Putting Kazakhstan on the map

In 2006 Kazakhstan faced an identity crisis thanks to Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentary Borat.

By RACHEL MARDER
Sacha Baron Cohen (photo credit: REUTERS)
Sacha Baron Cohen
(photo credit: REUTERS)
In 2006 Kazakhstan faced an identity crisis thanks to Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentary Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. It could choose to be offended by the embarrassing portrayal, or use the moment as a springboard to plant the former Soviet state on the world map. At the end of the day Baron Cohen’s Borat character doesn’t seem to have done a disservice to the Central Asian country of some 16 million.
Of course at first, the country did not appreciate the cinematic jab and Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry even threatened to sue Cohen for his slanderous character.
“We do not rule out that Mr. Cohen is serving someone’s political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way,” Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev said in a 2006 press conference. “We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind.”
But the ninth largest country in the world, which prides itself on its heritage of tribal, nomadic horsemen, quickly toned down its threats and changed its tune, realizing the film had actually plopped it into the world’s consciousness and created a golden opportunity for nation-branding and spreading international recognition, according to Robert Saunders’s 2008 Slavic Review article “Buying into Brand Borat: Kazakhstan’s Cautious Embrace of its Unwanted Son.”
It was a start for the young country, whose government had poured millions into tourism since independence, but after Borat came out actually saw those numbers increase dramatically. A staffer from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that I met on a recent trip to Astana to attend the 14th annual Capital Day events on July 6, celebrating Astana’s culture, history and modern statehood, even seemed grateful for the press Borat provided.
Today, Kazakhstan tries to project the opposite image from the one that first made its name recognizable: modern, innovative, well educated and open-minded.
For this reason, it gets quite defensive when its authoritarian political system and control over freedoms of expression, assembly and religion are discussed.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who came to power in the oil, uranium and mineral-rich state when it gained independence in 1991, has been hard at work over the past 14 years since the capital moved from Almaty to Astana. The leader has striven to make his country a world player with a state-of-the-art capital and impressive architecture in Soviet, classic and modern styles, cultural attractions, and above all, an open door to foreign business and investors.
Calling itself “the golden threshold of Eurasia,” Kazakhstan officials emphasized in interviews its prime geographic location at the crossroads of Russia, Europe, India and China, making it logistically advantageous for business.
Astana, with a population of more than 750,000, has attracted more than $22 billion in investments – $700 million from foreign businessmen. It boasts a laundry list of foreign companies that have set up shop including GE, Chevron and Deutsche Bank, its GDP has increased from 1.5 percent to 10% over the last decade, and in 2010 the World Bank ranked the landlocked nation the 59th country out of a list of 183 with the best business climate. It has the largest economy in Central Asia, producing 30 million tons of wheat last year, as well as helicopters and railway locomotives for foreign markets.
WHEN IT comes to Israel and Iran, Israel and the Palestinians and the Arab world, Kazakhstan does not take sides, wanting to be an ally and business partner to all.
While honoring the UN and Western sanctions on Iran, it continues to sell the Islamic Republic wheat, which does not fall under the prohibitions.
“[If] you need enriched uranium for peaceful needs you will receive from us,” says Israeli Ambassador to Kazakhstan Israel Mey-Ami in an interview in his Astana office, adding that Nazarbayev unequivocally opposes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ambition to build a nuclear weapon. “Ahmadinejad doesn’t totally accept this position but it still stands.”
Kazakhstan possesses up to 15% of the world’s uranium supply, according to experts, but Nazarbayev has pledged that no nuclear material will reach Iran. In December 2009 it was reported that Iran was secretly slated to receive 1,350 tons of purified uranium from the country under an agreement they signed, but Kazakhstan denied the report.
The two countries have strengthened their cultural and academic ties over the years and Kazakhstan shipped oil to Iran in the past, collaborated in the agricultural and energy industries, and on a railway between Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan providing access to the Persian Gulf.
Kazakhstan also doesn’t take a side on Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s unilateral statehood bid to the UN.
“They don’t support this position or a n o t h e r , rather they raise the banner for dialogue [and] bilateral talks in negotiations,” says the ambassador.
Israel and Kazakhstan have enjoyed diplomatic relations for 20 years, and over that period, the latter has attracted Israeli business, investment and technologies, including Israeli entrepreneur David Ben-Nani’s $6 million real-estate investment last year.
“Israel has the best technologies in the world for developing agriculture,” says Meder Maselov, head of Astana-New City’s economic zone, in his office, located in the burgeoning industrial and business section of the city, a bridge away from “Old Astana,” which does not yet feature the grandiose, ultra-modern structures of the new section of the city.
British architect Norman Foster designed several of the spectacular structures, including the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation and the Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center, and his $1 billion Abu Dhabi Plaza is in the works.
Maselov cites Israeli drip irrigation and a couple of Israeli-built greenhouses near the capital growing cucumbers and tomatoes as examples of technology he hopes to bring to his country, which does not naturally grow many fruits and vegetables.
“You have impressive success in this field of agriculture and medicine, and we’re going to work with Israelis and transfer some technologies, give back some of our things, and this is cooperation that I think is very close,” says Maselov. Kazakhstan has also purchased military technology from Israel.
The city official is proud of the long way Astana has come in its economic development, as he shows reporters in the room a photograph of a totally bare capital in 2003 and a completely opposite image taken in 2012, side by side.
“There is no country which is not interesting for Kazakhstan,” he says. “We’re looking for the success stories of countries in the different fields.”
Astana is attracting companies and startups alike with some very attractive tax benefits, exemptions from customs duties for importing equipment, government land grants, and for start-ups, the city will even pay for consultants, Internet and telephone use in the office space.
LESS ATTRACTIVE is the country’s human rights record and foggy political system, located somewhere between a democracy and an authoritarian regime.
While the country, whose president won nearly 96% of the vote in last year’s election, presents itself as forward thinking and modern, its tight restrictions on freedom of the press and assembly are well documented by Human Rights Watch and the Western media.
A Kazakhstan court convicted 34 oil workers from OzenMunaiGas, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s state oil and gas company KazMunaiGa, in June for clashing with police during a strike in western Kazakhstan in December, and it was reported that authorities shot and killed at least 15 and wounded over 100 workers in that strike. Those convicted claimed their testimonies were obtained by torture, but the court was not concerned.
After 200 to 300 people rallied in March in Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, in memory of those killed and wounded by police during a December 16 demonstration, authorities detained and fined several lead activists for their participation.
The Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law reported that political opposition rallies were held across the country in early 2012 to protest unfair parliamentary elections in Almaty, the persecution of activists and violence against workers who went on strike in Akatu.
Because over 90% of those 162 protests were not authorized (it’s not easy to receive government approval), police, maintaining a heavy presence at the rallies, sometimes detained activists and charged them with “administrative violation.”
A fine of $700 is the penalty for organizing an unauthorized protest. Still, the percentage of assemblies held without permission increased from 84% in 2010 to 92.5% in 2011, according to the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law.
A visitor on Capital Day would not likely notice this state control, except for the police officers who wear imposing hats and station themselves at every crosswalk and public event.
The president, seemingly the ultimate, beloved leader of the country, was popularly elected in 1991, but suspended parliament in 1995 and canceled the presidential elections in 1996. In the past two years he has made some democratic reforms, including allowing other political parties to organize aside from his own Nur Otan (“Fatherland’s ray of light”) party, though he holds policy power over the parliament, in which his party holds 83 out of 108 seats.
A so-called promoter of Western values who sees no place for religious extremism, the president looks upon Astana, a city that’s more than doubled in size since 1998, as his baby.
When he moved the capital there to economically develop the north and create jobs, Nazarbayev began investing millions in modern infrastructure, industry, education and medical facilities. Like the legendary Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek, Nazarbayev takes walks around the capital and notices what needs fixing and what is lacking, says Mey-Ami.
“There is a feeling of a landlord,” he says.
Standing outside the city’s iconic 105- meter Bayterek tower, Aliya Bitimova, a representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, says her president, not Japanese architect Kosho Kurokawa, who designed Astana’s master plan, is truly the city’s main architect.
“It is his city,” she says. Inside the Bayterek stands a gilded hand print of the president’s in which visitors fit their own hands and take a photo.
Over the next 10 years, Maselov says construction of the new section of Astana will be completed, and they will begin rebuilding the old area of the city. I ask what Maselov imagines to see in the future when he looks out of his window.
“We have the concrete plans. We cannot imagine,” he laughs.
THE CITY puts its best face forward over Capital Day, which is also Nazarbayev’s birthday (he turned 72), with citizens journeying from around the country to partake in events, whose ticket revenue goes to charity and which included the flag raising ceremony at Atameken (Fatherland) memorial complex, a lastminute Cirque du Soleil performance, musical concerts of traditional and modern song, a food festival and the grand opening of the Hazret Sultan mosque, constructed in an unbelievable two years and capable of holding up to 10,000 worshipers.
The government generally times the opening of jaw-dropping buildings to coincide with Capital Day, and the majority population of Muslims, many of who are deemed “Soviet-style” Sunni and Sufis, turned out in the thousands with children and grandparents to see the Hazret Sultan and hear the president speak.
Capital Day is ultra-nationalistic, even down to the songs on the radio praising Astana. At a dazzling evening concert beside the Hazret Sultan showcasing local dancers, famous pop stars like Roza Rymbayeva and Keshyou and the nation’s fashion designers, several audience members were invited on stage to talk about their origin city in one minute, and have the audience applaud loudest for the one who did the best.
This national goal to foster patriotism is also on the agenda of the Nazarbayev Center, which opened in January and is only one of two institutions that carry the president’s name (the other is Nazarbayev University in Astana, which the president intends to raise to Ivy League quality over the next decade).
The center aims to resemble the presidential libraries and centers of the US, conduct research, educate visitors on Kazakhstan’s history and values and introduce policy on the president’s international agenda of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, inter-ethnic and inter-religious dialogue and tolerance, integration within the former Soviet Union, economic and social reform and regional security.
The center houses artifacts of the cultural and social history of Kazakhstan, including 19th-century yurt dwellings, agricultural tools, musical instruments made from horse tail (the horse, a sacred cultural symbol, is eaten and its milk fermented for drinking) and traditional wool garments. An exhibit called “My Fate is the Country’s Fate” displays photographs of Nazarbayev standing beside workers, athletes and world leaders like US President Barack Obama, holding a baby, and standing in a classroom with children.
“We’re a new country and it’s a matter of priority to basically forge sentiment of, to put it bluntly, patriotism, and that’s what we’ve done,” says the center’s deputy director and editor of The Astana Times Roman Vassilenko, in an interview at the facility. Vassilenko, who also serves a diplomatic post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, worked as Kazakhstan’s press secretary in the US.
PATRIOTISM MEANS first and foremost ingraining that “we are one nation of many different ethnic groups, but one nation,” he says, adding that there are over 100 ethnic groups in the country, including the majority Kazakh population (some 60%), Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, Greeks and Jews. Muslims make up the majority religion, followed by Russian Orthodox Christians, atheists and Jews (some 30,000 throughout the country).
“We’ve been lucky that there hasn’t been any single or major incident in 20 years of our independence based on interethnic tension,” says Vassilenko. “The president is always, especially in recent years, he’s always stressing that we will not tolerate propaganda of hatred, extremism of any sort which covers itself in religion.
We’ve been so keen to check on all the religious denominations of Muslim, Christians of all stripes, to check what they teach.”
In May, October and November 2011 Kazakhstan suffered suicide bombing attacks allegedly by a Pakistani Muslim group calling itself Soldiers of the Caliphate.
It claimed to oppose the Law on Religious Activities and Religious Associations, which Nazarbayev signed into law on October 13, 2011, and requires religious organizations to register with the government, bans unregistered religious activity, prohibits prayer in government workplaces and military bases and requires the government to approve the building or opening of new places of worship.
“We thought we were immune to this situation because the economy was growing very well,” says Vassilenko, citing strengthened social welfare, more schools and hospitals and pay raises for state employees over the last few years. “People were generally happy. Apparently we were sort of misguided and some people thought they were left behind in this development and turned to this extremist ideology. Now we are much more attentive to these issues because of that.”
As head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (finishing its term this year), Nazarbayev promoted dialogue with the West and other faiths, and since 2003 has hosted four conferences for leaders of world religions, which Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar have attended.
The Nazarbayev Center, which Vassilenko says receives some 60,000 visitors a year, also supports the state’s patriotic goal of promoting the Kazakh language, which is the state language in name although the most widely spoken language is Russian.
“You should learn Kazakh, you should not forget Russian and you should learn English,” Vassilenko says. “It’s a result of a very carefully crafted policy to maintain inter-ethnic harmony in such a diverse country.” The president often starts his speeches in Kazakh, then switches to Russian and ends in Kazakh, he says.
The officials I met with excitedly told me about the city’s frequent economic and interfaith dialogue forums, ambition to host Expo 2017, the country’s history of tolerance for all faiths and ethnicities and a supposed absence of anti-Semitism.
Israel’s ambassador in Astana Israel Mey- Ami says his parents, who fled Poland during World War II, found haven in Kazakhstan, where he was born.
The Kazakh nation saved tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, he insists. “During the whole stay of the Jews in Kazakhstan they have enjoyed good relations,” he says, “without anti-Semitism.”
“It’s necessary to value the Kazakh nation for this,” says Mey-Ami.
Astana’s Chabad rabbi Yehuda Kubalkin of Beis Rachel Chabad Jewish Center, who has been stationed there for 11 years, agrees that the government has been good to the Jewish communities throughout the country, which includes some 20 synagogues, Jewish centers and schools.
“I was born in Ukraine,” he says during an interview in the center, which houses a sanctuary, his office, dining room, guest rooms and soon, a gym. “I know what is anti-Semitism.”
Still, isolated incidents of anti-Semitism have occurred. In 1997 Leonid Solomin, a Jewish labor leader and protest organizer, was charged with an economic crime, interrogated and investigated, and had his home searched by the authorities. Almaty newspapers railed against Zionists and international Jewry in response.
Mey-Ami, though, hopes Israelis will take a closer look at Kazakhstan, and realize that while it has a ways to go in fostering an open democracy, the president’s political reforms, focus on investing in education, modern industry, interfaith dialogue and a nuclear-free world, are an indication it’s on its way there.
“In the past I have encountered Israeli newspapers that spoke in an uncomplimentary way about Kazakhstan in relation to the government here,” he says. “We are speaking about a state at a high level. Certainly it’s not Israel or America, but it’s going in the right direction.”