Kazakhstan Crisis in 2021-22       

 

Kazakhstan, a central Asian nation now was earlier a part of Soviet Union.

 

Historically, it was a land of Turkish tribes like Scythians (Saka’s), Kushan’s, Hun’s and Timur’s who were considered to be very powerful and raided Asia throughout Ancient and Medieval period.

During 18^th Century, Kazakhs raided Russian region and captured many slaves

By the late 18^th and early 19^th Century, the Kazakhstan region was captured by the then kingdom of Russia.

In 1917, after Bolshevik revolution the Kazakhstan region became a part of Soviet Union named as Kazakh SSR.

 

During 1991, when Soviet Union got dismantled into many small independent nations, Kazakhstan also gained its independence from USSR.

 

Although Kazakhstan got independent and became a democratic, secular and republic nation but Russian influence was seen for up to three decades.  The president of Kazakhstan was seen to be ruling like authoritarian ruler with close allies with Russian counterpart.

 

Although the democratic ruler of Kazakhstan behavior was authoritarian in style but the economy was growing and investments & healthy relationship with west was seen.

 

Kazakhstan has a big land mass filled with natural resources. The nation grew its economy through exploration of Natural Gas & Minerals presence in abundance. Now, holds 60% of Central Asia’s GDP.

 

From the year 2019, the economic condition of Kazakhstan was seen to be weak, Non-Mineral Sector was seen to be struggling and resource distribution was uneven. At the same time, the political condition was also in trouble due to people protest and governments autocratic behavior. This led to resign of President.

 

In 2021, the pandemic made the situation even worse resulting to high inflation and food cost went up high, for this government had to stop/ban export of many items.

 

The coal rich nation Kazakhstan even suffered from shortage of electricity production leading to emergency shutdowns and to over come such problems, they asked Russia to supply electricity.

In the first week of 2022, government changed some of the economic rules resulting to mass protest at many places across the nation.

The price of LPG across the nation was made more than double. Government removed the subsides which was being over burden for government and allowed the price of LPG to be regulated as per market norms.

As a result of this policy change, violent protest was seen at many places.

 

Government imposed Two-week State Emergency from 5^th January 2022. Peoples of Kazakhstan went more violent on this matter and started destroying public property.

President of Kazakhstan asked for Russian help to control the violent protest and deployment of CSTO (Collective Security Treaty organisation - a Russian led alliance of former soviet states) forces across nation.

 

Russia deployed 2500 peacekeeping troops to control the situation.

Peacekeeping troops fired on the protesters openly with order of Kazakhstan’s president and more than 26 peoples were killed and 10,000 were detained.

 

As of now, the protest in under control and CSTO peacekeeping forces are about the leave Kazakhstan. Soon the normalcy would prevail in the region.