Page 60 - bne magazine February 2022_20220208

60 I Special focus I Kazakhstan bne February 2022
January 4 the next wave of protests were muted. The government stepped back and allowed the ransacking to go on but only now they say they are back in control,” he added.
While RT is reporting on widespread vandalism and looting of banks and stores, our correspondent says the only obvious victim is the large Magnit shopping mall in the centre, which has been attacked, but there is no widespread looting.
Another factor at play is that, as bne IntelliNews has reported, Tokayev appears to have opportunistically taken advantage to the crisis to remove the last hold on power of the former Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Tokayev took over Nazarbayev’s job as head of the National Security Council, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, and has replaced key figures in the administration, including the head of the security services, with people loyal to himself.
“Nazarbayev’s name has disappeared from reporting in the last two days; [he] fled the country on January 5 and is now believed to be in Switzerland,” bne IntelliNews' correspondent says. “Officially Tokayev now holds all the levers of power.”
Blood on the street
Despite all these complications, the protests in Almaty and elsewhere have clearly got out-of-control and there most certainly have been casualties and deaths. Below bne IntelliNews reports on what has been broadcast and shared, but we emphasise that none of the
posts or videos released can be verified. Moreover, we strongly suspect that some or possibly even all of the posts could
be fake, as clearly both the Russian and Kazakh authorities have been trying to manipulate the information reaching the public to bring the protests to an
end sooner in the case of the Kazakhs
by terrorising the population, and to justify sending Russian troops to another country in the case of the Russians.
While information is sketchy, it is clear that there were major clashes between protesters and Kazakh police
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and in many incidents the protesters outnumbered the police who were not in control of the situation. Many of these reports were posted on social media before the internet was turned off during the afternoon of January 5.
Some 109 people have been hospitalised, according to official news reports, of which almost all were police officers, strongly suggesting that the demonstrators have had the upper hand on the second day of protests.
On January 5 those reports were followed by new reports of deaths amongst the security services. The Kazakh Internal Affairs Ministry says 10 police and national guard troops were killed in clashes with protesters and another 317 injured during unrest in several regions of Kazakhstan, Russian news service RIA reported. These early reports of the 10 dead policemen made no mention of any beheadings.
The social media that was still possible to release on January 5 showed copious video of protesters fighting with police and openly smashing and burning police cars and vans.
In another clip a group of about 20 protesters surrounded an officer in full riot gear and wrestled a shotgun from him and walked away with it. Shotguns are standard issue in protests and
used for crowd control but usually fire non-lethal birdshot rather than deadly ammunition. During the Belarusian demonstrations in the summer of 2020 there were several confirmed reports of the use of shotguns firing birdshot against protesters.
But the most disturbing video (WARNING: graphic content) to emerge on social media is a clip circulating on Russian Telegram that appears to be shot from inside a morgue, where some 20 body bags are lined up in a small hall that contain what appears to be normal people who are cut and bruised, covered in blood.
Fight for the airport
The one clash that certainly occurred and was confirmed by Tokayev himself was the fight for the airport in Almaty
that was briefly taken over by protesters on January 5, until local security troops recaptured it later in the day.
Tokayev referred to the seizure the next day, saying an assault to recapture it was led by Kazakh paratroopers. However, separately there were reports that Russian Spetsnaz participated in, or even carried out, the operation.
RT broadcast a recorded phone message from a Russian at the airport waiting
to fly out as the airport was taken over. The passenger said that the staff of the airport suddenly left.
“There are eight of us sitting here, but all the staff is leaving. They have not told us anything and they have not tried to evacuate us,” the man said. Other reports described the same events, in reports that cannot be independently verified.
However, by the end of the day the airport was back in the government’s hands, although no details of how that was achieved or if anyone was hurt in the operation were given.
The airport currently remains closed and no flights are going in or out
of any of Kazakhstan’s three main international airports.
Nazarbayev reportedly left Almaty Airport shortly before it fell into the protesters’ hands on January 5 on a private jet, one of the last flights out of the country.
Guns
It also appears highly like that some of the protesters have armed themselves. More social media footage showed men handing out rifles and machine guns in the last two days, getting ready to fight.
In another incident, there were unconfirmed reports that protesters had stormed a National Security Committee armoury in Almaty and emptied it of arms and ammo. The footage showed men emptying lockers and gun racks of arms, while at least one man had an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade).