The vanquished are judged

“GAS PROTESTS” (OR COUP ATTEMPT) IN KAZAKHSTAN

Two years after Kantar, the Kazakh author­i­ties decid­ed on the final ver­sion of what hap­pened — it was an attempt at a coup orga­nized by secu­ri­ty offi­cers led by the for­mer chair­man of the National Security Committee Karim Masimov.

All oth­er ver­sions in Akorda are called spec­u­la­tion, but they can­not pre­vent their occur­rence. Until now, the coun­try is try­ing not to put the words Kantar and Elbasy next to each oth­er, and those who do this then retract their words because they do not have the facts. However, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ’s rhetoric towards his pre­de­ces­sor is increas­ing­ly becom­ing harsh­er. Monuments to Nazarbayev are being removed in Kazakhstan. One of his nephews was con­vict­ed and paid for half the dam­age caused by the riots. The sec­ond is await­ing tri­al. Details are in the Fergana article.

Movie

At the begin­ning of January, Kazakh state tele­vi­sion chan­nels showed the doc­u­men­tary film “Kantar. Attempted coup. How it was”. The 22-minute film presents the offi­cial ver­sion of what hap­pened and pre­vi­ous­ly unshown oper­a­tional footage. Events, the film claims, were sup­posed to devel­op “in waves.” First, the con­spir­a­tors took the peo­ple out into the streets and intro­duced provo­ca­teurs into the ranks of the pro­test­ers to start pogroms. The sec­ond wave hit Almaty on January 4–5. It was about cre­at­ing an atmos­phere of chaos. The riot­ers robbed gun stores and erect­ed bar­ri­cades on the streets.

On January 5–6, the third wave began with the seizure of admin­is­tra­tive build­ings, law enforce­ment agen­cies, and the air­port. In this way, the orga­niz­ers tried to sow pan­ic among the pop­u­la­tion and demon­strate the help­less­ness of the author­i­ties. During the fourth wave, the “sleep­ing” cells of rad­i­cals were sup­posed to awak­en, as in the Syrian sce­nario. However, it didn’t come to that.

The main “vil­lain” respon­si­ble for what hap­pened was the for­mer chair­man of the National Security Committee, Karim Masimov . The authors of the film claim that they have col­lect­ed the most com­plete and detailed chronol­o­gy of January events. But its view­ers did not receive answers to the main ques­tions and are unlike­ly to ever receive them — the Kazakh lead­er­ship has closed the courts in cas­es relat­ed to Kantar and is try­ing to sup­press any attempts to com­pre­hend what hap­pened in a way dif­fer­ent from the offi­cial one.

Since the begin­ning of the year, two books ded­i­cat­ed to the January riots were sup­posed to be pub­lished in the repub­lic. “Year-January” by jour­nal­ist Daniyar Moldabekov and “From the Arena to the Square. Living the Almaty tragedy” by soci­ol­o­gist Gulmira Ileuova. The print­ing house refused to print the first one. This hap­pened after a vis­it from the secu­ri­ty forces with an insis­tent desire to famil­iar­ize them­selves with the con­tents. The sec­ond was pub­lished, but it nev­er made it into book­stores. Both authors did not promise any sen­sa­tions, they only doc­u­ment­ed what they saw with their own eyes in Almaty, as well as the tes­ti­monies of oth­er eye­wit­ness­es and par­tic­i­pants in the events.

It can­not be said that the author­i­ties gen­er­al­ly pro­hib­it any pub­li­ca­tions about Kantara. At the end of December 2022, Russian jour­nal­ist Leonid Mlechin’s book “Tragic January” was pub­lished, the pre­sen­ta­tion of which was attend­ed by diplo­mats from the Kazakh embassy in Moscow. In 2023, Kazakh social activist, and sci­en­tif­ic direc­tor of the Applied Economics Research Center (AERC) Zhaksybek Kulekeev pub­lished his work “January Events: The Fight for Akorda” in Kazakh.

The works of these authors are replete with insights and impres­sive details. Mlechin described how Tokayev was per­suad­ed to fly out of Kazakhstan dur­ing the unrest, for which a plane and $25 mil­lion in cash were pre­pared for him, but the pres­i­dent refused. Referring to social net­works and “knowl­edge­able peo­ple,” the Russian jour­nal­ist also pub­lished the tes­ti­mo­ny of the “main con­spir­a­tor” Masimov, alleged­ly giv­en by him to inves­ti­ga­tors. According to the for­mer head of the National Security Committee, Nursultan Nazarbayev , the first pres­i­dent of Kazakhstan, intend­ed after Kantar to return to the high­est post in the coun­try for three years, and then install a more suit­able per­son in this place. Masimov him­self was promised the posi­tion of prime min­is­ter with unlim­it­ed powers.

Kulekeyev, who was in Astana dur­ing the unrest, men­tioned in his book the “ Shaprashty ” oper­a­tion, which con­sist­ed of an attempt to remove Tokayev from pow­er force­ful­ly. The prepa­ra­tion of this spe­cial oper­a­tion became known back in 2019. The trig­ger for its onset was alleged­ly Nazarbayev’s heart attack and the sub­se­quent dete­ri­o­ra­tion of his health.

Later, in an inter­view with the edi­tor-in-chief of the pub­li­ca­tion ORDA.kz, Gulnara Bazhkenova, Kulekeev stat­ed that he took all the infor­ma­tion for his book from open sources, and the excerpt about the oper­a­tion “ Shaprashty ” — from the anony­mous Telegram chan­nel “Nursultan Nightingale” (prob­a­bly from this post).

“It seemed to me that there was at least some small log­ic there,” the author explained his motives. — The sec­ond rea­son why I decid­ed to use this infor­ma­tion [is that] before that, in many, includ­ing oppo­si­tion news­pa­pers, a lot of mate­ri­als were pub­lished about the role of the Shaprashtins, about the Shaprashtin oper­a­tion. Therefore, it is impos­si­ble to hide this from the pub­lic, which means peo­ple knew. So I’m not giv­ing away any­thing that extra­or­di­nary here.”

To Bazhkenova’s direct ques­tion of whether the author agrees that this was Operation Shaprashty, Zhaksybek Kulekeev answered eva­sive­ly: “All peo­ple are look­ing for who the main orga­niz­er is. Who is the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ry of this sit­u­a­tion? All peo­ple would like to know [who this is], to know the role of Elbasy in these events, the role of fam­i­ly mem­bers in orga­niz­ing the January events. I have noth­ing here about this. Because I don’t have a sin­gle fact in my hands indi­cat­ing that Elbasy was direct­ly involved in orga­niz­ing this event.”

Memoirs

Nursultan Nazarbayev did not appear in pub­lic dur­ing Kantara and did not make any state­ments. There were sug­ges­tions that he and his fam­i­ly mem­bers could have left Kazakhstan. However, the for­mer pres­i­den­t’s press sec­re­tary denied these rumours. Only on January 18, 2022, when the unrest had already been sup­pressed, Nazarbayev made a video mes­sage, say­ing that he was “on a well-deserved rest in the cap­i­tal of Kazakhstan and had not left anywhere.”

From the mem­oirs of the for­mer Kazakh leader, pub­lished on December 1 last year, it fol­lows that the unrest found him in Almaty. Expressing grat­i­tude to his assis­tant Abay Bisembaev, who head­ed the pres­i­den­tial affairs depart­ment for 17 years, Nazarbayev writes: “During the January events, dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions arose when I could not trust even the spe­cial secu­ri­ty assigned to me. And then the per­son who put me in his car and took me to Almaty air­port, there­by help­ing to ensure that I was in the cap­i­tal at the hour of tri­al, was Abai Aidarkhanovich. Such things are not forgotten.”

The mem­oirs have a sep­a­rate chap­ter ded­i­cat­ed to January, but this excerpt is not from there.

The first pres­i­dent casu­al­ly men­tions where he was dur­ing the bloody events as if there were no insin­u­a­tions about this. Nazarbayev also hints that he was in some kind of dan­ger, thus not only dis­tanc­ing him­self from those involved in the unrest but also oppos­ing him­self to them.
The for­mer pres­i­dent writes about Kantara in a detached man­ner, using clichés about “orga­nized extrem­ist groups,” “mass riots,” and “ter­ror­ist attacks.” He men­tions the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and the flawed work of the gov­ern­ment but calls the strug­gle for pow­er the main rea­son for what happened.

“In 2019, when I vol­un­tar­i­ly resigned my pres­i­den­tial pow­ers and, under the Constitution, trans­ferred them to the Chairman of the Senate, many took this with hos­til­i­ty, which I know for cer­tain,” Nazarbayev writes.

“Some of those who were against (secret­ly, of course) my deci­sion to choose a suc­ces­sor dreamed of tak­ing the post of President. At first, they were unable to express their dis­agree­ment with me. Then they were unable to express dis­agree­ment with the will of the peo­ple in the elections.

Always dur­ing a change of pres­i­dents, attempts arise to fill the vacant seat. Of course, peo­ple knew that I was old and think­ing about leav­ing. But they did­n’t know when it would hap­pen. Moreover, it hap­pened so quick­ly that the “chal­lengers” woke up late. I tend to think so. But this is my per­son­al opin­ion,” writes Nursultan Abishevich.

Opponents of Tokayev, he believes, became more active on November 23, 2021 — on this day Nazarbayev announced his inten­tion to trans­fer the chair­man­ship of the rul­ing Nur-Otan par­ty (now Amanat) to the pres­i­dent. Because it is believed that the par­ty leader has a sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased chance of win­ning the election.

Nazarbayev writes noth­ing about the bloody events of the first days of January. But at the same time, he accus­es the rad­i­cal oppo­si­tion in the per­son of his long-time ene­my Mukhtar Ablyazov, who alleged­ly coor­di­nat­ed the pro­test­ers, of involve­ment in them.

The fugi­tive Kazakh banker, the leader of the DCK move­ment, banned in Kazakhstan, real­ly tried to declare him­self the orga­niz­er of the protests, the first days of which he open­ly “slept through,” but this looked more like an attempt to remind about him­self and, as they say, “ride the wave.”

Towards the end of the chap­ter, Nazarbayev repeats ver­ba­tim the offi­cial ver­sion of what hap­pened, dwelling in detail on the ver­dict of the con­spir­a­tors, the case against whom, in his words, “was exam­ined for a long time and carefully.”

“TO. Masimov and A. Sadykulov were found guilty of high trea­son, vio­lent seizure of pow­er, abuse of pow­er and offi­cial author­i­ty, D. Ergozhin — of vio­lent seizure of pow­er, abuse of pow­er and offi­cial author­i­ty, M. Osipov — of abuse of pow­er and offi­cial author­i­ty. Karim Masimov was sen­tenced to 18 years. Others also suf­fered appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment,” writes the ex-president.

In real­i­ty, this is not the case. The tri­al of anoth­er for­mer deputy of Masimov began in January of this year. He is charged with Article 362 (“Excess of pow­er or offi­cial author­i­ty”) of the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan. We are talk­ing about Samat Abish, Nazarbayev’s nephew.

Like a bone in the throat

Samat Abish was relieved of his post as first deputy head of the National Security Committee on January 17, 2022, when the CSTO peace­keep­ing con­tin­gent was already being with­drawn from Kazakhstan. From the moment the coup attempt was sup­pressed, he was “in the orbit of the inves­ti­ga­tion,” prob­a­bly active­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with it, but did not have the offi­cial sta­tus of a sus­pect. A cou­ple of months after Kantara, the Prosecutor General of Kazakhstan, Berik Asylov, in a con­ver­sa­tion with jour­nal­ists, said that the inves­ti­ga­tion man­aged to col­lect evi­dence of guilt against Karim Masimov and his three for­mer deputies, but not against Samat Abish.

Until now, the role of the for­mer president’s nephew in the January events is not clear to the gen­er­al pub­lic. A crim­i­nal case against him was ini­ti­at­ed much lat­er — only in September 2023, and under a much milder arti­cle than those under which his for­mer col­leagues were con­vict­ed. This coin­cid­ed with the appear­ance in court of the for­mer head of the 5th Department of the National Security Committee, Ruslan Iskakov, who stat­ed that dur­ing the January events, he car­ried out Abish’s orders. He over­saw the work of the 5th Department of the KNB, and Colonel Iskakov was his direct subordinate.

Iskakov claimed that it was Nazarbayev’s nephew, dur­ing the chaos that reigned in Almaty, who instruct­ed him to seek help from the well-known crim­i­nal author­i­ty in Kazakhstan, Arman Dzhumageldiev (Dikiy), to restore order in the city. He con­sid­ers the order itself jus­ti­fied. However, lat­er Abish alleged­ly dis­so­ci­at­ed him­self from him, mak­ing Iskakov and Dzhumageldiev “extreme” — now both are accused of orga­niz­ing the riots.

According to inves­ti­ga­tors, Dikiy Arman, act­ing under the lead­er­ship of a cura­tor from the National Security Committee, was sup­posed to take con­trol of the crowd and cre­ate a so-called “peo­ple’s coun­cil” to issue an ulti­ma­tum to the author­i­ties. According to eye­wit­ness­es, he and his men grabbed pro­test­ers, beat them and tor­tured them. As a result, one per­son died.

The crime boss claims the oppo­site: Iskakov alleged­ly turned to him with a request to save peo­ple from the aki­mat (the Almaty City Hall build­ing that lat­er burned down), calm down the pro­test­ers and take pro­tec­tion of social facil­i­ties. Dzhumageldiev respond­ed to the call and came to the city cen­tre, where chaos reigned:

“Some attacked police offi­cers, oth­ers called for the over­throw of the state sys­tem, oth­ers stood near the mon­u­ment and shout­ed: ”Shal ket! res­i­dence, a fifth robbed restau­rants and stole alco­holic drinks, and a sixth walked around with weapons in their hands, with hel­mets and shields, which were tak­en from the police offi­cers,” this is how he described what he saw.

In the crowd, Dzhumageldiev claims, his peo­ple caught the loot­ers and tried to hand them over to the police, but no one want­ed to accept them. In fact, dur­ing the unrest, the crime boss took over the func­tion of the secu­ri­ty forces — this is his line of defence.

Dzhumageldiev con­veyed his ver­sion of what hap­pened to jour­nal­ists through his lawyers. Iskakov’s state­ment that he was fol­low­ing the orders of Nazarbayev’s nephew was made at the court hear­ing. Subsequently, the tri­als of both defen­dants were closed, and non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments were tak­en from their lawyers. However, Iskakov some­how man­aged to break through the infor­ma­tion block­ade. Within the walls of the KNB pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­tre, he wrote and released (prob­a­bly not with­out out­side help) two open let­ters. The first was pub­lished back in 2022 by jour­nal­ist Mikhail Kozachkov, who lat­er found him­self in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­tre on anoth­er case.

The sec­ond, in ear­ly February, appeared on the web­site of the Russian Novaya Gazeta (rec­og­nized in Russia itself, first as a for­eign agent, and then com­plete­ly deprived of its license). There are sev­er­al inter­est­ing points in this mes­sage: first­ly, Iskakov places respon­si­bil­i­ty for the start of the protests on President Tokayev and his gov­ern­ment, who alleged­ly knew that the pop­u­la­tion would react painful­ly to an increase in gas prices, but delib­er­ate­ly went for it, try­ing to oust them from the “oil indus­try” » Nazarbayev’s son-in-law — Timur Kulibayev.

Secondly, Iskakov names for­mer Minister of Internal Affairs Erlan Turgumbayev as the author of the dis­in­for­ma­tion about 20 thou­sand mil­i­tants* in Almaty, claim­ing that in the cen­tre of the city, there were no mil­i­tants, but res­i­dents of Almaty and the sur­round­ing area.

*At the height of the unrest, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, first in address­es to the peo­ple and then on Twitter, announced that 20 thou­sand ter­ror­ists had attacked Almaty and need­ed to be elim­i­nat­ed. This tweet lat­er dis­ap­peared from the social net­work. Almost six months after the riots, dur­ing a ref­er­en­dum on chang­ing the Constitution, the pres­i­dent was asked about the real num­ber of attack­ers in the city. He replied that the fig­ure of 20 thou­sand was pro­vid­ed by the for­mer lead­er­ship of law enforce­ment agen­cies and that we were talk­ing about the entire country.

Following the offi­cial ver­sion, it was assumed that the pres­i­dent, as the main con­spir­a­tor, was mis­in­formed by Karim Masimov since there were no com­plaints against Yerlan Turgumbayev, who at that time held the post of head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After the January events, although he left the post of Minister of Internal Affairs, he worked as an advis­er to the pres­i­dent for anoth­er six months. Rumours peri­od­i­cal­ly appeared on the Internet that a case could be filed against him. But they remained rumours, and the for­mer min­is­ter did not fall into the orbit of the investigation.

The state­ments of Iskakov and Dzhumageldiev, as well as the attempts of some social activists to fig­ure out who was in the square dur­ing Kantara and who opposed whom dur­ing these bloody events, unnerve Akorda. In a long inter­view with Kazakhstanskaya Pravda in January of this year, Tokayev called on Kazakhstanis not to believe in any spec­u­la­tive ver­sions (appar­ent­ly, we are talk­ing about all ver­sions except the offi­cial one).

“I’ll say it straight: dis­cus­sions about an alleged pop­u­lar upris­ing con­tribute to the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and white­wash­ing of crim­i­nal acts. Such irre­spon­si­ble, essen­tial­ly provoca­tive con­ver­sa­tions lead to the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of real ban­dits and the root­ing of harm­ful crim­i­nal psy­chol­o­gy in soci­ety. This means they are call­ing for new unrest to the detri­ment of nation­al secu­ri­ty and the well-being of the peo­ple. This is a very seri­ous threat. Therefore, the state and soci­ety must unite to con­demn law­less­ness,” Tokayev is confident.

Let us add on our own that one can crit­i­cize Kantar’s offi­cial ver­sion, which is assem­bled from indi­vid­ual facts and resem­bles, as Kazakh jour­nal­ist Vadim Boreyko not­ed, Frankenstein. One can and should be scep­ti­cal about open let­ters from a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter, the author of which is pri­mar­i­ly inter­est­ed in extri­cat­ing him­self from the blow. However, the very appear­ance of such “leaks” indi­cates that the cur­rent lead­er­ship of the coun­try, build­ing New Kazakhstan, is not as mono­lith­ic as it would like to seem. This means that Iskakov’s provoca­tive state­ments, which Akorda prefers to ignore for now, will not be the last attempt to “shat­ter” the posi­tion of power.

Family

Kantar launched a chain of events called in the press the “deel­ba­siza­tion” of Kazakhstan. The first pres­i­dent was stripped of almost all his regalia, and pre­vi­ous­ly untouch­able mem­bers of his fam­i­ly were under threat of crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. So far, the author­i­ties have treat­ed his nephew, Abish’s old­er broth­er, Kairat Satybaldy (Satybaldyuly), the harsh­est of all of Nazarbayev’s rel­a­tives. He is cur­rent­ly serv­ing a six-year prison sen­tence for grand lar­ce­ny. Last December, Satybaldy applied for parole, but the court reject­ed him, cit­ing faulty behaviour.

Since the begin­ning of the inves­ti­ga­tion, using the law on the return of ille­gal cap­i­tal, Satybalda’s assets of $1.4 bil­lion have been trans­ferred to the bud­get of Kazakhstan. The total dam­age from Kantar, as the pres­i­dent pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed, amount­ed to $3 bil­lion. That is, Nazarbayev’s nephew cov­ered almost half of this amount.
Over the past months, the wal­lets of the for­mer match­mak­er of the first pres­i­dent, Kairat Boranbayev, who, how­ev­er, man­aged to get out from behind bars on parole, Nazarbayev’s son-in-law Timur Kulibayev, as well as the now deceased younger broth­er Bolat, have become sig­nif­i­cant­ly lighter.

Tokayev, who had pre­vi­ous­ly tried to smooth out the cor­ners, spoke extreme­ly harsh­ly about his predecessor’s entourage at the begin­ning of this year. He said that the polit­i­cal games of Nazarbayev’s clos­est asso­ciates almost tore the coun­try apart. “I believe that there should be no senior and junior pres­i­dents at all. When you leave, leave,” he emphasized.

The addressee of this call took the mis­for­tunes that befell his fam­i­ly with restraint.

“If I said that I was equal­ly hap­py with all the steps tak­en by Kassym-Jomart Tokayev after the January events, then this would not be true. We are all humans. In addi­tion, it is very dif­fi­cult to per­ceive with absolute objec­tiv­i­ty strict deci­sions made in rela­tion to your envi­ron­ment and close rel­a­tives, Nursultan Nazarbayev wrote in his mem­oirs. “And yet, as a per­son who once launched the process of build­ing a legal soci­ety and over­came many dif­fi­cul­ties along the way, the tri­als that befell some of my rel­a­tives, I con­sid­er a harsh les­son not only for them but also for every­one who is in pow­er struc­tures of our state. For me, noth­ing is above the law.”

“He’s a monument!”

The sit­u­a­tion with mon­u­ments to the for­mer pres­i­dent, which one after anoth­er began to dis­ap­pear through­out the coun­try, deserves a spe­cial men­tion in con­nec­tion with “deel­ba­siza­tion.” In recent months, a stat­ue of Nazarbayev has been removed from the grounds of the National Defense University in Astana. Another sculp­ture dis­ap­peared from the atri­um of the National Museum of Kazakhstan under the pre­text of updat­ing the exhibition.

The por­trait of the first pres­i­dent, which hung at the Almaly sta­tion of the Almaty metro, was removed. Finally, the four-meter mon­u­ment to Nazarbayev in Taldykorgan, which par­tic­i­pants in the January riots top­pled over and broke into sev­er­al parts, has not returned to its place, and the oth­er day, under the cov­er of dark­ness, its pedestal was removed.

A kind of cul­mi­na­tion of this sto­ry was the deci­sion of the author­i­ties to per­pet­u­ate the mem­o­ry of politi­cian Zamanbek Nurkadilov, a for­mer ally of Nazarbayev, who lat­er went over to the oppo­si­tion and died at home as a result of three gun­shot wounds, which the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion called sui­cide. In 2024 he would have turned 80 years old. The deci­sion to erect a mon­u­ment to Nurkadilov in his native vil­lage of Kegen (in the Almaty region) was made by President Tokayev. His press sec­re­tary Berik Uali per­son­al­ly hand­ed over a let­ter from the head of state to Nurkadilov’s rel­a­tives. “To hon­our the names of the sons of the peo­ple and give a wor­thy assess­ment of their work is the duty of descen­dants,” the mes­sage said.

Some opti­mists saw in this a hint to the Nazarbayev Family and him­self that they could still face some kind of score.

Author: Анна Козырева
Original arti­cle in Russian: FE. ФЕРГАНА

Translated from Russian by © Google Translate