Tandem Rule in Kyrgyzstan: The Pursuit of Money and Power

Since Kyrgyzstan’s October 2020 revolution, two men have been credibly accused of establishing an authoritarian regime in the country: President Sadyr Japarov and his associate Kamchybek Tashiev, who is currently chairman of the State Committee for National Security Committee (GKNB), the local successor to the KGB. 

The two men came to power in 2020 by skillfully taking advantage of the revolutionary fervor that dominated that year, and that raised so many hopes among the people. To realize their goals, they made quick decisions, competently distributed resources, and capitalized on short-lived alliances with criminal networks and corrupt officials. 

Since then, to consolidate power, they have made significant changes to Kyrgyzstan’s constitution, shifting the country from a parliamentary to a presidential republic, and enacted several repressive laws. Japarov, for example, recently signed a law labeling NGOs in Kyrgyzstan that accept foreign funding as “foreign representatives,” a move that recalls similar laws passed in Russia under President Vladimir Putin. 

Since 2020 there have been persistent crackdowns on dissent, including the arrest of opposition figures, and considerable pressure exerted on the rights of assembly and speech, through the continued banning of rallies and closures (or attempted closures) of independent media outlets. 

The powerful duopoly that Japarov and Tashiev have built for themselves has allowed them to effectively dismantle opposition voices, weaken civil society, and to assert government control over mainstream media. The Japarov-Tashiev tandem has sunk real roots into Kyrgyzstan’s society, and those roots are deeper and stronger than they might seem on the surface.

Some argue that this “rule by tandem” cannot continue forever, or even for very long. When discussing the political future of Kyrgyzstan, it is frequently argued that the country’s small size and limited resources will continue to hinder its political stability. Many experts speculate that the current government is at risk of being overthrown by revolution again in the near future due to these factors. 

This, however, ignores one crucial strength of the Japarov-Tashiev tandem: its ability to accumulate money and use that money to secure power, and not just by simple bribery. This accumulation of money often involves what is known in Kyrgyzstan as “kusturizatsia” and “cooperation.”

Money is a tool for acquiring and consolidating power and eliminating opponents, but in a way, money is no longer merely a symbol. 

What this means – as Johan Engvall has written – is that role of money in present-day Kyrgyzstani politics is so great that it has turned the country into an “investment market state,” one where public offices are bought and sold by state authorities in order to benefit, in terms of personal enrichment but also to provide favored businesses with protection. 

Money plays a crucial role in the political system of Kyrgyzstan, as it enables Japarov and Tashiev to centralize power in their hands. Money – metaphorically speaking – has become the “heart” of Japarov and Tashiev’s tandem. Money allows them to carry on strengthening their authoritarian aims, and money may enable them to stay in the power for a long time.

“Of course” – this is what my interviewees all say when I ask them whether Japarov and Tashiev are amassing wealth, and if money is at the core of their tandem. “Of course they are.” Of course it is.

This lack of surprise among the populace is notable. Simultaneously, my sources (which include businesspeople and politicians, NGO workers and activists, as well as ordinary people) expressed concerns about freedom of speech, noting that people are now afraid of posting critical opinions on social media and feel that everything is under scrutiny (while some of my interviews were done in person, others were done remotely). They feel restricted in openly discussing Japarov and Tashiev. 

It is important to provide a brief background on the role of informal networks in the events that brought Japarov and Tashiev to power before we move to the heart of tandem rule.

The Tandem’s Rise to Power: The Role of Informal Networks

To win and keep power, Japarov and Tashiev have relied on informal social networks, whose value lies in their flexibility and the access they provide to different political actors. That access has allowed the tandem to shape political support by playing, masterfully, on people's ideas of hope. It also enabled the use of tactics and strategies of co-optation, division, and interference, and it is these tactics and strategies that have transformed the present-day political dynamics of Kyrgyzstan.

Japarov and Tashiev brought in their own relatives (including those by marriage) and friends, putting them in key positions. These individuals, in turn, have brought in their own relatives, close and distant alike, in order to strengthen the network.

How can we understand the blurring of the boundaries of state, family, business and criminal networks in Kyrgyzstan? How should we conceptualize, for example, the difficulties facing anyone who doesn’t want to pay bribes and shares (dolya) to state officials and others with the power to extract them? 

Criminal networks, corrupt officials, affinity networks, and kinship are the key concepts here. Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in 2009 demonstrated how to analyze these different dimensions of informal network practices and their “embeddedness” in social life and moral values. Embeddedness – that sinking of deep and strong roots into a society, regardless of the consequences for that society – relies on three types of reciprocity: generalized, balanced, and negative. Sahlins’ ideas explain the dynamics of a situation like the one in which Kyrgyzstan currently finds itself.

The strategy of appointing friends and relatives to positions of power is an intentional one, as is the choice those so appointed make to bring in their friends. This is Sahlin’s generalized reciprocity at work, making it necessary to reward those who have helped and trusted you. Outside of kinship and marriage, Japarov also uses balanced reciprocity, or exchanges between interested groups (business alliances, political parties, economic alliances, and corrupt officials). Balanced reciprocity involves transactions between interested parties who have mutual interests, and who benefit from each other’s in the short-term or the long run. Reciprocation for a favor, service, or other needs may occur in the future, but the exchange is based on trust, mutual equal interests, and connections.

When it comes to understanding Kyrgyzstan’s current condition, negative reciprocity may be the most important of Sahlins’ concepts. In relations of negative reciprocity, one side gains from an exchange at the expense of the other. 

Although Japarov and Tashiev positioned themselves against symbols of corruption when he was seizing power, since then, their informal networks have consistently mobilized criminal networks. In this mobilization, negative reciprocity has been utilized between the tandem and criminal leaders, all of whom have different interests. On the one hand, Japarov used the criminal networks to return the “rule of law” and “social order” to the streets. Criminals were also used by Japarov to shield himself against other, competing, political opposition groups. 

At the beginning of his rule Japarov notably did not touch the true leaders of the criminal world and its most influential criminal “authority,” Kamchybek Kolbaev. Despite the serious charges against him, Kolbaev was released from prison in March 2021 by Japarov. He also tried to establish negative reciprocity with the smuggler Raimbek Matraimov, but in the end both sides had to accept certain costs: Matraimov lost financial resources, while Japarov lost authority and legitimacy in the eyes of a small portion of the opposition. In the end Japarov used Matraimov to make more money, and then had him arrested again. 

Japarov’s team didn’t just take power in the country within a short period of time through the mobilization of criminals and corrupt officials like Matraimov. They also rallied parliamentarians and tapped into public discontent to force the previous president to resign. 

Things have begun to change since Japarov and Tashiev have started consolidating power into their hands. 

At the Heart of the Tandem: Money and Performance

Money, and the process of collecting money, is what builds and strengthens the Japarov-Tashiev tandem. That wealth is translated into power by strengthening the “friendship” ties that bind different groups of people (raised in different parts of Kyrgyzstan) together under an umbrella of solidarity, loyalty, interdependence. 

Performative displays are widely used by Japarov and Tashiev in order to strategically deploy the image of an “eternal” friendship and thus shape public opinion and influence the political situation.

As one of my sources, Anvar, 38, said: “Recently there was a rumor that someone saw the sons of Tashiev and Japarov fighting in a club, and as a result people began to be concerned about the friendship of the two. After these incidents, Tashiev and Japarov appeared in public and gave an image that ‘we are friends forever’ and ‘together we are the power.’ 

“Our first reaction was that they are telling us a fairy tale,” Anvar continued. “First of all, they have never been friends, especially in politics, [where] there is no friendship, only interests. Only money keeps them together as ‘the best friends forever.’” 

As highlighted by anthropologists, money is the medium through which interests are exchanged in transactions between parties, irrespective of any other connections or relationships among them. Money is like blood in that it is a relational and generative object; money is the blood of the tandem. 

Moreover, money can be viewed as a means of keeping track of the complex social networks generated by all people through social activity. In doing so, it has effects very unlike what professor Keith Hart called “the impersonal model of money and markets offered by economics.” By following the argument of anthropologist Ina Zharkevich, who identified monetary remittances as the substance of relatedness, capital accumulation is a practice through which the tandem is produced and reproduced across time and space. 

As Janet Carsten, another anthropologist, put it, money inspires metaphors of growth and fertility, and thus has the capacity for “vitality” and “animation.” In this regard, the flow of money in and through informal networks of the tandem animates the life of that power duopoly (the flow of money from businessmen to Japarov and Tashiev, dispossessions, and “peredel sfer vliyaniya” or “redistribution of spheres of influence”). Within those informal networks, it is the “flow, circulation, and liquidity” of money that indicates its inherent capacity to regenerate life and social relations. 

If the tandem is strong, then it owes its strength to its possession of a preventive fund (money), which allows exchange, enables flow from one domain to another (persons, institutions, projects), and which possesses the quality of animation. 

But who and what does it animate?

Kusturizatsia

Japarov and Tashiev have initiated what they claim to be “anti-corruption” efforts under      “kusturizatsia” and “cooperation,” which can be viewed as two steps within the same system. 

As I’ve written previously for The Diplomat:

Kusturizatsia, a term derived from the word for “vomiting” in Kyrgyz, is used to refer to those who damage the state through corrupt practices and economic crimes (such as stealing from the state budget or not paying taxes), and are then forced to pay compensation to the state when they are discovered.

These tactics target individuals who fail to comply with the rules of the game; rules defined by the tandem. 

While asking about kusturizatsia, a group of interviewees told me that whenever they discuss the current situation in Kyrgyzstan, the first thing to be discussed is the future – or the lack of a future – for their children, at least in the business world. It would be impossible to dream about being business owners, they told me, for a successful businessperson would immediately be forced to surrender their business to the tandem. 

“This is unfortunately our future for our children. Because the business is squeezed and the business cannot stand up.” 

The system works like this: When corrupt practices are detected, the perpetrators (mainly influential politicians and prominent businessmen) are given time to voluntarily pay compensation for the damage to the state, under the threat of possible detention if they don’t. Thus, kusturizatsia represents, essentially, the legalization of corrupt activities by prominent businessmen and politicians. It occurs outside the rule of law, even if that fact has been covered up by Japarov’s preferred phrase for the scheme: “economic amnesty.”

After “vomiting,” business are then coerced into “cooperation.” This refers to cooperation with unknown “sponsors,” criminal networks and rich (and corrupt) officials – and it is a relationship that allows the tandem to accumulate money, reciprocate favors, redistribute cash transfers, and preserve its power. 

Business and businesspeople so targeted either cooperate or are crushed. At the moment, any large business can be squeezed, whether engaged in trade, transport, or construction. 

The whereabouts of the money coughed up or squeezed out is unknown, because it is lodged (apparently) in a separate account belonging to the security service, and thus enjoys the status of a top national secret. There is no transparent information about the funds, especially about how much money has come back into the budget or how it has been spent. There’s no reason to believe that the funds returned via kusturizatsia are not themselves also plundered. 

And not everyone is offered this golden opportunity to reimburse the state; the eligibility criteria are a mystery. 

Finally, as noted above, the policy has arguably led to investors fleeing Kyrgyzstan en masse for more predictable markets abroad, but we don’t know the full extent of the damage to Kyrgyzstan’s economy and reputation. 

This is yet another role money plays in consolidating and maintaining power in ways that are both vast and intricate. This is possible because there is literally no distinction between economic and political elites; they are one and the same.

Unknown Sponsors 

In Kyrgyzstan, many new buildings for law enforcement bodies are being constructed outside of the state budget using money donated by unidentified and unknown individuals. What’s more intriguing is that these anonymous donors are referred to as “sponsors.” 

For example, the GKNB departmental headquarters in the Jalal-Abad region was built at the expense of unknown “sponsors” whose names Tashiev did not disclose. These sponsors gave about $1.2 million (100 million soms) to the GKNB for a new office in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan. 

In the same region, in the summer of 2021, another unknown sponsor provided money for new housing for Jalal-Abad law enforcement personnel, a detail revealed by Tashiev during the ceremony that marked the building’s construction.

Kloop, a well-respected independent Kyrgyz media outlet, documented a case in 2021 where the head office of the Ministry of Interior in Bishkek was renovated with funds from sponsors, whose names were not disclosed because “they wished to remain anonymous.” 

One of my sources had a ready explanation for this: “Of course, Tashiev would not openly admit that he squeezed business profits and diverted funds to renovate public offices.” 

Consolidation of Power: Money and the Fates of Rivals

The scale of the economic resources that are controlled by Japarov and Tashiev is impressive. These include: 1) the withdrawal of money from criminal networks; 2) payoffs from corrupt officials (these occur through the GKNB within the kusturizatsia framework); 3) so-called voluntary contributions of businesses for supporting “social projects;” and 4) via collaboration with Russian efforts to bypass sanctions introduced since the outbreak of the Ukraine war two years ago. 

These aspects of the power exercised by the tandem are highlighted by the ultimate fates of Matraimov and Kolbaev. The former was the organizer of smuggling schemes worth billions of dollars. The latter was a central “thief in law” (or authority figure in a vast criminal network), and he and his close relatives and followers had illegal financial activities in the tourism, construction, trade, and restaurant sectors. Kolbaev was also connected with smuggling, international drug trafficking, robberies, and kidnappings. Matraimov has been permitted to live; Kolbaev was killed in a Bishkek pub.

According to my interviewees, the situation involving Matraimov reflects the foundation of the current tandem’s power. People continue to be outraged about the entire scenario, for they know that, initially, in their ascent to power, Japarov and Tashiev supported Matraimov. Subsequently, however, the pair had him arrested, so as to extract money from him. Later, they permitted Matraimov to leave the country for a time, during which they received additional money from him. Now, they have brought him back to extract even more money, as he possesses substantial influence and wealth. They have opted to keep him under control as he represents a threat to the tandem.

Since the death of Kolbaev – which I discuss in more detail below –  Matraimov’s influence has begun to wane. Matraimov helped protect Kolbaev’s business interests, and, in return, Kolbaev protected Matraimov. They both harbored ambitions in the realm of politics. Together, they facilitated the rise of Japarov and Tashiev to power, but they have since been ousted (or killed), and their financial assets have been confiscated. 

Japarov and Tashiev removed their former partners because both of them were threats to the tandem’s power.

Kolbaev was a “criminal leader,” but much more than that phrase might imply – and this is why his shooting in a Bishkek pub in October 2023 remains one of the most significant events of the tandem era. 

One of Kyrgyzstan’s opposition leaders claimed that “after the death of the thief-in-law Kolbaev, Tashiev took over his mobile and immobile properties, but also all kinds of financial resources (construction company, custom, bazaar)... Tashiev distributed all these to his son and his informal networks. All these resources belong to Tashiev.”

The death of Kolbaev immediately set in motion a major redistribution of property. This involved not only the property of the newly deceased Kolbaev, which is estimated at more that $1.5 billion (one-third of the country's budget), but also the detention of businessmen who had paid tribute to Kolbaev.

Regardless of what reasons truly lay behind the circumstances of Kolbaev's death, what ultimately matters is the fact that Japarov and Tashiev now have even greater opportunities to earn money than ever before by confiscating Kolbaev’s financial resources and monopolizing his businesses.

The death of Kolbaev has inspired various forms of speculation, which usually link his demise to geopolitical changes and the need to bypass sanctions. According to Kloop, some connect his death to the trade in smuggled goods from China, the scale of which can be enormous. Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the transportation of goods through Central Asia has become too important for a Russia that wishes to circumvent Western sanctions, meaning that for Japarov and Tashiev it has become too serious an international resource to leave in the hands of criminals. 

The suspicion then arises that Kolbaev’s killing may be related to the control of smuggling flows. The reasoning here relies on the fact that on the same day as the shooting, the former deputy head of Kyrgyz customs, Matraimov, was summoned for questioning by the GKNB.

Kyrgyzstan has been open to the new opportunities that have emerged as a result of the war in Ukraine. There is money to be made from bypassing sanctions, a niche now solely controlled by Japarov and Tashiev supporters.

Since the war started, Russia has greatly increased its imports of technology from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which are both member countries of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, Radio Azattyk, released an investigative report in June 2023 detailing the fact that companies in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are selling “dual-use” technologies – those with both civilian and military applications – to Russian firms connected to Russia’s military. Meanwhile, Western countries are trying to stop such sales through Central Asia. Russian weapons used in the Ukraine conflict have been found, on more than one occasion, to contain parts from electronic equipment produced by big American companies like Texas Instruments and Analog Devices, possibly routed through Central Asia.

Conclusion

What promotes strong tandem cooperation, mutual support, and the persisting role of friendship in a context of geopolitical changes is a separate account, called, locally, spetz schet. This is the money that, when circulating within Japarov’s and Tashiev’s networks, becomes the substance of tandem power in local politics. It’s a closed system of asymmetric exchange in which the tandem extracts rent, resources, and favors in return for patronage and protection – but wealth remains firmly within their control.

Money plays a crucial role in consolidating power by linking the personal ambitions of individuals – Japarov and Tashiev – to larger informal networks with informal safety nets. Money also assists in the reproduction of the tandem, and the production of new networks and ways of controlling people. Money allows its controllers to buy off political opponents and supporters, to divert journalists into producing “fake news,” and to maintain criminal networks. It also transforms the tandem structure itself, prioritizing those who contribute to the foundation and threatening the exclusion of those who do not. 

Money serves to reinforce the tandem’s cohesion, yet it also holds the potential for future conflict. Even though both Japarov and Tashiev appear to be benefiting from their friendship, there are already rumors that suggest the tandem is not so solid. Currently, money amounting to billions (from various sources such as racketeering, customs, transportation, trade, and energy) is flowing into their coffers, but this dynamic may shift in the future. 

At the moment, and despite the rumors, the allure of wealth motivates both Japarov and Tashiev to maintain a facade of unity and preserve their collective power through performance of that unity. While money currently bolsters their authority, it also poses a looming threat to their future stability. 

The next step is to closely monitor the trajectory of the tandem, the tensions and disagreements within its networks, and the performance of “friendship” between the tandem’s two heads. Sahlins’ modes of negative reciprocity have, so far, brought a kind of stability and security with tandem rule in Kyrgyzstan. 

Who can really say whether that stability will last forever?