In November 2021, Central Asia was highlighted in the foreign press in the light of the parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan, energy shortages in Kazakhstan amid a surge in cryptomining; the need for an updated US strategy in the region; and increased government control over the Internet.
Parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan: low turnout, technical failures
The online magazine The Diplomat, covering the past parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan, notes that the final results have not yet been determined, but one thing is clear that the Kyrgyz people are tired of the elections. Kyrgyzstan’s November 28 parliamentary election was plagued by low voter turnout and technical glitches at precisely the wrong time. Manual vote counting continues, but as it stands now, the day after the election, it appears that six parties, largely pro-government in outlook, will gain entry into the pared-down parliament.
In their preliminary conclusions, the OSCE’s election monitoring mission stated, “The 28 November parliamentary elections were competitive but constitutional changes weakening parliament, subsequent extensive legislative changes to key aspects of the elections, a stifled campaign and overall voter disillusionment hindered meaningful engagement”.
Voter turnout for the parliamentary election — the third electoral exercise of 2021 for Kyrgyzstan — is estimated at around 34 percent, a record low. For comparison, last year’s October parliamentary election, the results of which were annulled after protests erupted the night after the vote, was 58.89 percent.
Kyrgyzstan’s elections, unlike those in the rest of Central Asia, are often competitive in a technical sense: 21 parties contested in the election and more than 300 people ran for seats via the new single-mandate districts.
This election took place under a new constitution (approved in April’s referendum) and under new rules (approved in August). The new constitution trimmed parliament from 120 deputies to 90, and the new electoral rules altered the way in which those seats were to be filled. Instead of the previous proportional party lists system, this election used a split system.
It’s perhaps not surprising that such an election system, so recently introduced, would stir up confusion and controversy. An election-day technical glitch only worsened the situation. According several reports, the CEC’s website began glitching after polls were closed.
Four opposition parties — Ata-Meken (Fatherland), Azattyk (Liberty), Social Democrats, and Uluttar Birimdigi (Unity of Ethnicities) — rallied in Bishkek the day after the election demanding that the results be annulled and new election called for.
Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov posted on Facebook to “address the parties making a fuss” and said that no one would stop them from counting the ballots by hand. He added that if its found that the CEC “falsified” the results, those responsible would “pay with their heads”.
Cryptocurrency miners grapple with major energy crisis in Kazakhstan
The American website The Verge on computers, gadgets and lifestyle, citing the Financial Times, reports that Kazakhstani cryptocurrency miners are facing widespread power shortages amid a surge in mining. Kazakhstan has been grappling with an overloaded energy grid as miners flock in from China, which cracked down on crypto earlier this year and banned crypto-based transactions in September.
According to the Financial Times, Kazakhstan’s demand for electricity has risen about eight percent since the beginning of 2021, a sharp increase from the one or two percent annual growth that the country typically experiences. The Financial Times’ research also estimates that over 87,849 “power-intensive” mining rigs have made their way from China to Kazakhstan. The country now sits in the number two spot — just behind the US — as one of the hottest crypto mining spots, according to data from the University of Cambridge.
Just last month, three of Kazakhstan’s most vital coal-fired power plants faced emergency shutdowns. In light of the outages, Coindesk reports that the country’s Ministry of Energy would start restricting new mining farms from using more than 100 megawatts (MW) over the course of two years, but later walked back on this limitation for lawful miners.
Little sad to shut down our mining farm in south KZ. Last container is ready to be sent. So much work, people, hopes are ruined. Country risk played out pic.twitter.com/J8ZMg6GeUI
— Didar (@didar_bekbau) November 24, 2021
To mitigate the impact of power outages, the Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Company also warned that it would begin rationing electricity to 50 state-registered crypto miners. Kazakh officials reportedly link the power outages to an increase in the number of gray unregistered miners who illegally mine cryptocurrency. These miners are estimated to be consuming 1,200 megawatts (MW) from the country’s busy power grid.
Starting in 2022, Kazakhstan will begin forcing legitimate miners to pay in order to distinguish registered miners from “gray” ones, and to ease the load on the electricity grid. The country plans to charge legal miners 1 Kazakhstani tenge ($ 0.0023) per kWh. But for now, Kazakhstan may have to rely on a Russian energy company with which Kazakhstan has an agreement to provide additional capacity gains during the cold winter months.
Nuclear power may seem like a natural choice for a country that produced 41% of the world’s uranium in 2020, according to the World Nuclear Association. But nuclear power is particularly controversial in Kazakhstan, which still bears the scars of Soviet-era weapon testing.
There are also worries the government isn’t being honest about its problems. The University of Glasgow’s Luca Anceshi argued to The Times that Kazakhstan was scapegoating miners for reliability problems with the country’s electrical grid. Whether or not that’s true, it’s safe to say the mining demand hints at the potential problems for other countries if their local crypto production takes off.
CACI: “Kyrgyzstan’s Initiative: A small land shows Washington a way forward”
The American analytical center The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst writes about the need to reset the US strategy in the region. Even before the U.S.’s abrupt retreat from Afghanistan, relations between the U.S. and the states of Central Asia had flagged. Yes, Washington had responded positively to President Shavkat Mirzioyev’s reforms in Uzbekistan and continued long-standing investments and commercial projects in Kazakhstan. But it had otherwise proven to be all but deaf to the Central Asians’ interest in opening transport corridors for goods, people, gas, and electricity to Afghanistan and through it to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean.
In the same vein, it showed little interest in the Central Asians’ keenness to link arms with each other to advance common goals. Indeed, when both Moscow and Beijing sent their foreign ministers to participate in a major conference in Tashkent to discuss both intra-regional cooperation and transport, Secretary of State Antony Blinken begged off and instead passed the buck to a second-level official from the National Security Council.
In the case of Kyrgyzstan, Washington’s disinterest was understandable. Back in 2014 Kyrgyzstan’s then president, Almazbek Atambayev, demanded that U.S. and NATO forces abandon the Manas air base outside the capital, Bishkek, which coalition forces operating in Afghanistan had used since 2002.
Today a new president rules in Bishkek. President Japarov has also decried the miasma of corruption that suffuses both the government and society in Kyrgyzstan. Whether his campaign is genuine and will achieve results remains to be seen, but for the time being he seems to be taking step to fighting this cancer in the polity, even to the point of offering financial rewards to whistleblowers.
In a similarly reformist vein, Japarov has come to realize that his small country cannot survive by depending only solely on Moscow and Beijing. Indeed, many observers have concluded that Kyrgyzstan has for all intents and purposes reverted to its status under Stalin, namely, as a so-called “Autonomous Region” within the Russian Federation. If this continues, all Japarov’s dream of restoring Kyrgyzstan’s nationhood will come to naught. The solution he proposes is to balance his country’s inevitable ties with nearby Russia and China with cordial and productive engagement with the West, and especially the United States.
To this end, his government prepared a document setting forth a full range of new relations with Washington and transmitted it to the U.S. State Department. His goal is to restore the cordial relationship that had existed earlier. Japarov decided to lay out a full plan by which Washington could reestablish a many-sided relationship with his country. It covers political, economic, and civic issues and is accompanied by a commitment on Kyrgyzstan’s side to wage a more effective fight against corruption and to affirm democratic freedoms within the presidential system that has now been reinstituted.
Will Washington now embrace President Japarov’s bilateral initiative and perhaps even expand beyond it by adding initiatives and projects of its own? Could it even use the Kyrgyz initiative as the basis for a fresh look at its relations with all of the five states of Central Asia, which presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden largely ignored? The United States could even take this gentle proposal from Bishkek as the basis for launching a broader discussion on the future relations between the Central Asian region as a whole and Afghanistan, and of America to both. This is not out of the question, but some first step is needed to break the log-jam that has marginalized the United States’ presence in the region for nearly a decade. While pursuing the interests of his own country, President Japarov may unintentionally have shown how Washington might take that first step.
Central Asia Is Turning Back to Moscow
The American online magazine Foreign Policy in its article “Central Asia Is Turning Back to Moscow” notes the increased role of Russia and China in Central Asia after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The end of communism was supposed to usher in a new era of freedom, democracy, and prosperity, but it was a resounding failure in Russia’s backyard. Central Asians might not be mad at the United States, but they’re certainly disappointed.
But Moscow may not be the biggest winner of the post-American era. There is one other serious contender for control in Central Asia: China. In Central Asia, this has developed into a rough division of power between the two superstates, with Russia dominating the security side, and China cornering infrastructure and development. Opinion is split on whether this arrangement represents a tacit agreement between Moscow and Beijing, or whether it’s a case of both sides playing their strongest hand in a bid to come out on top.
Central Asians of all ages are seizing the opportunity to reconnect with religious and cultural identities that were stifled by Tsarist Russia and then the Soviet Union. Ordinary Central Asians may not be interested in American ideas, but they do want to continue enjoying this religious freedom. Beijing’s virulent Islamophobia and persecution of its Uyghur population makes clear its feelings on the religious rights of Muslims—and Kazakhs and Kyrgyzstanis are already being arrested in their own countries for speaking out. If the United States wants to regain influence in the region, it would do well to position itself as an investor and job creator that will respect local culture and support religious freedom, not hinder it. Central Asia has had enough of colonial mentalities.
Sources at the U.S. State Department stress that their vision for development in Central Asia entails grants and investment—a “clear alternative” to Chinese loans—and that protecting the independence and sovereignty of these states is a “top priority” for the current administration. This is promising, but to rebuild trust and to present itself as a serious alternative, the United States needs to seriously up its commitments in the region.
The West’s lengthy neglect of Central Asia has served to undermine faith in democracy while making it easier for opportunistic regimes to establish exploitative relationships that will last for generations to come. Similar stories are emerging in countries throughout Africa, where China and Russia continue to carve up control along comparable lines. Political isolationism and inward-looking policies will only make this worse. As Ingram put it: “We take our eye off the ball at our own peril.”
Central Asian leaders want to tighten grip on social media. Russia’s playbook blazes the trail
The American newspaper Washington Post notes that there is a tendency in Central Asian countries to test how far they can go in restricting Internet freedom. A trend among Central Asian countries testing how far they can go to restrict Internet freedoms. Their fight with Big Tech comes as Central Asian governments increasingly balk at Western influence and instead take their cues from powers such as China, which is investing heavily in the region.
Central Asia is also following the playbook of traditional ally Russia on Internet controls. Like Moscow — as its own censorship efforts are ramping up — the Central Asian countries are having to tread carefully for fear of public backlash. Russia has routinely fined tech giants for refusing to remove what the country has branded banned content, but officials have so far been hesitant to fully blacklist popular networks such as YouTube.
Dutch digital space The Global Voices also devoted an article to Internet control in Central Asia, noting that the region’s authorities are trying to gain more control over the Internet through data localization.
Earlier this year, Kazakhstan adopted new legislation on “data localization” that would require social media companies to remove content flagged by the local authorities as potentially harmful for children within 24 hours. Companies that fail to comply could have their services shut down. Officials justified the draft law by claiming it would protect children’s rights.
In the past, internet giants have shown resistance to such content monitoring and control measures, but crafty local laws could become insurmountable obstacles in the future.
On October 24, Mirziyoyev won his second presidential election with 80 percent of the votes. Observers said the election lacked real competition and highlighted several procedural violations.
Days later, on November 3, the country’s main communications regulatory agency, Uzkomnazorat, blocked access to several online services for not having a registered office in the country. Popular messaging apps and social media providers such as Telegram, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn were not accessible for about one hour.
Mirziyoyev swiftly fired the head of Uzkomnazorat for his “unilateral and erroneous” decision. Just months ago, however, the president had signed a new data localization policy into law, demanding that online service providers physically store the personal data of Uzbek citizens in the country.
While the restored access to social media was hailed as a “victory” by some observers, the incident looks more like a power move by Mirziyoyev, a way of letting the public know that he is in control of the country’s communication networks and access to popular social media apps.
Russia and Uzbekistan’s 5 year rapprochement
The Russian think tank Riddle analyzes the post-Karimov era of Russian-Uzbek relations in an article. Uzbek officials were mostly shunned in the West in the years preceding Karimov’s death,. The 2005 legacy of Andijan, revelations about Karimova’s corruption, and the use of forced labor in the country’s cotton fields all took its toll. But a domestic reform agenda is now helping secure Uzbekistan’s entry into capital markets. That Mirziyoyev declare an end to the practice of cotton slavery. He freed political prisoners, and dismantled the SNB’s quasi state-within-a-state. Then again, this reform agenda has since ground to a halt. Tashkent’s is only so willing to accept suggestions for political and human rights reform in return for financing. Equally, there is little active effort emanating from Brussels, London or Washington to advocate for such change.
Putin’s Kremlin, meanwhile, sees the economic reforms as stabilizing Uzbekistan, and Western capital as keeping Central Asia’s most influential state from becoming beholden to Beijing, as is the case in neighboring Tajikistan. Moscow is wary of the strings attached to Chinese loans. With Kremlin-adjacent oligarchs poised to reap the benefits and a stable Uzbekistan providing a credible buffer with Afghanistan, there is little need for Moscow to pressure Uzbekistan for more. Indeed, Moscow did not seek to push Tashkent after it stayed an observer rather than a member of the EEU. Similarly, Moscow has also not sought to pressure Mirziyoyev into rejoining the CSTO. The Kremlin is content with Mirziyoyev’s growing cooperation (Mirziyoyev did attend a virtual conference in August as an ‘invited guest’.)
Both capitals now share concerns over the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. In turn, this offers Moscow a chance to shore up its role as Uzbekistan’s key security partner. Even though Tashkent has said it does not expect this to result in further formal tie-ups.
All told, Mirziyoyev’s Uzbekistan is one that Putin’s Russia can do business with. That appears to suit Moscow just fine.