The Kazakh-Kyrgyz Rift

A Time interview with Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev conducted after the UN General Assembly in September and released only a few days before the Kyrgyz presidential election in October was filled with soft-ball questions and led, naturally, with geopolitics.

“Let's start with the big geopolitical issue for the Kyrgyz Republic,” Ian Bremmer began. “Your country has great relations with Russia, a country that also is increasingly tied economically to China. Do you see growing tensions between your Russia relations and your China relations?”

Atambayev dismissed the notion: “You know, I don’t see big problems with it.”

Some observers of Central Asia are obsessed with geopolitics, as if nothing moves politically or economically in the region without Russian or Chinese influence. But some of Central Asia’s most important politicking occurs between states in the region, not with outside bastions of power.

A case in point: The highest drama in last month’s Kyrgyz presidential election was inspired by the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan bilateral relationship.

Immediately after dismissing the geopolitical question, Atambayev went on sneak in a jab at the neighbors. “Of course,” he said “some countries in the region don’t approve of our chosen path of parliamentary democracy. They don’t like it that the President of Kyrgyzstan has decided to be in office for only a single term. Some leaders think we are giving a bad example for their people.”

This echoed Atambayev’s September 20 UN General Assembly speech, in which he said Kyrgyzstan is the “first and the only country in post-Soviet Central Asia with parliamentary democracy.”

This could have been a reference to nearly all of Kyrgyzstan’s neighbors – they all claim to be democracies, through all except Kyrgyzstan are technically presidential republics. But the criticism is best read as a reference to Kazakhstan.

Meetings With Nazarbayev

On September 19, Omurbek Babanov, a former prime minister, current member of parliament, and a leading presidential candidate from the Respublika Party, met with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in Almaty.

The Kyrgyz foreign ministry quickly fired off an angry note to their Kazakh counterparts: “The Kyrgyz side considers the statements [made during the meeting] and the wide coverage of the meeting by the Kazakh side as an attempt to influence the choice of Kyrgyzstan's people and an interference into Kyrgyzstan's internal affairs.”

The Kazakhs responded, noting their “extreme surprise” at the Kyrgyz reaction. The Kazakhs also pointed out that Nazarbayev had met with Sooronbai Jeenbekov, the candidate from Atambayev’s Social Democratic Party (SDPK), on August 14, in his final week as prime minister before resigning to officially campaign. When Jeenbekov met with Nazarbayev, he’d already been nominated by SDPK to run as Atambayev’s successor.

That Jeenbekov and Babanov were leading the pack as the election approached undermined the sincerity of Atambayev’s umbrage at supposed Kazakh meddling. Further, Jeenbekov’s victory, with 55 percent of the vote to Babanov’s 34 percent, sets him up for a difficult relationship with the region’s preeminent power.

Nevertheless, Atambayev is not one to be dissuaded by either reality or practicality. On October 7, he said, “I understand why the Kazakh authorities want to force their candidate on us. They love [former president Kurmanbek] Bakiyev.” Atambayev added, “To this day, the Bakiyev family goes for its holidays in Kazakhstan.”

Atambayev then dramatically canceled his planned trip to attend the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) summits in Sochi, Russia on October 11, citing the possibility of election unrest.

"Considering the evidence that… certain politicians are planning mass riots on election day, involving criminal elements, and also the financial support of these candidates from abroad, the president has decided to cancel his working visit in order to personally ensure order and security in the country," Atambayev's office said.

Then traffic at Kazakh-Kyrgyz border began piling up. As Eurasianet reported, “Kazakhstan border officials imposed a high-security regime at 6 pm on October 10, massively slowing down the passage of travelers. The Kyrgyz border service then replied with its own high-security regime two hours later.”

A History of Tension

While the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan relationship is not among Central Asia’s worst bilaterals – that prize goes to Uzbekistan’s various bilateral relations under Islam Karimov – Atambayev’s sharp remarks and accusations are not the first blemishes in the relationship.

One need only look at Kyrgyzstan’s haphazard inclusion into the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) to get an understanding of the sometimes fraught relationship between Astana and Bishkek.

In December 2016, more than a year after Kyrgyzstan acceded to the EEU, the Kazakh-Kyrgyz border was not yet fully open to trade – the entire point of joining a customs union. Then-Prime Minister Jeenbekov complained that Kyrgyz products could not enter the common market because Kazakhstan had not removed veterinary and customs controls at the border. Kazakhstan signed an agreement to provide $100 million in technical assistance to resolve the remaining issues but dragged its feet on actually disbursing the funds. The first tranche – $41 million – was reportedly disbursed August 22 before the row erupted.

Another incident that helps illuminate the state of relations between the two states was the infamous May 2016 “toilet cleaning” comment. Kazakh Culture and Sports Minister Arystanbek Mukhamediuly said, during a discussion about the Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov, that “Aitmatov wanted to prevent his people from taking…senseless steps… And really he forecast those negative events that we have witnessed in Kyrgyzstan."

Then the kicker: “When I go to Moscow, it is painful for me to see how young Kyrgyz girls have to clean public toilets there. Since there are no jobs, no prospects in their country, Kyrgyz have to leave.”

Unsurprisingly, Kyrgyz took offense at the minister’s jab. Analysts linked the comments to Kazakhstan’s nervousness about the kind of political upheaval that is more routine in Kyrgyzstan, tying the occurrence of protests and revolutions to the poor economic conditions that motivated thousands of Kyrgyz to migrate for work in Russia. But it also, as I’ll explain a bit more in the next section, reflected a blatant lack of respect for the Kyrgyz state.

Respect and Politics

On October 13, two days ahead of the election, Atambayev’s rhetoric intensified. During a visit to the southern Batken region, the Kyrgyz president said:

Now, a foreign country's moneybags and power holders are imposing their flunky on us...Failing to buy us with their money, they are trying to frighten us...The Kyrgyz people, with at least a 3,000-year history, will never be frightened of a three-day blockade and will never vote for someone's flunky...

In Central Asian politics, accusations of meddling from abroad are usually reserved for the United States and Russia (and increasingly, in economic matters at least, China). But Kazakhstan is in a prime position to elicit resentment from the region, Kyrgyzstan especially.

Let’s return to the Bremmer interview and Atambayev’s UN remarks, which occurred after Babanov’s Almaty meeting with Nazarbayev but before Atambayev began his public rampages about Kazakh influence. While Atambayev’s laudatory comments about Kyrgyz democracy are par for the course, the reference to the neighbors not liking it is quite fascinating.

Kazakhstan loudly proclaims itself a democracy, a title that does not truly hold up to scrutiny. As flawed as Kyrgyz democracy is (and it is flawed), Bishkek trumps Astana when it comes to democratic credentials. To use one measurement, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2016 Democracy Index, Kyrgyzstan came in at 96th out of 167 countries, the middle of the “hybrid-regime” pack. Kazakhstan, however, landed amid the “authoritarian” states at 139th, a few spots below China and just above Zimbabwe.

Nevertheless, Kazakhstan is the richest and internationally best-known Central Asian state. President Nazarbayev has inserted his country (and himself, l’etat c’est moi, after all) into all kinds of international dealings from Iran and nonproliferation to Syria and combatting extremism. This burgeoning international political heft sets Kazakhstan apart – and above – the other Central Asian states.

Put more simplistically: Bishkek is jealous, in a way, of Astana.

Astana frankly gets away with plenty of nondemocratic shenanigans by fiat; meanwhile Bishkek – with the most vibrant political culture, media space, and civil society in the entire region – feels beset with criticisms about human rights, media freedoms, and other issues.

Make no mistake, the criticisms are valid: Atambayev’s government, for example, sued a local media organization out of existence this summer for insulting the president’s honor. Bishkek also completely ignored the ruling of a UN human rights body that Azimjan Askarov, a journalist and activist jailed in 2010 in the wake of the ethnic violence in Osh after the second revolution, should be released – also ignoring its own constitutional mandate to comply with international human rights bodies. Then Atambayev pushed through changes to the constitution to remove the relevant human rights clause, strengthen the prime minister post, and weaken the presidency.

Standing in Bishkek, it certainly doesn’t seem fair that international powers continue to court leaders in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan (no one really tries with Turkmenistan anymore), while “overlooking” Kyrgyzstan.

This is a perception problem more than a real one. Central Asia’s nondemocratic states are subject to plenty of criticism from journalists, researchers, and activists and in terms of aid, Kyrgyzstan receives far more from the United States than its neighbors because of its democratic credentials paired with its relative poverty, as well as the decade it hosted a U.S. military base. But when Uzbekistan receives a delivery of MRAPs from the United States, despite its autocratic political climate, human rights abuses, and total lack of free media, Kyrgyzstan forgets the volume of USAID’s efforts and sees a neighbor rewarded for bad behavior.

In the end, aid is not respect and it is respect which Kyrgyzstan craves.

Notably, in late October Kyrgyzstan began the formal process to reject the $100 million Kazakh aid package mentioned above. Kyrgyz deputy prime minister Duishenbek Zilaliyev said that Kyrgyzstan had gone ahead and built the facilities the aid was meant to help construct, given Kazakhstan’s delays, and that additional facilities would be built with Kyrgyz money.

“Of course it will be hard,” Zilaliyev said “but if we don’t respect ourselves, then nobody will respect us, so we have decided to scrap the [aid] agreement.”

Where the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan relationship goes next will be worth watching closely. At a time when Uzbekistan is cleaning up its bilaterals, the Kyrgyz political party that accused Astana of meddling – a serious charge in Central Asia – seems to have cinched the presidency again in Kyrgyzstan.