Page 91 - bne magazine February 2022_20220208

bne February 2022
Opinion 91
The West’s tricky relationship with Kazakhstan gets more complicated
Clare Nuttall in Glasgow
Western government officials have long had to reconcile their desire for Kazakhstan’s vast natural resources with the country’s poor record on democracy and human rights.
The eruption of violent protests and their brutal suppression make this relationship more difficult, and the arrival of troops from Russia and other member states of the Russian- dominated Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) at the request of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is no doubt an unwelcome development.
Ever since independence more than 30 years ago Kazakhstan’s long-serving former president Nursultan Nazarbayev pursued a multi-vector foreign policy that combined very close relations with Russia – Kazakhstan was one of the founding members of the Customs Union that later grew into the Eurasian Economic Union – with friendly relations with
a broad range of countries from the West, the Middle East and Asia.
However, the latest developments have re-positioned Kazakhstan firmly in Russia’s backyard, as Tokayev relies on soldiers from Russia and other counties within Moscow’s sphere of influence to re-establish control over the country.
The post-independence oil rush
When the Soviet Union broke up, western oil companies were quick to move in to develop the oil and gas resources of the Caspian Basin in both Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan that had been previously behind the Iron Curtain. As early as 1992, AGIP (now Eni) and British Gas were awarded negotiating rights for Kazakhstan’s Karachaganak field, later signing
a production-sharing agreement (PSA) with the Kazakh government alongside Texaco (now Chevron) and Russia’s Lukoil. Another international consortium later started developing the Kashagan mega field.
Kazakhstan’s geo-strategic importance, and that of its Central Asian neighbours, suddenly increased with the start of the War on Terror after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York
on September 11, 2001. The Muslim yet largely secular states were important allies when it came to the logistics of the war
in Afghanistan and as a stable buffer zone north of the war- torn country. Western governments were therefore willing to ignore the repression of these states’ own populations – not least when it came to keeping a lid on any homegrown Islamic fundamentalism on their own territories.
This combination of economics and geopolitics encouraged western politicians to downplay events such as the December 2011 Zhanaozen massacre in Kazakhstan, the worst violence by the security forces against the population until this week’s events.
Just over three months after the shootings in the western oil town, then US president Barack Obama exchanged warm words with Nazarbayev at the March 2012 Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul. Not mentioning Zhanaozen, Obama’s official statement noted the US’ commercial relations with Kazakhstan and added "interested in discussing with the President efforts to further expand democracy and human rights within Kazakhstan, which will help to lead to further growth and prosperity in the future”.
Meanwhile, former British prime minister Tony Blair gave Nazarbayev advice on how to avoid his image being tarnished by the killings in Zhanaozen. His consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, much criticised for advising countries with poor human rights records, signed a multi-million-pound deal to advise Kazakhstan's leadership on good governance.
Other western government officials wooing Kazakhstan have also struggled to bring together the not very compatible sentiments of ‘let us drill your oil’ and ‘don’t kill protesters’ with an added dash of ‘keep up the good work against fundamentalism’. Politicians on visits to the Central Asian nation have long tended tend to make some bland statements on human rights and democracy largely for the benefit of the audience at home before getting down to the actual business of natural resources deals and infrastructure contracts.
The traffic has gone two ways; not only have western investors flocked to Kazakhstan; the new class of super-rich Kazakhs favour London and other western cities to buy properties
and secure their money. In a December 2020 feature, RFE/
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