Kazakhstan: The family dynamic, with updates

Reviewing recent events:
Last week, I wrote on the Nurbank scandal and the about-face decision to investigate Mr. Aliev rather than to send him out of the country until the scandal died down.  At the time that Mr. Aliev was demoted from his Foreign Ministry position and made Ambassador to Austria, he was feeling his relative impunity well enough to a. admit that he and his wife Dariga Nazarbaeva did still own a great part of the Kazakhstan media empire, and b. to sue, for slander and libel, the wives of the men he allegedly kidnapped and tortured. 

Since then, President Nazarbaev accepted a grateful legislatures’ permission to be exempt from all constitutional term limits, with the ability to run for office indefinitely.  It is worth noting that Mr. Aliev's father, Mukhtar Aliev, was one of the few people quoted as not in favor of this motion.  And apparently, Rakhat Aliev had been making his election plans for 2012 known within the Aliev and Nazarbaev family circles.  

But on Friday, the Kazakhstan government penalized KTK Television and Karavan, two media outlets owned by Aliev & Nazarbaeva, for failure to follow the laws concerning legal percentages of local content broadcasting.  They are closed for three months, which means a loss of market share, advertising revenue, and, quite likely, some heavy fines upon its return to broadcasting.  And on Saturday, Aliev was fired from his post as ambassador to Austria. 

Rakhat Aliev publicly denounced the new constitutional amendment and began discussing his own presidential hopes, and served all this up with accusing President Nazarbaev with election irregularities in 2005.  The coup de grace, as far as I am concerned, is in Rakhat Aliev's newfound fidelity to electoral principles.  Only last summer, he was the one that suggested Mr. Nazarbaev be elected as president for life–only to be shouted down. 

Family feuds?
It's not uncommon for the hook that draws people in to analyses of Kazakhstan politics to emphasize the father versus daughter/son-in-law dynamic.  And it can't be ignored, but there are two other relevant principles to consider when looking at these events.

Two important principles: Kompromat and Krugovaia poruka:
Two Russian informal practices from Alena Ledenava's remarkable lexicon possibly apply here.  The first is kompromat: loosely translated as “compromising material”.  Anyone who has worked with unhappy people understands how kompromat is used.  Whatever you did wrong, from the tiniest misdeed to the largest, at someone else's behest or on your own, can be used against you.  It will keep you quiet about another person's misdeeds, or, the compromising material can come out just as you are competing for that promotion–and someone wants to hold you back.

The second term, krugovaia poruka, can be idiomatically translated as “joint responsibility”.  The illustration in Ledeneva's book shows a cartoon where a circle of businessmen or politicos stand in a circle, each holding a gun on the one in front of him.  In short, the longer you are quiet about the kompromat, or participate in it, the more reciprocal it becomes, until a very small circle of people understand and enable the special deals, grey areas, and non-transparent transactions that bind them all together for a lifetime.  Possibly the closest word to krugovaia poruka in English would be collusion: something less pointed than a conspiracy, but more constant, and in effect, a community-building experience among a certain group.

When the kompromat hits the fan
Using these two concepts,  Mr. Aliev's vulnerability was 1. KTK's and Karavan's broadcast content, something that had surely been occurring all along, and 2. the Nurbank scandal, which is hardly resolved.  Mr. Nazarbaev's vulnerability is the alleged electoral fraud, with it counting against OSCE chairmanship.  However, the OSCE had already deemed Kazakhstan's elections ‘not free, not fair’.  The criminal trials attendant on its worst aspects (the deaths of Mr. Nurkiladov and Mr. Sarsenbaev) had already taken place.  Mr. Aliev's kompromat on Mr. Nazarbaev is therefore not as good as Mr.  Nazarbaev's on Mr. Aliev. 

Second, to bring up these elections again has the potential to break the “joint responsibility” pact that may have been involved in those elections.  If Mr. Nazarbaev is not in the clear for election fraud, then Mr. Aliev is not either.  

Deja vu
Ironically, one most damaging press story on the murders of Mr. Nurkiladov and Mr. Sarsanbaev, two contending candidates in the last presidential elections, was written by Dariga Nazarbaeva: a story called “Deja vu.”  The article was intended to have its readers look away from the Nazarbaev family to other people with axes to grind.  “Deja vu” inspired a lot of commentary on family rivalries in Kazakhstan: one particular article on family rivalry I have repeatedly used in these pages.  But Ms. Nazarbaeva's article also had the opposite effect of confirming one faction's accusations. 

For those of you that read Russian, the story is linked below.  The most relevant paragraph of the article immediately follows, translated to English.  Brackets indicate explanatory notes, and parenthesis denote editing:

The Chairman of the National Security Committee, General Dutbaev immediately presented to the Head of State [President Nazarbaev] his version (of events): a member of the President's family stands behind the crime – either Rakhat Aliev [married to Dariga Nazarbaeva], Timur Kulibaev [married to Daniya Nazarbaeva], or Kayrat Satybaldy. The same delirious theory contradicts well-known facts, in (concert with those that) fan the hysterical "independent publications" and anonymous commentators in the Internet. Deja vu!

In this and other parts of the story, she tracks the workings of Kazakhstan's internal security as increasingly factionalized after 2001, when Mr. Aliev was no longer associated with it.  However, it also pointed out that Mr. Aliev had been associated with internal security.  The above passage also shows Ms. Nazarbaeva deriding alternate press agencies and Internet along with other political factions and opposition members.  It didn't help in that sphere either.  Dariga Nazarbaeva and Rakhat Aliev lost some portion of their media empire over this story, and Ms. Nazarbaeva also merged her Asar political party into President Nazarbaev's political party shortly thereafter.  Then all was apparently calm until Nurbank scandal of January. 

Under these new Aliev v. Nazarbaev controversies, the spectre of family rivalry, at the Nazarbaev family's dining table and between families, rises again.  Much of this speculation has to do with our own understanding of family dynamics, and may not be relevant, even if it explains things to our satisfaction.  Therefore, using the concepts of kompromat and krugovaia poruka, this is my conclusion: I don't think Rakhat Aliev has the resources to win this battle.  He likely has the capability to sling kompromat in full, but it seems that there is plenty, probably, to sling back.  Mr. Aliev has already lost the subtlety contest, but these immediate steps against him should also be viewed as fair warning to become again circumspect. 

There's bound to be new developments in future. . . . check back . . . .

Update, May 29, 2007, 6:00 a.m.: The state of Kazakhstan has sent a team of prosecutors to Vienna to attempt to arrest Mr. Aliev.  The BBC article is here.

Update, May 29, 10:00 a.m.: The NGO International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) has reported that the closures of KTK-TV, Karavan newspaper, and Nurbank have extended into quarantine of the employees of these establishements.  Journalists, publishers, and bank officials have been held in situ.  In the case of KTK, a warrant was presented; at Karavan, no documents were supplied.  Furthermore, employee cell phones have been disconnected so their status has been unobtainable.   

Further Reading:
Three different analyses on why Mr. Nazarbaev accepted presidential exceptions
RFE/RL 's most excellent Bruce Pannier on restricted media ownership in Kazakhstan
One of my most-cited articles from RFE/RL about the Sarsenbaev murder and trial, family dynamics, and other issues, by the great Daniel Kimmage
Ðâ₠ежа вю: Deja vu in Russian, (thank you Dr. Sean Roberts)
A very useful analysis by The Roberts Report on Rakhat Aliev
You can get Alena Ledenava's book —  see Worth Reading Page for information

Photos: Peoples.ru; Kazakhstan Today