Markets, palaces, buildings and thousands of hectares of land: after the clashes of January 2022, their power was formally stripped of all honor, but a long list of assets that should have been requisitioned are still firmly in the hands of the family that dominated “old Kazakhstan”.
The company Yandex has increased the percentages for taxi drivers, and has stifled all the other players in the market for the transport of people and goods (including Uber) in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The measures launched by the local antitrust agencies have been ineffective.
The repercussions in Central Asia of the US government's blocking of cooperation activities also include the suspension of subsidies to news agencies such as Radio Svoboda and associations that fight against the gagging of critical voices. And Kazakh nationalist politicians are rejoicing, calling for an end to ‘foreign interference’ in the story of their country.
The mayor of the Kazakh capital has announced the summer opening of the rail transport line that has become a monument to corruption in the country after ten years of inconclusive projects. But the final costs and payment mechanisms remain unknown.
From Kazakhstan to Tajikistan, procedures have been adopted throughout the region to change the spelling of surnames by eliminating the patronymic forms imposed during tsarist and Soviet domination, in order to recover Turkic or other ethnic roots. However, only a few personalities have taken this step, perceived by many as an unnecessary complication.
Analyst Syroežkin - freed from prison after being convicted in 2019 of ‘treason’ - analysed the state of Kazakhstan's relations with China in a television interview: ‘The president is one of the few Kazakhs who can understand Chinese policy: he tries to pursue an effective balance with Moscow. But his promises about a new and just country still remain limp’.
