EURO ASIA NEWS INTERNET NEWSPAPER

Authorities in Kazakhstan look like anything but in control.

For a whole three days after violence erupted in the western city of Aktobe, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev was nowhere to be seen.

Prime Minister Karim Masimov tepidly assured his Cabinet on June 6 that the president was monitoring events closely: “The head of state is maintaining this issue under his control.” But still no messages, of either reassurance or condolence, came out of the presidential administration in Astana.

The silence was finally broken on June 8, when the Akorda presidential administration released a video of a brief exchange between Nazarbayev and the chairman of the National Security Committee, Vladimir Zhumakanov.

a monotone. “If they resist, they must be eliminated. They should all be punished in a most severe fashion.”

If the footage was intended to convey the image of a man in control, it was weak stuff. Much of Zhumakanov’s information ranged between old and obvious. Such videotaped briefings are of course typically theater and play-acting for the camera. It should not be imagined the president really is being kept abreast of developments so poorly, and yet the whole scene is indicative of how Kazakhstan’s authorities regularly struggle to get their messages across to the general public.

To make matters worse, Zhumakanov then threw out a distressing of scrap of information that was subsequently denied.

“At 8.06 a.m. (local time on June 8), a shotgun was fired from a white Lada model 15 automobile at the guards of a summer children’s camp,” he told Nazarbayev.

This would have been a particularly chilling development. All the civilians killed by the gunmen on June 5 were either bystanders or, in one case, a security guard dispatched to a hunting supplies shop that was being attacked. The notion that the armed group were specifically targeting civilians, and possibly even children, for premeditated killing was a disturbing one.

But hours after Zhumakanov made his remarks, the Interior Ministry issued a denial.

“Reports of a shooting at a summer camp in the Aktobe region have been received and verified. They cannot be confirmed,” ministry spokesman Almas Sadubayev said.

What then was the business with the Lada? Who knows?

a monotone. “If they resist, they must be eliminated. They should all be punished in a most severe fashion.”

If the footage was intended to convey the image of a man in control, it was weak stuff. Much of Zhumakanov’s information ranged between old and obvious. Such videotaped briefings are of course typically theater and play-acting for the camera. It should not be imagined the president really is being kept abreast of developments so poorly, and yet the whole scene is indicative of how Kazakhstan’s authorities regularly struggle to get their messages across to the general public.

To make matters worse, Zhumakanov then threw out a distressing of scrap of information that was subsequently denied.

The bizarre cross-communication has only heightened impressions of a government floundering amid an unfolding security crisis.