Kazakhstan’s Tokayev announces swift end to Russian-led intervention, reorganizes security forces

“The main mission of the CSTO peacekeeping forces has been successfully completed. In two days, a phased withdrawal of the CSTO united peacekeeping contingent will begin. The process of withdrawing the contingent will take no more than 10 days,” Tokayev told a meeting of Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament.

Kazakh authorities detained almost 10,000 people during a tough crackdown on the unrest; Tokayev said during a televised address to the nation that he had given security forces shoot-to-kill orders. At least 164 people died in the violence, according the Kazakh authorities, including 16 law enforcement officers.

Tokayev, who claimed Monday that his government faced a coup attempt by terrorists, told the parliament that the appeal for CSTO forces was “legally grounded.” He has said CSTO forces did not take part in suppressing the unrest but guarded buildings and infrastructure vital to national security.

Kazakh authorities imposed an Internet blackout during the crisis and barred foreign journalists from entering the country to report on events there.

The CSTO’s intervention marked its shift from a largely symbolic grouping seen as the region’s answer to NATO to one tasked with protecting autocratic governments facing domestic strife, including the popular uprisings that in the past have ousted pro-Moscow governments in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere, events often dubbed “color revolutions.”

The crisis also saw a power struggle at the top levels of the country as Tokayev moved to marginalize his predecessor, 81-year-old Nursultan Nazarbayev, who resigned as president in 2019 after nearly 30 years in office but retained power over the country’s security forces as chairman of the national security council.

Tokayev took over as security council head on Jan. 5 as the crisis peaked, dismissing Nazarbayev, whose whereabouts are unknown. He also fired Karim Masimov, the head of the security services and a figure close to Nazarbayev, who was then arrested and charged with treason on Jan. 8.

Alexander Libman, head of the politics department at the Free University of Berlin, an expert on authoritarian regimes, said it appeared Tokayev had used the protests and CSTO intervention to strengthen his power. He argued that Tokayev had not lost complete control of the country and would have coped without the CSTO.

“Kazakhstan would probably have managed on its own but it needed some sort of signal that other Eurasian powers stood with Tokayev and that’s how the CSTO was used.” He said Tokayev needed a show of acceptance by Russian President Vladimir Putin, amid the power struggle between the country’s elites.

“For him it was important to show to people, to the elites of Kazakhstan, that ‘I’m the person Putin’s betting on and that’s why he’s sending troops to Kazakhstan,’ said Libman, adding that the question now was if Tokayev would continue to need the Russian-led troops to stay in power.

Tokayev further consolidated his grip on the security apparatus Tuesday, ordering a total reorganization of the country’s security structures, including setting up new units in the National Guard and boosting its size. He also named a new prime minister, Alikhan Smailov, and government.

“We have to restructure the work of our armed forces, law enforcement agencies, national security agencies, foreign intelligence. All of them must work together in the name of one goal — the maximum effective protection of our citizens, the constitutional order and sovereignty from threats of any nature and scale,” he said.

Although he froze government salaries for five years, he announced pay increases for special operations personnel across all security forces. He also called for tough new counterterrorism measures “to counter religious extremism.”

In a nod to the outpouring of rage across the country about inequality and corruption — which is largely believed to be behind the protests, aside from the immediate cause, a jump in energy prices — he also ordered wealthy companies that blossomed under the Nazarbayev administration to start make contributions to a national wealth fund.

Tokayev said that thanks to Nazarbayev, “a group of very profitable companies and a layer of wealthy people even by international standards appeared in the country. I believe that the time has come for them to give what is due to the people of Kazakhstan and to help the people on a systematic and regular basis.”

Putin, the dominant figure in the six-nation coalition that also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, strongly backed Tokayev’s call for intervention, telling a meeting of the CSTO on Monday that the organization would not permit color revolutions, which are seen by Moscow as Western-instigated.

“Measures taken by the CSTO have clearly shown that we won’t let anyone destabilize the situation in our home and won’t allow the so-called color revolution scenario to play out either,” Putin said, in comments that emphasized Russia’s idea of a sphere of influence that echoes the old Soviet empire.

He compared the unrest in Kazakhstan to Ukraine’s Maidan revolution in 2014 that ousted pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych and shifted the nation to a more pro-European stance. Putin said, “Maidan technologies of armed and information support for the protests were actively used” in the Kazakh unrest.

Tokayev has yet to present evidence for his claim that the unrest was an organized terrorist attack against the government.

Libman said there was no evidence of foreign or terrorist intervention, except the claims of Kazakh authorities “and even those were extremely imprecise. I don’t see an external threat here at all.”

Putin, however, endorsed Tokayev’s claim — opening the way for the CSTO to be used by embattled autocrats to suppress domestic protests and popular revolutions in the future.

Putin said there were “organized and controlled groups of fighters,” including “people who had apparently received training in terrorist camps abroad.” Their action, “essentially an attack on the country, on Kazakhstan, amounts to an act of aggression,” Putin said.

Read more:

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