Usually I keep my focus on Kazakhstan, but this is a big one. The President-for-life, Saparmurat Niyazov, died Wednesday night of heart failure at age 66. As is well-known, he was an authoritarian leader given to fulfilling whims and crushing dissent. Although there were rumors that his heart was weak, his health was considered top-secret. Thus it isn’t clear if there was a contigency plan or what now follows. Opposition parties are illegal and he goes through Ministers and high officials like flatbread–every failure is accompanied by the sacking of a government official who is then blacklisted. As had been noted, there is no one left to succeed him. Having stripped the educational system, and included study of his “great book” the Rukhnama, a history of the Turkmen people interespersed with sayings and poetry, as a major part of any curriculum, the problem of finding competent successors will last for generations.

There also issues such as what will happen to all the Turkmen gas, and contracts with foreign companies to extract that gas, or foriegn nations to issue that gas. The lessons of dictatorship are all too clear now. Once you give a man too much power, you give the post too much power for anyone to step into.
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I was asked to participate in a cross-blog survey with New Eurasia to predict what Central Asia will look like in 15 years. You can check out the other posts here. And my little dichotomious view is below. I couldn’t come to any solid and concrete conclusions so I ended up with perhaps more of a range of views of how to take Kazakhstan. I really look forward to comments.

The akim of Semey woke up on Independence Day in 2021 in his newly finished residence. The bedroom was gilt in gold, with rich wallpaper based on a 17th century bedroom he’d seen recreated in the British Museum when we studied at LSE. Through the transparent curtains he could see Abay tower, the second tallest tower in Kazakhstan with an observatory on top, and offices of the local Social-Business Corporation, the akimat, and the new Narodnii Bank offices—everything in Italian marble, wireless internet throughout the building, in short the latest technology and comfort!

It had taken a lot of doing to get it down in time for the 16th of December—but as they said no two beams in town were put together by his mat, and he had plenty to go around. He remembered back fifteen years ago when the central government held the budget strings so tightly and being akim was basically carrying out the orders of the President. Then, Astana was the only prestigious city in the country. (more…)