Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

Kyrgyzstan has gone through some really rough times this year.

The country has the highest official rate of coronavirus cases in Central Asia and the highest mortality rate, which has had a knock-on effect that has sent the economy plummeting.

And for good measure, protesters ousted the president and government in early October.

So the country's new leadership was looking for help and found it in a very unexpected place: right next door.

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev's press service released a statement on November 12 that said Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will be providing financial and humanitarian aid to Kyrgyzstan.

The Uzbek info site gazeta.uz reported the same day about a phone call between Toqaev and his Uzbek counterpart, Shavkat Mirziyoev, during which they agreed “on joint measures aimed at ensuring stability and safety in the region, and additionally on economic and humanitarian help for the Kyrgyz people."

Embed share

Dying Doctors Leave A Void As Kyrgyzstan's COVID-19 Crisis Grows

Embed share

The code has been copied to your clipboard.

---

width px height px

---

The URL has been copied to your clipboard

No media source currently available

0:00 0:02:23 0:00

The report noted Kyrgyzstan’s debt stands at $4.5 billion and more than 42 percent of that is owed to China.

There were no details about the amount of financial and humanitarian aid the two countries would send to Kyrgyzstan, but the groundwork for the announcement was made several days in advance.

New Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Ruslan Kazakbaev visited Kazakhstan on October 29 and Uzbekistan on November 5-6, requesting help from both neighbors -- each of which said "yes."

The financial support Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan intend to provide is aimed at supporting Kyrgyzstan’s budget and ensuring food security.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan also both agreed to send medicine and hospital equipment to help Kyrgyzstan battle the coronavirus, and Uzbekistan reportedly agreed to help build a “medical and health institution."

This seems to be exactly the sort of help Kyrgyzstan needs at the moment, especially after the Kremlin froze $100 million in financial aid it had earlier earmarked for Kyrgyzstan as a way of showing its displeasure at this third change of leadership in 15 years due to mass protests.

SEE ALSO:

New Kyrgyz Leadership Gets A Cold Reception From The Kremlin

More interesting is that Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are cooperating to aid their ailing neighbor.

The three countries signed an Eternal Friendship treaty in Bishkek on January 10, 1997, when all had different presidents. But that proved to be a rather meaningless document.

In November 1998, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan signed their own bilateral Eternal Friendship treaty.

For most of the nearly 30 years of Central Asia’s independence, Kazakh-Kyrgyz relations have been the best bilateral relations in the entire region. But that's not saying much.

Kazakh President Toqaev made reference to that when Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Kazakbaev visited recently.

“Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are the closest governments,” Toqaev told his Kyrgyz guest. “Nothing separates us; on the contrary, there are many factors that unite us."

And that despite former Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev’s tirades against Kazakhstan in late 2017 that led Kazakhstan to close its border with Kyrgyzstan and, in response, caused Kyrgyzstan to make an own goal by refusing $100 million that Kazakhstan was prepared to give Kyrgyzstan to help it integrate into the Eurasian Economic Union (made up of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan).

Clearly those fences have been mended.

Under Mirziyoev’s predecessor, Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan was no friend to either Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. The latter especially suffered as Uzbekistan often closed the 1,388-kilometer Uzbek-Kyrgyz border.

Mirziyoev can be credited for making good on his early promise after coming to power in September 2016 to improve relations with all of Uzbekistan’s immediate neighbors.

Had the pandemic hit before he died in 2016, it is unlikely Karimov would have offered anything to Kyrgyzstan, except possibly some criticism of the way the Kyrgyz government was handling a health crisis.

It is also interesting that the statement on Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan mentioned taking joint measures to ensure “stability and safety in the region.”

This somewhat echoes an October 9 joint statement in the wake of the ouster of Kyrgyzstan’s government from the leaders of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan that expressed concern about “events happening in fraternal Kyrgyzstan,” but also mentioned that the “well-being of Kyrgyzstan is an important factor for regional security and sustainable development throughout Central Asia."

The statement was issued by Toqaev’s office, but the impetus for arranging this unprecedented joint statement of Central Asian leaders almost surely came from discussions between Toqaev and Mirziyoev.

Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are so introverted and have so many of their own domestic problems that it is difficult to see how the leaders in either country would have initiated such a statement.

Uzbekistan has emerged as a regional partner and, increasingly, Tashkent and Nur-Sultan are consulting on regional matters.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan should be the dominant states of Central Asia.

Regionally, they are the most powerful economically, militarily, and in terms of population size. But previously they found it difficult to cooperate, again mainly due to Karimov's obstinateness.

Among the first fruits of Kazakh-Uzbek cooperation may be an improvement in the situation in Kyrgyzstan. Encouragingly, the Kazakh and Uzbek governments are talking about “regional” security and stability, which could lessen the dependence of all five Central Asian states on outside help -- namely Russia or China -- when problems arise.

Kyrgyzstan has a new leader who has already embarked on his own anti-corruption campaign.

All of the leaders in Central Asia have declared such campaigns, some of them several times, but it seems like an absolute necessity to do so after there is a change in leadership and someone new is in power.

Kyrgyzstan got just such a change in early October after the results of the flawed October 4 parliamentary elections were announced, leading to protests in the capital that brought the government down and saw Sadyr Japarov -- who was in prison during the elections -- unexpectedly be elevated to prime minister and, later, acting president.

Japarov, who has limited political experience and a checkered past, was in prison for kidnapping, so a good old-fashioned anti-corruption campaign was just the thing to get some popular support to swing behind him.

The people, especially in economically challenged countries like Kyrgyzstan, always enjoy watching officials and inexplicably wealthy businesspeople get taken down. It seems like justice is being served.

The current campaign in Kyrgyzstan began on October 16. That was the day Japarov appointed his longtime friend and well-known politician Kamchybek Tashiev to be head of the State Committee for National Security (UKMK).

Looking at all the news reports since then, the campaign has been an unbelievable success, at least at uncovering "corruption networks" and estimating the huge amounts of money they have siphoned off the country.

Notorious 'Kingpins' Detained

The campaign started with two of the country's most notorious alleged underworld kingpins being detained: Raimbek Matraimov on October 20 and Kamchy Kolbaev, aka Kolya Kyrgyz, two days later.

It was simple to find them. Both were in the capital, Bishkek, and Matraimov was actually at a gas station near the UKMK headquarters.

Matraimov was taken into custody as part of an investigation into corruption in the Customs Service, where he was the deputy chief from 2015 to 2017.

How A Kyrgyz Customs Chief Enabled A Secretive Smuggling Empire

He has been the subject of several lengthy investigative reports by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Kyrgyzstan's independent Kloop news website, and RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service (known locally as Azattyk) in which Matraimov is alleged to have taken some $700 million out of Kyrgyzstan.

Matraimov was questioned and placed under house arrest after pledging not to leave the country and to pay 2 billion soms (about $24 million) in damages to the country.

Kolbaev is being held in penal colony No. 47 on suspicion of organizing and participating in a criminal group.

He has been on the U.S. Treasury's list since 2012 as a "significant foreign narcotics trafficker." Others have connected Kolbaev to murder, human trafficking, and extortion.

But the anti-corruption campaign has continued since the detention of Matraimov and Kolbaev.

A Busy Month

On October 27, the State Agency for Combating Economic Crime, the Kyrgyz financial police, said they discovered a corruption network involving employees of the Social Fund and the State Tax Service that had cost the state about 9 million soms (about $110,000).

Shortly afterwards, the financial police detained Kanat Jetenbaev, the head of the department of freight traffic and commercial work at the state railway company, Kyrgyz Temir Zholy, who had allegedly been cutting up railway wagons and selling off the scrap metal.

On October 30, the financial police announced that the company MIS, which rents buildings to universities, private schools, stores, and other enterprises had avoided paying 90 million soms (about $1.1 million) in taxes.

That same day, the UKMK announced that it had found out that the State Veterinary and Agricultural Control Inspectorate had been fabricating figures on the size of herds and the cost of vaccines, milking the country for about 31 million soms (about $370,000).

Just a few days later (November 2) the financial police said they were investigating a criminal group that had smuggled some 1.1 billion soms (about $180 million) out of Kyrgyzstan and into China by claiming the money was payment for goods. In fact, there were no goods.

On November 5, the UMKM's anti-corruption department said it discovered that from 1993 to 2002 top officials from Kyrgyzstan, in collusion with representatives of foreign banks, had a network that funneled out of the country some $1 billion of credit extended to Kyrgyzstan.

The UKMK's press center said on November 5 that since October 15 "the budget of the Kyrgyz Republic had received 575 million soms (almost $7 million) in compensation for damages."

It is interesting that the UKMK and financial police seem to be uncovering more corruption schemes in one month than previous anti-corruption campaigns ever uncovered.

But there are some things worth noting here.

Purchasing Loyalty?

Anti-corruption campaigns, most certainly in Central Asia, are often a way to redistribute the wealth and this is quite often the case when there is a leadership change.

New leaders have their own supporters and loyalty is often rewarded or purchased.

All of the corruption schemes that have been revealed since October 15 involved wrongdoing that occurred either before or after Kurmanbek Bakiev's term as president (2005-2010).

Japarov was a chief in the anti-corruption agency under Bakiev and the ousted president's time in office is looked upon as an era of rampant corruption in Kyrgyzstan.

Japarov has said he sees no reason to arrest Matraimov since that would not solve anything and Tashiev said it will be enough for those who illegally made money to simply return it and there is no need to put them in prison.