Just imagine a huge Muslim state, the ninth biggest country in the world, one of the richest with natural resources on the globe. Imagine a place where you can freely stroll the streets wearing a badge with the Israeli flag, where anti-Semitism is a weird, unknown social disease and people respect their Jewish neighbors and the Jewish state.
Rabbi Yeshaya Cohen, Kazakhstan's chief rabbi, blows a shofar in front of Astana's main synagoge in 2004.
Photo: Tovah Lazaroff/Jpost
Imagine a Muslim country in the vicinity of Afghanistan and Pakistan where Islamic extremism does not exist. Imagine a place with one of the highest economic growth rates in the world, an island of stability in a quite heated region.
This place is called Kazakhstan.
The sixth annual Eurasian Media Forum (EAMF), a unique platform for East-West dialogue, recently took place in Almaty, Kazakhstan's former capital. For three days, beginning April 19, more than 600 delegates from 50 countries, including prominent politicians and journalists from leading news media outlets, gathered at the Intercontinental Hotel's conference hall to discuss the most important issues on the world's and region's agenda.
For the first time in the history of the EAMF, a delegation of Israeli experts, sent by the Foreign Ministry, participated. They took part in the sessions on Iraq's future development, Iran's nuclear program, Kazakhstan's bid to chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and media glamorization.
As former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami attended the Forum, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev called upon Iran to follow his country's lead.
"Our country was the first in the world to shut down the largest nuclear-weapons test site and voluntarily renounce nuclear weapons, thus strengthening the foundation for the nonproliferation system," he said. "Our renunciation of nuclear weapons in exchange for guarantees from nuclear-weapon states was Kazakhstan's strategic choice based on our understanding of our global responsibility. We call on other countries to follow our example. First of all, we direct this call to countries seeking nuclear weapons."
Nazarbaev said today's crisis in international politics was a "clear manifestation of ineffectiveness of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the lack of noticeable progress in disarmament."
But no progress was made on the issue at the Forum. Khatami expressed a willingness to conduct a dialog, but skipped the session where he was supposed to meet the Israeli representative.
The Iraqi issue was also a bit of a disappointment, mostly because of British MP George Galloway's astonishingly rude, baseless and tasteless attacks on US President George W. Bush. When Israeli journalist Tzvi Yehezkely asked him about the Sunni and Shi'ite conflict in Iraq, Galloway responded by saying Israel was a main reason for the war. Richard Holbrooke, chairman of the Asia Society and former US ambassador to the UN, became so irritated by such remarks that he left the podium.
The issue of Kazakhstan's OSCE chair was attention-grabbing, and some progress was reached during the session. This topic, despite being seemingly far from Israel's sphere of interest, is quite important. There are several reasons why it would be beneficial for Israel if Kazakhstan receives the chair of this organization.
Kazakhstan is a moderate Sunni state that has good relations with Israel, including more than $800 million in trade annually. It's a great place for doing business, and many Israelis are already active here, investing in several spheres, from energy and mineral-resources extraction to construction. This country is developing and rebuilding itself at a very rapid rate.
In terms of stability and openness, it is a much more trustworthy country than Pakistan, one of the main US allies in Asia. This is simply another world, another Islam, tolerant and respecting other religions. Kazakhstan breaks the stereotype Israel being at odds with the whole Muslim world.
The Kazakh population and society is much more prone to develop in a Western direction than any other population in the region. And if we consider possible religious confrontation in the world, the descendants of Genghis Khan, as they like to see themselves, are the best defense line in Asia, and a possible mediator for reconciliation. In fact, they are trying to make all of this part of their new national ideology, built on the idea of being a bridge between the East and the West.
Secondly, at the tactical level, considering our sometimes-strained relations with the EU, it would be rather advantageous for Jerusalem to have such a friendly state as Kazakhstan chairing one of the biggest European-based organizations.
To survive, the Kazakh leadership has managed to reach compromises on many levels with its aggressive neighbors - superpowers China and Russia. It would be a walk in the park for Astana, Kazakhstan's capital since 1997, to mediate on issues it understands better than Brussels does.
The Kazakh leadership knows how hard it is to fight Islamic terrorism, so we may acquire an ally, capable of explaining and supporting our position.
Thirdly, the objection to Kazakhstan's bid to chair OSCE seems to be full of double standards, similar those Israel has contended with in the world political arena for years. Breaking them will create a favorable precedent.
There are claims that Kazakhstan is not democratic, not free enough, has a high level of corruption and cannot become a leader of the 56 states of the OSCE. Some of that is true, but to what extent? Are the local realities taken into account, while considering the issues?
Kazakhstan is a democratic state, even though some Western institutions claim its elections have been rigged, with close to 90 percent of the population voting for Nazarbaev and his party. But why wouldn't people prefer Nazarbaev, who has the economy developing at an even quicker rate than China's, to somebody else?
And why wouldn't they prefer Nazarbaev, whose security services managed to eradicate all the Islamic militants in the huge Central Asian country? Neighboring Uzbekistan almost turned into a Taliban-like state, and 10,000 Uzbek mujahideen fighters are "wandering" in the region from Afghanistan to Pakistan, taking part in the local jihad.
