Since the very first week of 2022, the capital city of Kazakhstan, Almaty, and other major cities have been burning in chaos. The situation went so out of control due to the fuel price hike that Russia had to send its forces to bring the situation under control. So far, Kazakhstan Police, Armed Forces, and the Russian forces have had to shoot the public on numerous occasions to put an end to the unrest. As of now, according to the government officials, more than 225 people from all over the nation had been killed in the violence, and among them, 19 were law enforcement officers. The Russian troops have returned, and the situations have come under control as the article is written. More than 12,000 people, including the protesters and some foreign journalists, had also been detained by the government.
The Reason and Beginning of Protest:
If you pick up any news report on Kazakhstan violence or social media platforms, you will see everything is related to the ‘Oil Price Hike.’ On the 1st January 2022, the oil prices were doubled. The new consumer oil price becomes 120 Tenge or USD 0.28 from 60 Tenge or USD 0.14. And then people started to protest all over the country, and later that turned into textbook vandalizing.
But why the price was hiked by 100%?
Making LPG electronically tradeable in real-time, or the government’s plan to de-control the LPG prices, started back in January 2019. The internal survey also showed it would be beneficial for the Kazakhstan-based oil companies to get more profit if the prices were set around 110 Tenge as 70-90% of all vehicles in Kazakhstan runs of LPG. As being an oil and natural gas-rich nation, petroleum prices were historically low in the country.
According to reports, at Mangystau, it costs 80 Tenge to produce a liter of petroleum products while the oil companies are bound to sell it to the local market at the fixed rate of 60 Tenge. So, the government wanted to settle this margin and bring in more profits for the oil companies.
According to, The Minster of Energy, Magzum Mirzagaliyev, in some regions, the petrol pump owners increased their selling prices even further. The government is currently investigating that. As per reports, the petrol pumps increased their margins by 25-50% in several areas. On the Aktau, an oil city near Zhanaozen from where the protesters marched into Nur-Sultan and another city, Mangystau, some reported a quick slash of oil prices, the government also reduced the oil prices by 85-90 Tenge per liter or USD 0.11 on 4th January 2022, and made it cheaper than previous 60 Tenge to settle down the public agitations, but surely it failed.
Well, sometimes, it takes real fuel to fuel unrest. The same thing happened here in Kazakhstan.
But was it All About Oil?
According to our investigations, the protest wasn’t just for oil by scrutinizing various reports and data available in the public domain. If it was, it should have ended on 4th January 2022, as the government made the oil and LPG even cheaper than the previous rates. Three things had come up as the most likely reasons behind this Kazakhstan unrest. We will list them down one by one.
The Gap between Rich and Poor is Extreme in Kazakhstan:
In the last 30 years, Nursultan Nazarbayev held the position of supreme commander of Kazakhstan. In the last 30 years, the people of Kazakhstan became poorer and poorer every year, and all the wealth accumulated by the entire country made just 81 people the richest people of the nation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the people lost more, but the wealthiest reached new milestones.
Understanding the public uproar early, Nazarbayev had stepped down from presidency back in 2019 but kept the post of Chairman of the Security Council of Kazakhstan. Basically, Nazarbayev was the most powerful person in the country, and he got all the backing he needed from Moscow. But as every great dictator had ever done in the past on the first sight of trouble, Nazarbayev also ran away from the situation by stepping down on 5th January 2022 and letting the incumbent president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev take the heat.
Tokayev asked for help from Moscow and got some and almost put the situation under control.
External Influencers:
The USA? NATO? EU?
Kazakhstan is considered the soft-underbelly of Russia, and Kazakhstan was also a part of the former Soviet Union or USSR. Therefore, Kazakhstan is always influenced by Russia even after the dissolution of the USSR.
Kazakhstan is rich in petroleum. It is also rich in Uranium, Chromium, Lead, Zinc, Copper, and many others. But even Kazakhstan holds more than 20% of the world’s Uranium storage; it has no nuclear powerplant.
The other world powers, the USA, China, the European Union, and even India, have tried to influence Kazakhstan in the last few years. But Russia always came on top of the ladder.
But now, as Russia is becoming very aggressive on the Ukraine matter, USA, EU, and NATO forces may have fueled the public unrest in Kazakhstan.
China or CCP?
China’s or, better words, CCP’s involvement is also not ignorable. Since 2020 China has started to claim parts of Kazakhstan and more than half of Kyrgyzstan as part of ancient China. That deteriorated China-Kazakhstan relationships in the last two years, and being a former Communist country, China still has some holds on the Communists of Kazakhstan.
Secondly, China has issues with Water-Supply. Kazakhstan’s main water supply lines are Lake Balkhash and Emil River, which flow from China, supplies water to Kazakhstan’s Lake Alakol and two other rivers, the Irtysh and the Ili, which are also there. While China’s Irtysh–Karamay–Ürümqi Canal and Kazakhstan’s Irtysh–Karaganda Canal are the backbone for Kazakhstan’s irrigation and drinking water supply. As China becomes the controlling power for the water flows in India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and almost everywhere in Asia, maybe it’s a foothold operation for the CPP sympathizers in Kazakhstan.
Kazakstan, to be specific, the people of Kazakhstan are paying the prices for joining the BRI or the Belt and Road Initiative by China or the Chinese Debt Traps. This also could add fuel to the unrest.
The Terrorists?
The Taliban, ISIS, ISI, and Other Terror Outfits:
Being a Muslim majority country, the ISI, the Taliban, and ISIS tried to make the five landlocked central Asian countries embrace Islamic Terrorism for several years. But so far, due to the Russian influence and the resistance of the people of these countries, the terrorists and their masters failed miserably. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan even tried helping the Anti-Taliban forces and Northern Alliance. After the fall of Kabul, all three of these even increased protective troop buildup for their own safety.
But after the fall of Kabul, the Taliban, the Interservice Intelligence of Pakistan (ISI), the Islamic States, Al-Qaeda, and other terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) became extremely active in Pakistan and Afghanistan. With the newfound American Arsenal, they are not stopping anytime soon.
Conclusion:
The situation of Kazakhstan is now more stable, and the Russian troops have gone back. The current President Tokayev has issued shoot-to-kill orders to control the situation. Although the state is investigating this massive uproar and so far only acknowledges the ‘rise of LPG prices’ as the reason for this unrest, they didn’t leave the cause of foreign hand out of the equation. As the state has not officially stated any other reason behind this situation, we will wait until the official report comes in. We request our readers to consider the ‘Three Reasons’ we had discussed in this report, as India At War’s speculations only.