The president Nursultan Nazarbayev is seriously concerned by the situation in the country and fears a growth in the protest movement associated with the difficult socio-economic situation. The question is, how ready is he for such a turn of events? It is obvious that both Aktobe and the attempted coup provide the authorities with a convenient excuse to toughen their control of the country still further.
On 5 June 2016 a group of people attempted to seize two firearms shops in the city of Aktobe in Kazakhstan and to break into a military post. A clash took place, leaving a number of dead and wounded. The city declared the highest level of alert and launched a counter-terrorism operation. Several more people were killed in the following days – the total number of gunmen killed reached 18.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the “Kazakhstan Liberation Army”, an organization which no one had previously heard of, and which experts regarded as the invention of journalists. It seems that’s what it is, since an organization with such a grand title would not launch its “political career” with an action which is more like a bandit raid.
There are also doubts about the claim that the action in Aktobe was the work of some kind of “sleeper cell” of Islamic extremists which needed weapons in order to do its work. True, recent years have seen the emergence in Kazakhstan of a whole network of Islamist “groups” linked to radical extremists in the Middle East, where several hundred of their accomplices have already gone (although the number is down this year). The way the attack was organized, however, is not characteristic of Islamists, particularly as it took place on the first day of Ramadan, the Muslim fast.
Meanwhile the Kazakhstan authorities have stated that a coup d’état planned by a group of security officials and military officers has been successfully thwarted. The plotters were led by the businessman Tokhtar Tuleshov, who is currently in prison.
In May of this year the security services prevented demonstrations (with those taking part allegedly promised 150 US dollars each) planned in several cities – Astana, Almaty, Aktobe, Semey, Uralsk and Pavlodar – against the planned changes to Kazakhstan’s land laws. The only city where a protest took place – involving, according to various reports, between 700 and 4,300 people – was Atyrau. According to the National Security Committee, the protests were financed by Tuleshov.
The plotters probably had nothing to do with the episode in Aktobe. At any rate, so far nothing has been said about their being involved in it.
In the light of the protests against the land law changes, the country’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev called on the population to be vigilant and not to allow stability and mutual respect to be undermined. It is significant that Nazarbayev makes this kind of appeal extremely rarely.
Nazarbayev’s response shows that the president is seriously concerned by the situation in the country and fears a growth in the protest movement associated with the difficult socio-economic situation. The question is, how ready is he for such a turn of events? It is obvious that both Aktobe and the attempted coup (doubts are being expressed that it actually took place and was not a provocation) provide the authorities with a convenient excuse to toughen their control of the country still further.
