This part of the paper will look at the securitisation rhetoric surrounding the threat of terrorism in Kazakhstan, utilising the media and government sources and legislation changes that followed the securitisation of terrorism. First, I will look at the counterterrorism legislation and programmes in Kazakhstan to understand the country’s counterterrorism development. Then I will turn to discuss Islam as an integral part of Kazakhstan’s counterterrorism present and future. To conclude, I will discuss the result of Kazakhstan’s increased attention to the threat of terrorism.
Part 2 is here. Writing status: ongoing
Kazakhstan uses a comprehensive legislative system to fight terrorism: acts of terrorism are recognised as a crime, and individuals responsible are prosecuted according to the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan[1]. Kazakhstan has adopted several special programs to fight terrorism: one in 2013-2017, which aimed to eliminate potentially dangerous radical Islam movements, represented a response to Kazakhstan’s first terrorist attacks in 2011. The 2011 Aktobe terrorist attacks have reinvigorated the already existing but somewhat rarely used counterterrorism legislation.
Initially, the 2011 suicide bombing in the city of Aktobe, in western Kazakhstan, was treated as a mafia-related attack in the government’s attempt not to cause panic, but later it was reclassified as being related to radical Islam (Lillis 2011b). Following the attack, some believed that the western region of Kazakhstan could become the terrorist brewing pot, as the result of tensions between rival political groups; west Kazakhstan, an oil-rich region, is paramount to whoever is in power, but the unfair allocation of oil revenues remains to be a difficult topic (Lillis 2011a).
The absence of justice in sharing the profits from the wealthiest regions and overall social dissatisfaction with the living conditions were probable causes for terrorist acts (Lillis 2011a). One can further argue that political rivalry could have been seen as a potential cause for a terrorist attack, reiterating the notion that the elites might see and label their political opponents as terrorists to stay in power (see part 2 for more on elites).
In 2016, the 2013-2017 counterterrorism program would be tested when Kazakhstan witnessed two major terrorist attacks in the same year, one after another, in Aktobe and Almaty. The Aktobe shootings in June 2016 shook up both the government and the public. For almost a week in June 2016, the city of Aktobe and its surroundings became a battlefield for a militarised group that successfully robbed two gun stores and then stormed a National Guard’s facility. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 45 people planned the attacks; however, only 25 continued to carry out the plan (Vlast.kz 2016). Later, the group would be labelled as following the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s[2] teachings (TASS 2016). Following the 2016 attacks, Kazakhstan’s attitude toward terrorism changed almost overnight: the feeling that Kazakhstan is safe and relatively distant from an immediate terrorist threat was replaced by the need to respond to the terrorist threat at home.
The second major terrorist attack of 2016 happened on 18 July, when Ruslan Kulekbaev walked into a downtown Almaty police station. He overpowered a police officer, acquired his weapon and started to shoot everyone wearing a uniform. After a car chase, the police captured him wounded but alive. Allegedly, Kulekbaev intended to take revenge on Kazakhstan’s law enforcement and court system because he believed he was mistakenly convicted in the past (Sputnik.kz 2018). Kulekbaev’s spree resulted in ten people dead, eight law enforcement officers and two civilians (Informburo.kz 2019). In his last word, he reiterated that he does not feel any remorse as he committed the actions in the name of Allah (Informburo.kz 2019). He received the death sentence; some believed the moratorium on the death sentence should be lifted to execute Kulekbaev, as the Constitution allows for an exception for terrorism sentences, although the moratorium is yet to be removed (RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty 2016).
Thus, following the events of 2016, the 2013-2017 counterterrorism program’s outcomes have been criticised: If the 2011 Aktobe events could have been seen as a one-off incident, two attacks in major cities in one year made the public question the effectiveness of the government’s counterterrorism efforts. For example, some people in Aktau opted to keep their children at home for 1 September celebration (the start of the school year, also known as Knowledge Day, in many former Soviet countries) because they were afraid of bigger terrorist attacks resembling the 2004 Beslan massacre in Russia (Lillis 2011b).
Thus, from the terrorist attacks prevention point of view, the 2013-2017 counterterrorism program has been unsuccessful, as the events of 2016 showed that the program’s ambitions to make Kazakhstan 100% prepared for a terrorist attack had not yielded awe-inspiring results. Zamir Karazhanov, a political observer, argues that the 2013-2017 program resulted in an opposite outcome, as the country saw an increase in a terrorist activity instead of reducing terrorism (365.info.kz 2016). However, it is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the 2013-2017 program from the government’s perspective as the program document has been heavily redacted and no reports regarding the program’s results are available online (according to the official website of the National Security Committee (KNB) of the Republic of Kazakhstan).
Undeniably, the 2016 attacks in Aktobe and Almaty were a turning point in Kazakhstan’s perceptions of terrorism: As a result, the government became more active on the counterterrorism plan, changing the counterterrorism legislation, and increasing counterterrorism cooperation with Russia, its historical military ally. Kazakhstan supports Russia’s security undertaking in the former Soviet space, following the Kremlin’s counterterrorism trajectory by introducing similar counterterrorism laws, having extensive joint military exercises, and supporting the Kremlin’s latest international counterterrorism campaign in Syria by hosting the 2017 Astana Talks.
The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the consequent Russian foray into Syria changed how the threat of terrorism is seen not only in Russia and Kazakhstan but in the post-Soviet space in general. The threat of ISIL has not escaped the region: there are reports of people from the Eurasian region fighting in Syria: in 2017, then-president Nazarbayev said that it could be more than five thousand people from former Soviet republics fighting in Syria (Zakon.kz 2017). Thus, the terrorist threat in the region appears to be more pronounced than it has even been. Also, reports indicate that new fighters were recruited from Eurasia, where recruiters targeted, among others, migrants from Central Asia who face hardship, especially in Russia (Lacinak 2017; Tuleev 2016).
Thus, Kazakhstan had experienced a significant amount of counterterrorism development since 2016, when the country faced two terrorist attacks in one year. Even if the government was developing some counterterrorism efforts post the 2011 Aktobe attack, it was seen as a somewhat random event. It did not warrant the same amount of attention to counterterrorism as the 2016 attacks. Overall, Kazakhstan’s counterterrorism borrows many techniques and strategies from Russia, bringing the countries together as allies in the regional and potentially global fight on terrorism.
Counterterrorism and the question of Islam revival
The perception of the terrorist threat and its connection to Islam remains to be a controversial topic in Central Asia, especially in Kazakhstan, as the government seeks to have control over religious organisations in the country: all religious organisations need to register with the government to be able to conduct any activities. The revival of Islam in Central Asia resulted in more people being interested in or following Islam, including non-official Islamic teachings (those not supported by the government), making it more challenging for Central Asian governments to keep track of various religious organisations, as many of them do not recognise the official government and its demands for registration (Lenz-Raymann 2014).
Marinin (2015, 14) highlights the constructed aspect of the terrorist threat and argues that the Kazakhstani government “overestimates the threats to national security and uses such policy [of religious organisations registration] as a pretense to suppress all the objectionable [thinking] [and] the problem of radical organizations is largely exaggerated in Central Asia”. This argument points towards an additional agenda behind an eager fight with such organisations. Crosston (2006, 43) argues that the religious aspect in terrorist threat perception played an essential role in how the region sees threats and has been portrayed to favour the political elites’ reading of it: “Islamic radicalism within the region seems to always be judged according to whether or not a true threat can emerge that may actually topple or overthrow an existing government. ‘True threat’ is thus being defined in an extremely narrow and immediate way: only as a revolution-starter and with objectives to establish an Islamic theocratic state”. The threat of radical Islamic teaching adds to the volatile security situation in the region.
To complicate an already difficult religious situation even further, we can see a tendency among Central Asian states to conflate terrorism, extremism, and Islamization, or use them interchangeably, adding to the confusion around the terrorism topic in the region (Heathershaw and Montgomery 2014; Lain 2016). Kazakhstan has started to untangle the terrorism-Islamization-extremism conundrum, but it is far from being clear cut and thoroughly expressed to the public. For example, in 2016, the Kazakhstani government created the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Civil Society, which would deal with religious and civil society issues. According to one of the Ministry’s employees, the government aims to create open platforms to educate people on being vigilant and rejecting potential indoctrination into extremist teachings (Krivosheev 2016). The Ministry is engaged in cybersecurity, policing religious groups’ online communications, and monitoring religious literature and students coming back home after studying abroad (Mosunov 2017).
In 2018, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Civil Society was renamed into the Ministry of Social Development, losing its religious focus but retaining dominion over the social affairs in Kazakhstan (Zakon.kz 2018). Later, this Ministry would add “information” to its title, becoming the Ministry of Information and Social Development. In July 2020, a subcommittee of this Ministry announced the creation of nine departments, one of those is called Department for Coordination of Prevention of Religious Extremism in the Internet Space, another aimed to deal with Islamic religious organisations (National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan n.d.)Thus, the creation of such a governmental body, following the compulsory religious organisations’ registration and its expansion over the years, can be seen as the government’s attempt to consolidate power, a part of Kazakhstan’s counterterrorism approach aiming to pre-emptively constrain civil freedoms.
The follow-up counterterrorism program has been approved for 2018-2022, claiming to target the terrorist problem in Kazakhstan. The proposed counterterrorism policy intended to continue the fight with radical religious movements, although the program clarifies that religion should not be seen as being equal to radicalism. Besides, the 2018-2022 program explicitly stated that there would be more control over the Internet and social media, hence creating the Department for Coordination of Prevention of Religious Extremism in the Internet Space. The report regarding the results of the first year of the 2018-2020 counterterrorism program is available online at the official website of the National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which showed that the starting year of the program was less than successful: neither local nor republic budget allocations were spent according to the program’s plan (National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan 2019). Unfortunately, no other reports regarding the results of either program are available.
However, it is possible to see some results of Astana’s close focus on counterterrorism: in the Global Terrorist Index Report 2019, Kazakhstan was ranked 85 with a score of 1.566, showing an improvement over two years without a terrorist incident (Institute for Economics & Peace 2019, 42). In 2020, Kazakhstan scored 0.901 and ranked 93, improving the score further, although it is congruent with the global trend of reducing physical terrorist attacks due to the Covid-19 pandemic (Institute for Economics & Peace 2020, 9).
However, after the significant defeat of ISIL in 2019 in Syria, Kazakhstan’s new leadership has been confronted with former ISIL fighters and their families coming back home. These are men who were involved in active combat and carried ISIL ideology and methods and their families, women, and children, who would require extensive socialisation to return to society. The question of the rehabilitation of ISIL returnees remains a challenge: Then-president Nazarbayev admitted that the government has not been successful in terrorists’ rehabilitation (Sultanov 2007; Zakon.kz 2017). Still, Kazakhstan repatriated 231 of its citizens from the ISIL conflict-related territories by May 2019 (UN News 2019). Ms Ní Aoláin, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, commended this decision but emphasised the need for a legislative change in Kazakhstan’s counterterrorism law because the law is prone to misuse by the government and has been used to silence political opposition (UN News 2019). Thus, we can see some improvement in Kazakhstan’s counterterrorism position, but its counterterrorism plan is far from being comprehensive.
To sum up, part 3 has discussed the counterterrorism situation in Kazakhstan and its developments, to illustrate some of its successes and failures, and to emphasise the trend of extensive control over the mere presence of religious organisations in Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, the Kazakhstani government is not interested in being more open about its counterterrorism programmes and their results, but even with access to very limited resources, we can see that Astana has been paying much more attention to the threat of terrorism.
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[1] Law № 416-I “On counteraction of terrorism” from 13 July 1999, with law № 180-VI introducing the latest corrections from 12 July 2018, would be the principal legal document regarding terrorism in Kazakhstan.
[2] Banned in Kazakhstan according to the Decision of the Yesil District Court of Nur-Sultan on October 15, 2015.