in this?!

 

[LupusDei]

Putin claims victory in defending Kazakhstan from revolt.

"Foreign-backed terrorist uprising"?! What foreign country would be involved in this?!

Whatever Putin gets angry about. Or maybe, they will ultimately blame the Islamists, as a convenient scapegoat.

They had to declare the protesters foreign terrorists to justify sending Russian troops in (It's a "defensive" alliance, actually made against Afghan Taliban, ISIS and the like, and didn't active during the last Azerbaijan - Armenia war despite Armenian requests (Russians much later intervened unilaterally)).

Why the Russians actually got called at all is rather uncertain.

There's actually are reports about organized looting and burning squads arriving in cars... those activities wasn't organically growing from the protests themselves, at least according to the protesters themselves. A popular theory is that Nazarbayev unleashed his organization's criminal wing, or said wing acted on it's own, with or without knowledge Nazarbayev had been pushed aside. While the now arrested KGB boss (and/or his deputy Nazarbayev's nephew) ordered law enforcement to step back and not intervene.

But that assume the rift between Tokayev and Nazarbayev's clan is real. Since Nazarbayev's clan practically owns most of the country, if there's really a conflict, Tokayev isn't out of the woods yet, and there's popcorn to be still needed.

Either way, Tokayev apparently didn't trust his own power structures anymore, and called Russians for an insurance, and political play. Many should be insulted by that act either way.

 

[pecksniff]

There's actually are reports about organized looting and burning squads arriving in cars... those activities wasn't organically growing from the protests themselves, at least according to the protesters themselves.

Now, why does that sound familiar?

 

[LupusDei]

Now, why does that sound familiar?

1) "Who are those people?" syndrome: since "nobody I know personally thinks it's a good idea to go on looting and burning spree during political protests," those apparently should be "others" of some kind. (Regardless of who they actually represented, obviously.)

2) Certain opportunists are indeed quick to jump in...

3) ...and if one sociopolitical network wants to discredit spontaneous mass protests of another, and has penetration in both deniability offering brownshirt operatives and law enforcement / judiciary, false flag action like that is very efficient and extremely difficult to defend against disrupting tactics. While such has a long list of assumptions that should be met to really work like that, it can't be ruled out. Especially in societies with entrenched clan/tribe systems.

 

[pecksniff]

Update:

NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan — Kazakhstan’s long-serving former president, who was conspicuously absent during the unrest that rocked the country this month, posted a video on Tuesday with his first public comments since the violence erupted, saying he supported the country’s leader and the economic reforms he has proposed.

In the video address, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled the Central Asian nation for three decades before stepping down, described the unrest — the worst the country had seen since declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 — as an assault on Kazakhstan.

“The purpose of these organized riots and attacks on Kazakhstan was to destroy the integrity of the country and the foundations of the state,” he said in the video, delivered in Kazakh and Russian on his website.

The absence of Mr. Nazarbayev, 81, from Kazakhstan’s political scene fueled speculation that he and his family members had left the country. In his address, he said he was inside Kazakhstan, but gave no evidence for his claim.

Mr. Nazarbayev began ruling the country in 1989 and stepped down in 2019, paving the way for his handpicked successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. However, he is widely believed to have wielded power and influence under a 2010 law that named him “leader of the nation” and gave him a lifetime appointment at the head of the country’s powerful Security Council. He also remained the leader of the ruling Nur Otan party.