标题: 2022.01.12 从伯金包到比特币：哈萨克斯坦的六大抗议活动 [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-9-7 23:41 标题: 2022.01.12 从伯金包到比特币：哈萨克斯坦的六大抗议活动 From a Birkin bag to bitcoin: Kazakhstan’s protests in six objects
Resentment of the ruling elite pushed the country to the edge of chaos
Jan 12th 2022
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By Simon Long
Of the five Central Asian “stans” that emerged as independent republics from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan had seemed the most prosperous, best-run and most stable. Its leader at the time of independence, Nursultan Nazarbayev, remained president until 2019; even afterwards he was the power behind the throne.
Nazarbayev rigged the political system and won elections by repressing the opposition and co-opting the elite, parts of which became fabulously rich, including his own family. When Nazarbayev stood down from the presidency in 2019 he was still recognised in the constitution as “leader of the nation”, and seemed to have engineered a smooth transition by installing a pliable successor, Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev. This year that cosy arrangement has fallen apart.
In January, protests started in the south-west of the country against the rising price of car fuel. The unrest soon grew and spread to the country’s largest city, Almaty, and elsewhere. The president’s security forces used lethal force to contain it: dozens of people were killed and thousands detained. Tokayev summoned foreign troops to help, including from Russia.
The unrest doesn’t bode well for his mentor. Nazarbayev, now 81, hasn’t been heard from throughout the protests. One of his most important henchmen, Karim Masimov, a former prime minister and head of the security services, has been sacked and arrested. Tokayev seems to have emerged as his own man – and to be in charge, at least for now.
Fuel to the fire A highly combustible cocktail
Zhanaozen, the town in south-western Kazakhstan where unrest began on January 2nd, has a history of resistance to the central government. In December 2011 a strike by oil workers about pay turned into a political protest in the main square. Security forces opened fire, killing 16 people.
This time the unrest there was provoked by a sudden doubling in the price of liquefied petroleum gas (lpg) from 60 to 120 tenge a litre (14 to 28 American cents). lpg is widely used as car fuel by less well-off drivers. It cost so much less than petrol that in recent years many drivers have converted their cars to run on it, sacrificing space in their boot for the canisters.
Lately, however, lpg has been in short supply in Kazakhstan: a government price-cap on the amount customers could be charged for fuel led producers to export lpg to countries where they could get more money for it. To fix the shortages, the government removed the cap.
The subsequent sharp rise in the price of lpg seemed to take everyone by surprise. Various contradictory explanations were given by the authorities: unexpectedly high demand; a shift to electronic trading on the international market; price-fixing by retailers. Whatever the true reason, it was plain the price rise was unsustainable. On January 5th price caps were restored for six months, for lpg, petrol and diesel. But by then, the fuel had already ignited.
Goody bag Did someone forget to pay for this Hermès Birkin?
When police raided properties belonging to the family of Malaysia’s former prime minister, Najib Razak, in 2018, they found $273m-worth of jewellery (12,000 items), cash and handbags – including nearly 300 Hermès bags, some of which may have been gifts from the family of Kazakhstan’s president.
In 2015 Najib’s daughter married a Kazakh man she had met while they were students at Columbia University in New York: the young man, Daniyar Kessikbayev, was a member of Kazakhstan’s elite and the president’s step-nephew. To celebrate their engagement, Kessikbayev had given his bride-to-be 16 chests of lavish gifts – an ancient Kazakhstani custom, he said. He was outraged by reports that it was his fiancée who had given him the presents.
His new father-in-law – who was still Malaysia’s prime minister at the time – was equally upset at suggestions that there was anything improper in the financing of at least three extravagant wedding receptions (two in Malaysia, one in Almaty). It was, suggested a spokesman for Najib, their “well-connected” new in-laws who had borne the cost, which included flying plane-loads of Malaysians to Kazakhstan.
The Malaysian prime minister’s touchiness was understandable. It later emerged that, during his tenure, some $4.5bn had been siphoned from a state investment fund, while the prime minister’s own bank balance rose by nearly $700m (an unrelated gift, he said).
For the groom’s family, too, unpleasant stories have been hard to avoid. In 2015 a retailer in New York brought a lawsuit against Kessikbayev and his mother, claiming that they failed to pay for seven Hermès bags. According to the lawsuit, some of the bags were for personal use; others were meant as gifts at the wedding of the century. The 19m Kazakhs without an invitation would be forgiven for feeling short-changed, too.
Capital gain This way to Nur-Sultan
Searching for a suitably sycophantic gift for his boss’s 68th birthday, Sat Tokpakbayev, a Kazakh politician, hit upon the perfect idea: why not rename Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, in President Nazarbayev’s honour? After all, America had its Washington; even Turkmenistan, a quirky isolationist neighbour, had a port named for its former dictator, Turkmenbashi. And “Astana”, which just means capital, was hardly dripping with historic import.
Tokpakbayev’s suggestion of renaming the capital “Nur-Sultan” was enthusiastically endorsed by almost all his fellow deputies (the others, one assumes, were inexplicably absent that day). Kazakhstan’s press was less keen. With inflation soaring and the economy in the doldrums, commentators wondered whether parliament might have had more serious things to discuss.
Self-effacing as ever, Nazarbayev declined the honour. It took years of wheedling from his loyal subjects for him to be persuaded that the new name was no more than his due. He eventually accepted it, like a gold watch or a greetings card full of embarrassing workplace reminiscences, as a retirement gift. He unexpectedly resigned the presidency in March 2019, to retreat to a life of behind-the-scenes string-pulling as the constitutionally designated “leader of the nation”. The protesters in Almaty this month, however, were less respectful, chanting “old man out!” They, at least, seemed to think he was still running the show.
Homes sweet homes 399 Route d’Hermance, Switzerland
Even if you live in a land of snow-capped mountains and gushing waterfalls, it can be useful to have a bolthole or 19. This sumptuous villa overlooking Lake Geneva, which belongs to Nazarbayev’s second daughter, Dinara Kulibayeva, is far from poky: it covers 3,200 square metres and has an indoor-outdoor swimming pool and spa.
Geneva seems a favourite not just for this branch of the Nazarbayev dynasty, but also for the family of his successor, Kassim-Zhomart Tokayev. He served as head of the United Nations office there from 2011-13, and his son, Timur, has an apartment in the Swiss city.
Other parts of the Nazarbayev family have an affinity for Britain. On London’s “Billionaires’ Row” – The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead – is a palace owned by another daughter, Dariga, and her son Nurali Aliyev. They also own expensive houses in Chelsea and Highgate, and, reportedly, the part of Baker Street where Sherlock Holmes had his fictional apartment.
The first three properties were the subject of an embarrassing “unexplained wealth order” from Britain’s National Crime Agency (nca) in 2019, alleging that they had been bought with money from Aliyev’s father, Rakhat Aliyev. The elder Aliyev, divorced from his wife, was a former senior official. In 2015 he was found hanged in an Austrian prison cell, where he was awaiting trial for murder. In 2020 the nca lost its case and the properties were unfrozen.
The conspicuous consumption and wealth that has fuelled antagonism towards the ruling elite does at least mean that, if they’re forced to flee, the Nazarbayevs and their friends won’t be short of places to stay.
Crypto cross words A fast-depreciating bitcoin
Miners have long been drawn to Kazakhstan’s natural resources. The vast country – as big as western Europe – is famously rich in oil and gas, and is a substantial producer of coal, as well as copper, steel and wheat. It also dominates the production of uranium, the basic fuel of the nuclear-power industry. In the days after unrest broke out, the price of uranium rose by 8%.
But the global market that was most discombobulated by events in Kazakhstan was that for bitcoin. Kazakhstan is the world’s second-biggest crypto-mining country (after America), accounting for nearly one-fifth of global production. Its rise to ascendancy has been swift, beginning in May 2021 when China, a former world leader in crypto-mining, cracked down on the industry. Many miners shifted to Kazakhstan, lured by its cheap electricity – bitcoin-miners use vast amounts of energy.
They also rely on internet connections to other miners. So when the authorities in Kazakhstan shut down the internet in response to the unrest, the impact on global bitcoin-mining was dramatic. According to btc.com, a data service for the cryptocurrency industry, there was a 14% drop in the amount of computing power devoted to bitcoin-mining between January 4th and 6th, which contributed to a steep fall in bitcoin’s value.
If unrest continues, crypto-miners may be forced to emigrate yet again. That, at least, would be welcome news for many ordinary people in Kazakhstan who’ve experienced blackouts recently due to pressure on the electricity grid.
Mane attraction Time to call the cavalry
Kazakhstani art, literature and folklore teem with horses, fittingly for a tradition stretching back 6,000 years to the domestication of the horse by nomads on the Central Asian steppes. Tulpars, winged horses, are a key part of the national emblem. Both flying and earthbound breeds appear on denominations of the country’s banknotes. Horse products also feature on menus: koumiss – fermented mare’s milk – is a traditional staple of steppe life. So, too, is beshbarmak, a stew of boiled horse meat, served on sheets of pasta.
But for most Kazakhs, the notion of a nomadic life roaming the vast steppes on horseback seems so distant as to be almost unimaginable. Their country is the most urbanised of all the “stans”, with more than half the population living in cities. Ethnic Kazakhs make up 70% of the population. The next biggest group, at 18%, are Russians, some of them descendants of the 1.5m political prisoners held in Kazakhstan in Stalin’s day, or the 1.3m deported there as “representatives of unreliable nations” during the second world war.
The country’s representatives remain proud of Kazakhstan’s equestrian traditions, however, boasting of traditional games, such as kokpar, where two mounted teams scramble over the carcass of a goat; or audaryspak, where two horsemen wrestle, each attempting to unhorse the other. The nearest equivalents these days are probably found in Kazakhstani politics, where horseplay has become a little more violent in recent years.■
