Expert on Central Asia Kislov: It is not yet clear who organized the marauders and hooligans in Kazakhstan

Daniil Kislov, an expert on Central Asia and founder of the Ferghana.ru project, considers it important to determine who is leading the gangs of marauders who are plundering Alma-Ata and other cities of Kazakhstan. He is confident that organized groups are taking violent actions, but he is not ready to clarify who may be behind these gangs.

In a commentary for RFI, Kislov noted that the protest that began in the western regions of the country was initially peaceful, and this continued later, but at some point unknown people, provocateurs who were brought to the cities by buses, intervened in the situation.

“At the same time, we see that there were no protesters in Almaty yesterday. And call [людей на улицах] protesters or protesters are wrong, they just need to be called bandits or looters. The result was the replacement of this protest economic movement with marauding and street pogroms. At the same time, we at least roughly understand who the initiators of these primary protest actions were. In the same Aktau – these are oil workers and their families – people who have suffered from the increase in gas prices. But we absolutely do not understand who these pogromists are, who replaced the protest, who picked up and spread it across many cities of the country, ”noted Daniil Kislov.

“At the same time, there is no police or security forces in the city. And the authorities show us the anti-terror operation, the cleansing of Almaty. In fact, it looks like a staging, a theatrical performance. We see soldiers walking through the city and from machine guns firing somewhere over houses. But we do not see terrorists who would resist them. Therefore, the picture is rather confusing, ”says the expert.

“It is absolutely clear that the marauders are an organized force. Organized by whom? The authorities, in order to discredit the process and show that we do not need all these “Maidans” and that all the protests are bad, because they end in robberies and murders of civilians and policemen? Or are these pogroms and atrocities organized by some political force against President Tokayev, or against ex-President Nazarbayev? We still do not understand this absolutely, ”the expert emphasized.

He noted that the Kazakh scenario cannot be compared with the Ukrainian Maidan of 2014, when people went for aggression against the authorities, because the authorities had previously used aggression against them and did not enter into any dialogue. “These are completely different things. Today it is just crime and banditry. Who wants to use it? I don’t understand yet, ”said Daniil Kislov.

At the same time, the expert says, the speed of the CSTO’s reaction to the events in Kazakhstan suggests that this could be a well-thought-out plan.

“You know, I’m not a political scientist and I cannot analyze the Kremlin’s game, but you and I have all read the latest article by the former Kremlin ideology leader Vladislav Surkov, who insisted that Russia is an empire and needs to constantly expand. And today, literally a month after this publication, we see as if he was either making a forecast or simply telling us what Moscow would do in the near future. Today’s introduction of the CSTO troops into the territory of Kazakhstan is, of course, not the annexation of Crimea, not the Donbass, but it could be such a quiet, peaceful attempt to “pull” Kazakhstan closer to us, ”the expert noted.